Sunday sanctuary

The hills are alive with golden aspen and I was itching to get out of town to take a look - and to leave the hubbub of the city behind for at least a few peaceful moments. So I treated myself to my version of Sunday meditations by lacing up my running shoes and heading for the hills...on foot...3000 feet uphill in about 9 miles as I ran most of Sunshine Canyon from Boulder to Gold Hill. With most of the uphill running completed, Kendall and Devon drove up in the van and gave me a lift even further into the mountains where we gazed upon snow-covered peaks and glistening aspen. I must say it feels mighty fine to be fit enough again to simply cruise, breath, and lose myself to the sights and sounds of the world around me.

Shaping up!

The cleaning frenzy is almost complete:
floors mopped, walls scrubbed, windows washed, surfaces dusted, cobwebs vanquished, shelves built in the basement to house the books that started this whole thing, and the dog has even been bathed!
O.K. Paul! You can come home now! ;-)



Speaking of shaping up. It appears my running is also beginning to shape up! This was my 4th consecutive week of high 40s or low to mid-50 miles/week; 4th consecutive week of solid hill repeat workouts (this week was the most I've ever done: 6 each of 90-second hills alternating between a steep and a friggin' steep hill); and 4th consecutive week with a long run over two hours - with two of those runs over 2.5 hours. I'm starting to feel the hints of fitness again. Weeehawww! I've been asked (often) what I'm getting ready for. Bottom line is, I'd like to be able to run as long as I want, whenever I want, wherever I might find myself to be. I do love perambulating tourism. When I was doing my hill repeats this past week I ran into Mark Plaatjes' training group which was also repeating on the "friggin' steep" hill. He commented on my run to Michigan and I said it was the best way to sight-see ever. He allowed as how one could get a pretty darned good view from an airplane. But I must say, I do prefer an up close and personal view!

Summer catch up post - 3 of 3

TV room - with no more bookshelves

After the whirlwind of travel and festivities, it was time to buckle down to business. We've got this domino effect going on in our house that falls something like this:

• Kendall buys a high def TV for the family for Christmas.
• To make room for the new TV, all the bookshelves come down in the TV room; the books are boxed up; the boxes are piled into the guest room.
• We paint the TV room, put up the TV and it all looks so darned good with the newly painted walls that we decide not to put bookshelves back up. (Ah hah! says the astute reader, the guest room is now the boxed up book room.)
• Son Devon returns home to live while he goes for another round of college studies (this time in Communication/radio broadcast at Metro State College of Denver) and he needs that guest room. The books must find a new home.
  
• The only room in the house that can possibly house that many shelves is...the basement. The basement is so full of 34 years of accumulated Paula/Kendall/boys' stuff that it has been reduced down to winding paths through the piles...no floor space, no wall space...pretty much no space at all. The basement must be cleaned out! [Note: this was the first agenda item on my Retirement List...but it somehow got preempted by 1) preparing for that wee run to Michigan and 2) too much nice weather to spend days in the basement and 3) pretty much anything else that came along that wasn't cleaning out the basement.]
  

With the pressure on to get Devon into his own room (he and his stuff is crammed into Paul's room at the moment and Paul is due home for a visit in two weeks), the neighborhood offers up a great incentive: a neighborhood garage sale! So, for the last week, we've been industriously - nay, ruthlessly - going through our piles.

Two mongo garbage barrels of trash, two mongo recycle barrels plus a giant box of recyclables, and a back porch of yard sale stuff, we now have a pretty darned tidy basement ...at least on the scale of VaughanMiller tidiness - which comes nowhere near the Good Housekeeping Martha Stewart scale of tidiness - but we're rather proud of ourselves!

(Porch-full of yard sale stuff -on the left above- makes for rediscovered basement walls & floor -on the right!)

So, if anyone is in the vicinity of the Martin Acres neighborhood of the city of Boulder on August 15th or 16th, do check out the yard sales and make us an offer; we're willing to go very very low!

Summer catch up post - 2 of 3

Millers et al - brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles... the gang's all here!

Following the big dose of Vaughan festivities in early-mid July, we turned around for a Miller extravaganza in honor of Kendall's brother Steve's 60th birthday.
(In the picture to the right, Steve's daughter Amber presents the cake - which is decorated with "1949 Don't Ask" - while Steve's granddaughters Audrey and Kira look on.)




All the siblings were present, most of the kids of the siblings and many of the cousins. Middle brother, Andy, did most of the organizing in hopes that this celebration would take care of all the "60" parties for the brothers. Ha! He and two of his cousins celebrate birthdays within days of eachother (they were known as the triplets when they were little); I see another grand gathering in two years' time!

Brothers/cousins: Andy, Earl, Kendall, Steve, John
(Andy, Earl & John are the "triplets" - and all have the solar foreheads!)

The partying started in Fraser/Winter Park and continued on in the Denver area with a somewhat smaller - yet still boisterous crew. Those Millers sure do know how to have fun!

The next generation - yes, they do know how to have fun!
(Tony, Audrey, Cullen, Kira, Juniper & Sage)

Summer catch up post - 1 of 3

How time flies when summer is swinging! Here's catch-up post #1 (and that's "catch up", not "ketchup" ...I'm a mustard kindo' gal myself... which reminds me of one of my 'quotes of the week' on our family whiteboard: "You can't put a mayonnaise personality into a mustard suit" ...from Unwrapped on the Food Network).

So! Summer since my last post!

That would include our road trip to Michigan by way of Knox College where we visited our son, Paul, who is spending his summer doing one of his very most favorite things: mathematics....specifically, research in cryptography. The boy looks good - and happy. And mom here is going to be even happier when he arrives back in Boulder at the end of the month for a two-week visit before his fall term starts up!

me & frisky mom

After the visit with Paul, we headed up to Petoskey for some quality time with mom, family, friends, and the lake. 'Twas an unusual visit for us in that friends we typically spend lots of time with were way busy (work in the summer...what's that about?!) thus our visiting time was good but short, friends we often don't get to see were actually in town while we were there so we had bonus visits, we were able to catch up with relatives we hadn't seen for a couple of years, and the weather was really quite lovely - lots of sunshine yet not too hot or muggy - but the water, at 50 degrees, was way too cold to swim in. Best of all, my mom's health has significantly improved over the past year so we were able to take her out for quite a few excursions. Northern Michigan is a most excellent get-out-and-about kind of place and we did just that!

Murphey & Vaughan cousins

Yi Lu, me, mom, Aunt Helen,
Dan, Kathleen, Dave

too cold to swim -
but great for hunting Petoskey stones

Summer in full swing

Summer hasn't even been here a full two weeks, but there sure has been a flurry of summer activity!


What with our wet spring, hillsides are loaded with a rainbow of wildflowers making for some positively lovely trail running. Adding to the colorful trail running fun: a never-been-used pair of just-my-size montrails that I found at a yard sale for a mere $20. What a sweet pair of shoes - like running on feathers that glide over rocks and roots.



Adding to this year's summer fun, since we're going to be here in town more than we're going to be gone, we actually resurrected our garden! To top it off, the garden is even producing edibles. Lots of salads so far, with root vegetables on the way. Yummers. However, by my vote, even better than the vegies is this year's cherry crop. Earlier this week, my afternoon progressed as follows: pick a whole bunch of cherries, walk straight into the kitchen, pit the cherries, prepare the crisp, and become thoroughly intoxicated by the smell of hot bubbling fresh-picked cherries. Nothing better!

Alas, not every moment can be spent outdoors - not when one is preparing for their first fiddle recital. Yikes! Many many hours of fiddle practice - and, I'm sure, many many neighbors wishing they had never heard the far-too-often repeated pjv rendition of "Red Haired Boy". If y'all are interested in hearing just how that recital turned out (not perfect, but not a disaster), here's the video our son Devon shot of his fiddling mom, accompanied by our teacher, Mike Marsh. (The first 1:39 is tuning; I recommend you skip that part and head straight for the fiddling.)

Moseying across the country

As you know, if you've read about my run from Colorado to Michigan, I'm a big fan of savoring the miles as one crosses the country. See the sights, enjoy the smells, revel in the fresh air... The thirty-mile-per-day plan was a delightful approach to travel.

Our most recent trip covered the distance a bit more quickly - something like 600 miles per day. Last week we journeyed to Illinois to attend Paul's Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony and Devon's girlfriend Corinne's graduation (all at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois). The weekend's festivities culminated with the packing of all of Devon's stuff into our motorhome and moving him back to Colorado where he will be pursuing a degree in speech communication.



On the way back to Colorado, we crossed paths with a group of folks who were taking the leisurely approach to cross-country travel. They had crossed Iowa last summer, are making their way across Nebraska this summer and will travel through Wyoming next summer...20 miles per day via wagon train! They allowed us to drive along with for a mile or so and I ran alongside in order to get the pictures. I suspect I was warmer running than they were sitting on their wagons in the rain...but what a way to travel!

Vaughan stubborn

Our backyard columbines.
We're lousy gardeners, but these hearty flowers burst forth regardless!

The Vaughan stubborn streak is legendary in our family.

It manifested in my dad through his unrelenting quest to finish whatever it is he may have started - be it changing a 6 cylinder Studebaker into a 4 cylinder Studebaker or going after a hole-in-one which he finally accomplished in his 80s (after 70 years of devoted golf playing).

In my case, it's heightened determination to do something after being told I can't. My first memory of this happening was in high school chemistry when the teacher announced that girls in the class should figure on getting a C since no girl had ever done better than that. So, despite not having any fondness for chemistry, I sucked it up and got an A. Another big one was when I was granted only a probationary admittance to grad school despite great test scores. My undergrad college wrote evaluations rather than give out grades so, without enough grade point credits, the grad school was reluctant to give me full admission. Harumph. First semester in, I got a 4.0 and ending up graduating at the top of my class. The most recent occurrence was just last week. A few weeks ago, my fiddle teacher had given me Red Haired Boy to try playing. Last week, he mentioned that our upcoming recital would be held at the end of June. I said, well, how about I play Red Haired Boy for the recital. He hemmed and hawed and said that it was a bit too tricky and we'd best find something else; he'd pick something out during the week. Tonight I showed up for the lesson, opened the book to Red Haired Boy and he said - ah, we were going to find something else for the recital. I replied with, how 'bout I play this for you first. Play I did...and raised some eyebrows. Red Haired Boy will be on the program! Like I said, don't tell me I can't do something!

Fortunately, for the run to Michigan, noone let it be known (to me, at least) that they didn't think I'd make it. There was no room for doubt in that endeavour...the challenge was daunting enough - and, besides, my brain was too full of the vision of running toward the view of Little Traverse Bay to make room for nay-sayers. I was quite amazed to discover afterwards how many of my buddies thought I was nuts to try...and unlikely to succeed. 'Tis a testament to their friendship that they never, ever shared those doubts with me until after the run. Nothing but powerful positive thoughts were sent my way. They do make all the difference!

Mood enhancers

See that smile? That's me after finally getting to go for a run after many many days of a non-running regimen in hopes that my quad would stop squawking at me.

After much PT and way too many days of being good, I got the green light for a 20 minute max run. I set off at a brisk walk for my volunteer job along bike paths and trails with my running start point firmly in mind (roughly half-way). A few blocks after leaving my house, the dirt path paralleling the bike path I was on beckoned. I sez to myself: "it's dirt, it'll be gentle on the leg" so onto the dirt and into a trot I went. Ahhh.... About a third of the way into the run I approached a pedestrian overpass. As I crested the top and looked down the other side I saw another dirt path. My brain begins conversing: "There's some more dirt; should we run it?" one side asks. "Well, sure why not?!" the other side responds. At that point, I broke out laughing. It's darned difficult to have a pros and cons debate when both parties - and every molecule inbetween - are big time jonesing for a run.

So, yes, I ran on the dirt, and then ran from the half-way point on in to the job. A most excellent start to the day!


(NOTE: if you, dear reader, happen to know my mom, please do not share this cranky leg info with her...she tends to become overly worried about her baby girl no matter how trivial the issue.)

Moving slowly; seeing the sights

I'm gimping around with a sore quad these days so have slowed down substantially...all the way down to a walk as a matter of fact. Other than being in a foul temper due to sweat glands not getting a workout, it's not been too bad. One can certainly get a good view of one's surroundings when meandering at a leisurely 3 miles per hour. Sightings of the last week have included

• three turkey vultures and a hawk floating along the thermals (probably waiting for me to drop from 3 mph to 0 mph so I'd be easy pickin's);
• a fox closely guarding its den where, I discovered the next day, at least one kit is being raised;
• a clucking crow;
• tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and even some pansies popping up...not to mention blossoms about to burst forth on the fruit trees;

But today's sighting takes the prize. Early this past Thursday it started to rain and snow...and did not stop raining and snowing until late Saturday. Supposedly there were 7 inches of snow and who knows how much rain. The streets were rivers, the dips were lakes, and our hay-like lawns now look like the emerald fields of Ireland. There was SO much water, apparently the fish population found new places to explore...this is what I spotted along the sidewalk when walking home from my volunteer job:


Keep your eyes wide open folks, ya' never know what you may see in this wild wonderful world of ours!