This month marks a new low for new content here at this online journal. My apologies for the neglect, though I’m not entirely sure who all might have noticed other than the spammers who like to put their links in my comments section. I am fairly confident that future me is going to notice, as I find myself using the archives here to refresh my memory about past events. Unfortunately, July 2012 is just going to be a mostly blank space (unless I want to see what was going on in the nail polish world, in which case I can check my blog).

What pushed me back here now (besides being unwilling to let a whole month go by without posting anything) was wanting to say a few words about Mr. Karen’s family reunion, which took place this past weekend. It was hosted by his sister, who lives nearby, so we didn’t have to travel this year. We didn’t even have anyone staying in our guest room like we have some years the reunion has been in SE Michigan. Mr. Karen did almost all of the preparation for our contribution to the potluck. Even so, I needed yesterday to recover. Our reunion experience started Thursday night when we went shopping for our contribution to the potluck. Friday we’d been planning to have dinner with some of Mr. K’s immediate family that was coming in from Illinois, but they got delayed and that ended up not happening. Saturday morning we got our dishes ready. As I mentioned, I didn’t do much of the work. I just washed the sweet potatoes for grilling and cautioned Mr. Karen against making too big a fruit salad—he ignored me, which was good, as most of what we took got eaten even though I thought it was double what we’d need. By the time we got everything packed up, we were late; fortunately it wasn’t a long drive and we weren’t responsible for starting the coals on the grill or providing the chairs or anything critical like that. The reunion lasted all afternoon and into the evening. Some of the upper middle generation (which includes Mr. Karen) went to downtown Ann Arbor for an after party; we missed the cheap mojitos portion of the evening but made it for the late dinner. Sunday most of the crew showed up for a brunch at a local hotel, then some of the family headed back to my sister in law’s house to hang out. By dinner time, it was down to just Mr. K’s immediate family (and assorted spouses like me), but since we had to work Monday, we peeled off for home at that point. For an introvert like me, all this socializing was quite draining. It doesn’t matter that I’ve known most of these people for two and half decades (or since they were kids, depending on the generation), that much talking saps my energy. I was hoping to recharge with a good night’s sleep heading into Monday, but my perimenopausal insomnia showed up to party and had me awake from about 2:30 in the morning until 5, so that helped not one bit. Fortunately last night I had better luck and was only awake for a few minutes in the middle of my seven hour slumber.