Lake vacation

 August means we go on vacation.  We've had a week of vacation in August every year since forever (10? 12? years, I don't know).  However, this year we went to Hawaii for two weeks in June so we were planning a long weekend at my family's lake house at Deer Lake in eastern WA (we started going there 6 years ago) instead of our normal week away.  Well, right before we went to Hawaii, Chris's work told them that anyone that was fully vaccinated by July 1st would get 40 hours of vacation time.  Perfect!  Chris has been vaccinated since March.  And I can work from home, so while that means I had to actually do work on our "vacation" we still got to go to the Lake.  

We went the first week of August, and it was nice.  I don't know if you remember that last year the Lake house was under construction.  When we got there this year it looked so nice . . . and I didn't take a picture of it at all.  (silly me)  But it was a wonderful week. 

We went to my Dad's house for the first night.  We left on Friday after work, so instead of doing the 7 hour drive after work, we did the 4 hour drive to my Dad's and then left Saturday morning.  Besides, we needed to pick up a key because the doors had been changed with the construction. 

Of course I ran while there.  The temperatures were in the 90s, so I had to do early runs.  They were still hotter than I like, mid to high-70s, but I did it.  

My favorite spot.  There was (as you can see) smoke, but the first few days it wasn't too bad.  It did get really bad on Wednesday, but then the wind picked up (bad for the fires, good for the air quality) and the smoke cleared up Thursday and Friday, but the temperatures also dropped.  

We did not get very good sunsets because of the smoke.  Thursday when we had the least smoke, it was cloudy.  😒

Of course I spent time on my paddle board.  

My nephew joined us for the entire week, and my sister came up on Thursday evening with my dad.

I honestly didn't take a lot of pictures this year.  I usually take a ton, but this year I just felt like doing nothing.  I don't think I have any of my dad, sister, Chris, or Maddox and my nephew (just the one above).  

While there I just didn't feel like running.  I haven't been super motivated to run at all lately.  I am actually grateful for my runstreak because I feel like I might not be running at all if I didn't have it.  Or maybe the runstreak is why I'm burned out on it, I don't know.  Anyway, there were a lot of 1 mile runs that week, and I was okay with that.  I did stop doing yoga/pilates with my sister that week.  I did it one day, but didn't want to get up and be working out early enough for her to do her work.  Plus, it meant less alone morning time.  By the time we were done with yoga, I'd go run, and then people were awake and my coffee/lake time was cut short. So after the first day we didn't do it (actually, maybe we did it two days).  (Don't worry, we picked up after I got home.)

We left on Saturday, usually we wait till Sunday, but our landlord wanted to come look at our (her) house that Monday, so we went home to clean up.  We are not messy people, or at least disgusting messy, but we do let things build up in the corners of our living spaces.  And I am really terrible about flat spaces, our table is usually full of stuff.  It is kind of funny though because I had complained to Chris that I was annoyed about the "corners" a few weeks before, so the weekend before we left we spent quite a lot of time cleaning "corners" so we only had to do the surface stuff when we got home, but we did spend a lot of time cleaning.    

Decisions

 I was looking at some of my posts from earlier this year.  One of them was titled "Not Good" where I talked about starting my practicum in a week and not doing well with the idea of doing that and working 30 hours a week.  I mentioned that I had 10 months of it and I didn't know how I'd survive.  Well, I have 2 months and 2 weeks left.  I have been doing it.  I am exhausted and can't wait to be done, but I'm doing it.  

I have some very big decisions to make. The paying job I have is expanding and they are talking about making a program manager for it. However, as of right now, there are no counseling positions available at my current job and that is my degree.  I will need 3000 hours of supervised counseling in order to get my license (Licensed Mental Health Counselor or LMHC), and unless things change I wouldn't be able to do that at my paying job.  The CEO there is very interested in keeping me and is going to work on including counseling in my new position so that I can get my hours, but there's no guarantee.  

On the other hand, my internship has basically told me that I have a position there if I want it when I graduate.  I like counseling kids . . . or actually I like kids.  I don't care for the counseling part very much.  But I am very invested in my current clients there.  

Anyway, all of this has my head reeling.  Hopefully in 6 months I can look back at this post and laugh, the same way I did the one titled "Not Good."

I don't have a picture, so here's a funny.