Beach-errific!

We were on vacation in Cape May, NJ, last week!  I know how excited you must be for us, since you were stuck at home watching Spongebob  reruns and getting rained on and doing your laundry and going back-to-school shopping and such, you are probably thinking, “Oh, I hope she posts some photos, lots and lots of pictures of her children doing mildly cute things and her husband looking all forearm-y, that would not be boring at all.” 

Oh!  How nice of you to ask!  I took about 700 bajillion photos, but I will try to trim it down a bit for you and spread it all out over a few posts.  Because I’m thoughtful that way.

Today’s theme is Beach Pictures. We are all beach bums.  Everyone likes boogie boarding and body surfing and digging in the sand.  I like making drippy castles and reading and hiding my adult beverage from the nosy lifeguards, but I did get into the water here and there.  A bit.

Mm-hmmm.  Oh yeah.

We went with Dave’s family: his mom and dad, who treat all of us to the week in a beautiful beach house; his sister, her husband, and their boys;  his older brother; his younger brother and his girlfriend.  Got that?

OMG!  SHARK!  DAVE!  WATCH OUT FOR THE SHARK!

What?  Oh, that’s a dolphin, you say?  Well. Don’t let him charm you to death then!

We see dolphins every year, but can you believe this year we saw a particularly happy dolphin, and I caught it on film!

How lucky was that?

Fine, okay, stop it with the gagging sounds.  I’ve always wanted to do this in the sand, and Dave was in a cooperative mood.  He probably regrets it now though, since I posted this photo on Facebook.  They are going to make fun of him big time at Fantasy Football Planning Night or whatever it’s called.    Or possibly, they will applaud him for his sensitivity.

Here is Mike, Dave’s baby brother. 

We love Uncle Mike and his girlfriend Nicole. 

We would love to be calling her Aunt Nicole, hint- hint, Mike.

Maddie and I tried writing this out with pebbles but we were never fast enough…the water would come and wash it all away at about “CapeM”.  Finally we just said “To heck with it” and wrote it out with a shovel.  True story.  I know you must be amazed at our resourcefulness.

Up next post:  The Houses of Cape May. 

August Book Review

After my last Book Review, Deb, my self-proclaimed biggest fan, asked me to list my Book Reviews in the sidebar over there to the right, and I was more than happy to oblige.  Now anytime you need a good book or possibly a bad book or maybe just want to use my book reviews as Cliff Notes so you can sound all smart and stuff at cocktail parties, because you totally will sound all smart and stuff, click on the hyperlinks, and they will take you right to my reviews.  Here are my last five books:

We Thought You Would Be Prettier by Laurie Notaro-  Notaro generally writes memoirs, like Jen Lancaster or David Sedaris, each chapter, however, generally stands on its own so the book is a collection of stories, not a novel.  We Thought You Would Be Prettier was a fun, funny, light read, very enjoyable, though not laugh-out-loud funny like Jen Lancaster’s memoirs.

Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner-I really loved this one.  Vaclav and Lena are both Russian immigrant children growing up in New York City.  They are in first grade together and best friends outside of school.  But one day, Lena disappears… Vaclav’s mother knows why but won’t tell him, and then the author skips ahead to their late teens when Vaclav and Lena find each other again.  This is a very sweet and tender love story, funny writing at times,with such believable characters and dialogue that I really felt like a fly on the wall.  I highly recommend it to you!

Still Alice by Lisa Genova-Alice, the title character, is a Harvard professor who one day, while out for a run, completely forgets where she is and how to get home.  She’s eventually diagnosed as having early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.  What makes this novel especially interesting is that it is told from Alice’s point of view, so as she is slowly losing her mental abilities, we, the readers, feel what she is feeling and thinking as it is happening to her.  I really loved this book.  Have your tissues ready by then end!

Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes-I love Marian Keyes, and my local library system does not have many of her books, so when I found this one at a used book sale, it felt like Christmas!  But then it quickly turned into that Christmas present, beautifully wrapped, much anticipated, which when opened contained itchy awful bumblebee striped socks.  What a disappointment.   It was obvious that this was one of Keyes’ first novels as I knew exactly how it would end by about page 15, I hated the whiny protagonist, and quite honestly, could not wait for this one to be over.  I did quite a bit of skimming to end the  torture as quickly as I could.  (I’m sorry if you read it and liked it…I was mainly just disappointed in Keyes, I think).  Read anything else by Marian Keyes!

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls-This one is a winner! If you’ve read Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, you will know that McCourt wrote about his terrible, poverty-stricken childhood with humor and grace.  Walls does the same thing here with her childhood.  Walls grew up with brilliant but aimless parents.  Her earliest memory, at age 3, was boiling some hot dogsfor herself on the stove and catching fire.  We also hear about how she rolled out of the moving car when the door came unlatched and it took her parents awhile to realize it and come back and get her.  I loved her story of how her very pregnant mother jumped out of the car and ran away from her father in anger, as he chased her down, the children screaming and bracing each other in the back seat as he yelled obscenities at her. (A lot of things happen in the car, as the family is always on the run from bill collectors or  the police).  Okay.  I realize all of that sounds kind of horrible.  But Walls writes it all so well and without an ounce of pity (it said that on the cover…I didn’t come up with that) that her stories come off as poignant and funny.  Read this one, you will love it.

Bug Boy

Jack is a bug boy.

He likes inchworms, butterflies, grasshoppers, crickets, earthworms, ladybugs, dragonflies…almost any nice bug you can name, Jack has probably adopted it, cared for it, accidentally killed it, and cried at its funeral.

He’s excited that Giant Grasshopper time has arrived.

He was getting bored with crickets.

This praying mantis was from two years ago.  Jack’s hoping to find another one this fall.

Even at age two the Ladies loved Jack.

He is under strict orders to keep his bugs out  of the house, but the other day I heard him utter these very unwelcome words: '”Uh oh, my bug got out!”  Turns out he “accidentally” brought in a moth who had luckily seen a slim chance at freedom around the saran-wrapped edge of an air hole and jumped ship.  We haven’t found him yet.  I was just glad it wasn’t a creepy, hairy spider or a noisy cicada.

Or for that matter, a frog.

Bowl of Cherries

I loved Erma Bombeck when I was a teenager.  My Aunt Kathy had all of her books and  I borrowed each and every one of them.  It didn’t matter that Erma’s target audience was women my mother’s age, I loved her humor and insight into family life.  Even her book titles were awesome, like  If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? and Family—The Ties That Bind… And Gag!   I keep telling myself I will check all of her books out of the library and reread them, but somehow the pile of books waiting for me on my nightstand still hasn’t gone down enough to allow me to indulge in an old favorite.

A little while ago, Sarah from Clover Lane shared this essay by Erma Bombeck, probably written for one of her newspaper columns.  I couldn’t get through it without damp eyes, and I dare you to try to do it too.  I printed it out, and keep it handy because I pull it out and read it on those days that the natives are wearing me down (and that’s happening a lot more frequently as summer is wearing on!)  It reminds me that I do need to appreciate every second I’ve got.

Erma’s column: 

A young mother writes: "I know you've written before about the empty-nest syndrome -- that lonely period after the children are grown and gone. Right now, I'm up to my eyeballs in laundry and muddy boots. The baby is teething; the boys are fighting. My husband just called and said to eat without him, and I fell off my diet. Lay it on me again, will you?"
OK.
One of these days, you'll shout, "Why don't you kids grow up and act your age!"
And they will.

Or, "You guys get outside and find yourselves something to do ... and don't slam the door!"
And they won't.

You'll straighten up the boys' bedroom neat and tidy -- bumper stickers discarded, bedspread tucked and smooth, toys displayed on the shelves. Hangers in the closet. Animals caged. And you'll say out loud, "Now I want it to stay this way."
And it will.

You'll prepare a perfect dinner with a salad that hasn't been picked to death and a cake with no finger traces in the icing, and you'll say, "Now, there's a meal for company."
And you'll eat it alone.

You'll say: "I want complete privacy on the phone. No dancing around. No demolition crews. Silence! Do you hear?" And you'll have it.

No more plastic tablecloths stained with spaghetti.
No more bedspreads to protect the sofa from damp bottoms.
No more gates to stumble over at the top of the basement steps.
No more clothespins under the sofa.
No more playpens to arrange a room around.

No more anxious nights under a vaporizer tent.
No more sand on the sheets or Popeye movies in the bathrooms.
No more iron-on patches, wet, knotted shoestrings, tight boots, or rubber bands for ponytails.

Imagine. A lipstick with a point on it. No baby sitter for New Year's Eve. Washing only once a week. Seeing a steak that isn't ground. Having your teeth cleaned without a baby on your lap.

No PTA meetings.
No car pools.
No blaring radios.
No one washing her hair at 11 o'clock at night.
Having your own roll of Scotch tape.

Think about it. No more Christmas presents out of toothpicks and library paste.
No more sloppy oatmeal kisses.
No more tooth fairy.
No giggles in the dark.
No knees to heal, no responsibility.

Only a voice crying, "Why don't you grow up?"
and the silence echoing, "I did."

Peachy Keen!

On my Summer A-Z List, my plan was to do some raspberry and apricot picking.  We did the raspberry picking a few weeks ago, but the apricot crop was tiny this year, so there weren’t enough of those to pick.  I was bummed, because I really love apricots. 

Visor on?  Check.  Sunglasses under the chin?  Check.  Raspberry container tipped over?  Checkarooni.

We (Dave) made those raspberries into ice cream, and that is such a sordid, horrifying tale that I won’t even tell it, except to say that Dave was very keen to remove every raspberry seed from the raspberries and he strained and strained and strained some more, and there were lots of raspberry guts splashed all over thousands of utensils and two walls and a long section of countertop and then the raspberry ice cream itself was…just…kind of…okay.  Dave’s final word?  “Never.  Again.”

We also ate a lot of raspberries out of hand, but no apricots.  Me so sad.

But now it is peach time!  We went peach picking with my friend Jodi who is a peach-picking expert, and who suggested we all wear long sleeved shirts because peaches can give you a rash, apparently.  Who knew?  Jodi, who is gorgeous, threatened me with bodily harm if I took any pictures of her because she had to rush to meet us at the orchard and was not feeling as glamorous as usual.   But her kids are cute and I’ve got pictures of them for you!

Somehow the only picture I got of her son was one with my son…who got hot in his long-sleeve shirt and is showing off his muscles to the ladies.

Jack basically walked around the orchard eating peaches the whole time. He finally asked me to take a picture of him in a tree (picture below), but the peach he is holding? Went into his mouth about 3 seconds after the camera clicked.

We headed back to the car and paid for our harvest.

My plan was to make peach crisp, peach pie, and peach freezer jam.  I did make the peach crisp using my apple/blueberry crisp recipe, and it was delicious, if I may say so myself. And apparently, I must.

So far, no pie and no freezer jam.  Herbie loves peaches, though, and has been steadily working his way through them.

And by the way,  Jack has a rash from his neck down to his belly button.  I’m betting it was from all the fuzzy peach juice that dripped off his chin, down his neck, and onto his belly for the hour the rest of us were picking peaches.

Indiana Jones and the Knoebel’s Grove Adventure

Can you believe it is already August?  We have accomplished 20 out of 26 tasks on our Summer A-Z List, but time is slowly running out. I knew we had to get this particular summer favorite in fast, because I think the kids just may have refused to strap on their backpacks and climb on the school bus if we hadn’t.

Knoebel’s Grove (and you do pronounce the K) is an old-fashioned, medium-sized amusement park,  found in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.  We didn’t need any sunscreen because the park is smack-dab in the middle of a leafy, pretty forest.

We have our favorite rides that we do every year, and one of them is the Hamster Wheel.  Jack was finally old enough to do this one this year!

If you rock it fast enough, you will get it to go upside down.  They are crazy.

Jack was also big enough for The Claw!

Crazy, I tell ya.

I’m betting Agnes and Bob bring their grandchildren to visit Knoebel’s every year!

So let me tell you how our day ended.  Our last ride of the day is usually the train, because it’s calm and quiet and you can sit down and rest your barking dogs, and it’s right next to the park entrance so it’s right on our way out.  The train actually winds its way through the park, under a roller coaster, and then leaves the park behind, heading out to the woods, where it’s all by itself.  So calm.  So relaxing!

Oh, darn.  I only took two pictures of the train ride.

Would you like to know why I only took two pictures?

BECAUSE MY CAMERA SLID OFF MY LAP AND FELL OFF THE STINKIN’ TRAIN!

Jack was sitting next to me and was horrified!  He screamed “Stop the train!” many times.   Ben and Maddie were behind us.  Ben started wringing his hands and yelling, “Your camera!  Mom! Your camera!”  Unfortunately, we were seated in the last train car, so the engineer had no idea that a minor catastrophe had taken place behind him.

The train was actually going pretty fast.  It was too fast for me to jump out, because believe me, I considered it.  A nice man sitting behind Ben and Maddie, though, reminded me that when the train goes around the bend to head back into the park, it slows down quite a bit.  I looked at Maddie and told her I was going to jump, that she was in charge and was to get the boys off the train back at the station and keep them there until I arrived.  When the train slowed down, I pulled on my backpack, kissed Jack goodbye, told them all to be good and that Mommy loved them, and they must all go to college and brush their teeth every night and please remind Daddy about the first day of school and that the washer uses High Efficiency detergent, not the regular kind, or there will be bubbles everywhere.   Kidding!  But I did kiss Jack, who was very scared to see me jump off the train, and then I did it.

It would be so totally cool to tell you that I hit the ground, tucked myself into a ball, and rolled until I came to a stop.  But, really, I hit the ground running, and then I jogged about two minutes back to my camera, which was lying on the ground all alone and sad, but not broken even a smidge. 

After about a five minute hike, I arrived back at the station where Jack jumped in my arms and had a little cry, Ben told me it was awesome when I jumped off the train, Maddie asked if the camera was okay, and then thank goodness we were ready to head to the parking lot because being Indiana Jones is tiring and a little nerve-wracking and I won’t ever complain that nothing exciting happens to me ever again.

The Stink of Defeat

The garbage guys got us again.

Our garbage truck usually comes to pick up our trash around mid-morning every Friday, which is very convenient when you forget to put the trash out on Thursday night, or when thunderstorms are predicted for trash night and you don’t want your garbage blowing down the street while you sleep, or for those times when you and your husband are in a waiting match to see which of you will take out the garbage and bedtime comes and both of you win.  Unfortunately, about 10% of the time our garbage guys will show up around five in the morning, so if it was one of those forgetful, windy, or lazy nights, you have actually lost the Garbage Showdown and are stuck with rotting chicken scraps and maggoty cantaloupe rinds for a bonus week.

Last Thursday night I completely forgot it was Thursday night.  Dave told me (later) that because rain was predicted, he had decided to keep the garbage inside until morning (although I think he may have been engaged in a one-sided garbage showdown with me, but won’t admit to this).   At the ungodly hour of 5 a.m., when the world still  lies in sweet darkness and the new day is being sleepily ignored, Dave was already awake and down in the basement working out.  He’s crazy like that.  I heard the sounds of a garbage truck, realized that I had forgotten it was Thursday night and that it was now Friday morning, and started to panic.  Although I knew the approaching truck was probably one of the competing sanitation trucks and almost certainly not ours, I still dragged myself out of bed and went to the window to check. 

It was not my garbage truck.  Phew.

However, I now had several decisions to make. 

a) go back to sleep, our garbage guys will arrive mid-morning like they always do.

b) go back to sleep, but wake up every time an airplane flies overhead or a neighbor’s car approaches for fear that the sound is my garbage truck approaching.

c) head outside wearing only a t-shirt and short robe, no bra, to deliver garbage/recycling to the curb, which is not a bad choice in the current semi-darkness.

d) put on a bra, get dressed, and drag the garbage to the curb, thereby completely waking myself up for the day, but feel complete satisfaction as I will no longer need to worry about the garbage/recycling.

e)  go get Dave to do it.

I opted for Plan E.  I headed down to the basement with hopes of reminding him that lifting garbage bags is also quite a good workout for the pecs, but unfortunately I found that the basement lights were off, which meant that instead of exercising, Dave had apparently fallen back asleep on the sofa down there.  I didn’t have the heart to wake him up, so I opted for plan B.

For the next hour I alternated between  falling asleep, to startling awake to the sound of a competing recycling truck, to falling asleep, to jumping out of bed at the sound of the neighbor heading to work, to falling asleep, etc., all because I was too lazy to take the garbage to the darn curb.  Just as I had finally decided to just do it, I heard the growl of an approaching truck.  A peek out of my window told me that my garbage guys had decided to make their rounds early today, and I would definitely need to throw on a bra and get dressed, otherwise I would have an audience for my Walk of Trash Shame to the end of the driveway. 

Quickly, I got threw on a bra and pajama pants, headed downstairs, and grabbed the bag of things from the fridge I hadn’t wanted rotting in the garbage can all week (chicken scraps, etc.) and headed out to the garage to grab the overflowing can and deliver my trash to the gentlemen at the end of my driveway. 

I missed the truck by about 10 seconds, its taillights mocking me as it left my street.  I almost considered chasing it. [Go ahead and take a moment to picture me running down the street in my Christmas panda pajama pants with crazy bedhead desperately yelling “STOOOOOOPPPPP!”, waking my neighbors, their faces all peering out of their windows at me, each smug in their own ability to get their garbage to the curb on time, while one gawker possibly records the moment for a YouTube video that becomes a viral hit by the end of the day].  So no.  I did not chase the garbage truck.

And now the garage smells like the stench of rotting chicken scraps and maggoty cantaloupe rinds, the madly buzzing flies are facing off West Side Story-style (most likely brandishing tiny little switchblades over the territorial right to the fetid leftovers and guinea pig poops), and I have 5 more days of whiny children complaining every time we have to go into the garage to get in the car, and I swear I will never forget a Thursday night or willingly engage in a garbage showdown again.  Ever.