hot? in seattle?

that's right, it's extraordinarily hot here. i had no idea how horribly humidity could affect my capacity to handle warm temps until tuesday rolled around. the temps weren't even high yet, but i could definitely tell a huge difference in comparison to the dry heat in colorado. my heart goes out to all the east coasters suffering 3 digit temps with 85% + humidity. in my book, that equals death. since tuesday, the temps have inched higher. yesterday we hit upper 90s. inside my house, it was in the 90s as well, as proven by my thermostat. temps in the 90s are unusual for this area, so NO ONE has air conditioning in their homes. it just doesn't exist up here. so, it's pretty much impossible to function during these mini heat waves. thankfully, temps are falling a solid 10 degrees tomorrow and after the weekend we should hang right around mid 70s for the next week. perfect.

as always, it's important that i mention food. these days we have more raspberries than we even know what to do with! we're averaging about 3/4 pint a day now, which is far too many day after day. so, i'm freezing them for smoothies and raspberry ice cream. i see lots of raspberry ice cream in our future! we have put our strawberry plant under a metal chair for protection from the birds and we're just about ready to pick our first one! just one single strawberry, but we have very high hopes for the little guy. we just increased our produce box delivery to every week. i'm sure you're all sick of hearing about it, but i'm just loving it. we got a ton of fruit this week- apricots, plums, peaches, cherries and blueberries. i'm making a crostata in a few days. i'm not a lover of fruit deserts, but i'll give it a shot. i can only handle so much fruit and cream, so i've got to start branching out if i want to continue enjoying the bounties of summer.

somehow, i've taken to running once again. somewhere, deep in my soul i've always felt like a runner. but my body thinks it is on the verge of death any time i move my legs faster than a 20 minute mile pace. as such, i've never kept up with running. i burn out too easily. but for now, i'm really loving it. loving it more than i ever have before. this is all very much due to beth baker with running evolution. beth is a hilarious running coach that hosts groups for non-runners, turning them into runners. i've now got a "running groupie" membership (this is a real thing folks) that includes a happy hour run and a trail run, among other perks. i'm also in the 5k club AND the 10k club. 10k club starts tomorrow with a 4 mile run, so let's hope i can keep up! i'm half tempted to turn this into a running blog, but my attempt this morning was a dismal failure due to the heat, so i'll spare you the gory details. except for this one: blood blisters. yep, the most i've run so far is 3.5 miles and i have blood blisters! yuck. good thing i loaded up on blister prevention socks at the nike employee store!