After we returned from Atlanta, Madison summer arrived in full with sailing, gardening, bicycling, farmer’s markets and summer dresses. Summer in Madison is the Madison I most missed and now here I am once more.

This year we joined a CSA run by two brothers, who started a potato farm when they were kids. http://www.driftlessorganics.com/ They offer an every other week share, which is just right for the two of us. Our second box comes tomorrow and we just finished eating the first box. Seems to be just the right volume for us. In our first box we got:

• spinach
• arugula
• lettuce
• green onions
• green garlic
• broccoli
• purple potatoes
• kohlrabi

We supplemented the share with sugar snaps, cucumber, asparagus and strawberries. All from the market. I made a couple cold salads, one being a kohlrabi, arugula and broccoli slaw and one being a cucumber and sugar snap asian salad. Yum!

Speaking of food at the market, we’ve also been enjoying incredible cheddar from Hook’s http://www.hookscheese.com/. Strangely, we first discovered Hook’s cheddar in Decatur, GA at Sun in My Belly. We loved it, but didn’t realize it was even a Wisconsin cheese. Then we saw their stand at the Farmer’s Market, adding fuel to our list of great Wisconsin things. Try the five year cheddar if you have a chance.

Lola and I have been loving the changing seasons here in Wisconsin. Going to the same dog park every week for a year, has really shown the huge diversity of seasons we have, all of them with their own beauty. It is amazing to stand in the same spot, up to your knees in snow and six months later be up to your knees in flowers. You might just have to take some time to roll around in joy.

I wrote this post on May 29…but for some reason never published it…

Home buyers stay home if it rains in Atlanta. In fact they seem to stay home if there’s even a chance of rain, a hint of rain or seemingly a cloud in the sky. It has been a rainy, cloudy 2009 in fair Atlanta. Mix that with “our current economic situation” and it means the house shopping has been slow, painfully slow.

Being up here in Wisconsin, and wanting so much for our house to sell, I’d started to second guess our decisions. Maybe we were stupid to have bought the house we did, maybe it isn’t as nice as I thought it was, maybe we were totally out of our minds while we lived there….maybe, maybe, maybe…..

After visiting, and staying in our house, I can say, once more with confidence, that our house is fantastic. It is super cute, a great size and layout and in beautiful shape. It is just the house we want, if only we could take it with us. As a neighbor said to us, “You just need to keep the faith.”

I returned from Atlanta with my faith renewed and a restored fortitude to face the fickle home buyers of this summer. It was tremendous fun to see all our friends and family, to stay in our lovely house and to road trip in our new car.

Three months have passed, the season changed from winter to spring. The weight of an unsold house, an empty pocket-book and no vacation in sight, brought me down. What’s the point of writing when things feel so unchanging, so stuck, so heavy?

Doing pretty much anything that doesn’t involve reading fiction, watching movies, knitting or caring for the pets, has seemed almost impossible. And yet, I did volunteer at the Wisconsin Film Festival and took a stay-cation to Milwaukee and Spring Green. But still the weight of our own personal economy has kept me tethered to the bottom.

In a making lemonaide out of lemons move, I decided we should start looking at our house in Atlanta as a great vacation home. It is already paid for, drivable in a long day, and takes dogs. It really is a fantastic house and we should go hang-out in it. So we are. We leave on Sunday for ten days of vacation. This alone has helped clear the gloom.

Further, the sailing season is upon us, with instructor planning, scheduling and deep anticipation. Sailing was always listed high on the reasons to move back, but coming back at the end of the season has meant a long winter of not realizing that goal. I think life will feel better with water under my feet.

That whole blogging more plan doesn’t seem to be working out so well. And now it’s already the second month of 09 and where are the blog posts? Where?!?

How’s that whole 2009 year treating me so far, you ask? Cold! Freezing! I’m starting to wonder why we ever said we missed Wisconsin winters. There have been days so cold that our poor dog couldn’t even make it around the block without being carried. Anything colder than minus 20 is simply brutal.

With this prolonged cold I thought it totally reasonable to plan an ice skating party for my 33rd birthday, this past weekend. Of course, that’s the day the weather spun around and produced a total melt down at 50 degrees. I can’t really complain since we have all been desperate for warmer weather. Plus, aren’t parties really about the food?

Pictured above are the pre-dinner snacks, avocado slices on chipotle mayo, homemade tempanade, and cucumber, capers and cream cheese. Having the canapes match the table runner was totally unintentional.

Other than party hosting and keeping warm, in January I finished a sweater and a pair of mittens, traveled to Portland for work and joined a Wii bowling league.

I’m going to look for that blogging wagon and try to climb back on. More soon (I hope).

Wow, 2008 was quite a year. It was yet another year of big change and big adventure for me. Can you believe I was standing on the beach above? It all seems unreal as I sit, looking at the snowy, cold Wisconsin winter, one year later. (All links in this post go to my flickr photos.)

Thailand tops my travel list for 08. It was the kind of trip we will be reminiscing about for years to come, remembering the tastes, smells, sounds and of course sights. A trip to epitomize why I love to travel.

Our trip to Thailand was our belated honeymoon and only a couple months later SB and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a long weekend in Savannah and Fort Pulaski. Being married couldn’t be better.

Back home in Atlanta, the next door house had become the set for a reality tv show, I celebrated my rose bounty and we continued to take in the lush offerings of the south: Arabia Mountain and the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

We expanded our family in the spring, with the addition of Lola, our puppy. Turning into dog owners has taken us all year and I still feel like such a newbie.

The spring of 08 will also be remembered as the great Atlanta tornado and we were there, in the path. The funnel cloud cut from the CNN building all the way to our back yard, demolishing nearby houses but luckily leaving us and our home unscathed. I never really believed a tornado sounded like a freight train, until I heard it myself.

In July we visited good friends in Albany, NY, with brief stops in NYC and Vermont. Upstate New York made us long for our home state. It was on this trip that SB received a job offer in Madison and big changes were put into motion.

We said good-bye to our dear house, packed up the moving truck and landed back in Madison.

In the fall I discovered the hardships and joys of owning a dog without a yard and toured the local dog parks. Madison makes being a dog owner easy and is one of the many highlights of being back home.

I spent one week jobless, before accepting a position with a Utah company. I would never have guessed on my trip to Utah in March that before the end of the year I would be back, applying for, accepting and training between the mountains and the great salt lake. Now I work from home, with the furriest co-workers.

A year ago I would never have predicted any of the above. 2008 was going to be a quiet year of contemplation and writing, but instead it was a jam packed year of change and excitement. Whew! Who knows what 2009 will bring!