Beach Selfie

Reid State Park, near Georgetown, Maine. Not shown: biting sand flies, predatory 20lb sea gull.

ETA: many, many biting things here. I am polka-dotted.

At the Beach

Iain playing at the beach with his friend. They did this for a solid hour. The moms spent that hour talking and swatting sand flies (biting sand flies).

New Newness

Our friends arrived from...well, from New York but they live in California.

Anyway, they arrived today. Iain and Lucas (4.5) are sleeping together in the loft ("boys only!") tonight. We are downstairs, using our electronic devices and listening to them whisper.

Lucas says he doesn't like shots. Iain says, "I like them." "You do?" "Yeah, because the band-aids are great."

Bonding.

Also, it was validating that Lucas's mother immediately commented on the intense humidity and aggressive quality of the natural world (especially the natural insects, who had a feast on us tonight). At dinner, Charles held up the salad dressing to demonstrate that it's so humid here the labels slide around on front and back. Ie, the water dissolved the glue. Gross.

Milestones

Tonight we played our first game of Monopoly as a family. Charles won.

He won on the measure: how many 1's do you have?
He won on the measure: how much money do you have overall?
He won on the measure: how much money are your properties worth?

Iain cried. Charles said, "It's just a game. You won on the measure of most monopolies [2]." Iain was unconsoled.

He said, "I want to turn the game off."

Like it was a video game.

Charles points out, it's not a board game (or a family game) without someone crying. Mommy dropped an F-bomb so everyone's performing up to expectations.

[ETA: Aaaannd the revisionism begins. Iain says, "well, at least I won." ??? "Well, I had the MOST MONOPOLIES."]

Things You Forget

In the West, you can leave your pistachios/pretzels in a bowl on the counter. They remain crunchy.

In the West, when laundry comes out of the dryer it's dry. Like, you could fold it and put it in a drawer. Right away. Because you used the dryer. To dry the laundry.

In the West, nature doesn't touch you much. Except the sun. The sun touches you all the time. But when you walk through the woods it doesn't quite feel as if the greenery were reaching out for you, stroking your legs, thinking about how you would taste if you were to fall and die and the moss could eat you right up.

In the West, roads have signs. They tell you the name of the road. Sometimes, they direct you toward things.

Yo, East. Fun to get re-acquainted.

Ice Cream

 When we travel, I take photos of Iain eating ice cream. The last time he visited Irvine, there must have been four of them.

So...we arrived in Maine yesterday. First stop: ice cream.

I should say that when we lived here (in Auburn, inland from our current spot on Westport Island) we rarely came to the coast on summer weekends. At those times, about ten million people from Massachusetts, New York, and other not-Maine places jam the roads and line up for lobster rolls at Red's Eats.

No exception yesterday. An antiques fair on the church lawn and a summerfest celebration of some kind did not help.

But who cares? We parked (easy to do because many of the horrible cars trailing through town are headed north, not stopping in lovely Wiscasset), walked to Lears and obtained Iain's first cone: cookies and cream. I tried Conservation Crunch (caramel with "crunchies"). Both yum. Upstairs is a toy store so we had to go there, too.

And then back to the house. Today, being Sunday, most things are closed. So we're spending a lazy day in the house, listening to motor boats and birds and sniffing the breeze. Iain says the East "has a lot of nature." Yes.

Camp (Not that kind of camp, Susan*)

This is Iain's third year of camp. He seems to enjoy it more this year - in part because he's a better swimmer and more socially adept in general.

Though he won't admit it, I think his favorite part of camp is the field trips. Every week, often on Wednesday, they scamper off to an apiary, or the zoo, or the Arts Festival. At the last, he especially enjoyed the face paint.

*

Proof of Maturity

Today, Iain received his first credit card offer.

Good job, Citibank. Very responsible.

New Quilt

The quilt I made for us many years ago (10? 15? I made it in California so that would have to be...more than 10) has begun to unravel. It's tearing away from the binding on Charles side, the Japanese fabric has faded to a dull, pinkish-gray, and the white isn't so white anymore.

We need another. But we like the pattern. And the fabrics. In fact, we liked everything about it. So I'm making a new quilt with the same pattern and even some of the same fabric.

The top you see above (minus strips of blue and white edging that I added later). I finished the back yesterday. Now I need to find a nice, big open space to make the "sandwich." If we're lucky, it'll be on the bed by September.

When completed, that will make 2 quilts this year. The first was a gift, and a secret until June.

More Fun With Screenshots

Above, part of the description of a condo. Looks nice, doesn't it? I've always wanted an "environment of modern sheik."

Wait.

What??

Adjustments for First Grade

Iain starts first grade next year. In preparation for this momentous event (and what we hope will be a heavy burden of homework (!!)), we've made some changes to his room.

Above, we stacked two IKEA bookshelves (hackhackhack) and attached them to the wall. The idea is that the shelves won't fall forward if pulled on by some foolish young person. Behind the door you can see that we've mounted a whiteboard/corkboard combination for him to record his triumphs.

He also needed a desk. He specifically requested a drawer. We looked at a local mid-century modern vintage place and loved much of what we saw there. But not, so much, desks. Iain liked one desk - teak, with a locking drawer and cabinet, both employing an old-fashioned skeleton key. He dreamed of the privacy of locking his things away. I dreamed of the nightmare of finding that key.

But in the end we bought him a simple, modern desk with two drawers. It's not world-class furniture but it will do for now. He added a lamp and some colored pencils to make it his own.