Weekend Things

It's turning out to be one of those rainy, rainy, rainy summers.

As much as I'd love to send our clouds Out West, so they could put out fires and I could get some laundry done, I haven't quite developed my powers over the elements yet.

So instead, I'm working on "making the best of it."

Friday evening I came home to boys bickering in the way that boys who have been cooped up indoors for far too long tend to do.

They kept at it all Saturday morning, which was largely my fault, since I made them help me clean house, rather than throwing them out in the rain.

By afternoon it was clear, we all needed to GET OUT.

We stopped in Damariscotta first; E has had a fifty dollar bill burning a hole in his pocket ever since he saw a Star Wars Lego set at the Reny's there, and I had a coupon for the book store burning a hole in mine.

Then, after a quick stop at the ice cream shop,  we headed straight for the beach.

The nice thing about foggy days about the beach, is that you have the whole place pretty much to yourself. Also, you don't need to bother with sunblock.

And, frankly, if you wait around for a perfectly sunny day, you might never get to the beach at all (I learned that much during our last really, really, really rainy summer).

The sun graced us with its presence Sunday, and after dashing around all morning to get M to his bus for camp (I realized at 9 a.m. that the bus left at 10:15, not the 1:45 I had in my head...he made it and I was very, very glad to not spend my Sunday afternoon and evening driving to the almost far-northernest corner of Maine and back), C, E, Z and I went to pick strawberries.

Sadly, many of the berries were rotten, thanks to the rain. It just breaks my heart to lift up a perfectly red, ripe berry and see its whole underside coated in mold. Because of the sparsity of good berries, and because we had to rush the boys off to a birthday party, we only picked about nine quarts, but I was able to make a double batch of jam last night. I had a partial box of Pomona's Pectin in my cabinet, and decided to use that, rather than my usual pectin-less method. It was kind of nice to only boil for a few minutes, rather than ages and ages. The jam leftover in the bottom of the pan was kind of grainy and lumpy, though (did I not stir vigorously enough?). Definitely not gift-giving jam, but I'm sure it will get eaten.

And how was your weekend? Are you wishing for a lot more rain or a lot less?