July 5: We are NOT talking about the weather.

Just so you know.

But I just finished reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, a mystery that I've been hearing about from every direction lately, and that I found, to my surprise, at our library right off the bat!

The main character, Flavia de Luce, is an 11 year old British girl living in 1950, and she sounds like a holy terror. . . but I ended up liking her nonetheless. The narration is a little abrupt and choppy, but it does help create a strong sense of this girl, her intelligence, and her view of the world. All in all, I liked it a great deal, and am disappointed to discover that even though this won an award for first novel in a detective series in 2007, the second book in the series isn't due out till 2010. Get writing, I sez!

Am pondering a bike ride. . . also had a terrific trip to Silveridge Farm in Bucksport to pick berries for a church fundraiser. We slid in between a torrential down pour on Thursday night and a spectacular rainstorm on Saturday afternoon. Oops. . . no weather talk, right? But the berries were lovely, and we got 36 quarts in little time. Look at us!



So: good stuff. And a good time at Swimgirl's house for the Fourth, too.

July 3: Making the Best of It!

Well. It is still mostly grey and mostly wet, with a few breaks of sun, like the ten minute one we got moments ago. I've been doing okay, although when we had a HUGE thunderstorm that lasted about an hour and a half last night, complete with torrential rains that postponed our fundraising trip to pick strawberries to sell at church and necessitated about 15 phone calls. . . . I was a tad pissed off about that. Incredibly enough, it didn't seem to make a difference.

As usual, we're at loose ends for the holiday tomorrow. With no family around, we're usually reluctant to call other people to ask them over, because often it turns out that those people have a family or neighborhood tradition, and we don't want to make them feel like they have to invite us. . .etc. etc. So far BH doesn't want to do any of the things the boys and I think are fun (going to Bar Harbor and walking around, going to see the fireworks, etc) and he doesn't have any great replacement ideas. . . so we'll just see what, besides strawberrying, unfolds! ETA: HA! New discovery: when mother tells son that he may not go to girlfriend's house because the Fourth is a family occasion, girlfriend's family invites family to their house! Win-win all around!

Today, though, I got onto my cooking horse and we're having a luxuriously toothsome dinner: pulled pork in the slow cooker and then coconut cupcakes for dessert. There are enough cupcakes that we should be able to take extras with us for a snack when we pick tomorrow, thus enabling us to try them with fresh strawberries, too! I also got stubborn and hung out two loads of laundry. After all, there IS a breeze, so. . . . we'll see.

I have also done two pattern repeats and separated for the arms on my Feb. Lady sweater (pattern adapted by Pamela Wynne, I will add since she had a long entry on her blog about how no one was giving her credit. Since I would have NO IDEA how to adapt such a pattern [and don't yet know if I can even follow the directions correctly], I give her all credit. ALL. ). The gull wing lace pattern makes sense, but I can't yet do it easily. A few more reps and I bet I'll have it, though!

Dinner was great and I am hankering for coconut cupcakes (ala Barefoot Contessa, a cookbook I love but don't use a lot, partly because it calls for tons of butter and eggs and stuff. Both cupcakes and icing called for 3/4 lb butter. EACH. On the upside, it made twenty four cupcakes, and I have icing enough for the carrot cake I'm bringing to Swimgirl's house tomorrow.) which I will light into at 7 pm (boundaries are good). We will also watch at least one of the Jeeves and Wooster cds that I got on big time sale from Daedalus Books for BH's belated Dad's Day gift. And I'll aim for another pattern repeat on the sweater. I'm on a roll (which is good, as I tore out the 4 hour scarf I started in a meeting this week. Needs bigger needles for more laciness, I think)!

AND the sun came out a bit. Just a bit, and exactly when I was elbows-deep in pulled pork defatting it and unable to go out. But we'll take it.

June 30: Good Stuff

BH and I just had a conversation about how we were coping with the extended greyness, and we reminded each other that overcast vacation is still more fun, and richer than, work days. . . . and I must say I have been fulfilling my pledge to make the most of my vacation time.

DID clean the house from top to toe, pores out, yesterday. . . .

DID go to Schoodic Fiber Arts Festival (tried to add a link, but with no apparent luck; go to http://www.schoodicarts.org/ to check it out) yesterday with Marie. . .

AND did finish Cursed Sock #2 while watching three episodes of "Rosemary and Thyme" with Younger last night!


That leaves about 1/2" straight sock and about 1" ribbing to do on the first sock, the one that I have frogged seven times and counting, and then, I informed BH, he is to put them on his feet and I am to hear no more about them. Ever.

I also got a different #7 round needle for the Feb. Lady yesterday, so once Sock 1 is done, I can get started on that.

Shazaam. Take that, overcast!

June 29, Monday: Still Grey

. . . and still determined not to whinge, as the Brits say. Sorted the drawers and laundry yesterday. Yay! Finished 39 Steps--like a comic book in prose, but a classic adventure novel--knitted on the Cursed socks, made bread, worked on the annual appeal. Today: cleaning house, going to Fiber Craft show. Yay! Might also decide on the needles I will use for the February Lady Sweater when I make attempt #2 on that. Waiting for the complete Jeeves and Wooster dvd set I ordered from Daedalus Books as BH's Dad's Day present--GREAT for this weather!



Old pic of this year's amaryllis, just for pretty. Inspiration, sunshine? Apparently, there is a trough of low pressure that has parked itself in the ocean and trapped all this moisture. We are set till at least next week. GULP. . . what movies do I want to see?????

June 28: Settling in and finding a balance

It's vacation, and I am home! Those are two wonderful bits of information that I'm just starting to encompass. Saturday I actually slept till 8:30 am--a first in a long, long time--and tomorrow I plan to clean the house in the first of my "I am the cleaning lady" sweeps for the summer. BOTH will be good signs that summer vacation is here and I'm settling in.

The week I was gone was, of course, my first week of vacation, and it featured lots of good stuff, including my twentieth reunion of the MAT group I graduated with, a five day stretch with my dearest friend and her family, and then a dinner, overnight, and trip to Boston with my sister and her family and a quick visit with my brother and his. It was wild to spend so much time with so many different people who are important to me--all in a week. I think I'm still absorbing it, but I know it made me very happy! Riding home on the Concord Coach from Boston gave me five hours to reflect and be silent. . . good recovery time from visiting central!

And I have mostly cleaned my study, and I have written most of my thank you notes, and I am poised for doing some more concrete stuff--like the aforementioned deep clean #1 tomorrow. I hope today to also get some unpacking/laundry putting away done (which should be coupled with winnowing out my drawers, which sorely need that), and then maybe work on draft #1 for the annual appeal letter for the library. The first paragraph will be the hardest, I know--but it's still hard to get that done.

The weather is certainly a boon to doing boring inside stuff: it has been grey, humid and damp for about two weeks. CT/MA has had more rain and longer greyness (they did not have the lovely week we did from June 15 - 18), so I am trying not to despair or complain, BUT. . . it's been a spell. I'm hoping to show my maturity by 1. continuing to work out and be active, especially by using my bike for most reasonable in-town commuting; 2. jumping on those inside jobs that I won't want to do when the sun finally shows up; 3. looking for FUN inside things to do that I'd want to do regardless, and 4. not whining. We'll see how it all unfolds. The hardest is not being able to hang out laundry, since winnowing and tidying both require considerable dirty laundry, whether changed sheets or used dust rags. BUT. That will come.

So: tomorrow I drop my car off to get the weird squeak looked at and the alignment dealt with.
Also, tomorrow Marie and I go to the Schoodic Fiber Arts show to look at knitting!
Today, I may make french bread and might try to write about teaching and why it's so hard. Also: annual appeal letter! DRAFT ONE!
Today, I might finish ONE of the Cursed socks. On sock #2, I finally figured out the heel, which led to undoing sock #1 TWO MORE TIMES, so it lives as having been frogged at least partially SEVEN TIMES. May that remain a record for me! Otherwise, it/they look like the end might be in sight. I hope.

I did finish the second book of the vacation: Barbara Pym's An Unsuitable Attachment. It blows my mind that she wrote it in the seventies: I still have a vivid 1930's feeling about her stuff. I liked that it ended happily, but it was a nonevent, pretty much, for me.

Book One was Maeve Binchy's Echoes, which was not good. Trite, stilted, boring. I speed read a bit of it, then left it at Julie's for her mom, to see what she thinks of it as we both (usually) like Binchy.

Book Three, I think, will be Thirty Nine Steps, which I gave Elder, who did not read it, lost it, and now has found it. We'll see how I like it!

A nap is calling me, but I think I need to put on some good music and head for our bedroom for some serious winnowing out. THEN, paragraph one of the appeal letter. Anyone out there want to just make a contribution of some hefty spare cash to the Ellsworth Public Library and save me this agony? Half a million? Please?

June 16: Nice Moment

Things are still pretty crazy around here. Note to self: in the future, try to not leave for a week 2 hours after school lets out. Just. . . don't.

BUT today Younger and I walked over to the high school for his arts awards, but found that they are actually tomorrow. Ah well. It was a lovely golden evening and we had a nice walk. En route home, I treated us both to single scoop cones at Baskin-Robbins, and we were in line behind an attractive young couple. They were laughing and hugging and he was teasing her about being nice to him or else he'd make her walk to Bangor, and she said, "I'm sure this nice family would give me a ride!" We laughed and told her she was out of luck because we didn't even have our car with us. Clearly, though, they both wanted to talk about what a great day they'd had: she's lived in Bangor all her life but had never been to Bar Harbor, so he had promised her a trip for her birthday. He's in the Maine National Guard and had been "in the field" for a month, so they'd had to schedule this way in advance, and the fact that this was a gorgeous day was sheer luck. They told us about the stores they liked (she was very excited about the nail polish she'd bought that changes color in the sun!) and had clearly just had a terrific day and wanted to talk about it. It was nice to get to share in their joy--to be able to play along with it, and cheer for them. The whole situation just made me smile.

And the pralines'n'cream was delicious, too!

June 11: Well, maybe some stress. . .

Ahhh. It's Thursday afternoon, and I love those, but I am still looking back on and forward to too little time doing stuff I like and want to do, and too much doing stuff I gotta do but don't wanna. So.

Fantasy stuff I could do:
--knit. Like all day, and maybe with friends. Get needles I like on my Feb. lady sweater, get the heel done on A's sock #2, maybe start the market bag I want to try.
--watch "Smoke Signals", the netflix I've had for weeks now. I've seen it before, but where has the time gone?
--garden. Period, amen. The list of what I could do is HUGE.
--read. I have three books I want to read NOW.
--sleep. Like from 10 pm to 8 am about five days in a row, and maybe take naps to boot.
--go out to lunch.
--clean the house. I mean, really dig in and clean the house deeply in an "all day sweaty huge piles of stuff to dispose of loud music deep down BONES clean the house" way. It's been so long that I am really wishing I could do this. Honest.

Reality stuff I have to do:
--go to Younger's medieval fair tonight.
--correct three piles of stuff that's come in over time and that I need to do.
--summarize grading for about 8 Solutions Fair projects that are complete.
--come up with a prompt, an exam topic, a prep-in-advance essay topic, and a poetry exam question.
--go to graduation.
--line up cards, etc, for Elder's friends who are graduating and for various students I have graduating who get cards.
--help kids tie up loose ends; recognize end of year!

Yikes! So. In about a week, I will be done with most of it. Till then. . . here I go.