How to Cross-Train for Imogene in 25 Easy Steps:

1. Hop on your bike and pedal down to the elementary school where your child is attending summer camp.
2. Sign child out and watch him take his sweet time moseying down the longest school corridor known to man and wonder if he'll make it to the end before you start going gray.
3. Place bicycle helmet on child.
4. Place your 50+ pound child on the back of your xtracycle:

5. Realize you must start the whole ordeal home by pedaling up hill. With 50+ pounds of wiggliness on the back of your bike.
6. Start pedaling.
7. Realize there is much uphill between school and your home.
8. Give a very sincere "thanks!" to the mom getting out of her car to pick up her kid who said to you "you're my hero!"
9. Realize you are only about 25% of the way up the first hill and have not even passed the school grounds yet.
10. Hope the mom with the compliment is already inside so she does not see you collapse.
11. Make to top of hill! Huzzah!
12. Realize top of hill is immediately followed by another hill (that is just so Flagstaff).
13. Get off and walk and make child walk too (it's good for him, builds character).
14. Resume riding when the hill is not so steep.
15. Realize that "not so steep uphill" is still uphill.
16. Wonder if you are too young for an exercise-induced heart attack.
17. Wonder if you are burning enough calories to work off all that ice cream.
18. In light of potential calorie consumption, keep going.
19. Despite a severe lack of oxygen, try to hold up your end of your child's conversation about..........something. Realize grunting will placate child and give up on conversation.
20. Confront the steep hill leading to your home and wonder who's dumb idea it was to buy a house at the top of a hill.
21. Get off bike and walk up the hill and make child walk too (it's good for him--builds character).
22. At child's urging, get back on bike to ride the last 100 ft of flat road at the top of the hill to your home.
23. Get off of bike.
24. Die a little.
25. Go make dinner.

I Wish It Would Never End

Summer in Flagstaff is like homemade vanilla ice cream. You know, the kind you make in one of those old fashioned ice cream makers with the ice and the rock salt? And somebody has to crank and crank and crank while the cream mixture freezes? And when it is done you end up with a sweet, slightly salty, confection that is perfect in its creamy simplicity? That kind of homemade ice cream. The cranking part is winter. Over and over and over you shovel and pile on sweaters, and curse snow and although you know that, in theory, there is a season called summer that does not require wool socks, you are pretty sure it is never, ever going to happen. But eventually it does....and oh man, is it good. It is warm and sunny and everything smells like pine trees and you can wear your Chaco sandals everywhere to everything because in Flagstaff they pass for dress shoes (this is the sweet part). And then just when it starts to get a touch too hot, and fans are not quite enough to take the edge off the afternoon heat, the thunderstorms come and they are cool and dramatic and beautiful (this is that bit of salt that cuts the sweetness perfectly). And then there are just all the amazing things happening here in the summer. Like concerts in the park. The city books local bands to play in the park on Wednesday evenings. For free. And there are arts and crafts to keep kids entertained and everybody comes with their blankets, and dinners, and fallen brownies, and sits around with friends and family to shoot the breeze and listen to some live music. Last night it was reggae. My friend's dad remarked (with a dash of sarcasm) "wow, I wish the music was a little more political." And even though you'd think all that social justice would be a little for a heavy for Wednesday evening, it was okay. Because people were dancing, and kids were playing soccer, and the day's storm clouds were just starting to move along and there was an incredible rainbow over the whole thing. And that is just about as good as summer gets.

Imperfect Blogging and Fallen Browinies

Ugh. My blogging has so ground to stunning halt. I am constantly thinking of things that I want to write about, want to share, but this particular time in my life seems to be one of immense busy-ness. And I do not love the busy-ness. I love having nothing to do. I crave time to play in the river at my mom's house (hi, Mom! I think busy-ness or no, we're coming your way this weekend). I crave time to read, to camp, to hike (without a time goal, damn Imogene training), to go somewhere just for the fun of it, or to have NOTHING to do for a whole weekend. And also to have twice weekly visits from the laundry fairy. Anyway, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Walk Slowly, Live Widly this evening and she posted about imperfect blogging. And I think that's it. If I want to blog I should blog and forget about making every post a try for the World's Best Blog Post Ever. Of course, even imperfect blogging takes time so I am probably kidding myself, but I apparently need to kid myself about regular blogging or growing my hair on a rotating cycle of approximately six month intervals. Since I have presently given up on growing out my hair, I will work on more regular blogging. In six months when I've failed at regular blogging, I'll switch and start working on growing out my hair again.

So. Onward. This is what we've been up to:

As mentioned in my last post, Moses and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in May by heading to Moab. I got Moses a spiffy camera so that he could pose with it and make faces at me while I photographed him with my less-spiffy camera.
Moses also went to D.C. for a week to sit in hotel conference room and read grant proposals and then took Garion to Utah for a few days of field work. He's been busy too.

The first week in July we headed to Washington state to visit Moses's mom, step-dad, and assorted siblings, nieces, and nephews. This was the first time Garion had met many of his cousins and shenanigans ensued.

Here's a sampling of the cousins (notice the 2-year old totally doing his own thing off to the right--that is the totally adorable part of 2-year olds):

On the way home we went to visit Moses's oldest brother who lives with his wife near Lake Shasta. We visit them because they have a boat. Oh, and also we like them. And they gave us Harley. Garion would have ridden the inner tube thingy all the way home to Flagstaff if he could have.

The drive from Flagstaff to Washington took us approximate 3 days each way. Ohmygoodness. Garion and Harley were champs for the most part. This was on the way home after about a week of not enough sleep because it stays light until 10-freakin'-p.m. in the Pacific Northwest:
Between the traveling, Garion's attended Invention Camp (he invented a mind-reader), swimming lessons, and summer FACTS (basically a place to park your kid for the summer if you work) and that all requires dropping off and picking up and for some reason that is all more onerous in the summer. Seriously, why do we not have teleporters yet?

Tomorrow night we are going to the Wednesday evening Concert in the Park (yay for Flagstaff in the summer!!) We're meeting some friends and several other families and engaging in some sort of pot luck dinner. My assignment was dessert. I made peanut butter cup cupcake brownies and they sank. I think though that if I make everybody consider them from this highly artistic angle they will not notice:
As in, "yes you may have a brownie but only if you hold it over your head at this precise angle to look at it before you eat it."