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!

You be the judge.

Doug and I are having the house painted in a couple of weeks. We are going to change the color of the house. Today we put on the house the two color choices that we narrowed all of our seemingly infinite color choices down to. Which one do you vote for?


We have a favorite, and it may not be the one that you think it is. You'll have to wait until the house is painted that color to know which one it is, though - I'm not giving up our secret just yet.

When I was uploading the photos of the color choices to the computer, I discovered that I hadn't uploaded the photos of our most recent beach trip. Last Saturday we were at Ogunquit and had a wonderful day there. We wish we had gotten to see Summer Sweater and her family, but maybe next time. This trip we just lay on the beach reading, Doug splashed about in the water a lot (and with my phone, which meant that I had to get a new phone because salt water and electronics do not mix), and then we took a long walk once the tide went out. Ogunquit at low tide late in the afternoon is a wonderful place to be. Most of the day-trippers and families with millions of little kids are gone and only those people who want to enjoy the tranquility of the beach are left. You get to see great scenes like this at that time of day:


Of course, if you look closely you can see that the guy flying the kites is doing so in what looks like his underwear. He was with two other guys, both also in what looked like their underwear, and our neighbors on the blanket next to us were calling them "The Underwear Guys." I wonder if this guy below was given a cool nickname by fellow beachgoers:


Me, I just call him "Hotstuff." Not very original, I realize, but totally accurate. It's the sandals that do it for me, and also the amazingly, almost alabaster-white skin. I don't know how he does it, but I feel lucky to know that it's all mine.

Weekly update.

So here's the weekly update (warning - I don't have any new photos).

We took Sherman to the emergency vet last Sunday morning. I won't go into the details of why, but let's just say that I noticed something about him that was abnormal and concerning. So, we pack him up and drive him to Walpole to the Tufts emergency vet clinic. It's odd being there just about a year after we brought Wyatt there, but hey. That's the way the cookie crumbles. So the vet sees Sherman and determines that while he doesn't seem to have an emergency per se, he does seem to have some medical problems, none of them stemming from his neck surgery. (By the way, there was a vet on duty there that day, Dr. Paul, who performed Sherman's neck surgery the day the Animal Rescue League brought him in and she was absolutely over the moon to see Sherman doing so well. She showed me photos of his wound pre-, during-, and post-surgery. I'm telling you, it's a miracle this cat is alive. Dr. Paul feels he was burned by the tailpipe of a car, and was convinced that he either wouldn't survive the surgery or that he would be deformed post-surgery. No to both. So Sherman is one lucky cat.) Anyway, we are currently trying to treat his itchy ears and the issue for which we brought him to the vet, and if these treatments do not work then we need to take Sherman to a dermatologist for his ears and an internist for his other issue.

So. That's the deal with Sherman. We have been giving him his ear drops still and also his new oral medicine, and he hates both, and I end up wearing more of both medicines than actually get into his ears or mouth because he thrashes about when we are administering them, but we're still trying. And we're still trying to get Sasha and Meg to coexist with Sherman. I feel that Meg is now used to him. She walks around him and stays in the same room as him, and she'll give the most inoccuous growls in his direction only when he is within maybe 5 feet of her. So I consider her integrated. Sasha... well, she's still another story, but who knows. Some days she can be within five feet of him and not pull a Linda Blair-Exorcist move. Other times she can't. Overall there's progress, but still. My nerves are pretty much shot from this whole thing and I cannot wait (let me reiterate - I CANNOT WAIT!) for our week's vacation away from the house, away from the commute, from work, and, most importantly these days, away from the cats.

On Thursday night I went to see The Names of Love, which was playing as part of the Boston French Film Festival. (What a fun film, by the way. It took on some pretty weighty issues, like the deportation of Jews in France in WWII and the French hostilities and open prejudices against Muslims and North Africans, but really didn't have a dark tone at all. If you want to see Sara Forestrier in all her glory, too, please see this movie.) I got to hang out with a very fun friend who I really do not see often enough, and all I did was blab the whole time about the cats, late-quarter life crises, and a lot of other boring stuff. Next time we hang out it's her turn to vent. But I also got myself a ticket to the MFA, which I plan to use to see the new American wing of the museum either today or one night this week. Can't think of a better place to go to beat the heat.

And, on a final note, we're in the middle of a heat wave. Apparently there's a heat dome over the entire United States (and probably the world, and we'll be enclosed in this dome for eternity, until we shrivel like raisins or run out of water and die. At least that's the sense I'm getting from all the news reports, which really put me in a great mood and make me look oh-so-forward to the future.) and yesterday the temperatures in Boston cracked 100 degrees. I do not believe I ever remember the temperatures - in the shade, no less - ever cracking 100 around here. So yes, it was mighty hot. Still is. We put the air conditioner in the window last night and actually turned it on. I will honestly say that I am not complaining. I would much rather take a few days of this kind of heat than take months of this:



At least I can walk outside without turning into an icicle. And if I sweat and smell, so be it. I can always go inside somewhere to cool off, but in the winter I feel like I can never get warm enough. But I won't have to think about that for at least another four months, so for now I'm just going to focus on enjoying the summer. Here's to 100 degrees!

Still truckin'.

I'm sitting here in long pants, a long sleeve shirt, and a sweatshirt. I am slightly warm, but you'd think I'd be unbearably warm. It's the middle of July! I should be thankful for the one or two cool days that we get in-between the sweltering, humid days of deep summer, but still. This throws a wrench in my plans to spend my Friday night hot and sweaty as I watch a movie on the couch with a fan turned up to high speed blowing directly on me (and keeping the cats away).

Speaking of cats, the cat integration is going. Inch by inch, row by row, we're gonna make these cats get along. But my god this particular integration is slow going. Maybe I am misremembering the previous integrations, but this one feels particularly painful. Sasha is relentless in her hissing and screaming. Meg is relentless in her hiding. Sherman is relentless in eating us out of house and home, scratching at his cone, rubbing his face all over our feet and shoes, and leaving us the largest, most malodorous deposits in his litter box that we have ever experienced. Other than these things, the integration is going well :) Of course, things are better than they were, but we are still faithfully sticking to our "No cats in the bedroom" policy each night so that we can actually sleep in peace. It's no fun to be woken up at 3am to the sounds of the devil coming from deep in Sasha's being.

I don't have any more photos of Sherman, either. He's very difficult to photograph, this cat. He will not sit still. Plus, it's hard to get a good photo of him with his lampshade. We'll have more photos of him at some point, but I'm thinking it won't be until we can take off his lampshade and he stops being itchy and fidgety. Which reminds me... he needs his drops. We are trying ear drops and prednisone to alleviate (and confirm) his allergies. His itching has lessened, but he's still uncomfortable. I hope we can find a solution that works for him, because then Doug and I will be able to sleep better at night. Literally.

Doug's watching soccer on TV right now, while the fish and potatoes are on the grill and my strawberry-blueberry muffins are in the oven.* Wolves v. Chelsea. Doug's enthusiasm for soccer has been rekindled after having see the Revs v. Man United game on Wednesday night.

It was a good game, despite the rain and the long lines at Five Guys with Fries beforehand. The Revs held their own against Man U for the first half, but once Matt Reis was taken out of goal and Park and Giggs were put in. The Revs lost, 4-1, but it was fun to see Gillette practically full and the fans really pumped up. Of course, most of the fans were really pumped up to see Man United. I had no idea that there were so many Man U fans in this area. The stadium was a sea of red and yellow Giggs and Rooney jerseys on men and women alike. Once again I felt like I was missing out on a huge cultural trend the likes of Glee and iPads. How come I didn't have any Man U gear? How come I had never heard of Ryan Giggs before? And how come all 55,000 of those fans had? I think I need to get out more.

Timer for the oven is going off - time to get the muffins out. Think I'll join Doug on the couch and see if I can learn something about soccer and feel more part of the world.

* Lest you think that we eat like this all the time, let me quickly correct you. I had cereal one night this week, and then a taco salad from Qdoba. And we eat hot dogs more than we comfortable admitting.

Tonight is an exception, and hopefully a tasty one.

A New Hampshire Fourth

If you blink, life passes you by. That's how it seems to me, anyway. So one must take full advantage of all opportunities. Like enjoying long weekends as much as possible.

Doug and I spent this long Fourth of July weekend in New Hampshire at the family compound. Despite there being some rain, no running water in my uncle's cabin, and my mother's dog biting my cousin (twice!) and other family antics, it was a great weekend and definitely an enjoyable way to spend the 4th.

We got to see my sister and her family, and we honored the occasion of all of the family being together in one place by taking a group photo. I don't recall another photo with all of us in it like this. And it's a really good photo. I may have this one framed.

We paid a visit to the King Arthur Flour store in Norwich, VT. Have you been there? It's a must if you like to bake - they sell anything that you might need or want for baking. I got three boxes of the King Arthur Belgian waffle mix, so we'll be having waffles around here for a while. Yay!

We tubed, as in me, my mother, and Doug. Tubing, if you've never done it, is when you sit or lay on a big donut-like tube connected to a speedboat by a rope and you are pulled around the lake/ocean at high speed. Now, this is a great feat for Doug, who does not swim and is terrified of having his head go underwater and not being able to touch the bottom of the pool/lake/ocean/etc. So the fact that he tubed is very impressive. Very, very impressive. I was so proud of him! I was also very proud of my mother, who tubed with me once Doug had had enough. My mother is sixty-six, but she held on tight and had more stamina than I did throughout our (very fast and very rough) ride. My mother is also very impressive. For someone who actively asserts her senior status at places like the movies and anywhere where she can get a senior discount, she certainly doesn't act like a senior. The energy she has amazes me (and, truth be told, makes me a little jealous. How come I didn't get that energy?).


Let's see, what else did we do in New Hampshire. We boated. We kayaked some, but we also rode in the little fishing boat in the Crystal Lake Boat Parade. We were the last boat in the parade, and our boat wasn't decorated, but at least we joined in the fun. Doug drove the boat in the parade, and Brian tried to keep up with us in the kayak. Brian eventually went his own way and left us with the pontoon and party boats, waving to the people on shore as we puttered by. (Maybe we should have tubed while being pulled by this little john-boat!).

Of course, what we didn't do over the weekend was spend much quality time with our cats. We left all three cats out in the house alone this past weekend while we were gone. We are still very much in the throes of integrating the two girl cats with their new feline brother, and this process is going to be a slow one. Much slower than when we integrated Wyatt with Meg, or when we integrated Sasha with Meg and Wyatt. Why? Because of Sasha. She's Satan's spawn at times, and this is one of those times. So, while we had hoped that over the weekend they would get the fighting and hissing out of their system, since they would have no choice but to live together while Doug and I were away, we are now back to having them in separate rooms overnight and throughout the day, and are only together in the house when we come home from work. The new cat, Sherman (we've been calling him this, and it's stuck. He head-butts like a Sherman tank.), loves being out and roaming the house, so we feel badly for him that he is locked up in the office all night and day, but if we ever want Sasha to stop hissing, growling, spitting, and making these god-awful screams, then this is probably what we have to do for quite a bit longer.

But look at him! He's such a good and handsome kitty, who has a bottomless pit for a stomach. He's already gained weight since he's been here, and his coat feels so much more healthy. The one thing is that we have to keep his lampshade on his head. We tried for a few days to leave it off, but he scratched way too much at his ears and neck, so now it's back on and he has himself an appointment at the vet tomorrow to get some ointment to help with the itching. He's doing well, though, despite everything, and he's settling right in. If only I could say the same for his sisters...