Why would we ever want to leave? More after the jump.

Click to continue »

The hurricane left angry seas in its wake, making today the first day we swam in the ocean. But it’s aallllllll goooood. Except for the broken sunroof. And the dog who was certain the skunk was an innocent little kitty who was dying to say HI!

republished with pictures that didn’t stick in the WordPress iPhone app

Remember last summer when we thought spending a few weeks at the beach seemed perfectly reasonable? I do. Vaguely.

Taking hundreds of pictures during our Vineyard trip last August was a clutch move. Sure, the memories will sustain us for a while. More importantly, my laptop is throwing off a lot of heat as I fix the tilted horizons and try to eliminate zombie dog eyes… and I’m sure running a computer is far cheaper than turning the heat up above 58 degrees.

Viewing the world from the late November market’s underbelly, hitting the road for two weeks seems a little extravagant. But I wouldn’t want the money back. Blowing it on an overland parking permit, Back Door Donuts, Sharkey’s margaritas and fishing poles (the ones a certain dog who shall remain nameless ate somewhere between Providence and New London) sure was fun. Pull up a chair and warm your hands by the CPU with me as I stroll down memory lane.

I’m still enamored of the clams in the bucket. If I took one picture of these, I took 4 dozen. Greedy greedy greedy.

The Edgartown Lighthouse is beautiful inside and out. And, yeah, I remember those flip flops. I think Talullah ate them some time in early September.

More extravagant memories after the jump.

Click to continue »

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.

Click to continue »

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.