um, I need some WD-40.

Where to even begin. The beginning? When was that? Where am I? Still in Vermont. But only for another day: I am driving down to Connecticut on Friday afternoon, with the cats. It’s been so long since I’ve posted – more than a month? I feel like my brain and my fingers are rusty. I might not even post a link to this on Facebook, I might just dip my toes in the wading pool here and blather pointlessly all by myself in my little corner of the internet.

Since our return from Kenya/Tanzania, I’ve been mostly focused on getting ready for the move. Kevin started his new job the week after we got back, so he’s been camped out at the house we’re renting down there, slowly reverting to a feral bachelor. I didn’t go with him because we had a long-standing plan to spend a week on the beach in South Carolina for a epic family reunion at the end of March, and we didn’t want to move the cats to Connecticut only to leave them for a week.

So after Kevin had been in his new job for a week, the movers came for most of the furniture and assorted whatnot up here. Then it was my turn to revert to a feral bachelor: I’ve been sleeping on the living room couch cause the bed’s gone (and we’re leaving this couch here). 

In the face of so much upheaval (me! Princess Groundy Pants! Moving! What the hell!) I really wanted to just experience the time with family, and not attempt to photograph much. So even though I brought all my gear, I wound up just snapping literally hundreds of blurry candids on my cell phone.

A bunch of us did a great five mile run on the beach. That’s my sister-in-law, my cousin, my other cousin, her husband, and my other other cousin’s wife. My brother is out of sight in the background nursing a popped ankle, which fixed itself, and he rejoined us later.

There was a whole lot of random togetherness.

I grew up hanging with my cousins – there are five families involved, as my mom’s the oldest of five – for a couple of weeks every summer for My Whole Life, and watching their kids get to know each other (which as we all know is best experienced by squashing one another on the couch) was immeasurably cool.

I had many conversations explaining the difference between first cousins, second cousins, and first cousins once removed to various folks of all ages.

This dude here? Such a treat to watch him be A Dad.

The highlight of the week was the dispersal of my grandparents’ ashes. My grandfather died back in ‘97, and my grandmother, last August, and the whole point of this reunion was to return them to the scene of so many happy family memories. The process involved many pails of their ashes, mixed with sand, sea water, and gin.

OK, there, I wrote a blog post. C-r-e-a-a-a-k. Rusty as hell.