Grr

I’m taking off this afternoon after my Pre-3 class is dismissed and heading up over Stevens Pass to an isolated corner of the Icicle Creek Valley near Leavenworth, where I’m staying with a group of guys at a rustic lodge.

It’s apparently a nice place in beautiful setting, where we should be surrounded by spectacular fall color. We’re expecting sunshine and highs of around 75-80 and nighttime lows down in the 40’s. My friend David invited me, who I know through several years of making art together with the Fremont Arts Council.

I live with my wife, daughter and two female dogs, all of whom I love dearly. In my job as a cooperative preschool teacher I spend my days surrounded by women, and not just women, but women performing their role as mothers, many of whom are pregnant. It’s a job I enjoy immensely, and they are colleagues I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. But still, that’s a whole heck of lot of girls.

Not only am I going to be spending my weekend in the company of men, but we’re going to be doing manly things. The Copper Notch’s new caretaker is apparently feeling overwhelmed and we’re going as an volunteer work crew to clear brush, cut trees, chop firewood (with a pneumatic log splitter no less), and build a trail down to the river. We’ve been enticed by the promise of whiskey, poker and gigantic meals.

Grr.

See you Monday.

Until then, here’s a dancing baby: