eight months slip by

I stopped blogging for a few weeks, blinked, and eight months slipped by. I have considered starting again from time to time, but would get overwhelmed by the number of things I had already failed to blog--important things, things that would provide missing links to things that came later. I will try to start again, but, alas, this will have to be an incomplete portrait of my life. The nose will be missing. The left ear. Part of an arm. I'll move on from here, perhaps coloring in a little of this or that from the past few months as I go. Because there was lots of good stuff in there, folks. You'll have to trust me on that.

The mancub and the partner and I just spent some real quality time playing and lazing on a deserted stretch of beach along Lake Michigan. Sometimes when I'm there, I think the world does not get more beautiful than this. We walked miles along the beach each day, with white-barked birch trees standing out in sharp relief against green pines, which stood out in sharp relief against an almost unreal blue sky. Beautiful. I collected a lot of rocks, as usual, because I am rock-obsessed. I love the cold, clear, Northern lakes. We swam in Lake Michigan, which, when we got back and checked, was 67 degrees in that area at that time. That is cold-cold. It helps to struggle to the top of giant sand dunes and get really hot first, and then run down them at full speed, across the beach, and straight into the water. Getting in is easier that way.