Shiny Things

There's been a beguiling mixture of rain and sun here. Rain is good for sitting on the porch with a book and looking at this. Sun is good for exploring. There was a parade in there somewhere too. Reading: Finished Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight . A random descriptive passage (chosen from many that are equally evocative): The heat in the kitchen is breath-sucking. There are two small windows at either end of the huge tacked-together room, and stable door, which leads off to the back veranda where the dairyman (surrounded by a halo of flied) labors over the milk churn (milk spits into buckets, cream chugs into a jug; both are in danger of going off before the can reach refrigeration). The fridges, unable to compete with the heat, leak (they bleed actually: think watered-down blood from the defrosting chunks of cow) and add a fusty-smelling steam to the atmosphere. The aroma here is defrosting flesh, soon-to-be-off milk, sweating butter, and the always present salty-meat-o...

Morning by the fire - father and son Second full day and the rhythms are being established. O loves to play human bellows with the fire, which burns each morning. He got his fishing in with his grandmother, and went kayaking and boating with his dad. Z went kayaking too and says that we should make it a goal to kayak every day. a good goal. She is also enchanted by the How to be the Best at Everything book David picked up at the library sale. (That was a useful library sale!) I continue to read and write, and got lots of time on my rock (will post pics of which another day).. For breakfast David made peach fritters (Connecticut peach dish #2), and they were good. We were joined in the afternoon by summer friends Michelle and Bob and their son C, who will keep us company and drink cocktails (see below) with us for several days. And my father in law was heard to utter this: "The end that's in the middle is I don't know why." Reading: The Fuller and also The Odyssey. The...

Peach Crisp with Half and Half (Connecticut peaches dish #1) The difficulty with being in a place where there is really not much going on is that there really is not much going on. I happen to love this about the cove, and I think ZandO do too really, but the first day was a bit rough. O wants so much to do the things he wants to do - fishing and Risk, mostly,  and kayaking - that he has a very hard time letting anyone else do what they want. Z, the socialest of sociable animals, is anxious for her summer friends to arrive on the weekend, and keyed up about the possibility of seeing her a best friend from home as she passes up the coast (this complicated by the fact that we get no cell phone reception here -- again, not something I mind on my on own). All this makes her less than gracious, and she also gets fed up with being the default playmate for her brother, in predictable and irritating ways. And David has things he wants to do too, and wishes the kids would run off and entert...

I was on the dock crabbing with Orson as soon as we unpacked the car. I saw the colors in the water first, then looked up.  Evening Rainbow, Flood's Cove. You can't tell from the photo, but it was actually a double -- there was a second arc above the one visible here. A strange half power outtage at Falk Manor drove us out for breakfast (that and the fact that we wanted to take them out to thank them), which we procured at the S&S Dugout Cafe in Southport, on Liz's recommendation. photo Roadfood,com. Read their review . They make their own delicious sausage -- a  fresh pork patty with spices. David and I had the hot, which really is hot, along with the house speciality fried mashed potatoes, rye toast, and two eggs over easy. Harris had the sweet, which really is sweet. O had a fine BLT, and Z had another house speciality - rare roast beef on a poppyseed roll. After that, peach picking, of course! We left Connecticut with 2 pecks of freshly picked peaches crammed into...

Sleepy people  Friday I finished my tenure at a job I have been working hard at for a year and a half? Two years? Five? Depends on how you count it. I stayed late to try to leave things as neatly as I could. After 11 I turned out the lights and whispered goodbye and thank you and good luck, and I drove home crying with the windows open to the humid night air. Crying because of endings, because of change, because I made this happen and I hope I have done the right thing. In one month I will begin the next thing. Saturday was packing and shopping and attending a theater people wedding. And Sunday was the long drive to Westport to see old friends in their new(ish) house. Along the way we ate here - food was ok, people were great. Harris I have know for ... 24 years? ... Liz for what must be nearly 10. I was very very pregnant with O, in an elegant black prego lady dress, when I stood in their wedding party 8 years ago. Little Z tossed flower petals and after the revelry had worn ...

Ceci n'est pas un cupcake. (Will only Kim get this joke?) On several occasions recently I have said or done something, and David has said, "Are you going to blog about that?" (See, I am using him to do a sideways I'm-so-sorry-I-haven't-been-blogging pose. Nonbloggerasana. He's going to hate that.) If I recall correctly, these included: my joy over realizing I could turn the raspberry ice cream I had just made into ice cream pie, the duck and kale spaghetti dish I invented, the pea pod slaw and Z as veggie crusader, my emotional reactions to Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir, and the "my city is beautiful" conversation I had with O.  I will write about that last first, and try to fill in the rest below. A couple weeks ago, O got to visit what seemed like 100 different cultural institutions as part of a weeklong camp. This included the new MOCA Cleveland giant black crystal of salt building, which I have not yet visited myself. On the way down to camp th...