Summer To-Do List

I know, I know, I always make these lists (though it looks like I skipped last year--here's 2010 and 2009), and I probably never accomplish a fraction of the items on the list (though with this year's Summer Manifesto, that might change). In fact, I probably never even look at my list again once I've written it. But, I don't know what it is (perhaps it's the thawing out of my bloodstream so I feel like I can function again after nine months of winter), but summer gets me in a Go! Make! Do! kinda mood (which is not to say that I have any problem with Stay! Relax! Chill!--in fact those such activities hold a prominent place on my list.

Places to Go

Coastal Maine Botanic Gardens (check!)

Dept. of Marine Resources Aquarium (check!)

Gray Wildlife Park

Colburn House

Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve

Things to Do

Go camping (one check, one to go)

Go to the beach

Dine al fresco

Go on picnics

Lie in the hammock

Outfit a picnic basket

Read to the kids on the picnic blanket outside

Make a garden playscape

Plant hollyhocks (check!)

Catch dragonflies

Lie in the hammock

Pick strawberries (opening day tomorrow!)

Lie in the hammock

Start a new nature journal

Re-cover the kitchen chairs

Do art/craft projects with the kids on the picnic blanket outside

Organize the basement (I know, I know, but it must be done sometime)

Read a non-grad-school-related book just for fun (and without guilt)

Lie in the hammock

Things to Make

A big beach bag

A summery table runner

Beeswax lanterns

A summery bunting

Jam, jam and more jam (I've already made rhubarb-ginger and rhubarb-grapefruit)

I just reread those 2009 and 2010 lists and they made me smile--the things I've actually accomplished (making good jam!) and the things that just aren't ever going to happen (homemade cheese) and the places I've been meaning to go for at least three years and haven't yet, but they're still on my list (zoiks!). We'll see what we check off this year's list and what gets carried over to next year.

What are your summer plans?

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.

A Father's Day Project

On Saturday, the boys and I made this garland/mobile thingy for C for Father's Day:

When we were at the Coastal Maine Botanic Gardens, they had a kids' art show going on, and one of the exhibitions included something like this, made by local school kids, and I knew right away that I wanted to recreate one with my kids. Do you know the trick of giving your spouse a gift that is actually something you want for yourself? I don't feel guilty imposing this trick on C, because he practically invented it (also, we gave him a flat screen TV--the first ever TV that we bought and did not inherit after its predecessor began smoking of its own accord). I added a sun, a leaf and a flower (which you can't see 'cause it's rotated sideways) for more color.

My friend Raina recently posed a question on her blog about whether her readers try to control the outcome when kids are creating an art project or whether they just let the kids go and have fun, whatever they create. I answered with an emphatic give the kids the materials and let them go at it. However, that does not mean that I don't require a period of adjustment when their results don't exactly meet my vision (see my post about the painted canvases for example). Anyway, I envisioned a lot more color, a lot less Pokemon, but I love the final project (though I might introduce this again, and provide some animal templates and a select color palette, while giving them more leeway with the scissors (I cut out E's and Z's for them because my fabric scissors are huge).

I had planned on having them sew around the shapes and stuff them, but then I realized that was way too much work/crazy for a last-minute (ahem) project, so I ended up just gluing the front of the animal to the back, with a piece of yarn sandwiched in-between, and threaded on big buttons between each felt animal/thing.

So, the garlandy things I saw in the art show were made up of owls and raccoons and birds and other woodland fauna cut out of brightly-colored felt. One of my kids (M) got on-board with the owl concept, only chose to go with brown, another (Z) made a black tiger with gold strips and big green eyes and the third (E) chose a Pokemon guy, also out of black.

In case you're wondering where I've been...

...this pretty much sums it up:

Dear Baseball:

My kids love you, so I won't say a word against you, but I do find your need to occupy four months of my year a bit excessive. That, and your desire to have me spend six evenings a week at your side is starting to make me feel a bit stifled.

Not to mention the fact that you require no fewer than eight separate articles of clothing, per child (twelve, for the one who has graduated to "athletic support" and batting gloves). That's about seven more things than seven-year-olds and their busy moms are capable of keeping track of.

Oh yes, and your constant last-minute cancellations of our dates, and last-minute re-schedulings (that I almost always find out about third-hand). Don't you think you're just a bit wishy-washy?

I think, perhaps, you're suffering from an overinflated sense of your own importance. Perhaps you're trying to affirm your status as "America's favorite pastime." Well, I have news for you: the rest of the world prefers the big black-and-white ball. I think that if you want to carve your place in our hearts and minds, you should take a few lessons from soccer: the season is six weeks long, there's one practice and one game a week, at least one game gets rained out (and NOT rescheduled) and by the end of the season it's too dark to practice. Oh, and the games are over in an hour. No one has time to get bored and throw dirt on the pitcher's mound. And I don't have to sit there long enough to get hypothermia ('cause let's face it: Maine's way too cold for either sport).

It's not that I want to break up with you forever, but I definitely need a break from your parasite-like presence. Let's take the summer (and the fall and winter) off and you can think about maybe lightening up a bit, not taking yourself so seriously perhaps? It will do us both good.

Sincerely,

The Mom on the Bleachers

Sad Day

Last night, something (we're guessing it was a weasel--or a whole army of weasels) got into the chicken house and massacred the chickens. I mean eviscerated, dismembered, and all that. E discovered the carcasses when I sent him out to open their door. Naturally everyone is very heartbroken (especially Z).

We had a little chicken funeral in the rain this afternoon, and planted this peony on their grave.

If you would indeed behold the spirit 

of death, open your heart wide 

unto the body of life.

For life and death are one, even as the 

river and sea are one.

--Kahlil Gibran

Walkin' About Freedom

Last Friday, I accompanied M's fifth grade class on a trip along the Freedom Trail in Boston. When I looked at the map of the trail after we returned, I realized that we had pretty much hiked the whole entire thing, stopping just short of Boston Common, which is pretty crazy, considering C and I walked it many years ago and over two days we still didn't see it all. It was like the ADD tour of history--a peek at this here, a walk-by of that there, never stopping in any one place for very long (with twenty eleven-year-olds, you've got to keep on moving). It was a long day--we left Whitefield at six in the morning and returned home at eleven at night--and here's just some of what we saw:

Bunker Hill Monument

The view from the top:

Partway down the 294 steps:

The Charles River (we all wore red to minimize lost kids):

The Freedom Trail (it really is a red line on the sidewalk):

Scary bridge:

 Old North Church ("One if by land, two if by sea..."):

Paul Revere:

Haymarket:

Street performer:

Ye Olde State House (site of Boston Massacre):

Granary Burying Ground:

The Capitol:

Faneuil Hall:

Water Taxi:

USS Constitution

I was pretty impressed with how good the kids were. Of course they had a lot of–ahem–energy (Mr. C deserves a medal for being so patient still at the end of the school year), but they seemed to get along really well. I remember fifth grade as being all cliques and mean girls, but it seems like their class everyone is just friends with everyone else--sure some of them hung out with certain other kids more than others, but they never seemed exclusive. They even tolerated the quirks of a handful of kids from the behavior program (of course they might just have been on their best behavior for the day).

I got a call from my brother on Saturday, and it turns out he was in Boston on Friday, too, also walking part of the Freedom Trail (he lives in Colorado). I had no idea he was going to Boston, and he had no idea we were either. In fact, I communicate with my family so infrequently that when I saw his name on my phone, I automatically assumed someone must have died. Hmm, I think we should do something about that...

May Days: Mother's Day

We spent Mother's Day, as is our occasional custom, at Dodge Point in Newcastle. It's one of my favorite places to hike because the trail goes along the tidal portion of the Damariscotta River with three beaches to stop at along the way: the brickyard beach, the sand beach and the pebble beach. Sometimes we find horseshoe crabs along the way (this time we only found--and brought home--a horseshoe crab's spiny tail).

After a late lunch/early dinner in Damariscotta, we stopped in Damariscotta Mills and saw the alewives migrating up the fish ladder. It was quite a sight to see a river solid with fish, just sort of hovering in place in the strong current. The seagulls were almost as entertaining, if not more, especially when one caught and swallowed a fish whole, and you could see the fish flopping around inside its chest. Imagine how that feels?

Their shrieks and screeches sounded an awful lot like the cafeteria at the boys' school (to which I was lucky enough to visit twice this year as "lunch buddy."

E and Z gave me lemon-sugar scrub they made at school, which was exciting because it's something I've wanted to try for a long time, but it just seemed too messy (it is a little known fact that I have an aversion to messy things; you would never know this by looking at my house).

M wrote this "poem" for me:

Mom

Nice,

Beautiful, Loving,

Cooker, Writer, Helpful

Creative, Ingenious, Artist, Author

Blogger, Understanding, Bold,

Pretty, Wise,

Kind,

Wonderful, Unique

Patient, Thoughtful, Trustworthy

Unselfish, Humorous, Honest, Sympathetic,

Generous, Forgiving, Affectionate,

Gentle, Special,

Giving,

Positive,

Ace, Dependable,

Considerate, Amusing, Entertaining,

Loyal, Role model,

Friendly

I started to get all weepy until I read "patient" and then I knew he must have just pulled a handful of descriptor words out of a bag, because patient I am not. My favorite is "Ace." Not sure what it means, but I think I'm going to adopt that as my new nickname; just call me Ace.