summertime in the triangle

gus brings down thor's hammer on an unsuspecting astrid

oh insomnia, how i loathe thee...but at least it gives me a chance to sit down and write about everything that's going on in the early days of summer vacation. my brain feels like it is swimming in a pool of caramel to make a complete thought, so forgiveness for the ramblings. actually that simile pretty much sums up my summer thus far; fortunately there isn't much mental heavy lifting involved during the days at the moment.

mr. gus' previous two weeks since school let out has had him playing with his friends, swimming at the pool, flying by himself to texas, and receiving an xbox from his grandparents who are hoping to keep him out of the triple-digit heat. again with the extreme weather tour: iowa winters and texas summers. gus (and sophie and i) are living within an environment of 130 actual (not including wind chill/heat index) degree temperature shifts year round; gus gets to experience the high end of that without air conditioning for three weeks. overall, gus seems satisfied with his summer.

sophie bunny has had a bit of a different path this summer: she's also playing with gus' friends, she's also swimming at the pool, but she's going to gymnastics camp where, on the first day, she collided with another kid on the trampoline, split her lip and tried to knock out her front teeth. an emergency trip to pediatric dentistry later told us that one of her front incisors was indeed going to be coming out sooner rather than later, and that she didn't do any permanent damage otherwise. she seems about as happy as gus with his new xbox, oddly.

rich has been working, working, working, which is normal. he's gotten two tons of papers out and reviewed some thesii on top of the usual retinue of surgery, clinic, whipping residents into shape--all that good stuff. and, he had a birthday! i think it was a happy one.

i've been diligently working on the swamp, whenever this god awful weather will allow it (it's been raining a bit). over the past 18 months, i managed to convince my neighbors to the east and the south to sell me some sections of the wet woodland adjacent to our original property, and i've been trying to catalogue exactly what needs to be done. it is so much frickin' work, most of which is of the type that usually convinces people they should study harder and go to graduate school so they don't have to do shit like what i'm doing all day for a living...but i digress. the point is that we are now proud owners of almost an acre of wet woodlands that is desperately in need of rehabilitation after decades of neglect. we included a clause in the sales contracts that would prohibit future owners of this house from subdividing the property for the purposes of an additional residential structure, i.e. someone couldn't buy our house to sell off the land to a developer. i'm fairly proud of that, although rehabbing this area may kill me. i did try and give myself heat stroke today. i also won a poker tournament (technically i was a co-winner, as the other finalist and i agreed to just split the pot), had a scabies scare (GROSS--and no, i didn't have it--they were weird bug bites from being in the swamp), and got a speeding ticket driving back from taking gus to catch that plane to texas...which will take care of the poker earnings. i've also emptied out a couple dozen dead chipmunks from the rat zappers, which isn't even making a dent in the overall population. see? no mental heavy lifting.

soon sophie and i are to leave iowa and head to texas for about a month, leaving rich and paco to fend for themselves. it'll be weeks on end for him of one bottle of beer and half a digiorno pizza for dinner every night...the recycling pile never lies...whereas i'll be eating fish tacos every chance i get. yum. sophie just wants to see the ocean again as she's still thinking about florida. actually i'm right there with her. gus'll be at camp before we get there, which makes me sad. i miss my boy!

here's hoping your summer is revving up as well!