Twin Trees 2011

Day 1: Traffic makes the drive a half hour longer than usual, but the last stretch was enhanced by a sign in Wevertown reading "Eggs so fresh you'll want to slap the hen" and a game that involved A laughing so hard that she shrieked, "You're making me drool!" "Piano Man" comes on the radio and Dan complains that radio stations only play three different Billy Joel songs.

Day 2: Overhearing the kids playing Go Fish, Dan and I contemplate pick-up lines following that format. "Do you have a rhinoceros?" is deemed too intimidating. C goes to Raquette Lake with his grandparents before Jeff, Sandy, Robin, and Iain arrive. Our campfire includes Violent Femmes sing-alongs and s'mores, and it is determined that Iain has not inherited his father's enmity toward marshmallows. It is also determined that s'mores made with Rolos are not as awesome as they should be.

Day 3: Dan makes omelets and fresh pesto with basil, parsley, and garlic he grew himself. We get sunburns while visiting Hooper Mine and Thirteenth Lake but blueberries provide adequate compensation. Dan attempts to take pin-up shots of me in my swimsuit but I have a bad attitude. (I then contemplate creating a nude Twin Trees calendar as a fundraiser, but can't think who would buy it.)

The old guests head for home and new ones arrive. Corrina, Donny, Dylan, and Arielle get settled in just in time for thunderstorms to keep us up all night.

Day 4: It's still pouring when we wake up. The kids are cheerfully but noisily playing inside and thus I feel rather sorry for Gene when he arrives for the day, but luckily it clears up enough to go to Thirteenth Lake and Hooper Mine. Yes, again.

And again, old guests leave and new ones replace them: C returns before Steve and Denali arrive. Steve, tasked with sorting peas while we cook dinner, is wholly unimpressed with Dan's methods. We consume a shocking number of desserts, since in addition to our own ice cream, we'd managed to wrangle chocolate zucchini cake, banana cake, lemon pie, and fruit from our previous guests and cookies and watermelon from our current ones. The boys play Settlers.

Day 5: We attempt to hike to Peaked Pond, but the kids’ enthusiasm for exploring and loon-watching kept us from reaching it. We only made it back to the Thirteenth Lake swimming area (yes, again) after I challenged them to walk for an entire ten minutes without stopping to eat. Our guests stay later than planned because C and Denali become immersed in NetHack.

Day 6: I beg for and am granted a day in which we don’t drive anywhere, despite Dan’s itching to find cell service. We walk to the creek across from the fire station and bicker about the safety hazards of throwing rocks. A hummingbird visits each hosta flower in turn. The kids complain about the homemade frozen pizza but acknowledge that it’s better than the pizzeria pizza we so cruelly subject them to on occasion. Everyone but me reads Garfield books that some sadist left behind. While making s’mores around the campfire, C sings along to a repeating song, and I wonder how much of his sing-along hatred comes from not remembering the words.

Day 7: We venture down the hill for the first time since Friday. The grocery store, to our surprise, has both organic yogurt and an aisle labeled “Warehouse Snacks.” We explore gift/ antique/ junk shops and the burnt-out ruins of the transfer station.

The heat causes my blood pressure to plummet. Having finished all of my own books I make selections from the camp bookshelf, and determine that John Grisham is a better choice than James Patterson.

(I cannot complain about the weather, though. This was the only unbearably hot day and other than Day 4, every day was sunny and gorgeous.)

A randomly decides to sleep in a tent by herself and stays there all night despite a noisy rainstorm. Dan however does not sleep at all, worrying about his 6-year-old out there. It was a little jarring to send off a little girl wearing a nightgown that matches her doll’s and carrying four stuffed animals to sleep outside alone.

Day 8: Dan cooks up potatoes and eggs for brunch, with the feeble hope that it’ll keep the kids from being hungry for an entire hour. C hadn’t yet climbed Hooper Mine on this trip, so off we went (yes, again), stopping (yes, again) at the lake to swim on the way home. We lazed around for the rest of the day. I flip open a magazine and read, “It can be tough to decide among bikes priced in the $2100 to $2700 range. Cyclists who find themselves faced with this budgetary limit on their hobby have to carefully evaluate how to get the most value for their money,” and giggle at the arrogance.

Tragedy! The baby zebra from the Go Fish game falls through a crack in the porch floor. A wails because “it will miss its mommy.” Dan is delighted when C volunteers to be the one to go under the porch after it. C find the crawlspace “awesome!” and collects both the zebra and an old used glowstick, which I refuse to let him bring home.

Day 9: I give C the next book in the series he’s reading and this renders him unwilling to go to the river with us. We drag him along anyway and A and he have a fantastic time swimming, collecting rocks, throwing rocks, exploring “Itchy Island,” and watching an osprey. Heidi, Brian, and Guinevere stop by for lunch before we head for home. “Big Shot” comes on the radio and Dan is delighted that it’s not one of the standard three he listed on the ride up. I’ve unpacked and done most of the laundry, but think it’ll take a few more showers before we’ve washed all the lake sand off.

Twin Trees

Day 1: We can barely fit everything in the car since we decided to bring all of our food and enough clothing to mostly avoid laundry for ten days. We also tote a surprisingly high maintenance monarch caterpillar, a whoopee cushion, and many many books.

The skies darken as we hit Lake George but it only sprinkles a little. The kids and Dan grab slippers and blankets as I unpack them, complaining of cold. It is 70. On a milkweed reconnaissance mission, Dan steps on a yellow jacket nest. A’s two stings are fine, but Dan’s four swell alarmingly, so we make an unplanned family fun trip to North Creek for Benadryl, find milkweed in the parking lot, dance to a local band on the sidewalk, and stop at the river on the way home, where Dan refuses to take the Benadryl.

Dan declares that people shouldn’t run around actin’ like hippies if they don’t practice free love. We both desperately hope that Lynyrd Skynyrd made a whole lot of money from the fake (and egregious) Sweet Home Alabama.

Day 2: It rains. C finds a heavy metal station. We set him to work repairing torn cushions. We realize that we can not see the fireplace from our bed in the Rose Room and consider making a life-size mural of it on the unfinished section of drywall.

Dan suggests that the book I’m reading, The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, could be redone to good effect as “one sexual liaison at a time.” I note that I’ve never found that to be a good community builder.

Day 3: C leaves with his grandparents. The rest of us go to Hooper Mine and Thirteenth Lake. There are many red raspberries, very few blueberries, and a couple just-ripe blackberries and thimbleberries. A draws fairies who are “smiling so hard that their long pointy teeth are showing.” The caterpillar turns green and pupates, allaying my fear that the trip had killed it (it hadn’t eaten since we got in the car). Dan decides to write a novel, gets out his computer, and goes all Jack Torrance.

Day 4: I try the plunger-and-bucket method of handwashing clothes to ensure we’ll have enough. We go into town so Dan can check his e-mail before hauling dirt to cover the new water line. I’ve finished all but one of my books and am way too tired to follow the discussion of Homo habilis DNA in the last one, so grab a 1971 book about hippie communes off the shelf.

We draft a budget, and Dan decrees that the entertainment line is more important than the savings line, which we drop to zero. Unsatisfied with the toy fairies she brought with her, A draws and cuts out several more and acts out multiple dramas with them. After she’s in bed Dan and I walk down to the brook and watch a yellow moon rise.

Day 5: We drive up to Raquette Lake to trade kids with my parents, check out their newly electrified cabin, and experience the wind at Golden Beach. I muse on the viability of growing bamboo as a building material and Dan says we’d need a guard gorilla. Or panda. Upon our return, C and Dan play Settlers while I take a walk and sit on a patch of thyme, watching the creek go by and the clouds turn pink.

Day 6: I wake up without the headache I’d had for the previous 48 hours but it returns by evening. We hike to Ross Pond. C complains that:

• We’re not going to Hooper Mine and that’s the only hike he will ever want to go on
• He’s required to change out of his pajamas
• Finding his water bottle is not his responsibility
• The trail is too far from the parking lotA moth flew into him
• The trail is too muddy
• There are too many “malarial mosquitoes”
• The woods at home are just as nice and easier to get to.

He eventually seemed to decide that his best strategy was to end things quickly, and ran up ahead. (I was impressed with his stamina but it made me feel very old.) I wore sneakers and learned that my fear that I now own no shoes that fit me well enough for a walk of more than a couple miles was correct (my sandals bit the dust before the trip). So when we got back I performed surgery on another pair to make room for all my toes. My parents drop off A and stop for dinner on their way home.

Day 7: Dan can’t go another minute without e-mail so we head back to North Creek. We stop by the swimming hole when he’s done; kids play, a heron visits, and I find a neat little walking path. We determine that my sinus headache may be altitude-related. I get out a puzzle but no one is willing to work on it with me.

Day 8: The phone rings at 9 a.m. and Dan expects it to be word about a job (the decision date has been pushed back three times already), but alas. We got to Hooper Mine and Thirteenth Lake (yes, C complains anyway)- it’s a beautiful day and Merganser ducks congregate on rocks. The kids bicker in the car and, thinking on the commune book I’ve been reading, it occurs to me that a major reason any lasted as long as they did was because everyone was stoned all the time and thus better able to put up with each other. I consider lifestyle changes. C brainstorms ship names. My favorite is the CKR Metaphor.

Day 9: C asks how to make Molotov cocktails; Dan objects when I begin to explain. I play in the creek with A. Dan and I disagree on whether pyromania is a human instinct. Dinner, a haphazard cleaning of the refrigerator, consists of peanuts in melted chocolate and hard boiled eggs.

Day 10: We pack and clean, finding toothpicks all over C’s room and tiny pictures of A’s everywhere. I appreciate the outhouse because it gives the children no excuse to come inside. I also appreciate the Playaways I got from the library; despite the arguments about the horror of wearing headphones, it may have been the most pleasant family car trip in our history. Home on time for the first laundry to dry before bed!

Twin Trees

So I thought I’d written up and posted about our trip to Twin Trees back in July, but it turns out I was only half done. And now I don’t remember what else happened. But here’s what I have:

Day 1: I pack furiously, but confronted with a refrigerator full of a CSA share, I am too overwhelmed to consider planning meals. I leave behind the cheese I’d bought for the trip but Dan remembers to bring socks and underwear this time.
The ride is blessedly uneventful. When we arrive, C immediately claims his favorite chair in the living room and reads a book. A wails, as we’re still unloading the car, “C has something to do and I don’t!” I suggest she climb on rocks, and to my surprise, she thought that was a fantastic suggestion.

We unpack and eat ice cream and send the kids to bed. (C in the Chalet, and I wonder if the fact that he not only accepts, but enjoys, sleeping in a building by himself at his age is something I should worry about.) Dan equates contra dancing with speed dating and we listen to the rain on the roof.

Day 2 dawns bright and sunny; we wonder where we are. Friends call and worry that their child may be too ill to visit. We assure them that vomiting only adds to the ambiance and ask them to pick up our cheese*. Dark clouds have rolled in by the time they arrive. “It’s funny,” they say, “it was sunny right up until we turned onto Thirteenth Lake Road.” How did my ancestors find such a miserable microclimate?

Hooper mine, lemon balm pesto, wine, campfire, s’mores (with vegan marshmallows!), hearts. Dan and I marvel at the functional toaster, and it occurs to us that we, too, could have one that toasts both sides of the bread simultaneously and stops when done.

Day 3: A bickers with her friend all morning (“everyone in the whole world is hurting my feelings!”) but shrieks, “You can’t leave so soon!” when his family departs. We go to Raquette Lake, where it’s windy and cloudy but not actually raining. The kids explore the cemetery when we return. We wonder, not for the first time, why my relatives LIKE to have a view of the road. I read a recipe that calls for a quart of breadcrumbs, which are used as bait to trap the pigeons used as the meal’s protein source.

Day 4: C wants to spend the day in his pajamas and we agree that he doesn’t have to go anywhere that requires clothing. So we spend the mostly sunny day reading; A colors and misuses game pieces and both kids play outside. Dan can’t take another day without e-mail and goes to North Creek for a fix. (I am extremely jealous.) He then demonstrates an effective way of removing dried CSA popcorn from the cob that he learned from a childhood of tic-tacking houses with field corn. I propose that people who hit deer with their cars be required to take partial responsibility for their actions by learning to gut and cook the meat.

Day 5: I think we went to the swimming hole at Ski-Bowl, which has the same lifeguard as last year. Sweet job- there are rarely any swimmers there, the pond is only about 5 feet deep, and he has his friends come over to hang out all day.

Day 6: Our next set of friends gets in around midnight and we stay up way too late chatting.

Day 7: A guest cooks us potatoes and peanuts for our third breakfast before we head out to Hooper Mine again. A climbs to the promontory without assistance. We stop at Thirteenth Lake on the way home and A freaks out when “black plumpy things” attach themselves to her. “The problem is that she doesn’t move around enough so the leeches have a chance to grab on,” Dan opines, as he swims out to a rock. All the children wail because they can’t reach the rock too.

Dan liked last year’s improvised lentil/ turnip/ feta meal so much that he makes it again, on purpose this time. Brian arrives as our other friends leave, bearing a six-pack of beer and a bag of cookies. He knows how to please us.

Day 8: Brian takes his bike to check out the “bike center” at Garnet Hill Lodge but is foiled by typical Adirondack service. So he rides to North Creek and back instead. The grandparents pick up C for a couple nights at Raquette Lake.

I tell Dan that I don’t want to go out to dinner if it means driving as far as Indian Lake (20 minutes). He tricks me into getting in the car to drive to the trailhead for Vanderwhacker Mountain an HOUR away, the last five miles of which on a rocky dirt road that does unmentionable things to our car. It’s muddy and buggy and steep and starts to rain when we’re less than halfway up. Brian and I insist on descending, traumatizing A who’d been promised a fire tower, but as it starts raining harder and harder even Dan admits we were right. We arrive at the car soaking wet and covered in mud, and of course have to creep back along the now-wet road designed for high-clearance 4WD vehicles. We have been officially Vanderwhacked.

Tired and hungry, we stop in Olmstedville for pizza at the dubiously-named Lucky Leprechaun. The waitress is polite and the place is clean, which is remarkable ‘round these parts, so things are looking up. The food takes forever, but when it finally comes I’m impressed that my first slice of pizza is tasty. Then I have a second and realize I was just starving initially. There is a single bathroom that eight people, including the four in our party, all desperately need to use simultaneously. I give up before it’s my turn, determining that it’d be more expedient to just drive home, where I declare that sea shanties don’t make anyone gay.

Days 9: Who knows? Presumably we were recovering from being Vanderwhacked.

Day 10: We manage to pack and clean up early so we’d have time to get home and settle in before I needed to go to work on Monday. But we are foiled on our way out of North River, when A has a sudden bout of (understandable) motion sickness and vomits all over the car. We spend an extra half hour cleaning up in the Hudson. Our car ride is more peaceful than usual, as C is still with his grandparents and A can obsessively listen to the same book on tape as she did on the way up, and I get the first load of laundry in as soon as we get home.

Back in September!


* I later find local cheese from happy cows for sale at Hudson River Trading, so I won’t have to fret so about left-behind-cheese in the future.

I'm no longer sure how I feel about the Internet. Or the funny papers.

C (laughing): I looked up a chemical and it talked about its atomic number, so then I had to look up what atomic number meant, and it said it was the number of protons in the nucleus. But then I had to look up what nucleus meant!
My father: What chemical were you looking up?
C: Chlorine. It said it was hay-lo-genic.
My father: Yes, it’s a halogen. Why were you looking up chlorine?
C: Because when I looked up IED the article talked about chlorine.
S: What’s an IED?
C: Improvised Explosive Device.
S: Er, why were you looking up IED?
C: It was in one of the comics.

Twin Trees play-by-play (warning- long)

Day 1: The kids are so badly behaved in the car that Dan and I aren't speaking to them by the time we arrive. It rains as we unload the car. Dan and A go raspberry picking but A doesn't like to walk through the tall wet grass. Dan, whose packing responsibilities were limited to his own needs, finds that he brought no socks or underwear. We break out the Twice 55 songbook (1) and argue about whether there is ever any merit to drawing out the last three syllables of each line of the Doxology (2).

Day 2: We go to North Creek in search of groceries, sunscreen, and socks. C is unbearable. There are no socks to be found, though a Rite Aid employee suggests we try the deli (?!) next door. Alas, it is closed, and Dan considers rifling through a rafting company's lost-and-found. We stop by the beach at Ski Bowl on the way home. A leech attaches itself to A's ankle and its removal involves squishing it. (Refraining from jumping up and down and screaming EW EW EW, and instead smiling and telling A about the cute little "snail" that liked her so much, took all of my will.) At home we realize C never ate his breakfast; once he finishes it he remains unbearable but in a cheerier way. At least until he slips into the brook and scrapes up his leg. I distract him from the pain by musing about how Bactine has gotten away with falsely advertising its "no-sting formula" for so many years. A says it's been so long since we've been at our house that she doesn't remember what it looks like.

Day 3: I decide to go for a run, but think better of it about five yards up the hill on Cemetery Road. My parents join us for a hike around Thirteenth Lake and we pick lots and lots of blueberries. C loses his wallet on the trail and is distraught (3). We give up on the local map puzzle; while only 400 pieces, it consists solely of contour lines. Dan finds NEW socks for $10 at a rafting company and invests in a single pair (4).

Day 4: We head back into town for building supplies, ice cream, and TP. I steal an unguarded wireless connection in the Grand Union parking lot to ensure that Friday's work snafu didn't escalate. We bribe the kids to play together (5). We stop at the swimming hole again (in the rain) and are surprised to find a teenaged lifeguard on duty, accompanies by two friends loudly discussing the quality of their weed and Husker Du. I dirty every pot in the kitchen to make dinner while Dan tries to learn Spanish. We utilize the military songs in Twice 55 to convince C to sing with us (6), and find that despite the limitations of the house dictionary, it is able to define "caisson" for us.

Day 5: Rain postpones our beach plans so we sing "If I Had a Crowbar" while taking out a defunct piece of drywall from the Rose Room (7). My parents arrive with a new sheet and we commence grumbling about our ancestors’ building techniques (8). My mother walks the kids to the larger creek and I revel in the silence. Dan and I replace the terrifying pictures of puppies and kittens to the repaired wall, thinking that way no one will notice the expanse of white among the fake wood paneling.

Day 6: We trek up to Raquette Lake to see the work my parents have done on their cabin and to enjoy Golden Beach (9). My kids forgot to take their smart pills- A asks where she can fill her bucket with water at the beach (uh- the lake maybe?) and C cannot grasp the concept of floating in an inner tube. We decide to forego dinner out to avoid child-meltdowns ruining an otherwise good day and head home for the lasagna Dan had made in the morning before I got up (10). Dan coats the seams of a leaking roof with sealant and hopes it does the trick.

Day 7: C demands a trip to Hooper Mine and we comply. There are red raspberries and coyote scat on the trail. I encourage C to descend via the scary rocky cliff face (11) and rip my only pair of shorts (12) accompanying him. Dan and A drop us off at the driveway so we can lie around and read while they refill the water jugs and play by the river. I manage to create a reasonably tasty dinner utilizing the last of our food stores (13) and replace the lightstring leading upstairs with an equally antique and knotted drapery pull. We have a campfire after it stops raining. C escorts A into the woods to search for birchbark and, shockingly, refrains from pushing her into the ravine.

Day 8: I yell at people while packing and cleaning. And we’re off! Pictures to follow.

(1) Which really should be named "Twelve Dozen" based on its song count, but anyway.
(2) Especially since they still pronounce "'nly" as only one syllable.
(3) Dan and I both advised him not to bring it to no avail.
(4) He continues to save his lone pair of sorta-clean boxers for special occasions.
(5) Not for the first time, but this time was notable because it actually worked.
(6) Our enthusiastic rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic may have frightened away the rodents for the next few weeks.
(7) We are surprised to find that the fake woodgrain pattern was factory-applied to the drywall. The lumberyard, alas, doesn't sell it anymore. How shocking.
(8) The studs were rotated 90 degrees, so there's only 2" between the bathroom and bedrooms, and they were installed 4' apart. We don’t like to wonder what’s holding up the roof.
(9) An especially fun beach for kids, because it’s nice and sandy and stays shallow a long way out. It is always windy, however, which only my mother considers a benefit to a swimming beach. This also means there are lots of waves which produce ripples in the sand underwater. My cousin Rebecca told me that they were snakes lurking under the sand and I fully believed her.
(10) He planned to bring it with us to Raquette Lake but I forced him to rethink that when he had no plan for how we would cool it and then reheat it at dinnertime.
(11) I thought it would be an exciting confidence-building adventure, and I went first so I’d break his fall if he slipped. (I’d like to say I’d catch him, but chances are I probably couldn’t.)
(12) Peter Harris and the church thrift shop have failed me this summer.
(13) The 1935 Fannie Farmer Cookbook was no help in telling me how best to combine turnips, lentils, and feta but I managed.

A was seeming awfully big today, so I wanted a picture from when she was little.

A came down with a nasty stomach bug Thursday night, so we had to cancel our monthly potluck. This was especially sad because a lot of people we hadn't see in a while were planning to come, and our next one is at a busy enough time of year that it's unlikely most will be able to make it then. I hate to think that we'll have to hope to catch up in 2008; I've never liked having such busy schedules that seeing local friends is a rare occasion.

While no longer especially ill, A wanted nothing to do with going outside on Saturday, which was a bit of a problem because we were hosting a work circle with outdoor projects. She watched more television that morning than she had all together over the previous three years. Which we weren't particularly proud of, but it reminded us that videos were an incredibly powerful tool for Getting Things Done, and one reason our neighbors are more productive than we are is because their kids watch several hours of TV each day. Maybe if we plant the kids in front of the television for a week next spring we can get the chimney pointed after all!

A's birthday is coming up-

so we're figuring out which ornaments to make for her birthday wreath this year. I'm deciding between a doll or a backpack. How tiny a purple princess can I sew....

After A went to bed, we broke out the Indigenous Peoples Puzzle. Our Columbus Day tradition for the past three years has been to do the puzzle, which is an illustrated map of pre-Columbian North America societies, and talk about the different cultures represented and what happened to them. This year involved less discussion (C was cheerily humming while he did the puzzle, and he's been so contrary lately that when he's happy we savor the moment and avoid changing anything) but it's always sobering to see the names that now only exist as place-names if at all.

We closed up Twin Trees for the winter over the weekend. We're enjoying A's newfound ability to remain halfway reasonable in the car; so long as we feed her continuously, she can usually handle the confinement for a bit over an hour. Once she's finally full, though, things get desperate. On the ride up, no one was exactly impressed by my dramatic solo rendition of the buzzard song but it did shock them into silence for a while. C likes Mercedes Benz because he doesn't understand its irony, but we haven't come up with too many other songs both the children will allow us to sing without complaint. (Oh, in desperation I tried Thick as a Brick and they actually put up with it, but I only remember half of it, and not in order, so I couldn't keep it going for too long without a flute.)

In between raking and wood-stacking, we got to go to the harvest festival at Gore Mountain again, and attempted to dance to the Ernie Williams Band while A insisted on holding our hands and C ran around us in circles. We remain confused as to where all the people who attend the festival come from; it's certainly larger than the population of North Creek.

We missed Aunt Maureen and Uncle Gene, but were glad Aunt Meredeth spent the night and that we didn't encounter any unforeseen disasters. (Just the predictable ones.)

My ideal of keeping our books corralled on the number of shelves we currently own requires regular thinning. When we moved bookshelves around last year, an entire box of books somehow didn't fit on them anymore, and I finally got around to redistributing them a few weeks ago.

This is always a somewhat fraught activity in our household. I feel that the public library does an excellent job of storing books, and we only need to keep on hand those that are not generally available or those that have significant personal meaning and are reread over and over. Dan disagrees, or maybe it's more that he feels EVERY book he's read has been important in some way. At any rate, I've given up trying to pass on the worn paperback versions of modern classics ("Half the pages are falling out!" "But it's Aldous Huxley!"), less-than-amazing titles ("It's yet another writer writing about writing- yawn." "But we know the author!"), poetry ("When was the last time you referred to the Western Wind anthology from freshman year?" "I plan to frequently, once our lives are less busy."), or anything work related ("Isn't there a bit of duplication between the The Art of Tracking, The Science of Tracking, The Art and Science of Tracking, and the Science and Art of Tracking?" "No!!!")

I think our longest debate was over Jack Kerouac. On the Road had a good beat, but its whole point was pointlessness; I found the first half about as interesting as sitting around with a bunch of stoners telling stories, and the second half sad but predictable. Dan, however, must've read it at just the right time; for several weeks, he channeled Dean's manic persona. (I wonder if I still have any e-mails from back then; just as Dan temporarily picks up foreign accents with long exposure to them, he assumed a stream-of-consciousness writing style in response to Kerouac.) As one might expect, this made me dislike the book even more, and at some point when we were preparing for a move, I tried to give it away. Dan caught me, though, and now I must forever live in fear that he'll re-read it at some point and start raving feverishly about jazz and freedom.

Dan is leaving at 4 a.m. for a 10-day trip to Washington. It's necessary for work- it's the annual staff retreat, and Dan has a lot of people to meet with in the office for the week prior to the retreat. But I am sooo jealous of all the off-hours he will have to himself, re-integrating himself into the community that we left behind, staying up late with old friends, enjoying parties without any dependents to worry about. I've had one night away from A since she was born; before A, I don't think I'd ever left C for more than two nights. (I even brought the boys along when I went on long business trips.) The luxury of having over a week of not having to think about whether anyone other than myself might need to eat seems unimaginable.

catching up

C is still reading so much that I’m having trouble keeping enough books for him; we go to the library once a week, and can barely fit all the books we’re returning into the stroller. He’s going to be furious when school starts again and they cut into his reading time with inanities like lunch. We went bowling with the family for his birthday party, and while I couldn’t bring myself to make a birthday cake with SIX inches of frosting as he’d requested, the two inches of homemade chocolate frosting I put on there were perhaps the best I’d ever tasted.

I took him to see the Park Playhouse performance of Grease as one of his birthday presents, and while he had a good time (largely because he got to stay up until 11), I certainly regretted it. We only got there an hour early, so had to sit on a highly uncomfortable hill; as always, they had a pointless 45-minute intermission, dragging out the night even longer; the quality of the performance was not as high as others I’ve seen there; and not only is Grease not my favorite musical in the first place, but it was inappropriate for a seven-year-old to a degree that I’d forgotten. (I don’t think he really followed the plot too well or caught any of the obscene hand gestures, but I still wish it had been ANYTHING else.)

A went through a stretch of refusing to go to bed. While she’s still resisting it, and some nights not going to sleep until 10:00, it has improved a bit through a series of bedtime-routine modifications. She likes the babysitter we’ve hired for six hours a week, but still throws a fit when Kate comes because she doesn’t want Dan to leave. (He is awfully far away, after all, all the way upstairs working in the bedroom.) We’re happy with the sitter- she brings books and craft projects with her and is often even able to fit a Stratego game in with C while she watches A- but we’re not sure how timing will work out when she goes back to high school in the fall.

We went to Twin Trees with a group of friends for an absolutely gorgeous weekend. We’re always fascinated by our friends’ reactions to the place- never having groped around the closet in Gramps’ room looking for a dead mouse, they find it charming, and are too polite to comment on its obvious faults. They do note things that I never notice (the light-string in the kitchen which hits everyone else in the head, but I can walk right under; the eclectic game collection) yet take it in stride when C comes out of the bathroom, shouting accusingly- “You need to point the toilet handle down!! You’re wasting water!!”

Thanks to Nana and Yeye, Dan and I managed to go to a party together sans kids, which was highly exciting. It had a Biblical theme (because all of our friends are so devout) and not only was Mary Magdalene present to anoint feet upon request, but Melchior (Dan) appeared to distribute gifts (some of which were appropriate for children, some of which were not). Wanting an excuse to tell riddles, I was the Queen of Sheba. (The kids were miracles- we decorated t-shirts for them with water, wine, loaves, and fishes.)

Dan's been claiming he'll post pictures for a long time now, so hopefully he will soon!

In which C indulges my imagination

C: That cloud is shaped like a bishop.
S: Maybe someone's playing an enormous chess game in the sky.
C: (slightly embarrassed for me) Well, that's fun to pretend, but I think the water molecules just formed into that shape.

Dan and I had an excellent time at my 10-year college reunion-- we had considered cancelling the trip because of my sadness and stress and exhaustion, but are glad we decided to go. The University plied us with food and drink all day Saturday, and after dinner we went to Alex's (the same as always, except without the smoke) where an alum's bored spouse entertained himself by serving me some kind of fancy tequila all night. I think it may have been the first time Dan and I have had more than six hours all to ourselves since A was born, and it's the first time I've been away from her for more than 12 hours.

It was so great that we thought we should start doing it LOTS, but A apparently disagrees; she gave my parents a horrible night. Even our dog was high-maintenance, so I doubt we'll have access to any overnight babysitters for a while....

Last night, slugs ate much of what was growing in the fenced-in part of the garden, and deer ate more than half of the leaves of the strawberry and scarlet runner bean plants from outside the fence. I did manage to harvest four miniature strawberries, so at least we had a tiny drop of sweetness after Noah's funeral.

Deer in road leads to fatal crash on Mass Pike
My cousin was one of the unlucky ones. Goodbye Noah- we love you.

The weather did not cooperate for C's birthday party, so we ditched our outside-group-game plans the morning of and came up with several carnival-type indoor games to do instead- throwing balls in a basket, driving remote-control bumpers cars over Xes on the floor, getting timed on the Sit-n-Spin, etc. This change, however, solidified Dan's insistence that we needed plenty of dollar-store-plastic-crap prizes for all the kids. (Another party activity was decorating t-shirts, which I had bought to limit the plastic-crap we were handing out. Just the day before, C attended his friends' pirate party and was handed a bag of what is best described as garbage as we left, and I really didn't want to contribute any more to our local landfill. But I was overruled.)

Luckily it stopped raining so we could do the t-shirts outside. We had the kids lay leaves, stickers, cardboard cutouts, etc. on their shirts and I used a spray-on dye over them, so when it dried and we took away the decorations they were left with the image in white. Then Dan supervised an egg-in-spoon relay race and we brought out dessert. (C wanted chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. Could I go out and buy Chipwiches? Of course not! I spent forever making a double batch of enormous cookies from scratch and spreading ice cream onto them instead. They were excellent, I've been told- not that I could have any since A is still offended by dairy. And I'm not bitter or anything.) And then it was 3:00! Time to go home! We made it! And we're never having that many small children in our house again!

(Well, Ashley stayed until about 3:30. She wasn't actually invited; she's Megan's little sister. But she wouldn't leave. Dan said she could sleep under the pool table in the shed with the dog, and she was okay with that. But her mom ended up carrying her kicking and screaming to the car.)

A's been trying hard to crawl for the past couple weeks, but isn't quite there yet. She is able to sit up from a prone position now, though, and she likes to do that when she's supposed to be going to bed. So what used to be a 10-minute naptime routine has morphed into at least 25 minutes, and tonight nearly two hours. Given that she wakes up at least every hour in the night as it is, we're not too thrilled. She's been pretty cranky too, but doesn't seem to believe us when we tell her that getting more sleep would solve her problems.

Pictures are coming soon. Starting tomorrow, we will be spending a week at Twin Trees, so expect no updates until we return. (Should that be if we return?)