In a van...down by the river

Oh, how Macauley and I love summer. We spent the day at home yesterday, mostly inside, me working on stuff for the online classes I'm teaching and Macauley watching all sorts of TV while constructing a "van" out of pillows on my bed.

He had me look at the van several times, and he showed me how one of my poufy round pillows made the perfect steering wheel/airbag. He later had pushed all the pillows from the foot of the bed over halfway towards the head of the bed and showed me the shape of the van after a major collision. Reminded me of one of my favorite Chris Farley routines, when he visits a family and tells the son, who wants to be a writer, that "Mr. Bill Shakespeare here" will end up "in a van...down by the river!"

Around 4:00 Macauley parked the "van" and we took to the woods behind our house to walk on the trail along the "river" (it's really just a little creek) that we love to sit by and wade in. We walk out here quite a bit and Booker loves it because he can run freely without a leash and sniff to his hound dog heart's content. It's mainly just a communal beaten path that cuts through several people's wooded backyard property. Someone anonymously mowed or brushhogged along the trail recently, and we are very grateful. Totally feels like country in the city and reminds me of growing up.

We always cut through this little opening down the creek. The water was kind of down compared to the way the creek usually flows after we've gotten some rain.

The water is almost always a little cold for me, but the temperature never seems to phase Macauley. Booker mostly just gingerly steps from rock to rock, but he has gotten in before.

Macauley and Booker climbed up the rocks on the bank to what Macauley declared as "Mount Evenest." There's a little "Garden" sign and a wooden birdhouse up there, too, but we don't know who put those there.

Macauley went all the way in the water, then floated in what he was calling a "zero gravity chamber." He got to walk home completely soaked.

I love how his little neck and arms get so tan ("brown as a biscuit" as my Nanny used to describe my cousins and me in the summer).

Back home for a tick check then into the shower my little biscuit goes.