a DALMAC house

Big A is doing the DALMAC, the multi-day camping bike tour from Lansing to Mackinaw Island. He left yesterday, and the first stop on the tour is near the town where I teach. It's so silly, but we were SO EXCITED TO MEET at school this morning and I walked him to the water fountain so he could fill his water bottles. We hugged and held hands all the way and then kissed behind a pillar. 

There was practically no one around at 7:50 am, but in retrospect, this still seems silly. I have no idea why we're like this or when we're going to stop being silly and embarrassing.

Pic: A selfie Big A sent me at the start of the ride yesterday. I think he looks so much like his baby picture in this!

until 2037

I heard the next super blue moon will happen in 2037... that seems like a very long wait. I tried (and failed) to get good pictures last night.

But as I waited for Nu's school bus (not with them, god forbid... I waited a respectful, nonchalant, and unembarrassing twenty paces away), all this loveliness just showed up.

Pic: Yesterday's super blue moon at sunrise this morning.

celebrations

It's EM's birthday! It's my dad's birthday! AD is in remission! It's a blue moon! It's a blue moon and a super moon! It's raksha bandhan! 

After work, I was in and out of the house all evening taking soup to AD and pastries and presents to EM (whom we celebrated over dinner last week). Many folks do all this commuting everyday with their kids' activities and sports and... wow. It's a lot.

Our rakhi days are different from everyone else's. This year, only Nu is wearing their rakhi on their wrist; At is wearing theirs on their ankle (work doesn't allow bracelets), and Huck and Max are wearing theirs on their collars. The kids--human and canine--have been tying on rakhis and promising to protect each other for as long as I can remember. But the years are distinct. This is Max's first; we missed Scout. I looked back at last year's celebration, and it feels like a different pandemic world!

After dinner, we called my dad to serenade him with birthday songs and then went outside to look for the blue super moon. My city kids (pointing at a distant streetlight) "Is that it?" (Face palm.)

We finally found it later and higher in the sky--so, so lovely!

at night when

I walk  past  our  house 

again and again... again

with  our  dogs, actually 

silent  blue  super moon 

close  enough  to  touch 

I feel a bit like... a ghost

on the outside I can feel  

only flowing and falling 

the swallowing of places 

like  I'm  not  even  here

our windows like pages 

in a picture book, maybe

a  passage  from  a novel 

this bloom in your voice 

as I finally open the door

Pic: Nu, Max, Big A, & Huck. These guys! Being so cute when I returned from a long day of teaching. 

High: seeing new and familiar faces in class. + Being able to remember the names of a hundred or so new students. 

Low: Saying goodbye to JD, a dear colleague-friend who's moving to U of M.

It's happening...

Fall and the fall semester are here whether I'm ready or not.

I'm ready.

I'm not.

I don't know! 

All my materials are ready, so I should feel ready too? Tomorrow will be here soon, anyway.

I've been excited and anxious about the first day of school since I was about five or six. It's probably the longest unbroken seasonal tradition I've got. That and sitting in the first row. The child advocacy organization we visited on Saturday posted a picture of our group on the socials... and there I am... sitting nerdily in the first row as always.

Pic: A lone maple leaf settles on our freshly redone street.

three-dog night

Yesterday--I think--was national dog day and my lovies didn't get their own post. 

Scout

The last time Big A and I cried about Scout was... today. One of us regularly comes up with stuff that then makes both of us cry. Today Big A wondered how long Scout had known he was sick and if he'd been in pain before we noticed. Yesterday I was remembering how Scout would entice Huck with a toy so she'd leave us and he could get all the pets. At and Nu seem so much better adjusted to Scout's absence.

Huck

I continue to be worried about Huck, who has not recovered from losing Scout either. Very worried. Huck was always such a princess and doted on by Scout who would groom her for hours (it was never reciprocal!). Our smart boy Scout was afraid of stairs, a bad catcher, and couldn't jump very high, and Huck used to take so much joy in routinely showing him up in each of those spheres. So Huck always took many of Scout's treats, bullied him about toys, and generally took him for granted... and now she misses him all the time. Sometimes I think she's asleep near me, but she's just staring into the distance and looks like the picture of depression. 

Max!

Max is so... Max! He looks more like Scout every day, but of course, he's not Scout and not at all like Scout. He's his own flopsy, mopsy, happy-go-lucky, Koolaid baby. He's got a goofy grin, loves everyone, is so easy going, eager to park himself on anyone sitting down, and just seems so cheerful all the time. He's learned to bark in the last month but still doesn't understand how to catch a treat. He'll just let it slide off him and then grab if off the floor. Huck plays with him, especially tug--and we know she's into it because when Max loses his grip on the tug toy, she'll sort of feed it back to him so they can tug again. But they rarely cuddle together. Max likes to torpedo into Huck who's smaller and older and and we're trying to teach him not to. School is coming up soon for this guy.

Pic: Max resting his puppy chin on my laptop, Huck looking back at us (sadly).

out and about

A service day with my new first year seminar class; youth advocacy will be the focus of our semester-long project. We got started today by getting on a school bus for a tour of the public school district, which incorporates very different neighborhoods from regular homes to mansions to farms to trailers to condos to... anything you can think of.

I learned that some students ride the bus for two hours to get to school!

And I saw a handmade poster that asked "Are you an American or are you a Democrat?" I'll be musing on that one for a while. It was close to a cluster of houses displaying the confederate flag--make of that what you will, I guess.

Pic: Our school district superintendent and my FYS class on the school bus.