Flagstaff is groovy.

BREAKING NEWS: Rain in Flagstaff. We accept it just as if we wanted it.

Lori and I went to Yoga in the Park in her subdivision. It's seductive, this lure of neighborhood parks, block parties, and cultured organized activities. Not seductive: my yoga pants. There's a reason the dog faces downward. The instructor, a lithe, willowy young thing, tried to help us all with our poses, but she had to give up and put her mat next to me. Ma'am, are you crying? What are you doing with your leg? Why is your head like that? Do you want me to call someone?

We all spent a lot of time in downtown Flag (locals don't use the whole word) this weekend, enjoying crafts and arts. I never know the difference. The place feels good.











Arizona Snowbowl (a ski resort) has reached an agreement with the City of Flagstaff to buy its reclaimed sewage water, pipe it to the top of the Peaks, and make fake snow with it. There are environmental concerns, as you might suspect, besides the concept of taking a dump in someone's church and sticking around to pee there all winter long. The Peaks are holy to the Dine', the Hopi, and eleven other tribes.
But, I just said the place has a good vibe, and so it does.

This is not a Steve Martin scimitar. She's actually balancing it on her head.

Seriously? She's balancing it on her head?

We're as languid as slugs on a salt-free cracker. We should move on before a ranger lays down a mineral lick. We have a few ideas:

I can wedge the rig in here.

San Francisco Peaks

Peeking Peak

And, boy howdy! is it raining! 

Did you know this about olive oil?

Maybe some hair of the dog?

Hope you're all recovering from your long Earth Day weekend. This holiday is typically a no-holds-barred kind of hard-partying kind of let-it-all-out kind of rock-and-roll revelry, and now might be a good time to think about a detox.

I did pick up a bag of garbage around our site before I realized that that's what everyone was doing, so I threw it all back down again.

We really did festivate on Sunday with the family, and (uh oh) we happened to take a camera (hoo boy) and there happened to be a baby there (here it comes) so brace yourselves for the cute. You're going to have to detox anyway, so let's make it count.

Looking pretty gangsta despite conventional hat-donning. His lovely chaperone is Cindy.

...and a deep, cleansing breath...

OH man, this one hurts a little, right in the old liver.

Ponderosa pines smell like butterscotch, vanilla, or chocolate. Chocolate is rare, and you're in detox anyway.
All the pines sampled here in Oak Creek Canyon (n=5) smelled like butterscotch.

Our faces did freeze like that.

...and breathe in...

...and out...

...hold it...

...and release.

Maddox has a whole slew of very attractive relatives, including a beautiful mom and a handsome dad, and I hope they all understand that THERE WAS A BABY THERE.

It's our anniversary week. On Wednesday we will have been together thirteen years.

Breathe normally.

On Friday, it was our one-year full-timing anniversary. Wow, how the milliseconds fly.

A new boondocking network is forming at Boondockers Welcome. The goal is to increase opportunities to visit parts of the country/continent that are underrepresented in traditional boondocking. Please do check it out. Couch-surfing for boondockers! It's free to join, for now.

Keep this to yourself.

Everyone has a family secret.  I'm just not sure how to describe it.  It's like ... you know how you ... sometimes it doesn't ...

• You're at a hockey game and a hug breaks out.
• Traffic slows on the interstate for a four-car picnic.
• A policeman in riot gear approaches you with a lavender-peppermint spritz.

How was I unique at this gathering?  I brought my wife, and everyone else in the house was my cousin somehow.

Cousin Savannah (shown with her mom, Cousin Jennifer

Savannah

Cousin Colin, Cousin Jennifer, and cousin Savannah.  High on "Chicago."
Just say NO to musicals.

Cousin Ian, who is indifferent to the camera.

Cousin Savannah, who is not.

My new Cousin Aaron (his new Cousin Annie in the background)

Cousin Ellis and her GG, Cousin Lori

Lori is my straight-up first cousin,  and the matriarch of ... OW!  I'm just kiddi ... OW!  SHE'S NOT THE MATRIARCH!  OW!  SHE'S NOT EVEN A GRANDMOTHER QUIT IT!  

"Drop the fifth ace or I will cut you ... another slice of pie."

Cousin Jonathan, and

Cousin Cynthia

Cousin Annie and Cousin Roxi

Lori is Jennifer and Jonathan's mom, and Cynthia and Ellis are Jonathan's daughters, and Colin, Ian and Savannah are Jennifer and Aaron's kids, so Jonathan and Jennifer are my first cousins, once-removed and Ellis, Colin, Cynthia, Ian, and Savannah are my first cousins, twice-removed, and ... ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING?

Did you correctly identify the:

• Mormons 
• anarchists
• Buddhists
• atheists
• agnostics
• libertarians
• liberals
• New Age-ers
• centrists
• homeopaths
• allopaths
• orthomolecularists

Hint:  it's not easy;  no one was only one thing.  No one is ever only one thing.

Before: ♥

After: ❤

Indiana wants me.

My mom had been within the border of every state before she was twenty-one. In 1952, they were all still contiguous.  Her friends told her she should appear on the TV show "I've Got a Secret."

Annie's family lives in Indiana, and we were last there in 2009 for Thanksgiving.  I loved Indiana farmland the way you love someplace you'll never have to live.  The silence was thick around my ears and squeezed its way in.









Occasionally, I dream that Annie and I have bought a house in the Midwest because prices are good. I try to be happy, but we are always either settling in southern Ohio in my first hometown, or in southern Indiana in hers.

My mother grew up in NYS, and that's where I went when I was eighteen.  There are scads of my relatives there, few of whom I've ever met. If your name is Luce, we are cousins descended from Henry Luce of Martha's Vineyard - the first Luce in the U.S. There are lots of other ways for us to be cousins, but that's the easiest. I don't have any money, so there's no reason you'd want to acknowledge kinship.

I didn't grow up with holiday traditions.  I've shared satisfying holidays with friends and with Annie's family, but this is the first time EVER that I am going to spend Thanksgiving with my relatives in a traditional style.  Woohoo!  Some of us are ultra-liberal, some of us are conservative, and a couple of us are libertarian.  Some are Mormon, some atheist, some agnostic, and some are New Age-y.  Some don't believe in Western medicine, and some believe in nothing else.  I don't see how anything can go wrong.
~~~~~~~

We went shopping for a book suitable for a little girl who has just started reading.  [We had to drive an hour to a town with a bookstore.]  We browsed a Disney Princess book, and asked the clerk for something where women don't need to be rescued.  She directed us to a series written by Jamie Lee Curtis;  we chose Today I Feel Silly: and Other Moods That Make My Day.  It made us LOL!  Good call, Books-a-Million clerk!
~~~~~~~

Still searching for butt rests.  Took them out for test-rests today.