And the boss of the year award goes to...

So, picture this. I'm on the couch, head slumped down on my chest, hair hanging across my face, while The New World is blaring in front of me. The movie is two hours and fifteen minutes long and I manage to sleep through about two-thirds of it. I wake for the last few minutes. Doug, seeing that I am conscious, comes over to the couch and tries to settle in for a late night of watching the latest episode of Ghost Hunters International. In my just-awakened state, which often finds me in a wretched mood, I want no part of it and go upstairs to put myself properly to bed. As Sasha is hovering over the water faucet trying to drink and I am putting the toothpaste onto my toothbrush, it hits me - I'm supposed to have gotten a cake for one of my staff's birthday tomorrow! I stand there in the mirror staring at myself with toothbrush halfway to my mouth. What do I do? It's 10:55pm. Said staff-person wants yellow cake with chocolate frosting; she told me this last week so I have no excuse not to have remembered to get her this cake. I am on the train at 6:45 each morning, so there's no time in the morning to go to the store (stores don't open around here until 7). I have no choice but to make her a cake from scratch! I run downstairs to find a recipe, and all recipes I find call for ingredients that I don't have. Milk, butter, cake flour... how come I don't have these things on hand? Gah!

After Doug determines that all grocery stores near us are closed, most of which closed at 11pm but some earlier (earlier?), I determine that I have no choice but to get in my car and drive around, trying to find a late-night 7-Eleven or something like that. The local Tedeschi is closed. I know of no other convenience store in the immediate area. Do I have to drive to Boston? On my way to the highway, I pass a CVS. Lights still on. I pull into the parking lot and see a person entering the building. Score! CVS must have cake mix and frosting, right? Forget this cake from scratch. Tonight calls for a box cake.

Yes, CVS does have cake mix, and even frosting. Yes, this CVS had yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting. I don't need milk or cake flour or butter for this. I make my purchase. Cake is now in the oven. Once the cake is baked and cooled I can sleep for a few hours before getting up extra early to frost it. And then the attempt to bring it to work with me (on the train) without any mishap. If this all works out, I hope she is happy, my staff-person. I hope she appreciates the cake. And I hope to god she really said that it's yellow cake with chocolate frosting that she wanted.

The positive in this situation is that I now have time to catch up on my blogging. So let's post photos of our annual trip to the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival. Every year for the past five years we have gone to this show, and every year we have come home with some kind of art. This year we came home with two things.



Doug's choice was the yellow painting on the top, which is of the Maine coast, which compliments the pink painting on the bottom of a street scene in Providence. Both are by the same artist, from Rhode Island, who has such great use of colors like yellow and pink that other artists, at least other artists that we see at the Mystic Art Show, do not use enough of (or well enough). My choice was a little more conventional:



But still a local scene. The artist is from Orleans, MA, and much of his inspiration comes from Cape Cod. This is a scene of a marsh in Provincetown. Again, the yellow struck me, as did the tactile nature of the paint. The artist uses some kind of knife technique to apply the paint, meaning that most of it comes out in big globs. I like that. I like art that you can touch.

When we are at the art show, which seems to consist of most of the same artists year after year, we always try to balance cost with appeal. Do we like a piece enough to pay that much for it? Much of what we see is very expensive, and it's not like I can really judge how much a piece of artwork should cost. I'm no artist, but I know that the labor going into some of these pieces is intense - and so much of it! Could an oil painting (oils always being more expensive than acrylics or watercolors or photographs it seems) really be worth $3500? Maybe. But those are the paintings we have to leave behind. We set a budget and don't go over that. We've amassed a nice collection of art in this house. People tend to outgrow houses because they have children. For us, we may outgrow this house because of our art.

There could be worse things, though. Worse things like brain-eating amoeba killing you after a nice swim in some nice warm water. I'm always telling Doug that if the water were warmer at the beach I'd go in and swim. But now maybe not. Can you believe that there is such a thing as brain-eating amoeba? Of course, there's flesh-eating bacteria, for real, so why not brain-eating amoeba. It's when I read things like this that I am convinced that the only way that I am going to survive this life, getting through all the anxiety of living - the risks and the dangers - is by some kind of Valium patch that delivers and maintains a constant dose of drug into my bloodstream. Some days I just can't handle all the uncertainties.

My cakes are done. Now for them to cool. This week has seemed endless. I'm definitely ready for this one to end.

Catching up.

The problem with writing a blog post once every week or more is that the posts I do write seem to be marathon posts. I will try not to make this a marathon post, being mindful that my faithful readers have other, much more interesting things to do with their lives.

In reverse chronological order:

Cat Update:

The cats were at Grandma's house while Doug and I were in Maine. Two cats love it there; one does not. I'll give you one guess for the cat who doesn't love it there. That's right - Sasha! The one who at the moment doesn't love anything but catnip and sucking on Doug's armpit. We retrieved Meg from East Hartford this weekend, completing the feline triumvirate in Dedham, and Sasha, who for a week was getting used to being the only cat in the bedroom at night, now had to deal with her sister again. This threw her into all kinds of disarray. Doug threw her out of the bedroom on Saturday night because she was being nasty to even him, and locked her in the office. In the morning when I went to let her out I discovered that she doesn't like being in jail and told me by letting me discover the wonderful gifts she left me overnight. Yes, she decided to use the office as her litter box. And someone else decided to use the bathroom rug as his/her litter box, too. So Sunday morning was all kinds of wonderful with me threatening Doug to drive one of the cats - I didn't care which one - to the shelter because if there is one thing - the one thing! - that I will not tolerate it is pee and poop outside the litter box. I then fled the disaster zone to go to the gym to blow off steam, only to see this as I was backing out of the driveway:


No one went to the shelter, and Sasha seemed to be making progress by the end of the day (maybe that's because her attempt to run away from her miserable existence, which got her stuck on the roof and caused Doug to do his fireman impression and rescue her via ladder, was a complete failure and left her knowing once and for all that she is the kind of cat who requires food and shelter and clean cotton t-shirts to suck on). We are giving them two weeks. If there are no more accidents outside the box and if I hear less screeching coming from the smallest one, then they can all stay with us.

Maine Update:

There's no update, really, about Maine, other than we miss Maine and those we know who live in that state. It seems like forever ago that we were there, gazing at the Belfast shore



kayaking while the sun was setting over the lake



watching this cutie-pie explore new foods and fall in love with questionable tag-sale cast-aways



and challenging our taste buds with foods like these from the Maine Lobster Festival.



More Moody's trips with Ruby and her two gay dads!



More hiking in the Camden Hills!



And more biking in Acadia.




Please? Don't know if we can wait for another year to pass before we feel that kind of contentment again. Anyone up for a week at the lake for some ice-fishing?

The next step.

We're back from our annual trip to Maine. If you want a review of our fabulous trip, please see the wonderfully concise post from Summer Sweater, or the introspective post from Cotton. I'll blog about the trip soon, but I have other things on my mind (doesn't take long for my mind to start to work (or overwork) again, let me tell you).

Other Thing on My Mind #1: The house.

The house is now painted! Yay! Remember when I asked you to vote for your preferred color? Well, I received no votes, which is just as well, since Doug and I picked out our preferred color and would have gone with that one regardless. We went with the light greenish/gray color, called Roycroft Mist Gray, with Roycroft Bottle Green for the accents and Creamy for the trim.



Doug and I really like it and can't wait to get a new, dark green awning to really show off the green accent color. I also can't wait to plant flowers in my window boxes, which thankfully I did not have to paint myself.



Coming back to our newly painted house was very satisfying. We pulled up to the little place and I was glad to be there. I was reflecting on all of the work that we have put into the place - the painting on the inside, the landscaping, and now the repainting on the outside. While in Maine, Doug and I were dreaming of living there, in some kind of old farmhouse not too far from the rocky coast. But when I came home to our little house with its fresh coat of paint, those dreams fade a little. (A little.)

Other Things on My Mind #2: Career Change.

This next topic will thrill my mother, who I fear is convinced that I am wandering aimlessly and unhappily through life (which is not true, really not true at all). Vacation always gets me to thinking about how I am living my life when I am not on vacation (if you have read Cotton's post mentioned above, you'll get a glimpse of why), and now that I'm back from it and we are basically back to our old routine (though not fully, since we are down one cat (still at Grandma's Meg is) and I'm still allowing myself to eat as many sweets as I want) I'm dreaming of ways to prolong those vacation feelings. Those feelings of freedom, of light-heartedness, of possibility and excitement. I do believe that finding the right career path is key to having that kind of satisfying vacation-feeling even when I'm not on vacation.

Let's just face it - I'm not a librarian at heart. I love books. Love, love, love books. Love their covers, their smell, their contents. There's not much about them that I do not like, and even confess to loving electronic books and their electronic devices. But that doesn't mean that I love librarianship, or am meant to be a librarian. The minute details of librarianship I find trying. What difference does it make if I stamp the due-date in the back of the book before I de-sensitize it? Why does everyone have to do these tasks in a particular order, and why do we have to have meetings to discuss what the best order is? To quote myself when I was talking to Doug today, I'm just not jazzed about librarianship. I know some very good, very passionate librarians and I am so glad, so glad, that they exist. But I don't consider myself one of them and I may very well never be. I thought things would be different when I left corporate librarianship for academic librarianship, and believe me, they are, but I still haven't found my "thing."

For me, more than moving to a new location or finding a new hobby, I need to start down that journey of changing my career. I need to start doing that thing that I can feel better about, or at least more interested in, each morning when I wake up. I've narrowed it down to a few options, and now I just have to take that plunge. I feel a lot of pressure to make the right choice. I feel that the time is now, and that the spotlight is on this decision. I feel like I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself, but I also am encouraged by the possibilities and the bright light of the future. These are good things, and I thank vacation for this.

I also thank vacation for another week of my life spend with three of my favorite people. Ruby is such a little delight, and her parents are just about the best people to go on vacation with. Ever. Doug and I are always so relaxed and comfortable on our trips to Liberty. We thank you, C, C, and R, for your hands in that!