dog days

and all of the sudden it's the end of july.

I can look back at pictures and try to piece together what we've done and how I feel about it, but mostly the days are a blur of playmobils and bathing suits that are never quite dry and cabbage. so. much. cabbage.



there are heads of garlic drying in rabbit's bedroom. there are onions (twenty pounds of them, to be exact) under the couch. there are jars and jars of sauerkraut, upstairs, downstairs, anywhere there is shelf space. the chickens ate four questionable watermelons in one day (there was lots of messy poop that day, to say the least). I think we are having a good year for berries, but none ever make it into the kitchen. we've had plums and squash and broccoli and carrots and potatoes and the lumpiest tomatoes you've ever seen. eric made pickles, the kombucha is happily fizzing away, the freezer is almost halfway full, and the drone of the dehydrator is the soundtrack to our summer. and my kitchen looks like this almost all the time:

there is a new baby in our world. our girl had her baby boy in the middle of july, just the same size as jamin when he was born. too many circles for my brain to travel, remembering a july six years ago when I was the one with the teeny tiny in nothing but a diaper, doing the "baby go to sleep" wiggle, wondering if my boobs would ever be the same. now I am watching her do the same dance, the same emotional shuffle, the same tininess and tiredness, the same elation and exhaustion. and here we are, doing it again half a generation later. and we get to be a part of it, that is the best part. here is where we are, so it must be just where we are supposed to be.







eric's mom found a long-lost box of old letters and memorabilia at eric's grandmother's house, things I had long given up as gone forever. I spent last night poring over old writing, notes from our early days of marriage, photos from camp, drawings from group home kids, pressed flowers that I can't recall being meaningful. funny to see how far we have come, and yet how much of how we struggle is the same: "are we doing work that matters? should we stay or go? is there something better just beyond our reach? how do we fight the good fight without wearing ourselves out so darn quickly? is the good fight really even worth fighting?" I think about those kids who drew those stick figures, married now with kids of their own, or the younguns eric and I were ten years ago, so sure of what we were doing and still wondering what we should do next. but what I love most about my life is the same: connecting in ways that matter, investing in people because it is worth it, opening my home, my heart, because it is all I know to do. even when it is hard. even when I know it is going to hurt. how could we do anything else?

dog days, indeed. I think the hottest of days have always suited me best.