July in the city

Summer, as per usual, is zipping by at an alarming rate. (Why can't the cold months do the same?) It's been a good summer here in the city, although a fairly quiet one. I didn't go on any big trips, which honestly was a little bit of a bummer. (But! Levent and I are trying to save up for a house, so it's okay to save our money I guess. lol.) Nevertheless, there have been highlights that are worth mentioning in this recap blog. (Sigh, I remember when I had way more to say in this blog besides just monthly recaps. But I guess those days are behind me. Although who knows what the future holds. Maybe one day I'll be inspired to blog more frequently and on a variety of subjects)

Anyway.

Here are the highlights.

1. Levent and I went to Virginia for the 4th of July weekend.

2. My brother-in-law Brendan and I went and picked blueberries near West Liberty, Ohio in early July. It was a little bit fun and a little bit grueling work. (It always reminds me of my time picking blueberries one summer in Asheville. Wow that feels like a lifetime ago- maybe summer 2009?)  These blueberries were not like that bounty of Asheville back in 2009. The berries were fairly picked over and small. So it took quite a bit of time to pick our buckets full. The nice thing is that is was not as hot as it had been the previous week. And of course, once we were done, we went and got ice cream for lunch. Very cute of us.

3. I went to the very humid, very crowded, but very fun book festival the library puts on at the main branch. I waited in line for their used book sale (and got a ton of cookbooks - my dream!), walked in the crowds and saw all the vendors and got some Thai food from a food truck to take home to share with Levent for lunch. All around, a good time (despite the fact that the event has out grown the library grounds).

4. Shirley and I tried a new (to us) matcha place in Dublin called Milky Way Matcha. (It also happened to be on the day that the air quality in Columbus was dangerously bad because of the extreme wildfires in Canada. But we dusted off some old face masks leftover from COVID times and (safely) braved the elements. 

5. Maybe the best highlight of the summer for me! Levent and I drove up for the southwest part of the Cleveland suburbs and met up with Jille and Lucas who were back in the States from Denmark for a few weeks. (Jille was my roommate from collage for all four years). We met up with their whole crew (they have 3 young kids) at a park, despite the heat. But at least the air quality was way better than it had been just the day before. So I feel lucky that it all worked out. We spent a few hours chatting but they had to move on to their next thing. Levent and I stopped for Thai food before heading back home. It was a lovely morning/afternoon.

6. We watched even more world cup matches! So fun! I loved the whole thing, which was weeks and weeks of soccer! Even though the 3rd place game was the better of the two (pictured), we went to watch the final game with Blake and Brendan in their newly renovated basement.

7. Speaking of Blake and Brendan, we had a lovely Sunday brunch with them at Joya's in Worthington, which is one of my favorite places in all of Columbus. (Definitely the best breakfast sammie in the city). 

8. We "put up" some corn. (Aka we processed it and froze it). It's a lot of work, but with many hands, etc. I believe it took us a little over two hours from start to finish (with clean up). My share was 8 containers, which is slightly less than the previous year (on purpose). Winter Anna will be very happy to add this corn to her many soups.

9. I started practicing driving on the highway. This isn't really a highlight but I do feel proud of myself. So I am including it here. I currently have a very large fear of driving on the highway. (This started like 3 years ago or so). My anxiety about driving is really loud. It has made regular, every day life things feel really hard and/or impossible. But I have been working on this in therapy for the past 2+ years. And now, with encouragement from Levent and my therapist, I practice driving on the highway once a week. And it's going okay. And I am proud of that. One such driving practice was going up to Clintonville to get ice cream at Jeni's. (I always get a little treat when I drive on the highway). Healing is not linear. So it's been a hard and frustrating literal road at times. But I proud of myself for trying.

And that, my friends, was July. Pretty simple but lovely all the same.