Tag Archives: family

the big road trip (2012)

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This evening we (Aimee, myself, Emery and Sofia (Hannah is staying and taking a college summer school class)) are leaving on a 14 1/2 day, almost 5,000 mile adventure. We’ll be traveling across the country to get to places that don’t feel or look like home. We’ll get 4-5 days at the ocean and 4 days in the mountains. We’ll also be painfully close to (relatively speaking), but won’t get to visit, two of our very favorite places on Earth — Yosemite N.P. and Olympic N.P. But, another time, I hope.

Go Tigers, beat Parkway North!

I’m off the grid.

2 poems to celebrate my anniversary –Waiting, by Raymond Carver and To My Valentine, by Ogden Nash

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Two poems to celebrate Aimee’s and my 24th wedding anniversary. Thanks, Aimee, I’m a lucky guy.

Waiting

Left off the highway and
down the hill. At the
bottom, hang another left.
Keep bearing left. The road
will make a Y. Left again.
There’s a creek on the left.
Keep going. Just before
the road ends, there’ll be
another road. Take it
and no other. Otherwise,
your life will be ruined
forever. There’s a log house
with a shake roof, on the left.
It’s not that house. It’s
the next house, just over
a rise. The house
where trees are laden with
fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,
and marigold grow. It’s
the house where the woman
stands in the doorway
wearing the sun in her hair. The one
who’s been waiting
all this time.
The woman who loves you.
The one who can say,
“What’s kept you?”

by Raymond Carver
from All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)







To My Valentine
by Ogden Nash

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That’s how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That’s how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That’s how you’re loved by me.

A little Trinitarian awesomeness by my 5-year-old daughter

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Today, I was strolling with my recently-turned five-year-old daughter, Sofie, when she said, “You know the three big giant boys on the clouds?.” “No, not really,” I replied. She said, “You know, Jesus, God and that other one — I can’t remember his name…”

Careful Southern Baptist Sunday School indoctrination meets wry and subversive five-year-old. Look out.

Chicago

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Elwood: This is definitely Lower Wacker Drive! If my estimations are correct, we should be very close to the Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza!
Jake: That’s where they got that Picasso.
Elwood: Yep.






Lurie Garden

rattlesnake master and Chicago skyline

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Chicago to deliver my daughter and her boyfriend to Lollapalooza and back. For my part, I got a day free of responsibility in one of my favorite places.

The highlights (for me (I didn’t get to hear Coldplay like they did)):

Oysy Sushi — great sushi in a relaxed atmosphere. My favorite.

Intelligentsia coffee — Best latte ever

Lurie Garden at Millenium Park– The template for beautiful, modern and sustainable gardening in the midwest. This garden is amazingly at its peak in the middle of August. Everywhere you look you see some clever and wonderful combination of plants.

Art Institute of Chicago — The Modern Wing is amazing.

Walks up (and up) Michigan and State Streets. World-class horticulture in the middle of the city. You simply don’t see a planting anywhere that doesn’t look perfect.

Room and Board — I could fill four houses with their furniture.

Overheard in the Lurie Garden — An eighty-ish year-old woman asks a 15-ish year-old boy “what band is that playing?” at Lollapalooza.

D’Amato’s for pizza and cannoli. The coolest place and amazing food.

Sore feet. Always a sign of a good trip to Chicago.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, home.

observations/realizations about/from vacation/travel

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I don’t like drinking coffee through oval holes in plastic lids.

I love waking up and going outside in July and wishing I had a jacket.

Really good small towns have to be at least 50 miles from a city.

I become an Apollo 13 astronaut at the slightest hint of car trouble.

The further away from “civilization” one gets, the more civil people become.

Home is just the place you live until you spend some time at “not home;” then, you start to understand some things about it.

Weather, time of day, and presence or absence of crowds profoundly change my impressions of a place.

Hotel beds suck.

the Smasheys at GNP

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Back porch of 1st room at Glacier Lodge


Glacier Lodge (East Glacier)


Glacier Lodge


Our second night’s room at Glacier Lodge


view from outside our room of the Glacier Lodge’s grand lobby


Many Glacier Hotel


“Beargrass” cammas


small grizzly on Swiftcurrent Lake Trail


Swiftcurrent Lake Trail


Many Glacier Hotel from across Swiftcurrent Lake


My kids (Hannah, Emery and Sofia) at Lake Josephine


Boat launching at Lake Josephine


Many Glacier Hotel


Lobby of Many Glacier Hotel


Grizzly on road to Many Glacier


Lone Goose Island on Hidden Lake


Emery on ancient rock (8 and 1.5 billion years old, respectively)


On the Red Bus (expertly piloted by Jammer Eric)


extreme closeup


The cabin Aimee and I want


Bighorn sheep at Logan Pass (the first morning the “Going to the Sun Road” was open in 2011 (July 13)


bighorn checking out the action at the Logan Pass portajohns


bighorn


bighorn


wild Dudus hipsteris

Child Development — a poem by Billy Collins

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Child Development

As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.

The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.

— Billy Collins