And now it is Fall. The trees are turning, the nights, cool.
You take the time to reflect on the summer. There is hardly time to reflect,
but you do it anyway. Remembering how the kids learned to swim and how they
made it out to the floating dock reserved for big kids. Your little kids are
now big somehow. They dove to the bottom of the lake and followed fish. You
smile, thinking about the camping trips you had with your family. The smile
falters as you remember the time you woke up in the middle of the night with
the worst nausea. Spending the next day running to the hot, public campground toilets
to relieve yourself out both ends as everyone else went for a hike. It was
food poisoning. It was 24 hour flu! Oh well, There is nothing you can do about that
now. Don’t worry about it. So what if no
one believes you.
Remember countless bike rides, the Boy’s training wheels off
for good. Proudly watching as he rode into trees, walls, houses, other bikes,
dogs. Cruising down hills and watching
as your son sails over his handlebars and skids across the pavement because he
“forgot the stop part”.
Ah the beauty of summer: The garden grew well this year.
Kids helped plant that. That has been a nice thing. The kids got their own plot
to plant. The girl’s was choked with flowers, the boy’s rather empty as he
could not stop experimenting with his seeds. Some went here, some there. Planted, dug up, re-planted. And that is how
tomatoes started growing in the blueberries. Some experiments were not so
successful: Bugs, for example, do not grow into bug plants, and worms don’t make
good pets: A worm leash tends to cut the worm in half, for instance.
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| new lavendar |
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| E's garden |
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| New apple tree |
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| bee balm |
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| Giant cone flower(because I can't spell 'ecanaeshea') |
You smile at the memories of hikes in the White Mountains,
where you unleashed all manner of trickery to convince your children they like
the hikes you and your husband force them to endure. So successful were you
that, huzzah! It took! And although they are bewildered by their own
enthusiasm, they declare themselves ‘real hikers’. You floated down rivers,
scrambled over rocks, had campfires, read “The Witches” by Roald Dahl to them
and they are at that perfect age where they believe every word of it and are
now forever on high alert to blue toothed, no toed, gloved handed, itchy headed
ladies who want to destroy them.
You sent the kids to their grandparent’s house and met your
husband in Florida where he was working. A few days of being alone: All day to yourself, evenings with your
handsome and charming husband. Maybe it was the heat of late summer Florida,
maybe the rush of being without your kids and responsibilities but wasn’t that
night on the boardwalk fun: Dinner, dancing. Dancing like no one was watching.
Like a free bird. Except there were people watching. And they saw. Pierina Legnani was not under threat as it
turned out. And as your husband so gleefully re-enacted in the elevator back up
to the room, Dancing like no one is watching is not sound advice.
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| The most useless sink in the world. At the museum of art in Ft. Lauderdale. You have to reach across 36"of shallow sink to get at water, which beacuse of it's lack of depth splashes everywhere. Fashion over function = not good for bathrooms. |
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| Bananna boat. Transports only banannas. Has huge fans because potasium gas is very flammable. I thought this was way cooler that the mansions this boat ride took me to see. |
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| Someone living the dream. Illegally tied to a hurricane devastated dock. |
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| Hollywood beach. You can smell the sunscreen and sweat from the hotel balcony when the wind is right. |
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| Another way of saying "No refunds if birds shit in your food." |
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| Oprah likes this place and we did too. NOT FOR VEGETARIANS!! |
Then the children went back with you for another visit to
Florida, and they dictated the agenda. There was much swimming in the hotel
pool, much avoiding of the ocean after they realized the omnipresent
helicopters were not looking for bad guys, but for SHARKS.
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| all these were from Ft. Lauderdale museum of art's SHARK exhibit |
There was cuddling of alligators which is
somehow great. Sharks= not cool, Alligators=awesome. Something to do with the
airboat ride, you guess.
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| "This is as close as I am getting to the Mastodon" |
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| Kids were very worried for this little dude |
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| High alert for alligators |
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| Officially the coolest dude in Florida |
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| Bike car |
Then school started and on that first ever recess of her
first ever day of grade 1, the girl fractures her arm. Always something, And
here we are. Fall.
