Dog days of summer

We're coming into the home stretch, when the long days grow shorter and the heat begins to escape us. I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but after so many hundred degree days over the past month, the weather lately feels down right fall like, with days that are merely warm, not scorching, and nights that are downright cool. Running in the mornings is enjoyable again (even as late as seven am!), so is walking the dogs in the afternoon, and the garden is finally growing.

I say all this on a day that reached a high of 94 degrees.

We have been watching the Olympics, along with much of America, I suppose, and I will jump on the band wagon with them and express my disappointment in NBC's failure to show the events as they happen. Facebook is fraught with spoilers, and my email keeps lighting up with updates from various news sources. There's no hope for magical surprises at this rate. We've been recording the nightly digest and sharing it with Calvin sans ads during dinner or the late afternoon lull. It's better without ads, but he's pretty crushed that they don't show all the medal ceremonies. He's drinking in the swimming. Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte are names that slip right off our tongues these days, and they've injected him with extra enthusiasm for his own lessons. This may be our first look at something like hero worship.

We dedicate the remaining month of summer to soaking up the warm rays of the sun. To hikes, and bird watching, and fun. And ice cream.

Strange encounters, weekend edition

A cooling breeze coming in through the windows, the warm rays of an early summer sun. I love lazy Saturday mornings when we're slow to rise and a soft sleepiness hangs around for a time before the get-up-and-go takes over. It's the perfect time for a book, or a crossword, or a puzzle, and definitely the perfect time for discovery. Then again, what isn't the perfect time for discovery?

Do you think Iris is wondering what's gotten into us? Crawling around on the ground in a tangle of wires making a variety of frightening sounds and shooting things into the air. She may think we're off our rockers.

She should see us at other times.

Later in the morning we went to the Ann Arbor library book sale. All books were half off their already obscenely low prices so it was hard to resist. We brought home a number of treasures—Calvin picked up a couple of dragon stories and I got a couple of photography books and a beautiful copy of a 1960s Field Guide to the National Parks of East Africa. I love books like this because they have that wonderful book smell, because they are usually very well made, better made than most new books, and because they are primary sources in their own right. History changes as we write about it, and if I want to read about African Wildlife in the 1960s, the best way to do so is in a book from that time. But at the checkout the man helping add up our total felt the need to mention to me that the 1960s guide might not be so accurate anymore. Thanks anyway guy.

After the sale we stopped by our favorite downtown lunch spot, where Calvin devoured not only some truffle pizza, but also his new book on the summer Olympics (another library sale find). This is the first Olympics that he is really aware of, and he's very excited about the swimming and other water sports in particular. We were explaining that they show the most popular sports on a tape delay late at night (something that I, and much of the Twitter world, apparently, find excessively annoying), and that they'd likely be on after bedtime. At that moment the people sitting next to us politely interrupted, asked Calvin about his interest, and then negotiated a later bedtime for him. The Olympics come around so rarely, they argued for him. He was allowed to stay up until 10.

After lunch, shopping at the fair trade shop next door, my quiet perusal of the book shelf was interrupted by an elderly store worker who suggested I read to Calvin a book about "a boy with no toys of his own", unlike the children we're used to, she added. She then proceeded to complain to me about her granddaughter's bursting toy chest and overflowing bedroom. I told her that we try to keep the toys in our house somewhat limited, though "educational products" and books are pretty much coming out our ears, and we chatted briefly about that side of our culture before she up and tried to sell me a toy made by underprivileged children somewhere in the world. I thought she was joking, but she wasn't. I did not enlighten her on the irony of that exchange.

We did go home with our overflowing bags of books, however, and spend the afternoon reading, and snapping circuits, and walking dogs, gardening, discovering, exploring, grilling dinner, and living the lazy summer life. And if you ever want to know about wildlife in 1960s African National Parks, just ask me.

Splash (finally)

It feels like we've waited for months to see some rain. In reality it's been more like weeks, and that's still a long time for a little boy with splashing boots and a rain coat. It was really too hot for the rain coat, but he couldn't resist the frog.

Last week

If you think I'm only having trouble keeping up with the blog, you should probably see the unchecked list of chores and the piles of books, papers, and other items collecting on tables, steps, the floor, and even chairs. It's a shameful confession, but true. I haven't written in our daily homeschool log in two weeks, and Calvin's budget sheet has been equally neglected. At least the library books are not overdue, the gardens are watered, and we do have clean underwear. Priorities.

So what happened last week? Last week was hot. We had our air on for two more days that reached into the triple digits, and nights that barely dropped into the seventies. We kept our cool by working at the library, reading a lot inside, and playing in the water. It has been over two weeks since we have had any rain worth mentioning. Our average rainfall for July is 3.67 inches, and to date we have had a total of .77 inches, the large majority of which fell in the first week. I'm battling to keep the gardens alive, and the rain barrels aren't exactly helping much.

Calvin had daily "jump start" swim lessons all week as a supplement to his weekly lesson. He takes weekly lessons at a local swim school with a comfortably warm indoor pool and enthusiastic, joyful young teachers. The lessons are limited to four students per teacher, and they are never-ending, so kids just move up to the next level whenever they are ready and keep going from there. I do admit to feeling a little guilty, though, or maybe just nostalgic, in taking him to indoor summer swim lessons when I remember so fondly the weeks of rising early to take lessons in the chilly outdoor public pool when I was little. I had to walk uphill both ways to school, too.

It was Art Fair week. The Ann Arbor Art Fairs are quite a production, and most locals try to get out of dodge for the week, but I have always enjoyed the crowd and the festive spirit. Jon's family has a tradition of spending the opening day walking the fairs and we have always joined them, so while this was unfortunately the first year that Jon could not take the time away from work, Calvin and I had a great time seeing everyone and perusing the art. Calvin was particularly drawn to a booth of nude photography, a booth of plaster and stone reliefs, and a booth of metal sculptures. He spoke well with a number of artists, and enjoyed a fair favorite—fresh squeezed lemonade. Jon and I went back on Saturday so he at least got a chance to go and look around. But even the Art Fairs didn't bring any rain worth mentioning.

Probably the highlight of the week is Calvin's new, very own Magic Tree House, built for him by Jon's dad, as imagined by his mom, in a tree at their house. A real, honest-to-goodness, awesome as all get-out tree house. I'm a little jealous. Calvin, of course, loves it, and had a marvelous time spending all afternoon in it. He especially loved the sweeping and upkeep, so why, I ask you, is our own house so messy?

And lastly, we spent yesterday morning cooling off at the lake, where Calvin practiced his swimming and played at splashing his father for a good couple of hours. This year especially I'm feeling lucky to live so close to a small public lake and beach.

Which brings us to this week. We have just three more weeks before we'll be on our final summer vacation, which I figure is just about enough time to catch up on everything and get back into a routine so that I can lose a whole bunch of ground again by leaving. But at least it's been fun.

Nature Thursdays

What do you do when you know more than the naturalist giving the presentation, and you know that they are giving horrendously wrong and even inapporpriate information? I did and said nothing, and now I'm kicking myself. Our usual beloved naturlist was not with this morning and we were introduced to the person filling the summer internship position. She incorrectly named two species of bird, told the kids that owls couldn't turn their heads any more than a normal human, and encouraged the removal of eggs from nests belonging to invasive species (which actually she incorrectly identified as invasive when in reality they are native species that are just outcompeting some song birds fair and square, as far as nature goes). Even Calvin knew that she had been wrong when identifying the speckled robin as the female instead of the juvenile, but we both kept quiet during the program and talked about it together later. We decided that it had been polite not to interrupt, but that we probably should have at least questioned the suggestion to remove eggs from nests, because it's unfortunate that some parents and children went home with dangerous misconceptions about some species that live in our area. I will do the next best thing, though, and talk to the head naturalist about it.

We spent the rest of the day at the lake, eating a picnic lunch, swimming in the lake, reading in the shade, and going crazy in the splash zone. Summer is good stuff.