Too Much

I'm very busy trying to stay sane in a crazy world. So Very Busy.

My current approach to life is to spend every minute of my spare time distracting myself with wine, music, preferably live, nature hikes, leisurely road trips, camping, chasing sunsets, taking pictures every step of the way. When you spend a lot of time driving through the nooks and crannies of America while taking a break from news, social media and all the noise, it's a little easier to forget how completely fucked up our little republic has become. For a little while, at least.

Since my last post, we have added these adventures in a frenzy of escapist, late, late mid life crises:

* drove to Nashville for a concert with family (Tedeschi Trucks Band)

* flew to San Antonio for business, fun and music  (Dueling Pianos)

* flew to Boca Raton FL for business, drove to the Gulf for a concert, (JJ Grey), to visit family and flew back from Tampa

* drove the camper, bikes and kayaks to St. Augustine for a truck camper rally with camping and hiking stops in Kentucky, Georgia and a stop to visit old best friends in Indiana

* moved our son into a condo in Chicago for his new job

* drove the camper to Chattanooga TN for a concert in a cavern, (JJ Grey) then hiked waterfall trails all the way home through Tennessee and Kentucky

*spent father's day at the lake shore in Chicago watching our kids and their significant others win a co-ed beach volleyball tournament

* spent an evening at a local Swedish Days festival concert with family and friends

*sweltered through a two day Aurora IL Blues Festival in record heat and humidity (Sonny Landreth, Samantha Fish, Elle King, Toronzo Cannon)

*drove to central Illinois to camp along the Illinois River, see live blues (Big Dog Mercer), watch barges go by and almost kill the dog from heat stroke

*camped our way through Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, camping along Lake Superior where we hiked and biked and swatted biting flies for four glorious days.

And we are not done yet.

We have a big summer concert in Chicago this week with family and friends, ( KT Tunstall, Better than Ezra and Bare Naked Ladies ), a blues festival in Rockford IL (Toronzo Cannon) and a concert with the kids at Wrigley Field (JJ Grey and Blackberry Smoke) in August. We are trying to find a weekend to get away to camp the dunes along the Michigan shores of Lake Michigan.

We have more trips to go this summer: one to camp in Minnesota in July, and a solo trip to Delaware to to see my family and go to a concert  (Trombone Shorty). Also in this time period, my husband has taken five additional business trips to Florida plus a trip to Rhode Island for work. I can't imagine the pace he keeps. I'm having trouble with my own.

I keep snapping pictures neurotically, obsessively. Everything. Scenery, weather, nature, people, towns, whatever I see with my eyes I snap with my camera. My phone ran out of memory sometime after 10,500 pictures. I backed up and deleted pictures for hours yesterday, enough for a while. I can only delete some of them from my phone, because it comforts me to scroll through the last few years, visually stimming, escaping, remembering.

These things. In no particular order.

It's been lovely, a wonderful distraction from all the mayhem. We are exhausted. But in a good way.


Hope your summers are filled with lovely distractions too.

xo