big bend

My family went camping without me.  I couldn't take the time off from the library, and although I was obviously very sad to miss Big Bend this year, I can't say it was exactly a hardship to sleep a full uninterrupted 10 hours every night they were gone.  I barely managed to fill half a dishwasher and half of that was gin and tonic glasses. 

I did get a lot done in their absence -- trees planted, walls and floors painted, clothes washed and folded, sheets changed, dead parakeets buried in shallow graves... With the sheer number of tiny animals buried in our backyard at this point, I would forgive the forensic anthropologists of the future for conjecturing that our dwelling housed a serial killer or two.  Really we've just had bad luck this year. With chickens, fish and now our parakeets, Twig and Sparkle. 

The girls both got their Junior Ranger badges and took their oaths. They climbed the Window Trail, which is no easy hike! Especially with a broken arm and a sling! And they reported that although camping was VERY fun, they were glad to wake up in their own beds this morning. 

Fall Camp on the Blanco

halloween

pedernales and other stuff

We went to Pedernales State Park. The river was not as weirdly green as it appears in these pictures. The kids swam. Ben vacillates between finding fish in the water either exciting or completely terrifying, depending as far as we can tell on cloud formations or solar flares. That day it was a mix of both.  I can safely say the Rodens are definitely no longer aquarium people, for the foreseeable future at least. 

We found our favorite tree - Bear immediately pooped in front of it. At first this was disappointing, but later on in the afternoon it allowed us to observe a female dung beetle up close and personal. UPSIDE!

Jane picked up some litter.

Bear remembered he could swim. Which is sort of the bare minimum on the "being a water dog" scale, but whatever. We were proud of him anyway. I've found that setting the bar low is the key to happy pet ownership. 

Also Ben started nursery school. This is a picture of Jane walking him into class on the first day. He likes it approximately 99% of the time; the 1% being 3 minutes every morning when the teachers are peeling him off my legs. 

And I started my job.  It's going okay. Why do we need so MANY laws though? Could people just stop making them all the damn time maybe? The law library is running out of space. 

ALSO we bought $40 of bricks on Craigslist and straight up just made this pathway in like 3 hours. If you come to my house I will drag out outside to view this path. You have to admire it, out loud, repeatedly, before I free you to discuss or look at other things. Ain't no party like a pathway party cause a pathway party is MANDATORY. 

So that's what blogging is now, apparently. Just a random assemblage of iphone pics I've probably already instagrammed, with additional cursory notes. If you want real blogging... that harkens back to the beautiful marbled text blocks and lovingly carved nibs of a gentler journaling age, please look no further than http://laaazlo.blogspot.com/  where Chase claims he is going to start blogging again although I have my doubts. Because right now we are both VERY VERY tired. What is up with this? WHY are we so tired? We don't have newborns/demanding careers/jetlag. GEEZ get off our backs TIREDNESS. 

first fall day

I would be calling him this morning. talking about the cool weather, and where to buy a cord of wood for the fireplace. I would hear about what birds he was seeing in the yard- whether the woodpecker was back in the pecan this year. 

Or maybe I’d call and the reception would be choppy— I’d know he was in the woods somewhere. Or on a sandbar, with his deck shoes pushed up next to the campfire, frying bacon and boiling water for another cup of coffee. His reach for the phone would have startled the dogs awake - only dogs exhausted by the excitements of camping can sleep in the presence of bacon. 

He would say “Hello Hello!” and I would ask if he’d caught anything. 

Or he would be standing at the sink, looking into the backyard, telling Shawn he knew they should cut back the jasmine by the kitchen window, but he just couldn’t bear to yet — it smelled so sweet in the mornings. 

Or he would say “I just can’t hear you right now Anne! Let me call you when we’re back in the slip!” and I would hear the roar and know he was out on lake sabine, tacking back and forth into the wind, terrifying whoever he’d convinced to go out with him on a too-windy-for-sailing day. I would hang up and wonder if he’d just called me by the wrong name (50/50 chance of that) or if he was actually going to call Anne back later and surprise her. Or if he’d lose his phone to spray again and I’d get a call from Shawn’s cell the next day. 

Or I would be asking what he was planting, asking when I should start the collard green seeds he gave me. I would already have looked it up on the internet, but I would ask him anyway. I would tell him about a new recipe for dilly beans I’d seen, and he would tell me about the all mayhaws they’d gotten out of Bird’s Eye Lake this year. I would hang up and open the last jar of mayhaw preserves from 2012, knowing I’d get a shelf full of new jars for Christmas. 

He would say, so un-pressingly, “Are you guys thinking about coming down for a visit sometime soon? I sure would love to take Ben on a walk in the woods.” 

And I would say “Well i don’t know Dad. school just started and we’ve got a lot going on — tumbling classes and dinner groups and girl scouts… I just started my new job!  And it seems like everyone’s getting a runny nose. maybe it’s the first fall cold… it might be a while before we can get away. But we sure would love to see you guys. We'll be down there next month for sure.”