Upcoming Trip

Here it is July 1st, 2010. Hard to believe, but wonderful and true.

I'm thinking of our upcoming trip, and that makes me think of last summer's trip, which makes me think of this blog. How nice to come here and catch up, relive some of those wonderful summer memories. It seems as if this blog has replaced journaling about the trips...but at the same time is journaling about the trips, just online, and for all to share.

This summer we're going to Nashville for a few days, then an overnight or two in Johnson City, TN. From there we'll stop in Delaware and then on to the Cape. The final stop is the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, then home. The girls and I won't be gone for as long as last year but the trip is still shaping up to be a good one. Nashville and Falcon Ridge are the "new" bookends that hold together the normal trip we like to do. It's so nice to have some of the every-year stuff mixed in with some fresh special-to-this-year stuff.

We're all looking forward to the trip and I'm hoping to blog about it to help remember all of those memories.

See you soon!

I did this on Saturday

Turtle Paddle with Eric Holt

June 26,

It is worth getting up early on Saturday morning for an outdoor adventure on Florida’s water.

Join the Trout Lake Nature Center Naturalist on Saturday June 26^th for a paddle on a Alexander Spring Run. The group will be joined by turtle biologist Eric Holt. When we pause in our paddling to aim our binoculars, Eric will help us decide whether the turtle spotted is a Florida Cooter, a released pet Red-eared Slider, or another Florida turtle species. To be amazed by the range of Eric’s knowledge and interests visit his website, “Empire of the Turtle.

There will be more than turtles to view on this paddle, and individuals of all ages and interests are welcome to join us. We’ll likely spot gators, wildflowers, waterbirds, butterflies, and more.

It was cool. The bridge is just past Alexander Springs, on the right-hand side. You can put in your kayak for free and paddle left towards the Springs, or right away from it. Eric had a good sit-on-top kayak that enabled him to jump out, dive onto a turtle, bring the turtle up like the prize it was, and get back into it right there on the river.

It sure was a nice day, and a leisurely paddle with Sandy Starr and the whole gang.

I'm glad I felt brave enough to just call and sign myself up for this adventure.

Getting off the Sauce, and A Friend Visits

Ok, yesterday I decided to get off the sauce, in my case that's caffeine, the good stuff. I've been having trouble sleeping lately, which I thought was related to emotional issues, but now I'm thinking might be related to issues of another kind. Woe is me. I've been hitting the coffee, and hitting it hard. It's become like a warm, dark friend, and I like this friend. My usual cup, here or there, developed into a cup a day and from there to several cups a day, and it's working it's way up to a small pot a day. Don't even let me think about the days I let myself have a Coke after the morning coffee. I use the term morning here loosely.

So, it's time. I'm on the wagon. I had home brewed decaffeinated coffee yesterday, it was SUNDAY after all, and there's a Sunday paper to read, and a couple sips of Coke. This morning, nothing. thump thump thump goes my head.

Oh and this morning I started my period. Oh, Sweet Jesus, how much harder does this have to be?!? My head is throbbing and I'm in "Give me the coffee and give it to me now!" land and a friend of another kind comes to visit. This should be an interesting week. Moving on.....


Here's some other stuff I've been thinking about.

1. My blog is not now, nor will it ever be, linear in a calendar sense. I've tried, to make it easier to find stuff, but it's not going to happen. I will write stuff about today, then tomorrow maybe something about Jordan's birthday that happened last month, and on. This serves as the official "sorry" to anyone out there but it's just the way it is.I'm coming to terms with it.


2. Empty Nest. Weird for me, yes, but gradually I'm facing it in an unusual sort of way. Bear with me, here goes......

Empty Nest Alert:
I've heard it said that certain things in life are extremely stressful: moving, money struggles, divorce, empty nest. Empty nest seems so far from what I should be feeling, what with both of the girls still living here, but (there's the but, you knew it was coming) but.....sometimes I brush right up to the edge of it.

This weekend Jordan was with Torin and his dad in Miami for an Aikido tournament, and Makenna was with her dad. I was home. Alone. And there will be a pattern of more of the same so I better get used to it.

Now, it might not seem so bad. And truth be told, at times it's not. But every now and again a sense of despair hits because I find myself wondering what exactly is going on. How is it that I'm rattling around in this house, all by my lonesome? It's so far from what I think of as the life I lead, this aloneness. It's like "Empty Nest - Phase I".


It's got me thinking. I mean, I know I'm learning so much.

I am learning to be alone, in my own company, which is something I've gotten out of the habit of knowing how to do. Or at least do for very long.

I am learning how to become motivated to work on stuff when it just doesn't seem to make sense, the aloneness, the work, how does it mesh? For example, I drive myself pretty hard to do all the work I do, keep up with the house, do school with the girls, my own school, all the paperwork, keep up with friends and family, etc. So...when I do have free time to myself, what do I do? Do I do work, or do I play, or do I create? Do I make plans with friends, or "Stay Busy" to keep myself from thinking? Or what? What feels right? How do I do my life without it attached to family, to the girls? Like I said, I am learning. And it's weird.


I knew when Rich and I switched from just sort of "figuring it out" every week with the girls to actually going to scheduled weekends, etc, that I was going to be facing some of these demons. I knew sort of leaving every weekend up to chance was an easy way for me to just stay buried in whatever happened, just kind of letting life be pretty much what it had always been. You know, me being a mom, puttering around, fitting myself around everyone else with the exception of an event or two that I want to do. Having an absence in the house even though I didn't have plans was going to challenge me. I knew this and I was right. I am challenged. And it feels uncomfortable.


Where's my coffee?

Wrap it Up.

Well, here it is September 5th and I've been home for exactly 3 weeks now. I've used the time to transition back from being away for so long (7weeks almost!), catch up with friends, and figure out planning and starting school.

Truth is, the whole time I've been home I've been missing blogging. I like the challenge I set for myself for the summer, and I like having a record of the more delicate memories of my days there. Even today as I sit down to do this blog I've enjoyed rereading of our adventures on the Cape. Also, there is a part of me that feels as if I've left a large project incomplete since I haven't written of my adventures since we all left.

So, in a two part effort - one to finish up what I started this summer, and two to continue something that's important to me - I've decided to try and catch up with the blog.

Today.

Right here.

Right now.

So....Jordan left the Hyannis on Wednesday, July 29th. She attempted to shove all of her stuff into the suitcase she brought with her when she left home, unsuccessfully. I went to TJ Maxx and got her a larger one which I think will come in handy in the future. We spent the day puttering around, talking, slowly disentangling from each other while at the same time getting as much connection as we could since Makenna and I wouldn't be home for 2 and a half more weeks. We took J to the bus station in Hyannis and she gave the bus driver her luggage, ticket and climbed aboard. She needed a ride to Logan Airport in Boston and she decided this was the way she was going to go. It's a couple of hours to get there, and then she had to negotiate when to get off, checking in, security, and getting to her gate. She did all of this swimmingly and Kenna and I were happy for her and proud of her. Jordan has been traveling all of her life, but mostly in the company of her family and friends. It made me proud to see her do everything she needed to make this trip happen and to educate herself on what to expect throughout her travels, most of it on her own. Go Jordan!!

After Jordan left Makenna and I went and ate ice-cream. Sometimes you just eat ice-cream.

Later that evening, much later, Jim and Daphne arrived from Michigan/Ohio. We weren't expecting them until the next evening, but they had a good trip and kept on motoring across this country of ours. I told you the Cape has a draw. Anyway, they were coming because we had made plans to travel to Maine when we left Cape Cod and camp at Acadia National Park. I've spent many years dreaming of getting to Acadia, so was very happy to make something happen this year. The complete plans were for Acadia first, then travel downstate to Johnson City, TN, stay for a couple of days, and then camp at Roan Mountain State Park. All of this in an effort to camp as much as possible AND for me to work my way down the east coast to make the trip back to Florida bearable and as underwhelming as possible.

Anyway, Jim and Daphne hung out with us for our last days on the Cape. I was aware of wrapping things up and at the same time was closer to Maine than I've ever been. The last couple of days were busy with the usual packing and cleaning, but on Saturday before we left we had a big lobster pig out dinner party. Usually every year we are on the Cape we have lobster dinner to celebrate all of our birthdays, at once, together. We have lobster and salads and wine and dessert and say "Happy Birthday to US!". This year was no different. Cheryl's Jim came, and Shayne from next door, Jim and Daphne were there, and Makenna and Cheryl and I of course was there.

It was great and decadent and wonderful. The girls, Makenna and Daphne, made a wonderful array of snackables for eating while we were waiting for dinner....fresh veggies and olives and hummus and fruit. Cheryl cooked the lobsters on the grill, which she finds grueling (so sad to kill the little creatures) and we had roasted potatoes (from Jim) and grilled chicken for people who don't want lobster, and pasta salad, and corn and of course BUTTER. Oh, and beer and wine. It was a very nice birthday/going away celebration.

Oh, and guess who else came to dinner? Jessie! Aunt Cheryl's sweet little girl kitty that ran away the day after we arrived decided to come back right before we left. She just strolled into the yard and Makenna said "That looks a lot like Jessie." and we looked and so it was. Aunt Cheryl cried. And we all were happy. Thanks for coming home, Jessie!

Monday August and we hit the road for Maine!

We stopped in Freeport to check out LL Bean and then on to our beautiful, lovely, stunning camp out.

And that's how it all ended.....it was so very wonderful to spend the month of July at the Cape.

I don't think I'll ever forget it.

What a summer. I have deep gratitude.

Monday July 27

Monday and it's Girl's Day.


The girls and I planned a little day for ourselves today. We're in the last few days of having Jordan with us on the Cape and we're making sure we do stuff we really like together. So, breakfast at The Daily Paper and Thriftstore Shopping and it's a day.


The Daily Paper is a nice restaurant chef-owned and operated and the food is creative and delicious. I had a Salmon Plate which is bagel, lox, cream cheese, capers, tomato, red onion, and a wedge of lemon. Oh, sweet mama, it's good. Makenna got a Chocolate Chip Pancake and a side of bacon. Jordan went for the Sliced Baguette French Toast. She and I had Ethiopian coffee. Dark and Good. Good food, good service, good company and a good time.


Jordan had the thrift store shopping all planned out, thanks to Google and Google Maps. After we left The Daily Paper we hit High Hopes, the Baptist Church thrift on Main St. Hyannis (closed except Tues and Thurs, and closed it was) the Salvation Army (a bit nasty, and NO cHanGing RoOmS, dear god in heaven, and I quote from a worker "We don't have any changing rooms, but there's a mirror over there and there's not too many men in here."), and Goodwill (50% off a certain color every Monday). Goodwill was by far the nicest experience, mostly due to the fact that they have lot of great clothes, and that 50% off sure helps because they are not cheap. The place is pretty clean, isn't offensive in its smell, and is pretty much normal and not too creepy. These are good qualities in a thrift store. We all found some good items, Jordan being very happy with finding 2 pairs of jeans (Gap and Old Navy) and both of them fitting great and (bonus) having the color of the week for the 50% off. These things just don't happen like that, but today, for Jordan, they did. Kenna was also a happy girl. She found tops from brands she likes right now, Abercrombe and Fitch, and Hollister. I also got a couple of tops and was happy to add a bit of variety to the wardrobe.


We all can only take so much thrifting, we just get shopped out, and so we headed home to chill, get some lunch and see if we could beat the weather and have some time on the beach. It stayed great, even though they were calling for rain, and the three of us headed down to the little beach at the end of the road. It was nice just talking, sunning, looking for shells and rocks and just being together. We watched the ferries and boats going in and out of the harbor and watched a pair of Canada Geese hang out with a seagull (weird).


After a while we all came home and I got ready for dinner with Aunt Cheryl and Geoff Rose, the man who runs Cape Cod Community Club, the organization I've been working with while I'm on the Cape. We went to The Steak House and had a great meal and nice company. We were home by 8, Geoff had a ferry to catch back to Martha's Vineyard.

It's a cool and lovely evening, and nice to have had a full and fun and relaxing day, and plenty of evening to just chill and be here in this house that we all love, together.

July 19-July 26

Here it is Sunday night and as I look over the past few posts to my blog I'm horrified to see exactly when the last "Cape Activities" type post was. Last Saturday's activities! Unbelievable, and I had such hopes for keeping up with this. I suppose instead of Detailed Travelogue-ing I'm just going to have to do Summing Up, or Brief Overviewing. Or maybe even List Writing.

Sigh.

It's not what you're used to, nor is it what I am used to. The standards have dropped, the rain around here has made me rusty, the habit is not yet set in, or the laziness factor had yet to be calculated, it's uncertain what's going on. Or maybe it's just business as usual.

With no further procrastinating here's a brief update on the last week.....

On Sunday July 19th the girls, Aunt Cheryl, Torin and I went to a kettle pond in Yarmouth. It was very much like a lake. I was in the middle of the woods, sort of, and the water was nice and very lake like. Jordan said the kettle pond she, Sadie, Metie, and Cheryl went to in 2007 was crystal clear, cold, and out in the middle of nowhere. This one was very populated by families, and was (like I said) lake like.

I've been interested in exactly what a kettle pond is. I live in Florida an I'm aware of how our natural springs are formed, but how was a kettle pond formed? Here's what I found out. The Cape (and surrounding areas) was once covered by a glacier. Kettle ponds mark the site of ice blocks that were left behind by the retreating glacier and buried by the outwash deposits. The buried ice was well insulated from the warmer post-glacial temperatures and may have persisted for several thousand years Kettle holes that are deep enough to expose the water table contain ponds or lakes. In many kettle ponds certain processes have smoothed the shoreline so that the ponds are almost circular. I read about this here at the U.S. Geological Survey site.

After we all got home from the kettle pond, I went out and cleared out the whole van of all of our travel stuff so we could make a large living room/bed for our night at the Wellfleet Drive-In. Makenna and I put down her sleeping bag, a rag rug, the wool blanket and my sleeping bag over all of that. I got the big down body pillow, the bolster from my bed and two throw pillows for leaning against. We also had the girls microfiber blankets. It was like a big nest back there! We popped 3 bags of microwave popcorn and hit the road. I wanted to be there when they opened, by 7, because I remember getting some outside parking the last time we went. We ended up being there by about 7:30 and it was early and we had good parking spot picking. Because of the height of the van we had to be in the front 2 rows or the back rows. The girls and I were worried about being too close in the front 2 rows, but Torin insisted we try it and that's where we stayed. It was a big screen up there, but it was good. I thought I'd do well letting the kids be in the van and I would have the camp chair at the tailgate, but I just couldn't hear very well so I ended up squishing in with them. It was tight and snuggly but FUN! We watched the new Harry Potter and listened on our radio. I was worried about the van's battery dying, but it wasn't even a problem. I still think we could have used more padding in the van, believe it or not there were lots of numb butts. Maybe next time we'll try an air mattress!

Monday was Torin Fly Home day. He was with us for 3 weeks and it was very nice having him be part of our family for that time. No one could believe it was time for him to go. Aunt Cheryl said "I don't want my boy-man to leave!!"

Jordan, Torin and I drove into Boston, parked at the Charles St. Parking Garage-which was great by the way, connected to a little center of town type terminal (check out the bathroom token meters-and worked off of our list of Cheap things to do in Boston.

Jordan did all the research for us and she did a great job. We walked everywhere. We went to the Boston Public Library - incredibly fabulous ; checked out Trinity Church-an amazingly beautiful and impressive church; walked around Boston talking pictures of everything-it's a cool town; ate lunch at The Pour House-cheapest lunch we could find and not a chain; shopped a little-Anthropology and a cool, inspiring paper store; spent tons of time in the Public Gardens-lots of great flowers, swan boats, sculpture, and peaceful land in the heart of the city; and last but not least enjoyed Torin playing the $93,000 Steinway grand piano at M. Steinert and Sons. He practically ran across traffic when he saw the sign for the shop.

It was a beautiful end to a wonderful day. We all got in the car and drove to the airport. Despite Aunt Cheryl's grim prediction of what driving in Boston might be like, we got very lucky and it was pretty much like navigating any other big city.

Team-work, yeah!

For the rest of the week, the girls and I tried to stay dry out of the rain, watched movies, went thrift store shopping, mall shopping, exchanged tickets for a play in Dennis and ate at Captain Frosty's, worked with Aunt Cheryl on the puzzle we bought at the thrift store (that's been good fun), went to the library, got ice cream and went to the beach. We went to Kalmus Beach at the end of Ocean Avenue this week. I've been wanting to go since Jim and Daphne were here and finally we made it. It was a very nice beach, lots of seaweed and TONS of Lady Slipper shells. There are hills of them at the end of this beach. It literally looks like the tide dumps them there by the front end loader full.

We also went to a BBQ at Midge and Jim's, cleaned the house - more teamwork - and I made a homemade apple pie.

I am sure there were other things we did, but I believe this is a good recap of most of it. Oh, these are flowers from Aunt Cheryl's garden, I love doing her gardening, and this bit of rainy-ness inspired me to bring some sunshine in. The next morning sun was streaming through the glass. Have I mentioned sitting on the porch. It seems that a day is not over until there has been at least some porch sitting done. My preferred way to start my day here is by taking a cup of coffee out to the porch, with my book and reading, sipping, and saying hi to the neighbors. I truly love that. I've had some really good conversations out on that porch. It's a great place to spend time. It's a great place to be.

Cat Vomit, a Vole, and a Little Birdie

Good morning Cape Cod.

This morning woke me up, gently, with a loving caress as the harbor breeze blew in from my open bedroom window and played across my face. White bedroom, soft white sheets, gentle breeze, sweet little girl asleep next to me, blonde, with a shell pink tank pj top accenting her brown little arms, her angelic face.

It was a pleasant good morning.

I wanted to get right up and do a little work, maybe blog, check out what's happening for the rest of the week, but my mind wanted to take the time to soak this in, make it linger, not to rush out into the world of doing, but to savor.

I spent another hour an a half doing just that, in bed, dozing on and off, lingering.

When it was time to get up I headed downstairs and into the living room. I was greeted by the vision of my laptop on the hassock, a nice cat vomit half on it half on the furniture, the nice felty dry part of the vomit being actually on my laptop, the juicy part on the footstool.

I walked around the corner to the kitchen to get some paper towel to clean it all up and there, on the floor, was a dead vole, not so juicy, and a dead little bird, very juicy, blood smeared across the floor.

Little gifties from the kitties. Could this be the work of one kitty? Is that possible? Or are they working as a team, Bennie and Rusty, lovely little killing, gifting machines?

Who knows, but I spent a bit of my morning Swiffering like a mad woman.

Good Morning Cape Cod.