6 days. 6 years.

The blog went down due to who knows what. We have fought the good fight to be back up and expect to go viral any second now. In addition to that excuse, I have been doing some writing extracurricular to the blog, and thus have had little left in the tank for the bloggy blog. But you know what, no more excuses. Let’s do this…

We head out on the RASCAL ROADTRIP in 6 days.

The first leg of the journey entails an eye surgery for Miss Lena on the 19th in St. Louis. We would appreciate your prayers. Lena’s eyes do not track together, so she is constantly seeing two separate images. Of course, this has to be very frustrating and we are excited to see what this procedure will mean for her. Most likely, true correction will require 2 or 3 surgeries before it is all done. It is an in-and-out surgery and we have been told her eyes will look horribly bloodshot initially, but that she will be fine- a day or two of blurry vision and teary eyes.

Then, if and only if all goes well, we will point the van due north and drive to Petoskey, Michigan. This jaunt is quickly becoming a family tradition for us as it has been for Ginny’s family for three generations. We will spend time in and around Bay View- a campy little community that is quite hard to explain to the outsider. Feel free to educate yourself here or the brief version they provide reads like this: Bay View was founded in 1875 by Michigan Methodists as a camp meeting “for intellectual and scientific culture and the promotion of the cause of religion and morality.”

Look, it’s an amazingly beautiful place with tons activities for our kids (sailing, beach, a day camp that Hazel will attend for the 1st time,) and weather that leaves you reaching for sleeves when evening comes; yes, I said sleeves. That is reason enough when you have endured ring-around-the-pits for weeks on end.  However, the religious component of Bay View- for lack of better description- just may have drifted a bit from the founding families and is quirky at best. The church gathering on Sunday would just as soon provide a speaker centered on Christ and bringing the word as it would a dream catching woman who fire walks labyrinths in her spare time and swears that Judas was a woman. Okay, it’s not that bad- most weeks.

We’re sort of the freaks up there. Folks from Arkansas and Louisiana are a sort of novelty and I think they try to not act surprised when we smile with all of our teeth intact. The whole trip will encompass 3 weeks in all; we are taking our time to get there- scheduling a few day in St. Louis to ensure that Lena is up to the baker’s dozen hours in the car for the remainder.

Upon arrival, I will be working during the week days- riding my bike to Roast & Toast, the local hipster coffee house- and have found that the change of scenery and lack of meetings provides a venue whereby I can accomplish quite a lot. I have set the time aside to focus on writing, and I am looking forward to having dedicated time to do so, as most of my work with words comes only in the cracks of life, and my life as of late has been more in need of crack as opposed to providing cracks.  I will also find ways to strategically force all 3 rascals into Mclean & Eakin, explaining to them the wonder of a great bookstore and trying to bribe them to pretend to care by buying them whatever book they want.

The day after Lena’s surgery, July 20th, we will be celebrating Eliot’s 6th birthday. This coming 99-day window is always a hallowed time for Gin and I. We are not sure as to how we will wrangle the family into a celebration- with Lena recovering and the other 2 bound to not be sleeping, as they never do on the road- but we will. Oh yes, we will.