Thursday Thirteen

13 Summer Fantasies

1.        I lie on a lounge chair in the back yard, with a book and within arm’s reach of my cherry tomato bush, which has grown ridiculously tall and produced hundreds of luscious tomatoes.

2.       I purchase the house I am interested in for a song and am able to fill both the upstairs and downstairs apartments with tenants paying a total of $1,800 a month.  One of the tenants is an avid lawnmower hobbyist and asks if he can please mow the lawn as part of his lawnmower enjoyment.

3.       I power through my training for the Huntsville Marathon, reaching the September 28 start date uninjured, and finish in under four hours. 

4.       We sail the Hobie catamaran from San Luis Obispo up to Morrow Bay, have a picnic on the sand spit there, and look for sea shells.

5.       Chuck and I are incredibly fit by the time we get on our bicycle in the Pyrenees and can chug up 3,000 feet of vertical in a day without really noticing it. We don’t notice, and neither do our quads.

6.       I eat at least three meals in Spain comprising unusual forms of seafood.  I wash it down with large quantities of wine. 

7.       I wander around San Sebastian in a warm, sultry evening, holding hands with my guy.  We eat tapas and drink more wine. 

8.       No!  Wait a minute!  It’s after noon and we have been pedaling on a Villa Verde.  We pause for lunch and I pull out fresh fruit and a sandwich filled with some famous Spanish jamon.

[Kate’s summer fantasies are evolving into a food theme… must… stop.. thinking…about…food…]

9.       My daughter is honored by the state of Utah for being an exemplary teen.  As part of this recognition, she is offered an early driver’s license and a car so she can get herself to all of her own sports and social engagements.  Let’s throw in a summer wardrobe as well. 

10.   Nathan tells me that his resolution for this summer is to stop playing computer games.  He puts away all of his clean clothes, matches up his odd socks, goes into the woods, builds a fort, then comes back in to see if I would like him to clean the rabbit’s cage. 

11.   I build up an impressive set of back muscles, allowing me to be a powerful rower in preparation for our Grand Canyon trip. People come up to me on the street to say, “Wow, you are SO RIPPED!”

12.   August 12 is a beautiful, sunny day and Chuck and I finish the day with a little campfire down at the beach with our bellies full of pulled pork and rocky-road brownies.  The cottage is full of family, playing Scrabble and cards.  We’ll join them in a minute, when we’re finished making out.

13.   Chuck has time to make absolutely gorgeous wedding bands for us, in the pattern that we have talked about.  They are a perfect fit and we smile at the effect when we put them on each other’s fingers.