Thanks for your patience while I took a little blog break. It wasn’t something I intended but I feel comfortable sharing now that my father-in-law has been gravely ill due to complications from a tick bite. Yes, a teeny tiny deer tick nearly took down a big mountain of a man. Things are looking up and took a big step in the right direction yesterday. I’m not going to go into further details on his battle, but I will say that when they tell you certain illnesses are life threatening for the elderly – they aren’t kidding.

What I can tell you, though, is that I spent much of the past week sitting quietly with Dale by his dad’s bedside. Other family members were there a lot as well, Dale’s siblings and our kids came and went frequently. But, speaking just for us, Dale and I chose to be there as often as possible because we both just felt better when we were sitting by Jack’s side. It was, as Kym once shared, life in parentheses. This analogy comes from the book Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding by Lynn Darling and the idea is that “catastrophes provide a pair of parentheses in which to live apart from real life, depositing you rather abruptly on the sidelines for a bit while normal life continues to eddy downstream.” When I first read that on Kym’s blog I thought I understood it. I mean, Kym explained it really well and it made sense. But now that I have spent the last week or so in parentheses I have to say that nope, I didn’t really get it until now.

Let me try to explain. I am a person who craves order and routine. I am also a person who loves summer and in summer my order and routine includes lots of time on the deck, lots of local corn on the cob and fresh tomatoes, lots of drinks al fresco, and lots of play time. Last week none of that happened. We were at the hospital pretty much all day every day and, while I missed all of those summer routines that I love, I also just didn’t care that I wasn’t able to do them. Life was going on around me and moving downstream while I stood on the sidelines and watched. Luckily I have really great people in my life who stepped up a lot and took care of things at work (thank you, Amy) and home, things like picking up cat food (thank you, Sean) and picking up invitations from the printer (thank you, Jo-Ann). I would have been lost were it not for people who reached out and checked in and offered support. Up until yesterday we weren’t certain what would do about our upcoming Cape Cod vacation and were pretty sure we would cancel it. And I just didn’t care. I wasn’t sad at the idea of not going, I wasn’t disappointed, I was just living in parentheses where nothing else mattered except that Jack was sick.

Life in parentheses has a really beautiful way of showing you what truly matters. All the junk, all the stuff of daily life, it just slips away and leaves you with perfect clarity: the only thing that matters are the people you love.

Want to know how I know that I’m moving outside the parentheses and back into routine life?

I was awake at 4am making lists of things I need to do before we go on vacation. And blogging. It’s good to be back.

It occurred to me last night, as I was prepping pictures to share with you all, that maybe one of the reasons it feels like weekends go by so quickly is because I summarize them for you every Monday. Maybe? Nevertheless, even if that is the reason (and I don’t seriously think it is) It’s fun to write these posts and it’s a great way of remembering the whoooooosh of the weekend. Ready to hear about this last one?

Friday was a beautiful day and, while I had originally thought we might head to the beach, our morning was slow and lazy and I found the day slipping away from us. So instead of the beach we headed towards water in the Mustang. We had a late lunch at The Oysterman, a place that had been recommended to me by a colleague and it was great. The oysters were fresh and delicious and the beer was cold and crisp.

After a bit more driving around and a peek at the ocean we headed for home. Friday Night Snacks were light since we were still full from lunch (there was more than those oysters!) and I sliced up one of our homegrown cucumbers and drizzle it with a little ranch dressing. We played Mexican Train on the deck and it was muggy and warm and a perfect summer night.

I invited Jessica and her family over for Saturday afternoon and evening and that meant food shopping and prep. Jess loves spinach artichoke dip, chicken wings and clam chowder and, since she’s the pregnant one, I made all of those just for her. We had a great time hanging out together and catching up. We got to hear about Patrick’s job and his experience getting his driver’s license last week and we got to marvel at Jessica’s expanding belly!

And, in honor of shark week, some wine.

On Sunday we were up and out early to head to Just Right Farm for an event held by the South of Boston Gardener’s group. I brought the big camera and will have many more photos of this day to share with you but I’ll just say for right now – it was a gorgeous day in a beautiful spot.

This is the screen house where they have farm to table dinners and I’m thrilled to say that Dale and I made a reservation to go experience this later in September for my birthday. I’ve heard marvelous things about their dinners so I’m pretty excited that we are going.

We came home mid afternoon and Dale snoozed on the couch while I read. Then we headed back outside where I picked our first substantial cherry tomato harvest and we worked on a crafty project together – more on that later this week, too.

We ended the afternoon with a couple of cocktails and some music outside. The temperature really dropped and it was crisp out there so we headed inside to watch Game of Thrones.

It was a really perfect weekend from start to finish!

A sunflower and a haiku for your enjoyment today.

Thriving in the weeds
Tall and strong, vibrant gold
Sunshine on a stem

Sometimes I take lots of photos on the weekend just so that I can show them to you. This weekend was one of those and I’ve got a pretty good photo recap of our activity.

Mason hung out in this box pretty much all weekend long. I don’t know if he thought he’d be the first kitty on the moon since he was in a space ship or if he just liked the enclosed space.

We had our usual Friday night snacks but if it looks like there is more food than usual it’s because we had help eating it since Jo-Ann and Shawn came over. We had a fun night playing Mexican Train and catching up since we don’t see them as much in the summer because there’s no Kiwanis and because they go to their lake house pretty much every weekend.

On Saturday we attended a birthday party for our awesome friend Katy. That was the real reason Jo-Ann and Shawn stayed home and we had a wonderful time celebrating Katy, drinking local beer, playing lawn games, listening to music and just hanging out.

Katy and her husband have a perfect spot for parties; their barn is relaxed and casual and utterly charming. I’m currently negotiating with them for a future party we are throwing!

We ended the evening with a campfire and s’mores. Nothing better on a summer night.

Sunday was a lazy day of hanging around, catching up on some stuff, and enjoying the outdoors. We recently got this cantilevered umbrella and can finally be on the deck during the day without baking in the hot sun. Hooray!

We ended the weekend with food and drink, nothing new about that.

And local corn. Because summer.

How was your weekend?