Skipping Town

My longest delinquent-blogging stretch yet! We left NJ in the late afternoon last Wednesday and drove to PA for our second visit of the summer. Tiny bone to pick: we were home for 2 1/2 days after our three weeks away in NH, and I kind of needed to get our held mail delivered, but we didn't get mail even once in the days we were home. What's up with that? I know I have some parcels in there, including some books I'm excited about, so that was annoying. PANDEMIC TROUBLES. Anyway, we're in PA. We've been to Pittsburgh and had socially-distanced drinks with friends. The kids have worked on stained glass with Pop Pop. Mom, the girls, and I have watched all the episodes of Netflix's Babysitters Club (fabulous). I cut the kids' nest-hair. The kids have played with their American Girl dolls, the latest lockdown resurrection.  The kids have also become obsessed with a traditional Orlando family snack called Toasted Butter Squares, which are...pieces of buttered

Another full day at home. The kids were in the pool from 11am till 5:30pm, breaking only when I brought out a little tray of lunch for them. Everytime I looked outside, they were doing something new: snorkeling around and around, balancing their American Girl dolls on a towel stretched over a donut float, one girl holding up the donut float and the other girl hurling beach balls at it, etc etc. On and on, all day. Best summer investment ('investment') ever. Why didn't we ever think of this before? I did some library outreach for my book, picked up a couple of books I'd ordered from our local bookstore, did all the laundry, and repacked a few things, because tomorrow we're leaving for a visit to PA. The girls are so excited. We've been completely isolated in NH for three weeks, so we feel like it's safe for us to go. Things are so scary again. Andrew and I also gave Farrah a much-needed bath. Tonight I visited a (socially distancing) book club to discuss

Day at home. I unpacked, did laundry, tried to get back to zero after three weeks away. I visited a home on our street that's for sale. I took Farrah for a walk and played with her inside (it's too hot outside to run around). The kids began the day playing with their Lego Friends, and then--in a startling shift this afternoon--pivoted to their American Girls, which haven't been looked at in months. Later, they swam in their pool, their AG dolls looking on. They told me they were putting on a Broadway show in the pool and the dolls were the audience.

What a hellish drive back to NJ. What happened to the best of the pandemic, when no one else was on the road? There was so much traffic today, and accidents, including a car that had flipped over the guardrail. And our roof bag kept sliding around alarmingly, straps flapping, so we had to stop twice to adjust it. It was hot. Sun was beating into the car. And we were already tired and irritable from having to pack up and close up after being in the house for three weeks--unwinding our very settled selves was not easy. It took us five and a half hours to get home. Before we left NH, Greta cut some Black-Eyed Susans into a little bouquet, secured them with a rubber band, and placed the bouquet by the gravestone of the dead mouse she found on one of our first days in NH. She also put a few of our painted stones on the grave. I fear this child's heart is too soft for this world. Oh--and we found the missing Lego Friend. She was in between the back seats of the car. Home at last in

Our last day in NH. Three weeks have flown by. This is the longest we've ever stayed--we'd done two weeks before, but never three. The wonders of the pandemic! No one has to be anywhere except where they want to be! As long as that place is in driving distance! We went to the pond in the late morning. I floated on the raft and the kids played maniacally with their various floats. They really treat the pond as a giant swimming pool, even swimming underwater with their goggles. You have to understand: the pond is untouched, untended, fully wild. It's not a charming, decorative pond with a nice cement bottom. No. It is mush: step in, and you'll sink up to your ankles. There are critters everywhere. Frogs, fish, tadpoles, salamanders, dragonflies, and the snapping turtle (somewhere). There are lily pads with long, slimy stalks. There is algae. There are large nests of other kinds of algae. There are cattails. Even after many summers of the kids enjoying the pond, I'm

I went grocery shopping this morning, the last time for a while, since we still don't want to do in-person shopping in NJ. The early part of the day was cool and rainy. I read, and the girls played with Legos and also played some games that we have up here, and we read Harry Potter and ate Rice Krispie treats. We took a walk to look for red efts. Not many today--just one, which Greta put into her Lego car for a minute. It warmed up in the afternoon, and the girls swam in the pond, most of the time hysterically laughing over elaborate, longstanding inside jokes that are impossible for anyone but them to understand. Andrew had to run a couple of errands later in the day, and he got takeout fried clams from a restaurant we like. Then we read more Harry Potter and then it was bedtime. The days fly by, and tomorrow is our last day here. Three weeks have gone by in a flash. It's nice to know, however, that depending on how things are with school, we can likely come up more at t

There were a lot of things the kids wanted to do today, and they began the day worried that we wouldn't be able to fit everything in, but we planned out the day and checked all the boxes. Here was how we spent our time today: 9:30-10: I walked Farrah 10-11am: breakfast 11-12:30: reading in hammocks 12:30-1: lunch 1-1:30: Rice Krispie treats and Harry Potter reading 1:30-2:30: Rummikub 2:30-4: kids played with Legos, I read 4:30-5: I walked Farrah and forced the kids to ride their bikes on the road 5-5:30: kids swam in the pond 5:50-6:15: dinner prep, tidying up, kids played with Legos 7-8: fire pit / burning sticks 8-9: showers, Harry Potter, bedtime (it's 9:42 and they're still awake upstairs) It wasn't hot today at all, just sunny and breezy. Our final days here are going too fast. What We're Reading: Margo: Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler Andrew: White Fragility Lucia: Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #2 Greta: The Bookwanderer

I went through this entire day thinking it was Tuesday. That aside, we had a nice day. The girls and I did our do-over trip to Books-A-Million after breakfast. I returned the Violent Cat Death books, and Greta chose three new ones. She's most excited about one called Rules of the Ruff, about a little girl who becomes a dog walker. (I read a bunch of reviews right there in the bookstore to make sure all the dogs don't get hit by a car, etc.) She also chose one called The Bookwanderers, and the first book in a series called City of Ember. Lucia chose the second book in the Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond series because there is NO WAY SHE COULD WAIT to get this one since she read the first one yesterday. It was a very mild day, not too hot, and we spent the day kind of lazily. Greta got right to reading, and Lucia and I played two games of Rummikub. Then we went to the pond for a little while, but it wasn't quite warm enough to swim, so we all ended up just reading by the

Fail, fail, fail parenting FAIL. This is why I don't randomly browse in bookstores. Here I thought the Warriors series that I bought for Greta would be about cats having adventures in their clans--but it's actually about WARRING clans and many cats in each book die gruesome deaths. Greta has read most of the way through the first book, and tonight at bedtime she was reading with her face a mask of horror because a cat she liked was killed in the battle. And another cat had already been killed. Too late, I read reviews online, and the gist of the many many reviews was "THIS IS AN AWESOME SERIES! BUT IF YOU'RE A SENSITIVE CAT LOVER, DON'T READ IT BECAUSE OF ALL THE VIOLENT CAT DEATHS!" So. Back to Books-A-Million we'll go tomorrow, to return the evidence of my parenting fail and select, as Greta said tonight, books about happy cats. What if my epic book-selection fail turns her against reading forever??? "Why do you hate reading so much, otherwise int

I'd promised the kids a trip to the bookstore today, so after breakfast we set out. The only bookstore available is a Books-A-Million, but the girls found plenty of great options. Greta selected the first three books of the original Warriors series, which truly is the perfect series for Greta--as far as I can tell, they're about a world populated only by cats. All the characters are cats. Lucia--who always has a hard time choosing books and was walking around with a stack of about ten--selected three books that are each the first in a different series. A dangerous option, I told her, since if she loves the first book she'll have to wait a little while to get the next, but she decided to go ahead anyway. We ate lunch when we got home and then headed to the creek. Greta was determined to catch a crayfish in her net, but they're too wily to be caught. We hiked just a little way down the creek and then tried again for the crayfish. We also saw a new creature, a crayfish w

Pancakes for breakfast, a hike in the woods, a tick on Andrew's ankle. There was some swimming/floating in the pond after the hot walk, and then Andrew went up to the house and brought a picnic down so we could eat lunch by the pond. The kids continued to swim after that. At some point in the afternoon, Lucia asked if we could eat Fudge Stripe cookies and read Harry Potter in our hammocks. OBVIOUSLY the answer to that insane request was a hard no. Ha ha just kidding. We did that immediately. Then we all read our own books in our hammocks while Andrew toiled away inside the hot, stuffy house, scraping a toxic layer of paint/drywall/skimcoat/lead/asbestos off the kitchen ceiling, because We All Have Our Own Ways of Relaxing. Later, there was another round of pond swimming. Tonight, we had a family reunion via Zoom, with four generations signing in from all over the U.S., including Hawaii. There were 31 relatives in attendance. I know it makes me sound like I'm a hundred years

Rain was forecasted all day today, so in the morning we set out to run some errands. We went to Walmart for a few things, and then Andrew ran into the grocery store to get some lobsters for dinner. While he shopped for food, the girls and I went into Michaels, and they each picked a rainy day craft, a Plush Craft animal. They've done these before and really like them. This was our first time in a Michaels since March, maybe February. It never did rain, but there were crazy strong winds. While the girls were upstairs working on their crafts, Andrew and I were sitting at the kitchen table and heard a loud crack and crash in the woods at the top of the field behind the barn. A tree--or trees--definitely fell. We'll investigate tomorrow. The kids went outside to play eventually, and I tethered Farrah outside too. Andrew and I continued sitting at the kitchen table, Assessing Our Life, and then another huge gust of wind came and I saw the beach canopy our cousins had left up sud

We were all a little tired from rafting today. L&G spent a large part of the morning in their pj's, playing in their room with their Legos. Andrew had to work, and I read in my hammock. After lunch, I read Harry Potter to the kids and then the three of us headed to the pond. The kids swam and played, and I floated in a raft. It was so hot today that I actually got INTO THE POND--I slid off the edge of my raft and completely submerged myself in the middle of the pond, where the water is deepest and there's fewer of the algae / lily pad tentacles. I didn't stay in for long. I do not like being in the pond. But I did appreciate how cooled off I felt after the dip. A few hours later, the kids were back to Legos, and I was back to reading. There was some unrest; they alternated between playing and reading and annoying each other by insisting on knowing what page the other was on. When Andrew finished working, we rallied everyone back to the pond, where Andrew swam and even