Playing catch up

The problem with falling behind on a journal of any kind, is a reluctance to go forward before catching up on the past. Unfortunately, that means that the more behind one falls, the less likely one is to get caught up, the less likely one is to ever start again. Over the past week-plus of my blog hibernation that something exciting has happened I've thought "Great! I now have something to write about and pictures to share!" quickly followed by "Oh, but I have to catch up first." So how about a quick catch-up post—everything that has happened, or at least everything that I have pictures of (pics or it didn't happen!), and then we'll move on from there.

Journaling the trip

Climbing at the park with HAA (our homeschooling group that meets once a week)

I found this word fun on the floor one morning.

On the first day of September we drove to a Lake Michigan beach to visit with family and soak up some final  joys of summer.

We had science over for dinner.

And we partyied in our garden, finding the first signs of fall and ridding the beds of weeds.

And I'm calling that caught up. Tomorrow is the first day of school for many, just another day for us, but I'm sure it will be a great day.

Catch up

No, I haven't forgotten about my journaling duties, but Calvin and I (and many other hard working volunteers) spent every day for the past week and a half in the basement of our library, preparing for, running, and then cleaning up after our biggest used book sale of the year. Carting around heavy boxes and doing heavy decision making left me too spent to blog at night. I also took a lot fewer pictures, and blogging without pictures gets down right dull. But now we're about to take off on our final summer trip, and that means an explosion of photo ops and journaling ideas.

So how about a run-down of the past almost two weeks first.

Calvin discovered and devoured James Howes's series of stories about Harold, Chester, Howie, and Bunnicula. It's a cute series that was a favorite in our house when Curtis and I were younger. Totally silly with a little mystery/suspense thrown in from a dog's point of view.

Olympics and books. We actually watched TV almost every night for two weeks. It was fun, but now that it has been quiet in the house for a whole week I'm feeling quite glad it's over. And August must be used book sale month—the month when all the local library sale groups cut prices even farther (Ann Arbor even had one weekend when you could have anything that was left for free). We hit up the Ann Arbor bag sale, then spent the next week preparing for our own big sale, which turned out to be a great success.

Dexter Daze was back, our little local fun fair in the center of town. Good local charities selling food, local artists setting up tents, the train ride, the bounce house, all the good stuff. And corn. And our biggest used book sale of the year. Did I mention that we had record breaking sales? I'm quite excited.

Of course, it has barely rained a quarter inch all summer, but when the festival weekend rolls around, full of outdoor activities all over the village, it gets cool and threatens storms and drizzles all weekend long. Don't get me wrong, we needed the water, but couldn't it have picked a better weekend?

And it did clear long enough for us to go outside and take advantage of the cooler weather and wetter ground to roast some s'mores.

And an Opabinia in the driveway. Because...why not, I guess?

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.