DUNE CLIMB

Its been almost two weeks now since we waded through the thick Ilinois 95 degree air and piled into the car for an all night drive to Sleeping Bear Dunes in MI. We took some good advice years ago from an elderly couple who always traveled at night WHEN THE KIDS ARE ASLEEP!

After 500 miles we were there but with a 30 degree drop in temperature it was too cold to swim so we headed for the steep rolling hills of sand they call the Dune Climb. Apparently the local football team trains on this sand and it's easy to see why as it will leave you breathing heavy with just a few steps up. The kids act like it's nothing, running up and down countless times, digging in the sand, running down the steep slopes until the sun has disappeared over the lake....and you still have to drag them away.

It finally got up to around 80 degrees so we did what the girls requested each & every day to come. We went to the beach! Oh this is bringing back memories from a trip to Ogunquit Maine a few years back when Stella & I drove out to Boston to pick up Amy, Rosa and Helen at the airport. I made several stops to visit antiques dealers on our way up into ME. They were all chanting "NO ANTIQUES JUST THE BEACH" over and over again!

Anyhow, we plopped ourselves down where the clear water of the Platte River dumps into Lake Michigan. We never did manage to leave the beach early enough to go through the hassle of building a camp fire and cooking ourselves dinner so we went up to Glen Arbor almost every night and spent all the money we saved by sleeping in a tent.....on food.

One exception was the night we were about to leave our haven at the waterfront when we spotted some hot coals someone had left behind in one of the grills. How convenient we thought and proceeded to grill our veggie burgers and tofu dogs. We were about half finished with dinner when this big RV pulls up full of the partying type. One of the guys comes over to let us know he started those coals and needed to get his burgers & brats going. We told him there was no need to thank us for stirring those coals while he was away and we'd be running along as soon as soon as we got our marshmallows heated up for the smores.

BIRD FEEDER

Amy's mother is here this weekend to help us terrorize the neighborhood with our second annual garage sale.

Sue finally took a break in the action this afternoon to go and have a browse at the Wild Birds Unlimited store, which is right up her alley. This reminded me of Amy shopping at WBU for Sue early this spring when she came home with a birdhome for Rosa and a bird feeder for Stella.

I did my fatherly duty by hanging out Rosa's 2nd floor bedroom window (top right in the photo) to stick the home on the upper pane. There is a blind that hangs on the inside pane so the bird(s) can have some privacy but also allows one to peek into the nest. Well, what bird brain do you think is going to set up housekeeping in a wood box that is stuck to a high window by 3 suction cups when our neighborhood is a forest of towering mature trees with sapling houses that have sprouted up in long neat rows. You guessed it! Not even a bird brain would sign a contract for deed on this one - not even any lookers during the long open house. It is a good thing because one day this spring we were on the front lawn when the suction cups gave way and the birdhome came crashing to the ground!

Now, onto the feeder, which i don't understand at all. I've never seen one bird standing on the street corner with a "will work for food" sign. Is it the late bird we're trying to take care of here? Shortly after mounting the bird feeder, Stella was awakened in the middle of the night by what sounded like a burglar trying to break in her window. There are more walnuts and acorns around here than the squirrels know what to do with but it didn't keep one from climbing the outside wall of our house and up the screen to have a go at the food that was meant for those poor darn birds that just can't seem to get themselves out of nest at a decent time.

I happened to find this image below with the empty bird dwelling still hanging on. By the way, where did spring go?

KIDS RUN

Amy ran the 29th annual Women's Distance Festival yesterday in Washington Park. It was a 2 mile race in which Amy finished well and bested her time from last year. Afterward, there was a kids run, which was about 150 yards or so. Rosa led her 6-8 year old field all the way and took the win. Stella also finished with the leaders of her age group. Great job girls!

INDEPENDENT WOMAN

Independence day - China's runner up in the favorite American holiday category.

We visited Helen, Amy's sister, in Carmel IN for this years festivities. We're all proud of how she has picked herself up after an awful divorce and has become stronger & wiser and is an "INDEPENDENT WOMAN"! Helen said this herself yesterday when someone called about about a car that she has for sale. The caller asked if her husband could bring the car over for an inspection.

HOME FOR SALE

Even before the subprime debacle, you could not sell your HOME! Home is where you hang your hat, home is where the heart is. I suppose one could donate their home if the appropriate box has been checked on their driver license but selling it is impossible.

Somewhere along the line the words house and home became synonomous. It wouldn't sound near as depressing if we had a houseless crisis. The term houseless would make it seem that these people only had an apartment or that they lived in a garage or machine shed. Homeless goes right for the heart just as Home for sale is supposed to make you feel all soft inside.

I have friends and family that live in house trailers and that is a good option for many people. This way you can take your house and home with you wherever you go. At some point these dwellings were were renamed "mobile homes", obviously by the companies that sell them. A mobile home park is actually a parking lot for house trailers.

When i was doing a lot of traveling, i longed to be home and back at my house. After staying in hotels for a week at a time, I'm not sure if i was housesick or homesick?

Don't you feel sorry for all the birds that have to sleep in a nest and are without a birdhome?

CAMPING $9

Amy is the idea person around here and last summers notion was to sleep in a tent near a beach. The Cole family on their first camping trip! What I imagined was The Berenstein Bears "Too Much Vacation".

A neighbor had suggested the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northwest Michigan. After doing some research Amy decided that Platte River Campground would be our destination. The problem is that if you didn't make reservations 6 months in advance there was a chance that you wouldn't get a camp site. It turned out to be something on the order of an estate tag sale. People arrived in the wee hours of the morning and stood in or on line at the park ranger's office. The ranger arrived around 7 to give the rules of the campground....don't leave out any food or the raccoons will steal it...blah, blah blah....and proceeded to hand out numbers. Number one got their pick of a space and so on. We were advised from an experienced couple that a walk-in site was the thing to do. This would get you away from the trailer campers and RVs.

In the middle of the first night we were awakened by the sound of a baby rattle with an electric amplifier. I grabbed my flashlight and headed toward the picnic table when i spotted a masked bandit nudging our giant tupperware container of trail mix through the woods. He gave me a look like "hey buddy, finders keepers, we're watching "Rascal" tonight for the 3 hundredth time and my wife and kids are waiting for me to bring home some groceries". He turned out to be more scared of me than i of him and scurried off in search of another newbie camper.

We really had the time of our lives up there. The weather was perfect and the water was clear and beautiful. It was Maui in Michigan and it was a bargain!

M THE CAT

Of course Amy had the idea to get out the camera for this one. I tend to focus more on photographing things that i want to sell and forget about these precious kids. I sent the image to a couple of people and received one reply, which was "uh...why is she naked". I had to respond with "we don't dress our cat". "I think that would be pretentious".

Some people regard their pets as their children and this is understandable. I have a friend that just made 2 trips to St. Louis and back to have their Persian cremated. Amy and i don't exactly have those feelings for M but with Rosa, it's a different story. Rosa and M don't remember life without each other. This cat was carried around like a rag doll for most of her life and never seemed to mind. Their love is mutual.

The one similarity i see with kids and pets is that they both cost a lot of money. Rosa's M has been bitten on two separate occasions with subsequent visits to the vet. The most difficult thing was explaining to the vet assistant that this cat's name is M. This was apparently not acceptable for their records. "Is it Em, like short for Emily" the assistant said. No her name is M and it is only spelled with the one letter. Emily would be the name of a cat that was treated by her owners as a child, one that wears a bonnet and a blouse. In the end we lost the battle and M's records are filed under Em for Emily.

HORSE CAMP $325

....and for another 25 bucks you can have a handful of fuzzy snapshots.

Any lucrative business that my dad didn't think of first is deemed a racket or racketeering. Horse camp was at the top of his racket list recently.

Anyhow, Stella was horse crazy this past year and felt the need to own one of these creatures. She had her 9th birthday this winter at the local stables and wanted to go back for camp. We fell for it or at least her mother and grandmother did.

At camp the kids learn to clean the horses hooves, groom them, feed them and clean stables. They are essentially hired hands that are hired by their parents to take care of someone elses horse. Well, it's not quite that bad. The kids do learn a lot and ride horses every day with swimming afterward.

The owner of the stables and camp director is a woman I'll call C. She isn't exactly the horse whisperer. C must have taken care of an elderly relative that was partially or nearly deaf. Her volume control seems to have broken and is stuck on loud. The last day she scolded Stella for not handling her horse just so. In case you don't know Stella, she tends to hold a grudge....for a long time.

It may have been worth the 325 after all because we haven't heard another word about wanting a horse. Stella doesn't even want to go back to horse camp next year or ride a horse in the forseeable future.

ROCKS & RANGE BALLS

I suppose there's a bit of a rock collector in all of us. Our 6 yr. old Rosa has more than the normal amount. No rock, stone or fossil with a sparkle is safe and if spotted it will be going in her pocket. The collection isn't in a fancy case with labels below each specimen. The gems are helter skelter, on top of the counters, in drawers, window sills and scattered on the floor of our house.

When Rosa was about 3 yrs. old, we were shopping in a store that had some sparkly rocks, which found their way into Rosa's pockets. She was like the crying kid in the grocery store line who thought the world would end if they didn't get that bag of skittles,which they brilliantly display at the one place in the store you can't just roll on past. How do you explain to a child that it's okay to pick up rocks at random from creek beds, forests, the neighbors landscaping etc. BUT you have to pay for the ones in this store?

It was a similar situation lately when we walked over to the local golf course to get a glimpse of the wild deer. There were range balls everywhere. Of course the kids starting gathering them up. Stella was okay with leaving them behind but Rosa wouldn't have it. It felt like stealing but we decided to just borrow the practice balls for a day or two and take them back.

farmers market

i can't believe i'm starting this blogging business. I don't even like the word and would like to have a talk with the party that invented it. There's nothing anyone can do about it now so i'll just deal with it.

We went to the local farmers market yesterday, where i have the idea to buy all of this lovely produce, you know FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. Amy's idea is more about these flax seed cookies some guy bakes. They are a 1.50 for one cookie or 2.00 for a bag full of broken ones. Well, Amy looks in the bags and doesn't see any flax seed, only raisin cookies, which she wouldn't touch. It was late in the day so the baker takes some of the nice round flax seed ones and breaks them up, throws 'em in a bag and there you go. Everyone is happy.

Today, i'm still not doing much with this plate & screws still trying desperately to hold my left clavicle in place. i could go on for a while about this bicycle racing accident but that's already on another forum.

My mother came by today and they headed for China Town. You didn't realize we had such culture in this Metropolis of Springfield IL? No, there isn't a concentration of Chinese people, restaurants, asian grocery stores and touristy gift shops. It is Ceramics 101 and it spelled China Towne, i think. You paint glaze on pre-fired trinkets or you can "make" your own set of personally designed dinnerware.

I passed up the opportunity to paint my very own troll and stayed home to finish up the last chapter of David Sedaris' latest book "When you are Engulfed in Flames".....and start this blog!

We'll see how this goes.