The Last Days of July

1. Last week we drove across Kansas twice and I spent the whole time coveting the 4-foot high sandstone fence posts of Post Rock Country. Normally I do not understand statements like "85% of people would steal from you if they could" (really? I'm one of the 15%? I'm embarrassed to even look at other people's family photos on display when I'm dogsitting for them), but perhaps it is because other people do not have the right stuff. Apparently I am perfectly capable of starting to plot ways to sneak off with post rocks. (Step #1: have enough room in the car.)

2. I also spent some time trying to figure out how to trick my family into spending our next vacation visiting the Tallgrass Prairie National Scrap and the El Cuartelejo ruins in southwestern Kansas. And Bent's Old Fort. I have been trying to convince everybody that they want to drive five hours into flatland Colorado to visit a national historic site for approximately 5 years, though, so. Maybe this will be my year.

3. City Museum in St Louis? Is possibly the coolest place ever. Look for me to be futilely buying bags of quikrete in the hopes that some morning I will wake up able to create elaborate serpentine treefish out of concrete.

4. Frogs. My kids don't have enough frogs in their lives.

This creek, this action: the best time of my Ohio summers

5. Places we've watched the Olympics this week: my parents' TV in Ohio; nailed-down TV in the Super8 motel in Lawrence, Kansas and that was SO NOT a bedbug I saw; internet-accessed highlights on the iPad on I70; home. Home home home.

Seven Days of Refusing to Be Photographed

6. Other activities of note: badmitton; volleyball (uggghh); croquet (this activity caused the most sibling strife. That and the mysterious Nanner No Tagback game that somehow involves Penske trucks and yellow cars and screaming); listening to Alice in Wonderland in the car; tick checks; geocaching; making dinner with my mom; reading; napping (napping!); running through the woods; life list wildlife sightings (kit fox; live possum; screech owl in the wild) (that last one was a wildlife hearing - click the recording in the link).

Croquet also caused grandparental and parental strife. We were all too MEAN.

Other than the drive across Kansas AND Missouri AND Illinois AND Indiana, the only drawbacks to the trip were the inadequate drive-day-to-vacation-day ratio, not enough time with my sister, cross-trail spiderwebs while running, excessive heat, and the sense that this may be the last time we ever get to do this with everything okay.

But everything is still gathered on the precarious knife edge of okay. So for now we can continue.