Simple Life

I started my period when I was 11 years old.  I remember going to the nurses office at school that day because my lower back hurt so badly.  It felt like nothing I had ever felt before, but was a feeling I would become quite familiar with.  Imagine there being a bowling ball inside your body, resting on your tail bone.  It causes pressure just sitting there.  That was a good day.  The bad days were when that bowling ball was being ground into my back - from the inside trying to find a way out.  Later, when laboring with Lily, that same feeling was there.  Lily was upside down and her head was resting on my tailbone.  The contractions that drove it deeper into the bone were killers.  So all those years of imagining my inner bowling ball were not that far off! In those first few years of cycling I would often seek out the hardest surface I could find and just lay on it, trying to flatten my back into it.  Our living room floor usual...

Now that summer is (almost) over for us I asked the kids what their favorite memories were.  We really didn't do much this year, but here are the highlights: 1) Camp Sealth Jason grew up going to Camp Sealth on Vashon Island every summer, first as a camper and later as a staff member.  This summer our two kids were able to go for their first time.  They loved it!  The camp was about a week long and they got to swim, tie dye, hike, sleep outside, ride a ferry, do archery, etc.  Both were nervous to go and be away from us for so long, but neither one was really ready to come home when it was over.  Both were already talking abut going next year before I had their suitcases in the trunk.  A good sign! The man with the kids is Paul Dudley, a Seattle area photographer that drove the ferry when Jason went to camp and is still doing it now.  Jason asked him to look out for the kids on drop off morning.  When Paul saw Lily he called out ...