*If you don’t want to read this post in its entirety, which is completely understandable, you might at least want to skip to the end for an announcement.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Have you ever had a weekend that’s so utterly fantastic that you just can’t stand for it to be over?  And the beauty is that it was so great, you didn’t even waste any time worrying about the fact that it would eventually end.  Every millisecond was spent in blissful enjoyment – in the here and now – and not an ounce was wasted on worry or dread over its impending end.

Now that it’s over and I’m coming down from the high, I feel less sad and more satiated.

Dare I say?

Content.

Did you know that it’s constant worry that does that to us?  Worrying about the future and longing for happy times of the past takes our lives away, bit by bit, making us forget to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I blame my recent lack of living in the present for the faint lines across my forehead and shadows beneath my eyes.

But the good news is that my eye crinkles can be blamed on laughter.

So I’m not a total loss.

And this weekend, I did enjoy the ride.  Thoroughly.  Friday was as relaxed as it gets, with nothing more than eating and dog-walking on the agenda:

Breakfast sausage casserole.  Recipe to come.

When it’s hot outside, we all could use a dip in the lake.

Saturday was Justin’s graduation day, and it was filled with wonderful friends and amazing food.

And wine.  Lots of wine:

I whisper-yelled, “Justin!” and they both turned around.  Guess which one’s mine?

Beautiful mother-to-be, Alaina.

My favorite would-be brother-in-law, Dirk.  And not just because he picked a great bottle of wine to go with lunch.

The Nice Guy, from Inside the Nice Guy doing his thang.

The Wine doing its thang.

The Street doing its thang.

Later that night, the steak also did its thang.  Mostly to my thighs.

(Dirk and Alaina bought a cow awhile back.  Then they brought like half of it – in the form of three 800 lb. steaks – to our house for dinner.)

Besides wrinkles from worry and crows’ feet from laughter, I’m sure I’ll have a few more lines to blame on my own stupidity for going to the beach and forgetting sunscreen the sun.  Due to a family emergency, Catherine wasn’t able to meet us at the lake yesterday.  We were bummed, but we reasoned that we are in a coastal state, and it’d be a shame for Matthew to make it this far without seeing the Atlantic Ocean.

So we grabbed a few necessities – towels, bathing suits, sunglasses, and of course cameras, completely neglecting the most obvious of beach-going accoutrements for pasty white Midwesterners, which is sunscreen.

(And kids, when it comes to sun safety, I don’t like to play.  No, I don’t find it amusing that I have a bow-shaped burn line on my back from the tie on my bathing suit top, nor do I find it amusing that I could die from melanoma. Fortunately, we all know I won’t have to worry about bow-shaped tan lines in Spain.  Only burned nipples.  Which might, admittedly, be worse.  So it’s safe to say I won’t be forgetting the sunscreen there.)

Aside from our lobster-like appearance, our impromptu trip to the coast inspired the elusive joy that travel-on-a-whim never fails to make me feel.  I was reminded that I don’t always need to fly far to experience a life less ordinary.

What is it about the beach, anyway?  I mean, it’s hot and dirty and I always end up with little sand mosaics embedded into my skin and we won’t even talk about the other pitfalls of sand ending up in places sand really shouldn’t be, but still we go and we complain about the crowds and we dig in the sand and we crisp in the sun just to experience that wash of awe when we realize we’ve gone as far as we can possibly go without a little help.

Or a yacht.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be on the other side of that water.

Crazy, huh?

Speaking of crazy, Domestiphobia reached a milestone recently.  A milestone I plan to celebrate later this afternoon.  So.  If you’ve made it this far in this post, you probably, definitely, for sure want to check back later today for something I’ve never done before.

I realize I started this post by telling you to live in the present and not worry about the future, but you should probably forget all that because this is something to get excited about.