Camera remote: $14.99.
Skill and patience required to take self-portraits with a toddler and roaming dog and a wish for sunspots: more than I have.
Adorability of my kid, anyway: a billion units. A billion units of adorbs.

When I was little my cousins lived right across the road from my house (<— as in the former, and the latter’s husband, and their little brother). They lived in the bottom between the creek and the road, and I lived on the hill above them. I spent a lot of my time at their house following my boycousins into treacherous situations and falling into – or willingly entering – the creek. I genuinely loved this kind of play, but in retrospect I wonder if I spent so much time with them to keep myself – and my freakishly long hair – away from Jessie and her Dreaded Caboodle. She ALWAYS wanted to “do my hair”. The closest I’d ever come to “doing my hair” was tucking it into my shirt so it didn’t get wound up in the back wheels of my big wheel (…ever again).

Anyway -

Oftentimes when I’d fall (/jump) into the creek, my aunt would put me in Doug’s dry clothes and I’d wear them home. This thrilled me to no end because then I got to wear – and keep – BOY UNDERWEAR. Constrained to the land of hearts, stars, mermaids, and pink, I lived for the motorcycles and GI Joes making their appearance in the laundry cycle. My parents let me wear them (thanks parents!) and I distinctly remember sporting the motorcycles one day in first grade – the same day my friend Joey showed up in a brand new puffy painted MTV denim jacket.

Anyway -

That kind of stuff – the day I walked into the kitchen with a golfball stuck down the front of my (Doug’s) GI Joe briefs and said “look Daddy, they have a pocket!!” – that’s kind of the epitome of my mentality as a child. I wanted to be a boy. They had more fun, easier clothes, better toys. I went through phases as a pre-K aged kid where I made everyone call me Kevin, and then Josh. I wanted (and got) Tonka construction toys instead of Barbies. I wanted (and got) my first pocket knife at age six. I wanted to wear boy underwear, flannel shirts, and converse. No pink. No dresses. And don’t ever touch my hair.

When Meggan and I became friends later in elementary school she was always trying desperately to fix my hair. “Please just let me fix your bangs! They look funny! They are falling out of their clips!” She was a girly girl and couldn’t fathom my tomboy ways. She hooked me up with her cousin Greg in fourth grade (ha!) She sighed (in a loving kind of way) when I showed up for the first day of fifth grade in brand new mini hiking boots that matched my dads, she in her bright white cheerleading shoes with the colored tabs that you can switch out to match your outfit (which was red and white… on our first day of fifth grade). She did not understand things like my rock collection, but loved me anyway. I did not understand things like curling irons, but I loved her anyway. She was the first one to notice and freak out any time I adopted any new little bitty femme habit.

So she, more than most of my friends, giggled hysterically and completely understood the disconnect when we showed up at her parents’ pizza shop on Saturday night with Hazel sporting the new shoes she’d picked out and suckered her grandpa into buying for her (my dad cares very much that his granddaughter is well-dressed and that her hair is combed… it’s kind of adorable, but very weird to me). Sometimes I don’t know where this kid came from.

Hazel is lucky to have an Aunt Meggan to school her in the ways of makeup-wearing, getting poker-straight hair to do anything but, and everything other girly thing under the sun.

Except nailpolish. I do love nailpolish. But usually only… brown. Brown glitter. :)

I brought you to the river to watch the fish swim by
and lay around that grassy bank and breathe in that blue sky
I brought you to these waters to see what you could see
the difference in the two worlds can’t help but frighten me…

- The Avett Brothers

Autumn has arrived… at least at my parents’ house, where trees started shedding their leaves and seed pods simply for Hazel’s amusement and collection, it seems. Time to listen to cool-weather music, button up, cut off all of my hemp bracelets until time to make more next summer.

…I’d say crazy devil in-laws are a myth. Mine are awesome. I got to see every single one of them this week! Mikey and Andy (and Dave, Dallas, Clint and Walt) opened for Will Oldham on Monday night, so everyone descended on our town for some vis’tin (and babysitting so Angie and I could both go to the show – yay!)

Also, a whole little crew of people from my hometown came to see Mikey play.

Brain-bending things happened. I saw people I haven’t seen in four years (Claire!), I saw people that I have only been around in totally different contexts (most excitedly with the lovely attached to this arm), and almost every single one of my “worlds” was all mingled together in the same bar. I am very George Costanza about this happening.

I feel like I woke up on Tuesday morning in some alternate universe that looked exactly like the old one but was somehow different in microscopic ways that I can’t pinpoint. We thought Janet’s cell phone had gotten left behind in the old one, but really Hazel had just “put it away” in her puppet tub.

In New Universe I am somehow way more motivated to GET RID OF SHIT BECAUSE WE’RE MOVING IN FOUR WEEKS. Yeehaw.

Hazel pushed aside her “I don’t totally enjoy getting my hands dirty” attitude to make you some art :)

Hazel could be Mrs. Hazel Mae Iafrate-Reindel-Swan. And she’ll have an abundance of things for her wedding reception slideshow. At least that’s what Kelly and I tell ourselves.

“Should I be taking pictures of this?”

“YES. We have to have SOMETHING for the slideshow.”

Things I worry about as a mother: When is Hazel going to wean and will it be easy or difficult for her? What do we do if she ever wants barbie dolls or “princess” stuff? What do we do if she ever says “can I shoot one of Grandpa’s guns?” What happens if she gets hurt? What happens if she gets sick? Do we homeschool / public school / some alternative school? How many siblings is a good amount? What if she gets bullied? What if she dates a mean boy (or girl!)? What if she wants to pierce things that shouldn’t be pierced? What if she wants lame tattoos? What if she’s not happy? What if she doesn’t like her life? What if she doesn’t like US?

This weekend all of that has been pushed aside for: What do we do when she leaves home? How do we take her to some town for college, buy her with a bunch of crappy food and a set of plastic drawers and XL twin sheets and just LEAVE HER THERE? What if she wants to go to college in CALIFORNIA? I am watching all these nervous parents moving their kids into their dorms this weekend and I want to cry. And the parents of every friend I’ve ever had who has gone to another country for school or work or life (um, hi Mom).

I have at least sixteen years. But we are already half-way to the point where we need to make some serious school decisions. Panic.

At least I have stricken the following worry from my repertoire: What happens when we have another baby? Because I think I know that one. Hazel LOVES babies, all of a sudden. She has been cradling stuffed animals and dolls and board books open to pictures of babies and singing to “baby Yo-wee” and hugging and kissing them. She will be just fine. Thrilled, in fact, to have a baby brother or sister.

She loves baby Zoe. She also loves Clint and Kelly A LOT.

Listening: Vic Chesnutt
(I am) Reading: haven’t touched a book in days
(Hazel is) Reading: The Bee Man of Orn, in that picture up there and all day yesterday
Working on: Etsy, Etsy, Etsy…
Thinking about working on: fall PJ pants for Hazel, baby gifts, some wall art (for what walls? I don’t know – I have no walls)

Several years ago our friends Eric and Colleen started working out a vision of a new work farm / intentional community in West Virginia. Though Chicago natives, they had both served at Nazareth Farm and were modeling many of their ideas around their time spent there. Five years ago, all of their planning and praying and networking and connecting and money-saving and falling in love with WV paid off, and Bethlehem Farm was born. Their first baby.

This September they will welcome Miriam or Isaiah, their second “baby” and first child. Kelly and I took Hazel and Xavier down to the farm over the weekend for a blessingway for Colleen, to fit in a much needed break from reality, visit with the ones who are the friends – you all have these, right? – who seem to Have It All Figured Out And Do Everything Exactly Right And In The Simplest Possible Way. There is nothing these people do without first contemplating how it will affect their immediate community, the earth, and humanity in general. They know the origins of – if not the actual hands that grew or made – practically every morsel of food that passes their lips. They are humble and gracious and really stinking smart. Eric is a master gardener in every sense of the word, and Colleen makes quilts that could be sold at Tamarack. They are the epitome of People Who Have Their Shit Together. I’m pretty sure that, among other things, it has a lot to do with how little time they spend facebooking (or something like that). If I didn’t love them so freaking much I’d be insanely jealous and probably a little bitter. Which reminds me that, also, they are way better at our religion than I am… clearly. In sifting through photos to share I realize that I did not take any of THEM. Fail. Here they are with Kelly, PJ, and a freshly baptized Xavier. I miss PJ’s huge beard. Eric’s beard is not that huge these days, either, unless it’s just blending with his plaid shirt and looking bigger than it really is – neither is my brother in law’s. There is some kind of beard recession going on.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~John Burroughs

Clifftop 2009

Today we left for Clifftop. I planned diligently, squirreled things into a tidy heap for weeks, made food, made lists, made it the most organized trip ever. Got on the road two minutes ahead of schedule – just in time to get us there a few hours before dark when it would be nice & cool for setting up camp and finding friends, two minutes early EVEN after a mad half-hour search and rescue of Andy Floppinberg (and two worried phonecalls to places that she might have been left behind)…realized ten minutes from home that the only thing we’d forgotten was one of our camping lanterns …not a big deal. Picked up a couple of last minute things in town and Hazel was almost asleep, sure to remain that way for the whole two and a half hours of driving that lay ahead, banjos and fiddles comin’ through the ipod, killing time until the real things put me to sleep later this evening.

And then we hit traffic at construction and sat still for awhile. And then our air conditioner died. And then we hit more traffic at an accident, where we sat at a standstill for 45 minutes while sweat poured in buckets from my child’s head and she kicked me repeatedly and I actually YELLED at her (Mikey’s banjo & guitar get to ride shotgun). And then we heard a weird rattle under our hood and smelled something funny for about four and a half seconds, that may have been us or may have been the huge truck we were behind. And then we made calls for car advice. And then we stopped at an auto parts store to check our coolant (fine) and belts (fine) and figured we must just need freon in our AC (deal with it later) and decided to get on our way and just set up the bare minimum of camp in the dark and get totally settled in the morning. And then we needed to make an impossibly fast dinner stop and chose Taco Bell. Couldn’t find it (seriously? we’re 15 minutes from home), did a u-turn at a bank and stopped for some cash while we were there. Called friends to let them know we were on our way south, and that if something else happened traffic-wise we might not make it to the campground before they stopped letting new people in for the night – if so, knowing they have a group this week, a random tent in their yard in the morning would be us. Weird rattling noise started again as we idled in the bank parking lot, talking on the phone. Drove next door to a(nother) auto parts store. Employee and random customer and Mikey stare at the innards of our car for 15 minutes. Still nothing visibly wrong and it won’t make the rattling noise of course. Mikey is very mad. Hazel is SCREAMING. It has been three hours since we left home and we are only actually twenty minutes away. We should have set up camp an hour ago. Walt tells us to bring our car to his house so he can look at it. We do. The noise magically happens but nothing is going to fall off of it anytime soon, he says. We each drink a beer in his driveway. I get 27 bug bites, Hazel gets none. We go to Black Bear as a consolation prize (and since we’re saving the $30 we would have paid to camp tonight). Hazel freaks. We order our food to go. I hug an old friend I haven’t seen since 2006. I iphotograph a giant yellow moth laying eggs in the parking garage. We drive back home and unpack a single toothbrush, a binky and four beers.

Today we came home from Clifftop.

Try again tomorrow.