I found these pirate mood rings the other day. Two rings at $3.99 each saved my family from a collective mid-vacation nervous breakdown.
But please don’t buy it as i paint myself as the savior. There’s no doubt I started it. I can sulk with the best of ‘em.
Are you familiar with the book The Day The Babies Crawled Away by Peggy Rathman? If you have little ones, it’s worth checking out. The artist / author did all of the artwork in silhouette against a fiery sunset . Let’s just say she’s a better artist than I will ever be, but I sure had fun trying.
The last time I went fishing, I was 12 and accompanied by four other 12 year old girls. It was my friend Midi’s birthday party. She lived on this completely sick horse farm in Darien, and there was a pond across the street stocked with who knows what kind of fish. It’s safe to say these fish of indeterminate origin were unprepared for an encounter with a small army of pre-teen girls. It disappoints my oldest son to no end that I don’t remember more of this story, but this is roughly how it went. One of us was holding the fishing rod as the lure and hook dangled salaciously (well, to a fish, I guess) in the murky water. We were surprised flabbergasted rendered incapable of any kind of communication other than shrieking when we actually caught a fish.
I don’t remember how we got the fish off the hook. I want to say I was brave enough to grab its body and hold it still as I gently removed the hook from its mouth and tossed it back into the murky depths. But I’m pretty sure I’d be making that part up. I do remember the whole experience was enough to keep us up chattering into the late hours (it was a sleepover) as we played Titanic, a fun and extremely involved 1970s board game I never came across anywhere else besides Midi’s house.
When we were lifeguards, my friend Joe and I feared hearing one thing more than anything else: “Hey lifeguard, I’ve got a fish hook in my eye. I think I need some first aid.” We developed a Universal Symbol for Fish Hook in Eye (with your forefinger slightly curled, stick it just under your brow bone and hold on tight while making your most grotesque facial expression) and waited vigilantly for our first victim patient. Of course, we also spent our time waiting for a commercial airliner to fall out of the sky and (conveniently) into the Long Island Sound so we could see exactly how long it would take us to row out a few miles to grab all those survivors. I can safely attribute our love for the macabre to being bored out of our skulls.
Taken with the iPhone when the point and shoot’s battery died*
*conveniently, the point-and-shoot’s batteries died before I dropped the iPhone on the ceramic tile floor. Umm, whoops.
Last year, my family and I discovered clamming at Wasque. Clams, clams, glorious clams. Because we have no sense, we took buckets and buckets and buckets of ‘em. I don’t exactly know what it was we thought we’d do with 82 bushels of clams. They don’t exactly travel well on, say, a seven hour car trip.
This year we’re showing restraint and imposing a one-bucket limit on ourselves. In this case, an orange bucket.
And yes, they were delicious.
It’s not all fun and games here, people. We’ve got serious work to do on this vacation. Observe the mighty canine, at the ready to grab small children from the rip tide. But he doesn’t need the rescue board. Salvation is just a giant labrador head away. Just grab on to those ears and hang on.
Summer 2005 should have been a flat-out great summer. We were new to the pool club that year, and spent as much time as the boys would let us floating in the water as night fell. Our oldest boy had just turned five, and we were well past the diapers, sleep deprivation and constant neediness that left us with blank pages where our memories of 2002 – 2004 were supposed to be.
My husband suffers from the occasional migraine, and I am a chronic (if periodic) insomniac who can usually beat it back with exercise. Suddenly he had two, sometimes three migraines a week. I was routinely waking up at 3 a.m., unable to even consider falling back to sleep. Neither one of us was willing to admit the problem: not to ourselves, not to each other. Our son was about to start Kindergarten, and we were ten kinds of freaked out.
pardon me while I go hyperlocal for a moment.
the stamford, ct board of education ceded their responsibility to redistrict the schools to the stamford public schools superintendent. he is presenting his options next tuesday, during the final week of summer vacation.
regular programming will resume shortly.
The redistricting information for next Tuesday’s ridiculously scheduled meeting by that equally ridiculous (Bo)Ed who made a career of disappointing me is now posted. Huh – meeting materials posted more than 5 minutes before the start of a meeting. What will they think of next?
I’ve started reviewing it, and I am willing to bet that other locals have done the same. So what do you think? Any insights? Any option(s) you favor over the others? Comments welcome.
The post from early August about the Board of Education is now password protected. If you want to read it, email me and I’ll gladly share the password with you. Thanks!
What’s the point of going to a casual, family friendly seaside vacation spot, only to spend all of your time perfecting your hair? I saw so many women today who had perfectly coiffed hair. As a curly headed freak, I can discern the difference between naturally straight hair and hair that’s been punished hard with 40 whacks by the straightening iron. I know I should shut it; it takes me all of 14 seconds and frequent haircuts to style my hair. Of course, today my ‘do consisted of a dirty-from-the-ocean mess held off my face by a Pepto Bismol pink hairband.
I just drove off the ferry from Edgartown to Chappy, my sister in the passenger seat and my husband in back with the boys. It’s our first trip since last summer.
My younger son, blessed with a steel trap memory, says “Mommy.” I know what’s coming before it gets out of his mouth. He points. “That’s the place last year where you had to throw up while we were waiting for the ferry.” Yes, I reply, you’re right. “Why did you have to throw up?” I pause for a moment. Casting a sidelong glance at my sister, I say I got some startling news last summer. “Oh yeah. Isn’t that when you found out Aunt C. was sick again?” Yes, honey. That’s it exactly.
It felt like a full body blow when I got the call. C’s cancer was back, nine years later.
It was around her vena cava this time, she was in the hospital, and the prognosis was not good. Waiting in line at the Chappy ferry, the retching began when I got the call and heard it was also near her clavicle. It would still be a few months before we all learned the worst news possible: it was also in her brain.
blah blah blah
