Today was the first day of school for our children. After some anxiety about what that might bring, it worked out OK for them both. Now we have some worries about what day two might bring. One day at a time, I guess.
Bus on the Way
Off They Go
Really Gone (at Least for the Day)
I got home from an all day meeting today about 4:30. I headed right to the kitchen. Last night I was going to make a tomato corn chowder. Then I got working and didn’t stop until way too late. So I planned to make it tonight. And I did. It meant I had to get cracking. And I did. It was, how to say this, tasty as all [insert expletive here].
I tried to find a recipe but just couldn’t scrounge one up. That was probably for the better. It would have taken me longer to keep referring to a book and then half forgetting what I just read as I chopped garlic. Here is what I did:
The children chowed it, even my son, who has been pretty picky lately. I have to admit, and my wife said this aloud, it was worth the hour spent preparing. The vegetables and herbs were all from our garden or from our CSA. Even the milk was local.
Item two was making the base for coffee ice cream. I whipped that up while the soup heated and stuck it in the fridge.
Then I went out with the kids and picked basil. We have more basil than I can handle. This is first year that the basil has really just grown. I clipped it pretty well not long ago and it really grew back well. I cut 12 cups of the stuff with my eager children who lost interest when they decided to mow the lawn with their scissors. They didn’t get all that far on that project.
I made three batches of pesto (it is supposed to get pretty cold the next couple of nights–basil doesn’t like cold), froze two and popped the other in the fridge. By now the children were off to bed with their mother, and I tried not to make too much noise with the food processor. They did fall asleep eventually, even after the delivery truck woke them up. Late delivery.
I just polished off the small bowl of ice cream from the batch I made after the basil was stored away. I probably shouldn’t have coffee ice cream this late–it is made with coffee after all, which people drink to stay awake. But I had to try some. What kind of cook would I be if I didn’t taste what I made? Plus, I didn’t have that much.
I waited to eat the ice cream after I had cleaned up everything (except the ice cream maker bucket–that thing was way too cold to wash). Cleaning too far too long. I was ready to be done when the counter was still covered with dishes. My wife still is healing from her sliced finger, otherwise I am sure she would have offered to do all the cleaning. I cook, I clean, I eat. All after a day at work. Not bad, eh?
Champ
My family went to a Vermont Lake Monsters game tonight at Burlington’s Centennial Field. We had a good time. There was plenty of action and we all had free Chessters frozen treats, thanks to my employer. We watched Champ, their mascot, dance around with the usual mascot antics. Unlike the last time I went to one of these games, with just my daughter, the kids thought Champ was a bit of a hoot.
On our way home, long past the children’s bed times, my son let loose a rather foul smelling burst of gas. It meant the windows were open for a while. And then I got thinking. What if the guy in the Champ suit laid one of those? Where could he go? Nowhere, that’s where. No tacos before game night, that would be my rule. Good old Champ.
For the most part our little camera does the trick. It is several years old, however, and I would love to update. Mostly, the shutter delay drives me crazy. It is really difficult to get some types of shots, even with the various settings the camera offers. Today, I was with my kids swimming. I thought I would get some pics of them jumping into the pool. But I either got this:
Dohp! Too early!
Or this:
Daah! Too late!
It was kind of a bummer. My birthday is coming up (although I guess, really, one’s birthday is always coming up) so maybe it’s time to treat myself to a new camera.
Leaving the Island, Heading Home, Looking Back
When I was in high school I read an essay called Return to the Lake. I remember that it was a good read, although I couldn’t tell you who wrote it, and I remember that I, along with some other folks, visited Lake Winnepesaukee soon after reading it. The essay was essentially about visiting, as an adult, a lake that had had meaning when the writer was younger. I returned to my own lake this past week.
We all went, this nuclear family of mine. We swam and swam and ate and swam some more. My children love the place, that place being Three Mile Island Camp. It is an Appalachian Mountain Club camp where I worked twenty years ago. I loved it then. It had a huge impact on my life. It still is pretty good.
We stayed in a couple of tiny adjacent rustic cabins right on the lake. I got up every morning, looked out at the still water for ten minutes or so, laid my glasses on the dock, and slipped into the water. I felt cool and calm. Some mornings I swam with loons. One morning I swam in the rain. Then I climbed back to the small porch and waited for my wife and my children to waken.
We had little to do all day. Meals are prepared by the staff and they do the clean-up. The cabins have no electricity, although the main house where family style meals are served does. We played and swam and rested and spent time with friends. We ate at the appropriate times. When it rained we hung out on the porch and drank tea and chatted while the children played games inside. Life is pretty good like that.
Home today we cranked out laundry and mowed the lawn and picked the abundant vegetables from out garden. Check this out:
A Few Veggies Ripe After a Week
We ate salad and corn on the cob (local but not ours) and blueberries (we even had some of those ripe!) and veggy burgers for dinner. We looked out over the field and decided it is as good as looking out over a lake. It was hot. If we were still on the lake we would have just jumped in the drink to cool off.
The air has cooled now. The children are off to bed early. I am happy to be home. I could have stayed longer but, like Christmas, experiencing it only once every year increases its appeal and its value. If we lived there year round we couldn’t have this amazing garden. We will return next year to swim and to play and to rest. We have some of that to do around here in the remaining days of summer. And a little work to do as well.
Once we get enough work done, we can return to the lake once again. And we will love being there all over again.
My daughter really wanted a bouquet for dinner. She and her brother had pulled the small table from the porch onto the lawn and had spread out a blanket. She wanted, in fact, a picnic bouquet. “We’ll set out everything on the little table here and then just take what we want,” she explained. And she and her brother worked to make it all happen, albeit with a few spills on the way. Dinner was a fine and fulfilling buffet.
Lower Shelf Installed, Upper Shelf Waiting
While this will not be a surprise to anyone in the Champlain Valley, it was raining again this morning, with showers forecast all day. So much for painting the house. It would be, however, a good day to work on the shelves I wanted to build in the garage. I was stymied a couple of weeks ago by my missing level. I did finally find it, hiding behind the paint cans. How it got there, I can’t say. I found it when I took a trip to basement with the children to see what paint we had that might be acceptable to paint their rooms. Another project.
I am glad I had the level. Someone made a comment on my earlier post that I could just measure from the floor. I was tempted. The level was key with the imperfect lumber I had, however. I was determined to use the lumber I had on hand and not to buy any. So far so good.
I would have finished both the upper and lower shelves, but I had to take my daughter to the doctor. She got a cut on her hand a couple of weeks ago and today it was clearly infected. She and her parents tried to clean it and bandage it but it got the nasties anyway. She was afraid to go to the doctor. She didn’t want anyone to poke it and she was afraid the doctor would want to look at her throat. She hates that. I’m not a fan myself. She had no throat inspection, however, just a confirmation that it is infected, a recommendation to come back in a few days to make sure it doesn’t need to be lanced, and a prescription for Amoxicillin.
By the time we got home it was a little late to keep plugging on the shelves. We had to stop to get the prescription filled (they didn’t have what we needed in stock so had to find a substitute) and shop for a few things to go camping at a state part tomorrow. I agreed to take the advice of a store employee and use the self-checkout. That was a bad idea. I have not had much luck with that approach. There seem to always be issues. The system doesn’t like when people bring their own bags, and the slightest shift on the scale sends it into a fit over the fear that one might be heisting some chewing gum.
We paid for the gum. I am chewing some now. The shelves wait for me. Maybe I’ll get to them after our little camping adventure. Or maybe I’ll just paint.
A couple of years ago, Santa brought this big inflatable bouncy toy thing. The kids ended up calling it the bouncy castle. We tried to set it up maybe a year ago, after a decent hiatus, but it had too many holes. Last week, however, my wife motivated to patch the holes and blow the thing up. It has gotten lots of use since. My daughter the photographer took a series of photographs yesterday from an insider’s perspective. This short photo essay is the result:
Rushing at it from outside
Leaping in
Working to avoid co-bouncers
Inside
Outside
Isn't this fun?
My boy is asleep in the chair next to me. He had a fever. He just woke from an hour long nap. Then he fell asleep again. The kid is out.
My daughter had a rough morning, feeling homesick about this half day art camp she has been attending. It is three hours in the morning during the week. She has had a blast. Today she was afraid of the dog she met yesterday and concerned about the number of kids and other stuff. She went anyway. She came home and said it was the best day yet.
I installed three new smoke detectors today. I also installed two carbon monoxide detectors. The ones in the house might be twenty years old. Who knows? That was a satisfying project. It rained again so no painting today. I also dealt with a bunch of eBay sales. EBay sales don’t exactly rake in the cash here but it is kind of fun, I have to admit. And it pays for our Christmas presents.
I was ready to tackle a few other tasks but they involved making too much noise. I need to finish taking out the bush I started tearing up yesterday, but it is right outside the window where my son is conked out. No need to wake him for that project. It can wait until tomorrow.
So I didn’t get much done today. It felt like a Sunday. It is amazing how a day can slip away when you are worried about a sick kid and you have a bunch of other days ahead of you. The sun is finally out so it is good weather for some outside projects. Oops, time to make dinner. That’s a project I won’t put off.
Yesterday my wife mowed the lawn. That was a bit of a messy task, given how wet the lawn has been. She left tire tracks all over the place. But it had to be done. It is raining again as I write this. The amusing bit, however, was when she tried to mow under the silver maple tree. We have this beautiful tree, maybe 25 years old, and it grows, like all silver maples, faster than most trees. The branches have been hanging lower and lower, some of them almost reaching the ground. The mower has taken a wider and wider path around the tree. It just gets too scratchy trying to blast through the low branches. So I took some action.
I started yesterday, clipping the lowest branches. I had a good pile of branches going before I quit. Today I busted out a ladder and finished the job. Well, I finished the trimming part. I had a big honking pile of brush by the time I was done, and my son was having a blast playing in it. He has the peddle ride on tractor and he started by hauling the branches into the woods. He got tired of that after, I don’t know, one load, and then just romped in the leaves and sticks. He sat neck deep next to his “crashed” tractor. He wanted to have a picnic in the pile. I got him a cup of pretzels.
Later, once the sun had dried things a little, I started in on the endless house painting project. One corner of the house has some lovely lilac and pine trees surrounding it. It looks nice but it was a bear trying to move around them. So I busted out the saw. I have been meaning to prune these anyway. Last winter we would be kept awake by the pines scraping the side of the house whenever it got windy enough. Those wily branches needed to go. I lopped and sawed and now I’ve got some room to work.
I had one other issue, however. We had two bushes on the south side of the house, the same one I am trying to get painted first. One of them succumbed to what we think was some kind of fungus. I cut that puppy down in the spring. The other one is now kicking the bucket and I need to cut it down before it gets too far gone. It right in front of a window I need to get at. The problem is that is it an evergreen with needles. When the needles are green, they are smooth and soft. When they get dry and brown, each tiny needle is just that–a needle. Those babies are so sharp and so persistent they make me just about cry. Getting one of those in a shoe is painful I tell you.
I started in on this bush but I had to be careful. I was wearing shorts and Crocs, of all things. This was fine for scraping and sanding, but not so fine for cutting back the needle bush. I did manage to cut enough that I can now maneuver at the window. Of course, the thing looks truly wretched now–a hacked and mangled, jagged, green and brown protrusion. Now I really need to get that thing out of there.
Since it is raining again, I won’t be able to sand first thing tomorrow. Looks like I’ll need to slide into some pants, put on my heavy jacket, don the gloves and goggles, and have at that bush. It’s tough, but I’ll show it the what for. I’ll make sure to wear some better shoes.
Mercury on the Move 