They’re gone. They’re all gone. For the first time in months I’ve got hours of blissful solitude. Oh how I love sending the kids off to school.

I love my kids, of course, but I’m actually quite introverted and my brain starts to overload when I don’t have time alone. Still, my kids are down for almost anything so we do a lot of fun things over the summer. I just don’t write about them because I can’t get a moment to think straight.

Since I wrote last we’ve been camping, swimming, roller skating, seen a couple of movies, went to a food truck festival, did a ropes course, visited my favorite annual craft festival, finished our Dungeons and Dragons campaign and started a new one . . . it’s been a whirlwind.

Somewhere in the middle of this bustle I took a Sunday afternoon to watch Midsommar. It was fascinating and mysterious and fun. I highly recommend it.

Our Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign ended in disaster. I made the final battle as easy as I possibly could, but since no one (not even Mr. Robot) really mastered their characters’ combat skills they all died anyway. It was pretty sad. My 10-year-old was devastated until I promised her character could come back somehow when we start the sequel. But we decided to switch gears entirely and play through Curse of Strahd first. All of my kids love spooky vampire stuff, but playing is different from reading or watching so we’re doing it in short sessions so they don’t get too scared. We just started Sunday and they all loved it. I have high hopes for this campaign, and I’ve already decided if one of their characters dies horribly it will come back as a ghost and help finish the campaign.

At the food truck festival

At the ropes–oldest decided she didn’t like them, so she hung out below and took photos.

We took a dam tour while we were camping, then we swam in the beautiful lake behind the dam.

We were camping during the Perseids meteor shower, so we also got up in the middle of the night to watch shooting stars. None of our cameras are good enough for that kind of photography, but it was beautiful.

My youngest stole my phone and took random pics of us skating.

And last but not least, we got a few great finds at our favorite craft fair, Craft Lake City. If you’re not into dead animals, scroll no further.

We bought a beautifully preserved lizard. According to the woman who made it, the gecko died naturally and was gifted by a friend who knows she likes to enbalm things. It’s beautifully preserved and I love the shape of the bottle as well.

We also found an artist who sells bell jars filled with skulls and crystals and such. She buys them from suppliers and most of the skulls were clean and well-bleached, but we fell in love with this deteriorated one with a length of spine still attached. It looked so natural resting there. My kids often find bones and skulls when we camp, so someday maybe I’ll make my own arrangement.

Our last find wasn’t macabre at all but I might just love it most of all. Which is good, because it was the most expensive thing we bought. There’s a part-time woodworker I’ve seen before at craft fairs, and he has a knack for picking interesting and beautiful bits of wood for his bowls and pepper mills. A few years ago I bought a bowl made of a cottonwood burl, and this time he had this bowl made of limber pine that had been damaged by pine beetles. (He got some pieces from a grad student researching the pine beetles). As the beetles bore into the outer layers of wood they stain it blue, so my bowl has a natural blue stripe on it. He also managed to keep some bark on while he turned the bowl. I’ve never collected wood or anything, but I’m in love with these things.

And now my quiet time is almost up so I’ll stop the show and tell, but now that I have my quiet time back I hope to be posting more often. It feels good to be back at it.