Eye Candy

In the time since I wrote last, I developed a little writer's block. Although there is plenty to write about, the second half of the summer seems too broad to tackle. It's not as if we really did THAT much, but sitting here on August 27 and looking back feels like standing at the bottom of a very tall hill and looking up. Each time I think about writing, I give up before I begin. But, as I tell my students, you have to start somewhere. Just write. So I'll begin my return with this lovely picture of the summer dishes in the drainer.

I didn't need new Fiesta Ware; I had at least 8 place settings, but somehow, they were all dark, wintry colors. Serving the summer's bounty on cobalt blue and persimmon seemed wrong somehow. I bought a few dinner plates from eBay in lovely summer colors, and I was really happy when I saw them lined up in the drainer. Even if I can't be eating corn-on-the-cob on the picnic table under the oak tree, looking at the pink, yellow, and turquoise plates makes me giggle a little, like sunshine.  They feel like bare feet in the summer grass, and I will enjoy them until snow is on the ground!

June

June flew by. Really, I don't know where it went. I worked for a great deal of June so it didn't really feel like summer until July. I did have days off here and there so I can't pretend it was all work and no play.

The first week I was training tutors for summer camp, Jamie and Duncan set up GeoTrax world so they would have something to keep Duncan occupied. They kept pretty busy. The hit the library and the bookstore, did some crafts, played outside, and made chocolate ice cream.

We got our vegetable garden going. Oddly, I have no pictures, but I'll post some soon. It can't be going too badly. We have baby peppers, lima beans, cucumbers, and watermelons taunting us in the front yard.

Duncan had a Children's Day at his preschool, and Nana and Poppy came down for the day so they could see his school and meet some of his teachers and friends. He road a pony, played in the bounce house, played some great games, and won $216 in the 50/50 raffle.

We met up with Grandma and Grandpa and Don and Sue for a barbecue at Jason and Suzanne's house. Good food, family, good friends, and croquet. Who can ask for anything more?

For Fathers' Day, we took a trip to a AAA baseball game and watched the Tri-City Valley Cats get creamed. We didn't care. We were two rows behind the visitors' dugout, and Duncan had a great view. He asked a lot of good questions about the game and really seemed to enjoy himself. We ate too much junk food (isn't that what baseball is for?), and Jamie and Duncan got new baseball caps.

We had fun visiting John, Melissa, and Anna in Hopedale, MA. Anna and Duncan played in the  sprinkler, and we visited the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.

We all wanted this for our yards:

This was Melissa's favorite.  I was kind of fond of it too:

Finally, at the tail end of June, Jamie, Duncan, and I took a trip to Hancock Shaker Village, where we marveled in some aspects of Shaker life, such as their devotion to God and connectedness to nature and their diligence and industriousness (they harnessed water from a nearby reservoir to run their sawmill and various other running water uses!)  On the other hand, we could only shake our heads at their belief that they could propagate a religion solely through converts. We were also a little curious at how fancy and sophisticated the Trustees House was, where Shaker elders met with visitors from the outside world. It's a beautiful museum, and it was nice to take a step back and think about a simpler way of life.

Oh, yeah.  And Dawn, Diana, and I trained some teachers for summer camp. 

I seem to remember complaining at the time about having to work so soon after graduation, but in retrospect, it does seem like we were able to pack in a good amount of summer. I'm sorry for my long absence, but there you have it.  June, in a nutshell. I hope yours was as good as ours was!

'Dem Bones, 'Dem Bones, 'Dem Dino Bones

A boy must have his dinosaurs. One of our more exciting excursions this summer was to the American Museum of Natural History. The dinosaurs were our first order of business. Since the museum is too big to see in one day we settled on just two other exhibits to visit - the frog exhibit and an exhibit of extreme mammals that included the biggest and smallest mammals, mammals that can fly, mammals that lay eggs, and other mammalian oddities. Duncan adored the dinosaurs; his favorites at the time were flying dinosaurs, and we found a few of those. The T-Rex and the long necks (allosaurs, brontosaurs, brachiosaurs, barosaurs) were also among the favored dinos. What I found most interesting was the range of dinosaur sizes and exhibits about how the skeletons were reconstructed. Unfortunately, Duncan's passion did NOT also lend us the time to read all the literature, but as he grows older, I'm sure we'll get to do that as well. The frogs were numerous:  colorful; camouflaged; minuscule; shiny; wet; dry; fat; huge; squat. Name an adjective, and there was a frog to modify. The exhibit was crowded and difficult to maneuver on that day in mid-summer, but it was well worth the extra admission fee. By the time we hit the extreme mammals, Duncan was finished for the day. The extreme mammals also included less common animals, and we didn't have time to read about them so they did not live up to our hype. We stopped at the barosaurs again in the lobby and then headed home. It was a long day of cars, trains, and subways, but walking in the footprints of the dinosaurs made it worthwhile.