We have a blog.

I haven’t kept a blog up in what feels like a million years. But I’m writing a new book, and I wanted to have an outlet for some things that are too long for twitter.

I kept putting this off, because writing a first post seemed like so much pressure! What kind of tone should I set, what sort of content will end up here, how often will I update it, etc. There’s a bit in my first book that I love especially, that says “you can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank one.” Usually when I write anything, I start in the middle. Introductions feel so difficult, so I just skip them until I have an idea of what I’m writing and can go back to it. So I’ll just do that. Write a middle post.

I took the kids for a hike. It was a cub scouts requirement for Johnny (he’s 6, nearly 7). Hank, 2, tagged along and dad stayed home sick. It was one of those trips with kids that’s kind of magical and great, while also being just a wall to wall disaster. We started our trek with almost no water, because Johnny had… drank it, I hope? I’d filled up a sports type bottle before we left, and it was nearly empty when we arrived. It could be all over the floor of our van, I lacked the will to investigate. Hank, obviously, fell asleep in the van on the drive there. He barely registered me moving him into his stroller.

We hiked. We looked for different animals and plants, per our scout badge requirements. Tigers in the Wild, I think. Johnny pushed his brother along. He insists on pushing the stroller in a serpentine pattern, as though we’re being hunted. Going down a sort of washed out hill, he dumps the stroller over entirely, with a sleeping Hank inside. I am not gracious about it, Hank is surprisingly chill to be woken up so abruptly, sideways in the gravel. We press on, because Johnny wants to see the creek, and I know there’s an inlet close.

I had intended on just checking out the creek, but as soon as we laid eyes on it, I could tell that Johnny was absolutely dying to put his feet in there. He didn’t want to ask for anything, since he had just rolled his brother, but he was intensely excited. And I, a moron, really thought the kids would simply dip their toes in politely and that would be it. Hank doesn’t even really like to get into water, generally, but he was fully sitting in the creek. Pretending that rocks were fishies, while his decidedly non-swim diaper ballooned ever larger. Johnny splashed through the creek, made potions out of mud and leaves, and threw the biggest rocks he could lift into the water. This part of our hike was honestly lovely, the kids were so thrilled.

And then I noticed some people hovering nearby on the trail. I thought “if they’re waiting for these kids to leave, they may as well just come on down, because it’s gonna be a while.” They didn’t. After a few minutes, I saw runners come through, and the hovering people threw colored powder at them. We had wandered into a color run, which meant I would have to somehow return these completely soaking wet children to our van… through a color run. Does this stuff stain? I’d never done one. Surely I’d have to wash it out of the kids’ hair, and they hate that. I’d mentally arrived at “fuck it, let’s get colorful” when the rain started.

The kids were already soaked, but I had managed to stay dry throughout our little creek excursion. Now I was pushing a stroller along with wet hair and fogged up glasses that kept sliding off of my face. The kids ran down the trail, Hank’s diaper threatening to explode as he bounced along. We were the better part of a mile away from where we’d parked, but Johnny ran almost the whole way. I stripped the little guy down, and some unsuspecting teenage bikers walked into a disheveled lady trying to wrangle her naked toddler while folding up a jogging stroller covered in mud. I got the little guy into a new diaper, but I saw him making his mad face at me in the mirror and asked him why. “Pants,” he said. “You’re mad because you don’t have pants?” He was. But when we got home, dad put the guys in a warm bath and got them jammies, and everything was great again.

This weekend is the scout campout, and I’m sure that will all go very smoothly.