Hell's never described as really COLD, is it?

I hate summer.  Okay, it's 8 zillion degrees.  I have no central air.  One of our three window units has conked out.  The kids and I have been at one another's throats, just an absoulte crab-fest.  And not that fun Chesapeake Bay kind, either.  Well, the hammers are still involved, but no dead crustaceans.  Except Sharkey the hermit crab, who sloughed off both his exo-skeleton and his mortal coil on Friday.  But I digress.  It's the heat, I tell you.

So, just a hellish morning, in which the highlight (no seriously) was going to the dentist's office.  It's air conditioned and full of nice people.  Then to the co-op, which is air conditioned and full of pierced people.  And then home, which has none of those things.  We're promised to go to the lake and meet friends.  I'm totally not in the mood, but I'm spurred on by the knowledge that everything is better at the lake.  I get to sit and chat, the kids go play, everyone cools down, we stay til sunset, it's just nice.  Fine, we'll go.  Shut up and get in the car.

Ah, but the lake...it's not at all refreshing. It is the temperature of pee.  It is Human Soup with Seaweed.  No one is getting along.  Julianna is screaming at everyone.  Ben is informing me that that is what *I* sound like.  And sitting on the shore crying that no one likes him.  Wonder why?  Lily has gone off with a family? of mentally challenged people and one seemingly normal girl of about 7.  She's like Marilyn from the Munsters.  Only it's even less funny.  Like The Munsters Today.   They've just given her a bottle of something blue.  Which she's drinking.   We head for home, leaving Julianna to go home with a friend.

I give Ben a movie downstairs. I put another on for Lily on the portable DVD player. I go up to the computer to complain to my imaginary friends.  That room is air conditioned.  Sympathetic imaginary friend Chris suggests I have a beer (your imaginary friends don't tell you to drink?  really?  Why do you keep them around?).  Good idea, Imaginary Chris!  I open the fridge to be greeted with a waterfall.  The stupid fargin' water filter has stupid fargin' cracked again, spewing stupid fargin' water all over everytime it tries to fill its stupid fargin' tank.  I'm a leeeetle tired of dealing with my fridge.  So I get ready to mop it up, only to hear Ben cry "Oh NO!" from the family room.  I go in and he's totally Arubus, holding the controller to the PlayStation, which the dog has chewed up.  Honestly, I don't think I HAVE that much beer.   It's 9:30, they're still awake, and I'm just totally disinclined to do anything about it. 

Building those summer memories

QUITE a day yesterday.  We had the end-of-swim-team picnic and pool party.  Started out well, with kids running hither and yon and eating water ice, parents sitting in the shade chit-chatting.  Then, just as I started to check my voice mail to find out why Steve isn't there yet, Julianna came over the hill, wailing and clutching her mouth.  She'd gotten pushed on a slide and chipped her bottom front teeth.  She's screaming in pain and panic.  I got the adreneline rush and couldn't even remember my phone number to dial home.  Ben came up wailing.  He'd gotten locked in the bathroom and there was a huge spider in there and he was terrified.  My head was just spinning.  Comfort this one!  Comfort that one!  What do I DO?  Luckily (for me and for him) Steve showed up right then and helped me sort it all out.  Got everyone home (get Lily out before something happens to HER!), called the on-call dentist.  Steve took Ben and Lily to the pool.  I took Julianna to get some Motrin (dentist says to just give her that for now, come in the next day) and pick up the hamsters that we'd taken to the mall for adoption day.  She was sobbing and drooling into a cup b/c it hurt too much to swallow.  I got her the pain meds and a bottle with a sports top so she could squirt water down her throat.  She was then able to swallow, but had to make a slurping noise like the NooNoo.   I was trying not to leap out of my skin and take off down the street.  Finally Motrin kicks in, hamsters get home (one dwarf got adopted and we brought home two new teddy bear hamster fosters!  Yay, we missed the full-size hammies).  Julianna and I went to the pool.

Perfect pool day.  Ben is thrilled at his swimming progress.  As am I.  He was a total freak in the water at the beginning of the year.  Now he is doing the breast stroke.  Most of the community is there.  Everyone is happy b/c swim team is over and we don't have to have kids to the pool at 8 am.  I'm thrilled that Julianna was in no danger of making the All Star team.  THEY have to have two hours a day of practice this week.  Losers.  It's a gorgeous day, we're all feeling happy so we decide to go to Uno's for dinner with Bev and her kids.  We imagine that we're a Big Love family.  I'd like to think I'm Barb, butI'm totally Nicki.  Ben loses a Lego bit under the table, I crawl around sweeping a straw under the table base, but Brooke finds it.  All is well.

Back home and then down to the Donald's for a bonfire.  I'd ordered 50 glow necklaces from Sure-Glow which got me 100 free glow bracelets.  Twenty bucks.  I don't know another way to buy that much fun for that little money.  The kids just festooned themselves with them.   They were thrilled to have as many as they wanted.  They put on a show for us with much discordant made-up music and falling down the hill and twirling of glowing strings.  Honestly, it was the trippiest thing I've seen since college.  The adults had them on as well.  We'd brought champagne, Bob made rum punch.  S'mores a plenty.  Really, how much nicer does a summer memory get?  Minus the broken teeth and the spider in the bathroom?

Beach Pictures

I had a 3 hour nap today and I still feel too tired to type.  So pardon my lack of wit, but here come the beach pictures.  We stayed and my folks' house on the Delaware Bay the weekend of the Whitaker reunion.  It's a ramshackle cottage in constant need of repair, but damn if it isn't the most relaxing place once you're there.  Mom and Dad are finding it less so, since they're seldom there w/o a caulk gun and a hammer, but WE enjoyed it.  Ben got a little modeling for Polo in while we were there:

Julianna and Lily on the beach.  Those sticks behind Lily have been there since we got the house, in like 1981 or something.  I thought they were for crab pots, but nothing ever seems to happen around them.  I wonder how far they must be in the ground to have stood all this time and all these storms.  I think maybe they come from the earth's core.



Careful!  Horseshoe crab's gonna git yer feet!



Fredo LOVED it.  He had a dog party on the beach:

I kept him on the long leash for a while, so that I could pull him out of a fight, should it become necessary.  But everyone played nice.  That's Sadie (Golden with a funny haircut), Max (big ol' lab), and Bailey (frisbee crazed Border Collie).  Bailey was far more interested in the frisbee than the other dogs.  She could have chased that thing for all eternity.  And was QUITE peeved when Sadie kept going after it.  Once, it rested on the sand long enough for Fredo to get a snif.  He looked up like, "THIS is what all the excitement is about?  You can't eat this!"  After we went back to the house, Sadie came by a few times, looking in the windows to see if Fredo could play.  The place is so quiet that I just let him out.  He was in heaven.  He needs a way-back machine so that he can go to the days of dogs just roaming the neigborhood in little packs.  He'd be hit by a carw/in a week, of course, but he'd be so happy until then. 

And now, the photo fest

People who could give a rat's ass about my pictures can just move along for this entry.  In fact, just go away if you cannot be bothered to coo over my children.  Well, no.  As long as you still tell me how funny I am, I guess I can forgo the compliments on the kids.  But you HAVE to do one or the other, got it?  Both is best and will get you a holiday card.  Or gratitude.

Okay, first to play catch-up.  the Caldwell reunion was last month, but I never mentioned it or put up pictures.  Mustn't make the Caldwell Clan feel that I'm ashamed of them.  Also mustn't post the rear-view pic of everyone loading plates at the "salad" table.  Instead, I'll start with this one of cousiny goodness.  Mikayla and Julianna:

I did a lot of sitting on the porch, reading.  Here I am with my Aunt Pat.  I'm the one with the odd expression.

And my mom, on the end, demonstrates that this inability to look good in a photo is genetic:

Lily and Emma.  I mean, really, couldn't you just eat Lily?  She might be a bit bitter, though...

Best shot of the day, though:  Amish buggy pulling a motor boat.  You can't see it in the photo, but the people in the buggy are probably late teens, early 20s.  Sunglasses and revelry.  But no buttons.




Later, it was the 4th of July.  Well, the 2nd of July.  We went up to the house of a friend with a fireworks addiction.  He goes to Pennsylvania and buys things I cannot BELIEVE they'll sell to people with no license.  You can't buy beer in a liquor store there, but you can buy heavy explosives.  We started with the little ones, though.  First, this one:

Which, sadly, was visited by tanks...

You have to love a shot like this. 

Okay, then this weekend was the Whitaker reunion, which was actually very nice and involved talking.  There was salad, of course, and my sister did her part by providing Ritz crackers dipped in chocolate (okay, yes, they're delicious, but something about dessert made of Ritz crackers always cracks me up).  I saw cousins I haven't seen in ages, some of which I even recognized (Lisa, Stephanie, yes.  Vaunelle, no).  Fredo came along and was even well-behaved.  No bed pooping.  No roof climbing.  No medicine eating (oh yes.  I'll have to tell you about that one.  It involved combing the neighborhood for a turkey baster). Here's our immediate crew.  I cannot BELIEVE I thought my hair looked good.  oy.

My dad and his brothers (he's second from the left).  Is there a family resemblence, you think? 

Okay.  Beach pics are next.  Prepare.

Reunion Season

We're about to head off to Delaware for the second family reunion of the summer.  My folks rolled snake-eyes and ended up hosting both the Caldwell and Whitaker reunions.  Now my mom's side, I see at least once a year and have always been closer to.  It's this matriarchy based on eating "salad" (it's a Southern thing in which you call "salad" something that is made of Cool Whip, cream cheese, mandarin oranges, and marshmallows.  And because it's "salad" you can eat it with your dinner.  And still have dessert.  Cause that was "salad.") and singing hymns during thunderstorms with power outages.

My dad's side, on the other hand, I seldom see.  And there are SCADS of them.  He's one of eight kids and each of them had a pile of their own, all of whom have grown and had kids of THEIR own, so yowsa.  Lots of people.  Few of whom I will recognize.  The summer trip to my dad's parents' house was always kind of dull.  No cousins my age, so I had to kind of glom onto the older kids.  The adults were really quiet and mostly just sat, occasionally whistling.  The women cooked most of the day.  The men, when they talked, discussed what road they'd taken to get there.    As an adult, I tend to look back on it like this Foxfire Live journey to Appalachia, but mostly it was just boring.

My kids love big piles of cousins however they can get them, so they should have fun.  They'll have their immediate cousins, plus MY cousins' kids...which I guess are first cousins once removed?  Plu-perfect?  Dunno.  Anyway.  More salad!  And then dessert!  hooray!