Summer lovin'

The weather tonight has to be one of my favorite things about Asheville. Does it get any better than dark storm clouds thundering their way through the mountains? The sound as thunder echoes through the peaks and valleys is like nature's surround sound. Mix that with the percussive melody of raindrops falling through treetop canopies and it is my favorite soundtrack ever. Seriously. You know those little noise machines? Most people like the setting that is supposed to sound like waves crashing on an ocean shore. (I don't really think it sounds like that hardly at all.) I know a few odd ones who actually like the white noise setting. (What...?) Me... I will always choose the rainstorm. If that is not available, I will happily make due with the babbling brook. 

I added something new to my "things I must have visitors experience in Asheville" list. Some existing items include pizza and a movie at the Brew and View, picnicking along the Rocky Bald River in Chimney Rock, an ice-cold adventure at Sliding Rock, and coming to Highland. Sadly, I had to retire spelunking in the fissure caves at Rumbling Bald, because the bats are dying of something called White Nose Syndrome that nobody knows anything about, but humans are probably part of the problem so no more disturbing the bats in Western North Carolina. Boo, hiss. For their information, I only ever saw one bat at Rumbling Bald... although come to think of it, I think it might have been sick because Joshua came awful close to picking it up off the wall and it didn't even put up a fight or flap a wing. Whatever. Save the bats.

New adventure: Tubing on the Green River down in Saluda. Normally, tubing down a river is something that you might classify as relaxing and fun to do with a group of friends, but not an adventure, per se. Might I ask you... what if said river had... rapids? 

The Green River is not your Granny's river, especially with the amount of rainfall we've had in the past year. There are whitewater rapids interspersed with calm flowing waters that make the three-hour float down the river a bona-fide adventure. Add in the snakes and that takes the adventure rating up a whole 'nother notch. 

The bathrooms at the tubing rental place leave a LOT to be desired, so I would suggest being dressed for the water when you arrive (I wasn't) and peeing in the river instead of chancing one of the toilets. But overall, it's a great way to spend an afternoon, especially since it's just $7.00 per person. And I didn't see one snake, which I count as divine intervention because God knows how I feel about those creatures. 

So, next time you come to visit me in Asheville during warm weather season, you can bet I'll take you tubing. What's fun to do in your neck of the woods?

Blog-worthy!

Today I ran my first race, the Oppenheimer Run for Kids' Sake 5K. I have been training for it since about the beginning of May, and it felt so good to cross that finish line today! I finished in 35:12 (although I'd like to just say 35:00 because the first 12 seconds were spent waiting to cross the starting line since I was in the back of the pack) and managed to place 2nd in my age group (I haven't found out exactly how many people were in the female 20-24 group yet... I'm going to laugh if it's like three or something). But it was so much fun! Running in North Carolina is not easy because of all of the hills... I definitely need to do some hill training. But I am super stoked about running more races this year, and my running buddy Deb and I really want to train for the Chicago Marathon in October 2011. Yay for crossing the finish line!

Summertime

Today's top three reasons I love summertime in Asheville:

1. The sun is rising when I leave the house at ten 'til five to go to the gym in the morning, and when I come home at 9:00 at night there is still daylight.

2. Corn stalks shooting up toward the sky and green bean tendrils winding their way around our homemade trellises in our vegetable garden.

3. Fireflies!

God has been doing something so refreshing and exciting in my heart this week. After a year of struggle, confusion, and (more often than not) discontentment, I feel like my head has broken the waterline and I am breathing life-giving oxygen again. Upcoming blog on this wonderfulness soon... preferably on a day that does not involve the regular gym, work, evening commitment insanity of schedule. This week that probably means Wednesday. Be on the look out!

Welcome back

I suppose I am welcoming myself back to the blogosphere. It's been a long absence of writing on a regular basis.

This has been a hard year for me... I'm not even sure where to begin. A part of me wants to start a new blog because I feel detached from... well, before. Before what, exactly? I'm not sure about that, either.

Joshua and I just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. It's hard to believe that it has been a whole year since we stood on the side of a mountain and said our vows to one another. Marriage has turned out to be so much more and so much different than anything I thought it would be. It has been a hard year for us. We are two people with different wounds and different broken places within our hearts, and joining together in such a significant relationship, there is bound to be some collateral damage along the way.

Marriage is more than I thought it would be because I have a deep-- and when I say deep, I mean deep in that sense that you know with all of your guts-- knowledge of the presence of the covenant that unifies us and the fact that it is not Joshua and I who are holding it together but God Almighty Himself. Marriage is so different than I thought it would be because I am an American woman and we are all brainwashed by movies, romantic novels, and society in general which asserts that love is more about how someone makes you feel rather than what you give. No matter how many times you say, "I know it's not like the movies" the truth is you actually don't know that, not until you are in it. This year I have been unabashedly confronted with my own selfishness, self-centeredness, and the realization of just how conditional my love for others truly is.

All of that to say, marriage is not for sissies.

My 25th birthday is coming up later this year. When I was 19 and on my second tattoo, I decided I wouldn't get any more ink until I turned 25. That seemed like an eternity at the time... now here I am. I recently decided on the spot I'd like to get it done, but the inspiration for the actual tat has eluded me. Today I was reading the psalms and as I read these verses I think they might have provided that inspiration.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

The images are rolling around in my brain. I wish I could draw.

I think I've decided to return to blogging for awhile. Hope you'll join me.