Little Bits of “Normal” Returning

fresh organic stone fruits from the Little Italy Mercato

Saturday / It’s been a long time coming (three and half months to be exact), but it finally feels like some of the little nuances of our “normal” life are returning. And one of those little things is our weekly market run. For obvious reasons, we haven’t been since the beginning of March. But boy does it feel good to be back supporting our two favorite little farms (Sweet Tree Farms + J.R. Organics), and to literally be enjoying the fruits of their labor.

Sunday / Since it has been a few years since we’ve been home in June, we’ve both sort of forgotten just how gloomy the June Gloom really is. While all of our family and friends are literally in the heat of Summer already, San Diego seems to be pretty content spending its mornings in the lower 60°s with complete cloud coverage. I can’t remember if it always seems this grey, but I’m pretty sure that we haven’t seen the sun in about ten days now. And while there are plenty of things that I appreciate about San Diego’s very temperate climate, I do miss feeling the change of the seasons. Even if that means 90° and humidity.

Monday / San Diego is really taking this whole June Gloom thing to the next level. We didn’t just wake up to an overcast sky and brisk temps this morning, we also woke up to rain. But these sort of mornings tend to be my happy cozy work zone. When everything seems to sort of slow down outside, it feels like the perfect time to really hunker down and get a head start on my work for the week. And after a few productive hours of work, the rain let up, and I was even able to sneak in a delightfully long walk along the beach before the showers returned.

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Tuesday / I was feeling like it had been awhile since I had done a “this week’s highlights” post that wasn’t featuring some of our travels from years past. But now, just four days into highlighting our current week, I am completely remembering why I had temporarily stopped sharing our current highlights in the first place. It’s not that I don’t see endless happy moments throughout our days, it’s just that our days, for lack of a better word, are kind of boring. Yep, my apologies, because our days are basically all the same. I work from home, Ryan has been a complete gem helping out with all of the household chores, we go for long walks, we catch up with family, and we cook dinner. And really, that’s about it. But I do know that this season of life, this “boring” really is a blessing. Because I’m pretty sure that someday very soon we will miss these quiet, and yes, boring days.

Wednesday / I wish that I could say that these are the fruits of my labor. But as you can see, this is really only the fruit of my labor. Yes, just one strawberry. My garden is actually doing pretty well finally, although I think that I may need to fertilize as it seems like things have started to slow down a little bit. But if this strawberry is any indicator as to the flavors that will be coming from our garden this year, then I dare say that we are in for a treat!

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Thursday / Our dryer was finally fixed today for (hopefully) the last time. It’s broken on and off over the past several months, resulting in finally just refusing to start at all about one month ago. So we’ve patiently been without a dryer for one whole month (thank God for our warm weather with all of the air drying that we had to do) while the insurance company more than took their time (despite Ryan’s persistence talking to every manager) locating and then finally receiving the needed parts. But hallelujah, because our dryer is working again!

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Friday / We decided to kick off this holiday weekend just like we would have pre-pandemic. When we went on lock-down in March, we had immediately written off the idea of getting any sort of takeout food. For us, we just felt like we wanted to limit how many hands were handling what we would be eating. So it’s been a long couple of months, but we’re finally back. Ryan picked up some sushi for us from our favorite local sushi restaurant, and really, this has probably been the most “normal“ that we have felt in a long time.