I'm still having the problems I had this summer, too much that I want to do, and just enough time to make it possible, but not enough to make it reasonable or, it's starting to feel, healthy.  But it's leveled off, so I'm hopeful.  I don't have any current plans to leave town until Thanksgiving. 

Weekend before last, I met my mom at a park-and-ride and we went to Providence, RI to participate in a breast cancer awareness walk with Janine her friends and family to mark the 10th anniversary of Janet's death.  It had been a long time since I'd seen most of Janine's family and I had a good time, despite it being an emotional day. I also liked walking around Providence. Downtown was nearly unrecognizable, but the Brown campus was essentially the same, despite a few new buildings. 

Last Sunday, I met with another volunteer to reorganize the stockroom of the co-op.  It needed a lot of help.  We didn't accomplish everything I hoped to, but we did sort all the stock by type, add a few new shelves to get all the boxes and bags off the floor, and label all the shelves so you can FIND the things you need.  I guess the store had such a quick opening, there was never time to get a system going.  Our system isn't ideal.  We ran out of time, and ideally there would be more space so that new stock could more easily be integrated. But it was a start.  The co-op had it's first annual meeting last night, and it was enjoyable and somewhat inspring.  One of the founding members of the HUGE co-op in Albany spoke, and several of the board members, and it was all warm and cozy and community focused.

The current home project that tormenting me is repairing and painting the storm windows.  I NEED to get it done because it's cold.  No snow yet, but it's been threatened.  Yikes.  Still also need to compost my blueberry beds and garden and built snow protection A-frames for the blueberries. 

On the Ian front, in his folder I found a note a friend had passed him. I asked him about it and he said the teacher had taken it away, but then given it back.  "rede page 372 IN THE BIG BOOK." it read.  His friend wanted him to read about alligators.  Such trouble-makers.

so I don't turn into one of those bitchy soccer moms.

Ian's been on the same soccer team for 2 years or, since they play spring and fall, 4 seasons.  The coach is a really nice guy and he's really encouraging to the kids.  He could probably work with them more on them being more aggressive. Ours is probably the worst team in the league.  But really, I'm OK with that.  They have fun, and don't seem to mind losing, and are probably learning something about soccer along the way.

For the past two seasons, another mom has been acting as assistant coach, and she is a bitch on wheels.  I always liked her when we just team parents together, but she has NO patience with the kids.  She makes them sit out if they're not listening well enough, or if they horse around.  They're 7.  It's what they do.  Today someone gave Ian goalie gloves and he was excited about them.. I'm sure I missed something, but I saw him ask her if he could be goalie second quarter and she said, "Ian, please! Sit down!" He sat out that quarter.  It may have been his turn to sit out anyway, (there're extra kids) but it sounded like punishment. I know he can be a pain in the ass, and I lose patience with him all the time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't piss me off when she does it.

Not only is she a bitch, but she's a bad coach.  During practices she sets up these complicated drills that mostly involve the kids waiting for their turn.  And she spent half a practice having them work on their throw-ins.  This for the team that didn't win one of their games all season long. Not that they shouldn't know how to throw, but is it really the crucial skill their missing that stands between them and success?  It seems like working on not kicking the ball out of bounds might be more useful. Or passing.  Or just about anything else.

I talked to the coach's wife and the good news is the coach isn't asking her to assist again next year.  He's going to try to go it alone. I hope she doesn't volunteer, because he's such a nice guy that I can't see him turning her down.  I probably shouldn't bitch so much, about a job I sure don't want to do.  I don't know much about soccer, but I did tell the coach's wife that I could help out at practices.  It's not often I'd say this, but better me than her.

Happy Anniversary to us.  Last Saturday was our 10th anniversary.  I had grand plans, most of which didn't pan out for various reasons.  One ideas was going to the Woodstock Film Festival, but most films were sold out by the time we started looking into it.  Next year, we'll plan ahead. (Yeah, right.) We ended up going out in Albany for some Thai food and then saw TWO movies, making it our own personal film festival

Larry wasn't working on Sunday and we hiked to Stewart and Indian Lakes.  It was a great little hike and would be nice to snowshoe in the winter.  We found a beautifull little waterfall off the trail that wasn't mentioned in the field guide.  What were they thinking?

The weekend before was my parent's annual party.  Last year, Ian and his friend needed to be coaxed up Bull Hill all the way.  This year they flew up.  In fact, they got way ahead and blew past the top of the mountain and we had to run to catch up to them and stop them. 

On Sunday I finally finished the wood shed roof.  Major project, and unfortunately it's not really done, but I don't think I 'm going to finish this season. Many of the facer boards along the eaves are shot, but I just can't cope with it right now, and I feel like with a solid roof, the whole thing is stabilized.  I didn't buy new shingles, instead using those I found in our garage.  So now the roof is green, with a gray stripe. Other than that it looks like a pretty professional job, at least if you don't look too closely.  If you look out one of our attic windows you can see it, and it's possible the neighbor behind us can see it from their upstairs windows. Oh well. A striped roof is the least offense view of the shed those neighbors are getting.  They get the worst of the rotted boards, and paint is peeling off in sheets back there, but I think they're just going to have to wait for spring. 

I know that we should have 2 full months before snow hits, but I really feel like winter is bearing down on us.  So finishing the shed is going to have to take a backseat to fixing the storm windows, and getting the yard winter ready for snow.  Snow!  It's on my mind already. 

After I finished the roof on Sunday afternoon, I made the rare decision for me that I was NOT going to tackle another project, and instead just have fun.  I called a friend and we took our kids to the playground and then came back and made homemade pizza and apple crisp.  Mmm. 

Larry and Ian and I went apple picking on Saturday, something I don't think I've done with Larry before.  He so organized.  Instead of just randomly grabbing apples from trees, he brought out a knife and cut one up and we'd try it first.  Then we only picked the varieties we liked.  Isn't that smart?  So now we have a half bushel of apples we like, instead of apples we're wondering what to do with.

I found a picture taken at Ian's kindergarten screening fallen down behind a shelf in my room.  He was so little!  Then Larry called trying to remember where there was a cartoon character named Tallulah.  We finally figured out that it was from the Maisy books and videos, long ago favorites of Ian's that I haven't thought about in a long time.  I think what gets me is that he keeps growing up, and always seems so mature compared to where we've been.  But then looking back, I realize how young he was.  At his kindergarten screening, he got unexpectedly nervous.  I was surprised, because he usually greets new people and situations with excitement.  The teachers whisked him away for the testing.  When we got him back I asked him what they did.  He said, "We had to do colors, shapes, letters.  Everything!"  He was fine with it all.  But looking at the picture, he looks like a baby.  I'll probably feel the same way when I look back on pictures of him now. 

In the past week I fixed a screen door, gathered extensively accumulated bags, boxes and bottles for recycling, put up a shelf in my closet (for Ian to crawl across, not for me to keep stuff on.  It extends his secret hideout.), organized a chunk of our books and magazines (in the process finding a boxful of books that we had in duplicate, and in at least one case, triplicate.  Larry and my dad are a dangerous combo when it comes to books.), hung some pictures and decorations that were taken down when we painted the hallway last WINTER, did some touch up painting in said hallway, hung a knick knack shelf, took down the god-awful valances in living room, built and installed shelves for all the crap that goes with a TV, hauled a bunch of stuff to the attic, and started a partial tear-down of the the wood shed roof that needs replacing.  And helped Larry set up the fish tank.  And worked 40 hours. See what I can do if I stay home for a couple weekends in a row?  I have to say, the place is shaping up, though it's not there yet.

I wish that completed the project list, but it really doesn't.  Not even close.  It seems like each project breeds a new one.  Taking down the valances?  Now I need to figure out what to do their place.  Hauling stuff to the attic?  Now I need to organize the attic.  The craziest project idea that's taken root is the dewey decimals system for the books.  I hate not having them organized.  The fiction was easy, alphabetical by author.  We even categorize by genre.  But then we get into murkier areas.  Where do memoirs go?  With biographies?  And what about a field guide to ferns?  You'd think with the other field guides, but maybe it should be with the gardening books on ferns.  See?  I need a clear-cut system.  And if they're not organized, we end up with books in triplicate that we don't know about, and dictionaries on three different shelves in the same room.  It's not right!

The wood shed roof is the biggest necessary project looming.  If it were just the roof itself it wouldn't be so bad, but once I got up there I saw that some of  the rafters are rotted too.  And some facer boards.  Ugh.  It's gonna be a lot of work.  The beauty of all the other stuff was that most of it didn't take very long, but I could feel like I accomplished something.  Even the biggest project only took a few hours. 

School and sports and lessons start next week, and I'll again be too busy to tackle much.  I'm trying to take advantage of this small window of opportunity.

We went to Jones Beach yesterday and had a great day.  Everything worked out just wonderfully.  Perfect beach weather, sunny and 84°, calm water.  Ahhh.

My parents, Ian and I left Cold Spring at 6:30 am to avoid traffic, a strategy that worked well.  Larry decided at the last minute not to come, because it's so exhausting to be at work on Sunday morning after making the trip down to my parents on Friday night.  But it was so much fun we'll have to find a way to make it work so we can all go together.  My Aunt Karen and her boyfriend Doug, who live on Long Island, met us at the beach. 

Ian hasn't been to the ocean as a swimmer, and we couldn't have picked a better day to introduce him to ocean swimming.  There were waves enough for him to learn the various strategies for dealing/playing with them, but nothing that was really going to tumble him, or drag him out to sea.  Later in the day, when the tide came in it got slightly rougher, but still very managable. 

It's been years time since I've been to the beach, and I forgot how much I love it.  I'm now plotting how I could possibly go back again this year.  

is flying by.  We finally had a few consecutive nice days.  Just in time for the leaves to start turning.  Really.  Not all over, but here and there I've spied a few orange leaves.

My garden faced a series of disasters and fell apart.  First, when we got back from Maine I noticed that one bed looked a little trampled.  The pea vines looked as if they been gnawed. It turns out that a groundhog is the culprit.  I think we may have one living under the back porch.  It also attacked my broccoli, which I had harvested once but left in the ground since they stalks seemed to still be producing florets. Next, we got hit with a blight that attacks nightshades.  My potatoes died back completely.  The potatoes themselves were fine, though small.  I harvested them and had them as part of a big meal with a friend.  I fear the tomatoes won't do so well.  Their leaves are turning black and curling up, although the plants aren't entirely dead yet. I hope the tomatoes will have a chance to ripen, but I fear they won't. The squash, unsurprisingly, is doing just fine.  You can't kill that stuff.

We're going down to Cold Spring and then to Jones Beach this weekend.  I'm looking forward to it.  But.  This will be my fifth out of town weekend in a row.  I'm also looking forward to next weekend, when I'll stay home.  I think.  I did really want to go camping again this summer.  See?  This is why I get in trouble.

Ian got whacked in the eye with a plastic sword. Scary stuff.  I brought him to an eye doctor, who said that the eyeball did get a direct hit, but didn't do much damage.  At the follow-up two days later he said it was completely resolved.  It's still pretty blood shot.

I've been busy.  Summer is flying by, and I've been having a lot of fun.  And the action continues for at least the next 3 weekends. I'm starting to get nervous, though, that I'll run out of time to do some activities I really want to do, like camping with a friend and taking Ian to Jones Beach.  There's also projects that need doing at home, not to mention the day-to-day stuff that I'm getting miserably behind on.  Summers are so short. 

I've been busy enough that I'm only occasionally noticing how unsummerlike the weather's been. Not fair. I really don't mind the long, hard winters, but I want a little summer to balance things out. 

We got an early start on Wednesday morning, after some panicky arrangement-making on Tuesday afternoon, and staying up WAY too late packing and preparing.  Even so, we were on the road by 6:30.  We had decided to take a longer but more scenic route.  First on the agenda was a Lake Champlain ferry crossing into Vermont.  I decided on the central crossing because and extra 15 minutes travel allowed us an hour on the boat, instead of 20 minutes, and meant we would go through Burlington.  (Looks nice, Alison!)  

Next up was Mt. Washington, where we went on the famous Auto Road (a little redundant, these days) and were given one of those "This car climbed Mt. Washington" bumper stickers I used to see all the time.  The views were amazing, until we got near the top where we were engulfed in clouds and couldn't see anything.  The wind was as fierce as advertised, about 55 mph while we where up there.

After Mt. Washington, we plowed on through the rest of NH and across Maine to get to Acadia just before dark.  Fortunately the campground wasn't full and was still open, and even had free firewood.  We set up camp, made a fire and played for a little while before bed.

Thursday was another early morning.  We had reservations on a whale watching boat in Bar Harbor at 7:45.  The trip was great.  We first went by an island that's a nesting site for puffins.  There were also lots of terns and other sea birds that I don't remember, on top of the hundreds of puffins.  As we headed out to sea, we saw a seal, porpoises, and finally whales.  What was especially exciting was that I spotted a whale just before the naturalist announced it.  We saw a bunch of finbacks, 3 or 4 humpbacks, and a couple mink whales.  There was also a hump back breaching in the distance, but all I could make out was the splash.  After the whale watching trip we went to a whale museum across the street. 

I was feeling tired.  REALLY tired.  I figured I'd been busy and hadn't slept as much as usual in for the past few night, but I was still surprised at how tired I was.  In the car, Larry looked over at me and said, "You look drugged."  And I said, "Ohhhhh!  Maybe I am."  I'd taken some dramamine for the boat trip, and even though it was the non-drowsy formula, it hit me hard.  I ended up sleeping the rest of the afternoon.  We went on the loop road through Acadia, and Larry took Ian swimming in the 55° water at Sand Beach, and I slept all the while.  Sadly, as it turned out, this meant I missed the last clear day of our trip.  I finally woke up toward late afternoon.  We had another fire at the campsite.  We'd been hearing thunder for a while, so we had everything ready to make a dash for the tent when it finally started raining.  We ready Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery until we fell asleep. 

Friday was a very foggy day.  We hung around the campsite for a while in the morning drying some our gear.  A corner of our ground tarp hadn't been folder under and we'd collected some water under the tent, but it wasn't too bad. We took a ride up Cadillac Mountain, which I enjoyed despite not being able to see anything.  Then we went back to Sand Beach to watch Ian swim some more.  I walked the trail (and occasionally off, where there were appealing rocks to scramble over) to the next attraction down the road, Thunder Hole, which I guess is only really impressive at high tide.  The park runs several bus routes, and Ian really wanted to ride a bus, and also wanted to go swimming at Echo Lake.  He and I caught a bus into Bar Harbor, where we had the perfect amount of time to get an ice cream cone before the bus to Echo Lake left.  It took a while but we made it there.  Larry met us there.  He had taken a drive through another area of the park, stopped at a hardware store for more tent stakes and scoped out places for dinner in Southwest Harbor and got to Echo Lake at about the same time we did.  We had  great meal out that night and again our nightly fire and ghost stories.

Saturday morning was very rainy.  The good news was that we'd sorted all the tent problems out and stayed perfectly dry.  There are a two small  museums in the park and it seemed like a good time to visit them.  After that we headed into Bar Harbor (again) to walk across the bar for which it's named at low tide.  We saw lots of barnacles, and some mussels and a couple tiny shrimp.  Ian, however was wet and miserable, so we ended up turning back before we'd made it all the way across.  After changing clothes and eating lunch we headed back to Echo Lake, where Ian talked us into changing into our bathing suits and standing shivering thigh-high in the water while he swam.  I gave up after not too long and went and got my clothes on again.  The water in Echo Lake is warmer than the ocean, but it was still probably in the 60s.  Too cold. 

Around the corner from the swimming area of the lake, we saw a beaver.  After I saw it, I found it sort of remarkable that I don't see them more often.  We see beaver dams all the time around here, but never beaver themselves. 

Except for my short walk to Thunder Hole, we hadn't done any hiking, and I wanted to.  I picked out a hike that seemed ideal.  It was short, flat and near our campground.  It turned out to be perfect.  It followed a narrow harbor out to the ocean.  It was gorgeous.  We poked around for a while on the rocky shoreline  of the harbor, then scrambled over the jumble or rocks and granite outcroppings down the the ocean.  It was just gorgeous, a perfect final activity for the trip.

Sunday was a travel day.  Larry wanted to follow Route 1 down the coast, but this turned out to be somewhat disappointing, at least in my going-home state of mind.  There were a couple cute little towns, but mostly just perfectly acceptable but not terribly interesting countryside.  He'd been that way before, but I think he may have been thinking of towns and views further south, after I'd gotten frustrated with traffic and low speed limits and gotten on the interstate.