Summer in Review
We did a lot more than I realized
I’m getting sick of the heat. It’s been 80 degrees here all week, which is abnormal for September and honestly really annoying. In true Midwesterner fashion, I’m more annoyed by the humidity than the heat, because it makes me feel perpetually sweaty and sticky. And then I get grumpy because I’m sweaty and sticky all the time.
Within a matter of days, though, it’s gonna feel like fall again. I don’t know when, but the forecast is predicting that we’ll get into the 60s by the end of September. Even if it’s another week or two away, that time is gonna go fast — and winter will be here before we know it.
I realized this weekend that I haven’t given much thought to everything that happened in summer 2024. After an insanely hectic start to the year, Ryan and I actually had a pretty good summer.
We actually did a lot more stuff than I remember. I was going through my camera roll, and saw pics of things that I honestly thought happened last year. Summer felt kind of endless, and at the same time was gone in a flash. Such is life.
I thought it’d be fun to share some of those memories with you this week, complete with photos. Most of these pics are of Ryan and I in various places because I didn’t have time to ask the people we spent time with if it was okay to put their faces in our newsletter. But we did see a lot of friends and family this summer — you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Starting in June, Ryan ran the Manitowoc Half Marathon for the second time. I went to support him, of course — and we even ran into some friends I went to college with at the finish line. Wisconsin feels like a small town sometimes.
A few weeks later, my mom, grandma, and youngest sister, Claire, came to visit. It was a pretty special trip because they brought our new cat, Juno. He was my mom and sister’s cat, but came to live with us after my mom decided to move from Michigan to South Carolina. Juno and her dog don’t mesh well, and my sister wasn’t in a position to adopt him, so that’s why he lives here now.
Juno hid in the bathtub that first night before he got the confidence to wander around our apartment. He settled in pretty quickly, all things considered.
The day after Juno moved in, I went down to Chicago with my family while Ryan stayed behind with the cat. My middle sister, Natalie (Nang), was graduating with her master’s degree from DePaul, so we were heading over to celebrate.
It was a whirlwind of a weekend. We got into town and stopped by my cousin Gaby’s art gallery to see some of her work on display before heading over to Nang’s. Then, we all changed and headed out to dinner and her graduation ceremony.
The next day, it was insanely hot and we walked in treacherous 95-degree weather down to a cafe near Nang’s place. The food was good, but it was so hot I just wanted to lock myself in a freezer and not come out. We spent the afternoon hanging out in the air conditioning at her apartment and then went to a nearby pub for her graduation party.
I got to meet some of Nang’s friends and neighbors and eat some tasty cake and shepherd’s pie. Then, my mom drove me to the train station to head back to Milwaukee, where Ryan picked me up. That’s probably the quickest trip to Chicago that I’ve ever done.
The next few weeks of June were spent in town, doing all the regular summer stuff that Ryan and I like to do. We spent time by the lake, saw some live music on the city green, and got gyros and baklava at Greek Fest.
And, of course, June also consisted of getting used to having a cat around. Juno is the first feline that Ryan and I have cared for as primary caretakers, so there was definitely a bit of a learning curve — especially for me. Ryan grew up with lots of cats, but I grew up with a dog, which are very different creatures.
Then July came, and my mom started intensely cleaning out her house to prepare for the big move. She shipped me boxes and boxes of stuff that she didn’t want anymore.
A lot of these things were my childhood memory boxes from school and stuffed animals from my massive Webkinz collection. Not to mention tons of physical media that Ryan requested we keep. (Ok, and me too, because I couldn’t bear letting go of our sticky copies of old Disney movies like Ratatouille and Dumbo.)
Ryan and I didn’t do much for July 4th, but we did watch the fireworks from our balcony. Last year, we actually went down to the waterfront to see the fireworks up close, but there were just too many damn people and too many damn mosquitos for us to want to do it again. The land is flat enough and we’re close enough to the water to see the show from home, so we just did that. It was fine.
A few weeks later, we got to see our friends get married in Milwaukee. It was a joyful ceremony, the food was great, and we even made some new friends and met up with old ones. What’s not to love?
I also did a lot of cooking this summer, in part due to the fact that we got a farm share. Every week, I go pick up a fresh box of veggies and have to find some creative way to use them. I’ve made tons of salads, soups, stews, and more experimental things like kohlrabi burgers.
One of the highlights was grilling with Ryan’s parents in early August. We made some veggie skewers to use up the surplus of veggies in our fridge. We also tried grilling zucchini, which turned out pretty good, but next time I’d use more salt.
Right after visiting Ryan’s family, the two of us headed home to prepare for our biggest summer trip: an excursion to Ithaca, New York. My sister Claire goes to school out there, and we wanted to hang out with her before she had to start class again. Ryan also had never been on an airplane or traveled outside the Midwest, so going to Ithaca seemed like the perfect opportunity to check both those tasks off his bucket list.
The flight there sucked, and Ryan did a great job of detailing on his Substack what a pain in the ass it was. But the rest of the trip was awesome. We hiked the gorges, visited a cat cafe, went record shopping, saw Cornell’s campus, and spent some quality time with my sister.
One of the biggest highlights was going to Moosewood, a legendary vegetarian restaurant that publishes some great cookbooks. Fun fact: the Grateful Dead went there in 1977 when they were in town for their show at Cornell, but no one from Moosewood recognized them. We loved the food there so much that we ate at Moosewood three times over the course of our trip. (We were only in Ithaca for three and a half days.)
We were real tired after getting back home from that trip, but things didn’t seem to slow down. Juno had an eye infection that required a vet visit, and we took him in the day after we got off the plane. Thankfully it just required some prescription antibiotics and nothing major.
And about a week after that, we got a spontaneous visit from my aunt, uncle, and little cousins from Pennsylvania. It was awesome getting to show them around our town, since they’d never visited us in Wisconsin before.
Then, before we knew it, August was over. Labor day weekend, which coincided with Ryan’s birthday, was right around the corner.
If you didn’t hear the news, Ryan turned 30 this year! It’s crazy to think he was just 24 and I was 21 when we met. We toyed with the idea of doing a big party for him, but August was so busy that neither of us had the energy to put it together.
Instead, we spent the weekend doing low-maintenance things we enjoyed: eating at our favorite restaurants, spending time with Ryan’s family, buying CDs, and rotting in bed. I think Ryan was pretty happy with it. We can always throw a party later.
That brings me to this past weekend, which was also busy. We went to an art festival in town, watched the local theater group perform Much Ado About Nothing, and got our Covid boosters. I don’t really want to work at all this week — I feel like I need several days to catch up on sleep.
But hey, before I know it, it’ll be too cold outside to do anything at all. And then I’ll find myself wishing it was still summer again.
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Sounds like you had a fun, busy summer. A whirlwind. I'm not a fan of humidity, but my wife Karen was okay with this last week. We had a contest of turning on and turning off the AC, with Karen constantly saying, "its not that hot out" and I would say, yeah, but...
We worked it out.