extremes

July 7th in Louisiana is hot. I mean hot, like otherworldly hot. This outdoor shower was my savior. Granted there were 30 or 40 other people vying for position to get in there, but when my number was up I savored every steamy drop. I eventually got savvy about things; lathering up under the 1 am moon or the 6 am sun. It was sort of my oasis in that foreign land.
I thought about this picture the other night as I soaked in the lunar eclipse. We were trying to build a fire and drink beer in the below zero air, unsuccessfully to say the least. Beer freezes and fire is out-manned when it's 10 below. But we were out there, wind chill be damned, trying to make it work.
I'm pretty sure on one of those July days while getting sunburned in this shower I fondly dreamed about sub-zero Minnesota winds freezing my eyelids shut. It's oddly comforting to know both of those options exist.

V

Happy Birthday V!!
We love you!

white

I took this one through the windshield on our way back to Iowa for Christmas. I love Highway 52, but sometimes it becomes a treacherous mess. At this point we thought it was just really pretty; snow columns snaking across the black road. About 10 miles later the fun ran out. The snakes changed to roaring waves of blinding white crashing over us from huge wind driven drifts. We imagined being in a boat driving parallel to the breakers during high tide. I don't necessarily like driving a car on a highway when the only thing visible is a mass of swirling white, but I'm sort of glad we did. It was a good exercise in controlling fear and panic. The fascinated laughter from a 10 year old helped. So did the Flaming Lips. In the end, we made it and Christmas vacation never felt so good.
If some sort of boy scout type uniform for living in the midwest existed, driving through a whiteout would definitely earn an iron on badge.

crazy

Sometimes you're a dork, sometimes you're not. I guess versatility is the key.
Last night while playing bingo at his school I asked one of his classmates (Madeline, 52 pounds of stick straight blonde Minnesota) if he is as weird at school as he is at home. She said "No", then returned to quietly playing her card. A few bingo calls later she looked up at me with a hint of pink in her cheeks and said, "He's just crazy."
That's my boy.

stairs

My last post was on November 20th? Wow, that sucks. I've been fighting an internal battle with creativity lately. I see it going on all around me but can't motivate myself to jump on the merry-go-round. Not sure what my deal is; winter blues, cyclical depression, "moody bastard" as one person likes to put it. I don't know, but I know I don't like it. So today, February 2nd, 2008, I'm going to start climbing the stairs out of this hole.