Sporty Miser family update

Life continues to be rich and full and sporty in the Miser Family Household.  So full.  Behold.

Being sporty is pretty hard right now, for a bunch of reasons.  For one thing, in our neck of the woods . . . er, city . . . this past month has been the hottest July on record since our city started keeping records.  Also, my running buddy is temporarily off limits to me.   (She does physical therapy for little kids, which is hard to do online, although she's been doing that valiantly for a while.  A few weeks ago, her organization started home visits again, and about two weeks ago, she did a home visit with a child who subsequently tested positive for Covid-19.  She's feeling fine herself, but she's doing the usual self-isolation for a while until she gets the green light).  

Okay, so that's two reasons: heat and loss of a running buddy.  The third is I gave blood.  So I did try pumping iron mid-week along with Dan and Kelly Fitness Blender, but I bailed early.  Wimpy me.  I don't have a photo, but I did get to do a fun 4-mile run through a local park with some different friends, later in the week when I'd recovered a bit from my phlebotomist encounters.  

Athleticism runs in the family, so to speak.  I just got the update from my dad, who "has been going faithfully to the gym three times a week."  My step-daughter L2 shows in her photo above that sometimes you have to bend over backwards to get in a good workout (acro yoga is above and beyond me).  Another example of flexibility is taking a selfie with a spinning wheel (if you haven't tried, you'll see how tricky that is). I-daughter writes, "This is me with my wheel and the yarns I spun during this year's Tour de Fleece".

L1 has had a tough week.  She says, "Sorry been a long day, we are watching the Yankees Sox game. Dogs are watching peter eat his pizza; it's a sport for them".   We've just learned that their foster dog, Ameila, has terminal cancer.   L1 and Peter have decided that Amelia is now their forever dog, and will be with them and be made comfortable in a way that only L1 can really do.  We're all sorry for this beautiful old dog, but grateful that she has the best place in the world to live out the rest of her days.  

On a different kind of difficult journey, Y says, "My sport was spending 5 hours in the car moving back from Southern Maryland to Phillyphilly. #NoMeGustaElAtasco".

The sport theme was N-son's suggestion, and he hit this theme out of the park with his wooden bat.  A-child decided to do him one or two better:  she's got two bats, and a swimsuit!   She had a great time in the ocean with her dad.  See them both in the water?

My guy has multiple sports that he excels at; he's still walking something like 60 miles a week for example.  But this picture shows two other of his favorite sports: biking and buying things.  And guess what he did this week? He bought a bike!  Because why not?  We only have like 5 or 6, so might as well get another one.  (For what it's worth, this is a single speed mountain bike with fat tires; it's slower and steadier than his other bikes, and I did bless the plan to get this.  If it had been me, I would have carefully mulled things over and then considered the purchase and then thought about buying the bike, and maybe then I might have worked my way up to figuring out whether I wanted to actually go out and buy it.  But he saw it at our local bike place on Tuesday evening as they were closing, chatted with me about it that night, and bought it Wednesday morning.  crazy.)  

I mentioned that the weather has been really hot and the sun has been fierce.  In some ways, I'm kind of delighted by this.   Here' s a spreadsheet showing our energy usage for July -- you might notice that about the middle of the month, our usage went negative.  Yes, we now have solar panels, and they're working.  Whoop!

Yesterday, Friday, was our 23rd wedding anniversary.  To mark the special day, I got my husband bedbugs, and he got me mattress covers and chocolate.  This was not actually what we'd planned to get each other, but I woke up in the middle of the night and realized to my horror that even though my husband was sleeping in the recovery bed in the next room, I was not alone, and in fact I had approximately a gazillion companions.  Icky, icky, icky.  Fortunately the bedbugs seem to be restricted to one room.  My husband (did I ever mention he's good at shopping?) ordered mattress covers; we've put the solar panels to good use by washing and then using the dryer on sheets and pillows and such, and we have an exterminator coming Tuesday.  So we're crossing fingers that we caught this before it takes over the whole house.  Still, icky.

Oh, and did I mention he got me chocolate (from a local store, and brought it home in pyrex with no plastic)?  Love that man so much.  

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our sporty adventures.  May you and yours stay safe, and don't let the bedbugs bite.