Summer

Summer is over. Manitoba’s autumn is the equivalent of winter in the coastal and southern areas–brain-freezing winds, thick frost, and gun-metal grey skies.

But it was a good summer. I’ve been reflecting on this past summer and I’ve been so grateful for the great things that have happened this summer. Here are the highlights.

Losing 30+ Pounds

This began in March, when I was introduced to the book Trim Healthy Mama. The book advocates a low-glycemic, superfood approach to eating, which I have embraced. This led to…

Running my First 5K

And my second, third and fourth. I began the Couch to 5K program in mid-June, and ran my first race on August 17th, about nine weeks later. Since the completion of the program, I have slowly been increasing my distance and speed.

Road Trip with Jess

In the first week of July, my sister and I packed up my little car and booted off to Minneapolis for a week of shopping, touring, and sister-time. Neither of us had shopped at the Mall of America. So we spent two eight-hour days shopping! After that we were sick of the place, and toured a historic mansion, attended a Independence Day celebration at Fort Snelling, and drank a LOT of coffee.

Publishing my First Novel

After a marathon of editing, and formatting, We are the Living was released as an E-book in August, and a print edition was released in September. My friends and family, who didn’t have to format and edit it, were much more excited than I. 🙂

It’s a post-zombie-apocalypse-lovestory mishmash, and a beautiful story of hope in bleak places. I hope it will be a stepping stone to greater things. I sure learned a lot from it.

A New Church

Leaving the church of my childhood was like leaving home and family. Now I am safely ensconced in a new church in town. It is slowly becoming home. I became a member of the choir two weeks ago, and now I feel like I have a family within the church family at large.

What Next?

So what will the winter hold? For starters, I’m going to learn how to run on a treadmill. I have no interest in running in -40 weather, so the treadmill will need to be my best friend. I’ve never used one, so this might be funny for everyone else.

I have plans to complete National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) by writing the first book in a series, which I plan to debut late next year. In the meantime, I am editing a sci-fi novel, for release in the spring.

And you know, I’m kind of looking forward to Christmas. Too soon?

How was your summer?

We call it The Cabin, and so it is. Just a hip-roofed cottage in a stand of spruce and birch trees, yet it is one of my oldest memories.

It smells like history: some combination of wood varnish, old furniture and bacon grease. It lingers on my bedding after I unpack, and links my city apartment with my happy past. We’ve been going there since before I was born.

It sounds like the rustle of the birch-leaves in the wind that is always blowing, and the creak of the wooden staircase up to the second floor. That creak that made sneaking down to the bathroom (outhouse, longer ago) so hard. They fixed the creak with carpet this year, and it seems wrong. The inane sounds of everyday life are gone—the alarm clock, the ringing phone, the traffic, the siren. The silent demands of the dirty dishes and the laundry—all gone in this peaceful place.

It looks like comfy, mismatched furniture. Everything is old-fashioned but functional—plates, cups, and certain forks and knives that are year after year. Who remembers the butter knives? I do.

It looks like silver water stretching to the blue horizon, broken by white caps at irregular intervals. The wind is strong. We smile, because that means big waves and more fun.

It feels like the rough wood of the handrail, and the pine-board walls, and the carven coffee table. Its the sag in an old mattress. My back protests until it sinks into the softness and forgets that it’s the wrong shape. It feels like sand in the swimsuit and tangled hair after spending happy hours at the beach, collecting shells, jumping in the waves, playing Frisbee.

It tastes like pancakes, and bacon, and Kraft Dinner—not most people’s idea of fine dining, but for us KD was always a treat reserved for the Cabin. We come together around the table—to eat, to laugh, and play cards. We make coffee in the afternoon and visit, because we can. Maybe a little later we’ll bike to the park and play basketball until we’re tired and sweaty. Then we’ll taste sunflower seeds and peach kool-aid from a plastic water jug, passed from hand to hand.

And then there is the sixth sense, the intuition, the essence. What does the cabin mean? The cabin means being together.

An Exceptionally Good Summer