Annual Summer Mooch

Hey and happy July! How was your Fourth (if you celebrated independence from those dastardly British oppressors)? We enjoyed ourselves in the Mid-West where we celebrated the annual week-long mooch off of our families. Ironic, isn't it? Let's pay homage to our American Independence from the imperial parent country by freeloading for many days at our parents'! A winning idea. So what do you talk about when you get together with your parents, if you also live distantly from them? We've lived > 1000 miles from any family for the past 10+ years, and I'm always surprised that even after months of not seeing one another face to face...it's still pretty anticlimactic. It's wonderful, but it's not like I imagine the pioneers experienced in their sweet reunions with parents after having to part to go find their destinies and then maybe doubling back after they'd set up house for a few years in the New World.

Wow, I am on a kick with talk of colonization today. Oosh.

Anyway, Loverpants and I identified two major themes in our recent chats with parents:

1. Wholesale Shopping Clubs 2. Birds

That's right. All of our parents, at some point, talked at length about their membership or acquisitions at Sam's Club, Costco, etc. AND made mention of birds. My old man was overheard saying, "It's been a great summer for birds, hasn't it?" It was a pretty raucous time, as you can imagine.

Oh, we also talked about this:

(Wuz'n me!)

Other topics of interest included: - How patently awesome Cleveland, Ohio is - How patently awesome Ann Arbor, Michigan is

Evidence of the above:

"If you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly." Truth.

Loved the matching walls + ceiling fan panes

With Amelia, Loverpants' favorite camper, taken in Corktown - Detroit's oldest neighborhood

Coasting toward home plate at Old Detroit Stadium

Vernor's Float. MidWest at its Best.

What I do with watermelons in my in-laws' kitchen. (Thanks, Jensa ;)) Poor, carefree swimmer...

Chillin' at the botanical gardens at the U of Michigan.

Waiting for her knight in shining armor. Oh wait! Look! He's here! At the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Clown Cone - Malley's, Cleveland

Li'l Skipper

Joke all you want about Cleveland. This is how I see it.

Bat Cave!

I'm always interested in slice-of-life vignettes. I love reading day-in-the-life accounts, I love watching raw footage of other people at work. There's something fond about imagining the neat and tidy way some folks live, orderly and rhythmic, even if no one really knows what he/she is going to be doing at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning. I've never been very good at ordering my week. I am practically bent on establishing order just so that I can go and bend every rule I just set. Most of my life's breaths are spent trying to quell the perpetual case of antsy pants into which I was born. I am a hyperactive vessel of nervous energy, pirouetting forever in a space that feels too small but which holds too much possibility not to try and change.

In short, I could never tell you what I do, how I spend my days. But mostly, it looks a lot like this:

And yes. That is my arm thrown up like a white flag of surrender behind Baby Girl's head.

My usual modus operandi.

But for the last few days, I can tell you very clearly how I lived and it was sublimely! Loverpants found us a gem of a craigslist getaway retreat kind of place in Bat Cave (!!!), North Carolina. It is down the road from Lake Lure where the late Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey immortalized The Lift.

If you'd like to go to the very place we stayed, where you can sit and read and grill pineapple and smell flowers and pet miniature horses, then I can give you more information.

It was one of the best trips Loverpants and I have ever taken together, and by far our most favorite trip as a FamiLee of four.

Loverpants did mad soduko out on the porch yo.

DuPont State Park.

Hendersonville, NC. Way cute main street.

Lake Lure

Oddball Weekend

This past weekend was one very large cocktail of oddity, with a straight chaser of strange. I spent almost 70% of it in the car. By myself. But, you know, with God. And both kinds of music! Country AND Western!

When was the last time I was in a car for 2 straight days, by myself? Probably half past never o'clock is when.

Further, when was I last in the car not passing gummi snacks or being outvoted in the selection of the soundtrack?

It was all very strange, you see. I had to drive to West by God Virginia for a period of 18 hours in order to see my old man get roooooasted by his friends and colleagues. As an included perk, I got to see the following, as well: - Baby Brother - Baby Sister - Baby Sister's Beaufriend - Stepmother - A great portion of elder gamblers in the casino where the meeting was held (quite similar to online meetings we have playing Goldenslot, really) - A great and startling cloud of cigar smoke indoors! Casinos are wildly above the law like that, no?

I was very happy to witness my old man receive a Lifetime Achievement Award for the hard work that he has been doing since, like, Betty White was a baby. He really deserved the commendations, but it also feels oddballs that my own dad is of the rank and file of people who can cut the proverbial greatest hits albums for their careers. I'm still a sophomore in high school, haven't got my learner's permit yet, so Pops is going to pick me up after my Key Club meeting after school, right?

The car ride to and fro was also accompanied by some powerful sermons that I highly recommend, including a 3-part Series on being a Princess by Janice Watson. Amazing, memorable, and one to share with your gal pals who've not yet married.

I also listened to one of the best episodes in the history of "This American Life" which is free for the listening, so podcast it up, y'all.

I arrived home completely spent and wickedly cramped in every muscle of my body. Wah. But at 4 a.m., I awoke in my own bed to find that my husband was gone. I wandered out into the hallway and saw the light to the children's room through a cracked door. There Loverpants sat rocking a little bedheaded boy, lullabying him back to sleep.

Wouldn't trade that scene in my own home for all the road trips in the world.

*** My handsome bro looking very money.

Tie tutorial with Mike and Mike

Pops, Stepmum, Sister

Look at my old man's many faces...

Brother cracking himself up

The old man keeping a captive audience

They call him "Super Stanton" :)