What We've Been Up To

My parents have been visiting us for the last few weeks (I just dropped them off this morning), so I haven't been making my evening library visits (thus no blogging--we live in a broadband black hole and I can't deal with upload times using my cellphone as a wireless modem--and not much writing, either). Instead we've been busy taking in the tourist sites, including quite a few on my Summer To-Do List.

The Major Reuben Colburn House, which was not open, so we peeked in the windows. There were some guys painting the barn and they let us go into that building, which houses the batteaux that Benedict Arnold's expedition rowed up the Kennebec.

Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve (just in time for the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring).

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse.

A weekend at Camp with another set of grandparents.

A stroll through the Arboretum.

Saying goodbye to summer at Pemaquid Beach.

The LC Bates Museum.

The WW&F Railway Museum (they really got to ride that pumper car).

While C and I went to work, my parents took the boys on all kinds of adventures, like the State Museum, the Botanical Gardens, the Aquarium, the Windsor Fair, two book stores, about eighty-five ice-cream shops. And they took some solo trips to Acadia and other coastal spots, searching for lighthouses.

Meanwhile school started up,

And soccer, too. 

And our next three weekends are filling up with friends, parties and fairs. I don't know why I thought I'd be able to take a breath this fall.

I was able to get a packet out to mentor amid all the fun (not a great packet, but a packet no less), and now I'm in that "I will never have another idea again" mode. Hopefully inspiration will strike soon, because October is looming, and with it packet #4 and two workshop pieces. Maybe this brrrr fall weather will encourage me to stay inside, pen in hand (47.5 degrees this a.m.!!!).

What have you been up to lately?

Magical

Did you have a good Fourth of July?

C took the boys to the Kings Mills parade while I stayed home and finished up my workshop comments. He recorded some of it on his phone, and it looked like the usual fire trucks interspersed with flatbed trucks holding Republicans and foot-powered floats of hippie farmers wearing enormous cardboard locally-made cheese wedges on their heads. So I didn't miss much.

We spent the afternoon on the lake, and managed to stave off the thunderstorms until we were ready to leave anyway. C changed his mind about taking the crew to the Augusta fire works and set off a few at home instead, and everyone cast spells with the fireworks the baptist church people handed out at the parade, which I think is a nice poetic justice...if only they knew people went home and avada kadavra'ed each other with the Sparklers for Jesus.

Tonight I took the boys to some live music at Lithgow Library in Augusta (This Way, a band for whom one of my MFA classmates plays bass) and E fell asleep on his hard plastic chair, so it was just as well that they didn't stay out extra-late at a big fireworks show last night...three little fireworks seemed to satisfy them anyway.

I leave tomorrow for my residency. I probably won't be back here during that time (but you never know). I'll be back for sure after the 16th.

Summer Manifesto: Just Do It

A couple of weekends ago, we were heading to our friend's camp ("camp" being Maineglish for "house/cabin/cottage on a lake") for the day when E said, can we stop at that stone house?

What he was talking about was the Jefferson Cattle Pound, a large circular structure made up completely of dry stone walls (meaning, no mortar holding them together).

We have driven by the Pound approximately a gazillion times a summer for the last ten years, and though we always say or think to ourselves, "we should stop there some day," we never have.

We're always in too much of a hurry to get to the lake and enjoy the sun, or we're in too much of ahurry to get home and make dinner and put kids to bed.

But this time I figured, why not? Seize the day. So we stopped.

And we ran around inside where once (almost 200 years ago) cattle roamed, or were herded, or hung out awaiting slaughter or auction. I'm not sure what a cattle pound is for exactly, but we thought it was a mighty fine place to run around in circles.

And then we got in the car and headed to the lake.

It took all of five minutes, including me accidentally driving past it and turning around in the next driveway.

So this is our philosophy for the summer: Carpe Diem! There's no time like the present! Quit talkin' about it and do it already!

Stop at that farm stand/ice cream stand/antique shop you've always been meaning to stop at.

Go to that place you've always been meaning to go.

Read that book that's been gathering dust on your shelves.

Make that project you've been meaning to make.

Summer's here. Slow down. Put on the brakes. Turn around at the next driveway and just do it.

*"Summer Manifesto" borrowed (and paraphrased) from Meryl at My Bit of Earth
**"Just Do It" borrowed from some footwear company...can't remember the name exactly right now.