It's Up to YOU...NEW...YORK....NEW YORK!

The game was fantastic. We got there in the middle of the fourth inning (due to some traffic in the cross-Bronx and the George Washington) which was perfect, as far as I'm concerned. That way, we got to see more than half the game but not so much of the game that I stopped caring and watching and started chanting mean things just to entertain myself. The skybox was very, very cool and located perfectly behind home plate. I have never had a better view of any ball game, my brother's little league games withstanding. They always put those bleachers at a weird angle, you know? Anyway, there were lots of other people in our box and they hovered over the railing with giant fishing nets, hoping to catch fly balls as they shot like rockets off the bat at the plate. One came directly at us and for a moment I was certain it was heading straight for my noggin in slow motion, but much to my chagrin it dropped at the last second, and Catchy McNets up front missed it by a fair margin. Oh well, better luck next season.

For the duration of the game, Ed's father and I taunted each other and made snide Sox/Yankees remarks back and forth, but when Damon hit his second homer of the game to the far right corner I clapped in spite of myself. I was happy the Yankees won because the crowd was happy and rowdy and sang "New York New York" with a good amount of believable pride. And what's more, their win helped to narrow the season, especially since the Sox lost yesterday. (I'm good at making it sound like I know about these things and really care, right?)

We took good advantage of all the free game food and ate a total of nine hot dogs between the four of us (gross!), ravioli, chicken strips, coconut shrimp, drinks and ice cream. We rolled each other out of the stadium at the end of the game into the stifling, crowded city heat. Traffic out of the Bronx kept us there for another hour, but we rolled south in time and jumped headlong into the pool as soon as we reached the house.

Oh summer. Don't end.


--Elli knows there's no sleep 'til Brooklyn

Garden State

Hello from New Jersey!
I am water-logged and exhausted after two days in the swimming pool and nearly two hours of Marco Polo with the little-kid cousins at the barbecue. Yankee stadium knocked my sox (heh) off today, and our skybox was right behind home plate. Very cool. Can't wait to get the pictures up here. The weather has been hot and muggy and summer-tastic, and eating too much picnic food never felt so good. The crickets and cicadas here are so loud, so incredibly loud, that when Ed and I went for a stroll around the neighborhood last night we had to shout to hear each other. No bother though, good talks in the dark Pine Barrens are the only way to go.

I'm wondering about my brother and how the Friday phone marathon went. Brother?

I'll be back home tomorrow and onto another four days of work, kayaking and maybe seeing Yenny this weekend. Yay!

-(counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike) Elli has gone to look for America...

This is me

...blogging in the middle of the day. And wondering what the deal is with jobs, the ones I've had and can get, the one I have now and leaves me...well...bored and unoccupied enough at 3 o'clock on a Friday to be using my time writing to you, the internet.

Is it just the way of jobs for people my age that they are structured around someone else's whim so that I am left at the beck and call of others to keep me busy and productive? It's frustrating. I am not unmotivated. I don't procrastinate. I don't like being bored at work and doing whatever I can to pass the time. I would much rather be writing a proposal to so-and-so foundation, or drafting letters to the Chair of this board, or that committee. Please! Task me! Fill my projects list so full I feel like I'm swimming in deadlines. Make my head spin and make it seem like I'll never again see the light of day. These are the conditions I want and need.

Instead, I've got: 3pm on a Friday. Everyone who tells me what to do is holed up in some meeting, and I am left sitting here for the next hour and a half, bored as a broomstick.


Maybe it's because I'm temporary, and I've been thinking about this. Now that they've snatched the job from underneath me, I'm mad that Ed and I didn't get to take the extended version of our cross-country trip home. When I found out in May that they wanted me here June 1, I was disappointed but excited, thinking that this was worth getting here for and that a cross-country trip could wait while the job of my dreams could not. But now, boy. Job of my dreams? Please. It was exciting for three weeks, while it was new and challenging, while I was learning something new every day and had enough on my list to keep me going. Now, it's a daily slog of reiterated tasks and cut-and-paste grant-making. Maybe if I was permanent there would be more room to grow. But permanent, I am not.

I was thinking today about the job I wish I had, the one that was busy because I had the freedom to make it that way, the one where I had varied and dynamic tasks and worked with lots of different people, the one that required creativity and always had room to grow, the one that I know I can do and be successful at. And I started wondering how the hell I will ever have a job like this, how I will ever get past the crap-job stage that seems to have swallowed my past few years, how much of a crapshoot it is that because I'm young and haven't done much yet, that I am sidelined to the boring, the mediocre, and the uninspiring. The worst part is that this has nothing to do with me, personally, or any lack of skill, intelligence, ingenuity, or dedication on my part, and everything to do with some social order, some hierarchy of hiring, some code of existence to which I am subject because I am young and inexperienced.

This is me, ranting in the middle of the day.

Lunch Musings

I'm at work eating lunch and wondering about this weekend and my impending trip to New Jersey.

1. What the heck do I pack? Ed and I are heading to his family's house to take part in a family barbecue on Saturday and attend a New York Yankees baseball game on Sunday. The tickets, which Ed's parents won in a raffle, are for a skybox. This is intimidating. I suppose I should wear my best pearls (have none) and some shiny sequined gown (prom, circa 1986) or something. I mean, this is serious fancy business. We will be watching the game from a glass box where the sounds and smells and mere existence of the proletariat can't interfere with our enjoyment. But my real question is, will my Red Sox t-shirt fit underneath my sequined gown, and can I still paint my face and hold up a "Yankees Suck" sign during the game?

2. What are Ed's mother and I going to talk about during the long baseball game? Lord knows she won't be interested in actually watching it, and will certainly sabotage any half-assed effort I might make to do so by directing her constant flow of stories in my direction. Meanwhile, Ed and his father will delight in their narrow escape from being the patient listeners, and will no doubt feign very keen interest in baseball and completely ignore my imploring glances.
My eyes: "Save me please."
Them: "Blah blah second base blah catch blah foul."

3. How many old ladies from Ed's family will kiss me at the barbecue? And how many of them will actually know who I am? I will report back on the results when I return.

Again for the First Time

It's been as long-standing an argument as we've been together, which is to say nearly three years. American Beauty. The movie. It's a movie I've long considered one of my favorites, ever since high school when my close-knit, exclusive posse of theater nerds claimed the movie as its own, feeling it exemplified everything meaningful we knew about life. I must have seen it four or five times during that senior year, mouthing the best lines along with the actors and laughing before the funniest jokes could even happen on screen.

I left high school, as we do, and my close-knit posse of pals which I thought would go on forever, inevitably didn't. I didn't watch American Beauty once during college, but recalled it often while watching refuse--garbage bags, paper plates, newspapers-- dance on the wind off the Charles. I recalled this scene in the movie, in which Ricky Fitz shows Jane the "most beautful thing he's ever filmed," as one of its most moving. I liked the way it made me feel, the way it made me pause and think, really consider how beauty exists in nearly everything, even a lone plastic bag, spinning in the breeze.

I liked the way the movie ended, a careful tragedy surrounded by hope, leaving me feeling a mix of sadness and relief, and even joy.

When I met Ed, we became fast friends while eating ice cream and climbing trees, wreaking havoc on the carefully crafted image of dignity our college campus had created. We went grocery shopping on Route 9 and rented movies and on this, we never, ever agreed. He always fell for heartful comedies to shed a light on the dark places, while I was drawn to dramatic tales which would send me through the throes of theatrical catharsis. He suggested The Birdcage, while I wanted Shawshank Redemption. Both worthy films, mind you, but we could never agree and so chose neither. We always settled on vaguaries to avoid the real issue of our difference in taste: we'd spring for foreign dynamos like Run Lola Run or Indochine. Somehow, this worked for both of us.

Sometime during the first few months, we were walking through Downtown Crossing with the wind howling, and a page from Spare Change chased across the street ahead of us. It swooped with the currents and fell with the stillness. My eyes brightened, and I nudged him with my arm which was latched to his at the elbow. "American Beauty," I whispered. He returned my smile with a blank, questioning stare. I learned he had never seen the movie, had heard all about it and due to its popularity among melodramatic high school types (ahem), had lost interest in seeing it at all. I was downcast, but having not yet discerned that we were two distinct people with different taste and opinions, I declared that he would love it and we would see it soon.

The years passed.

During this time, I learned a thing or two about myself and about life, love, and Ed. I learned that, indeed, we are different people. Very different, in fact. We are two people whose movie collections would not speak if they met at a cocktail party, and this has proven an interesting challenge. It's often a battle of wills when we visit the movie store, and we often settle on renting two movies, one through which I roll my eyes and wait for the punch line, and one during which Ed squirms and groans at the dramatic tension and character flaws. I recently remembered my quest for Ed to see American Beauty, and this launched the age-old discussion between us about why he just didn't want to. I couldn't understand it, I said. It's a good movie, afterall, and while I had to admit that it might not end up being one of his favorites, I had a hunch he might actually like it. He quipped that he'd been wanting to rent The Princess Bride for an equal amount of eternity and I kept shooting him down, but please. I have seen The Princess Bride, multiple times, and I love it with my whole heart already. I argued that his point was invalid, that it was unfair to compare a movie I had already seen with one he hadn't, and furthermore, one I'd been pining for him to see for years.

Ultimately, I won on the technicality that Ed is a more pleasant person than I am, and unwilling to argue extensively about stupid things. He agreed unenthusiastically to rent American Beauty, and so rent it we did.

As the movie began, I realized the pressure that now existed for the movie to actually be the best movie ever, lest I prove myself a persistent idiot, and I started getting nervous. The first twenty minutes revealed none of the meaning and deep-feeling I remembered from high school. Lester Burnham fought with Carolyn. Jane's curiosity for Ricky grossed Angela out. Cheerleaders wearing stupid sneakers marched in place on the gymnasium floor. I stole sideways glances at Ed on the couch, who noticed my odd behavior but said nothing. Moments passed, and the same lines that had sent me into poetic reverie at the age of seventeen now left me cringing at the blandness of empty irony. I feared that I had grown out of the movie, and that it had never been anything to crow about.

The movie continued, and at the halfway mark, things started to loosen up. Lester buys a Camaro and gets high and starts working out. Carolyn bangs the Real Estate King in a seedy motel. Jane and Ricky smooch it up and Angela is slowly revealed as the joker she really is. Things get funny. And then things get serious.

I had forgotten what led up to the ending. I had forgotten her virginity, the family photograph, the bloody t-shirt, and look of peace on Lester's face, the closet full of his clothing and his Carolyn, falling to her knees. I had forgotten the ambivalence, that perfect duality which leaves me feeling completely satisfied with the way everyone's lives fall entirely apart. I hadn't forgotten that I loved this movie, but I had misplaced why. Having removed it from the saccharin sap of high school memory, I had recovered something of myself, and let something different go.

As the credits rolled I sat pressed to my seat and turned slowly to look at Ed. I half-smirked, unsure of what he'd say, but he surprised me. He'd liked it, he said. It was a good movie, and he wished he'd seen it sooner. "Even with all that squirmy drama?" I asked. Even with all that squirmy drama. Maybe we'll hit up that cocktail party after all.

Music Morning

It's Saturday morning, Ed is reading a required law book and I am running aroung the apartment, making it pretty and presentable for Erin and Jeff who are visiting later today. Woo! I constructed a playlist of music to keep me moving and thought it would be good to display it here, mostly because it kicks a lot of arse and is indicative of the happy/upbeat music I'm into.

Artist & Song

Matt Costa - Sunshine
Modest Mouse - Float On
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
The Killers - Mr. Brightside
Badly Drawn Boy - A Minor Incident
Ben Kweller - Falling
Cher - Just Like Jesse James
Diana Ross & The Supremes - You Can't Hurry Love
Dixie Chicks - Landslide
Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight
Ronan Keating - Lovin' Each Day
The Postal Service - Against All Odds
No Doubt - Sunday Morning
Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
Matisyahu - King Without a Crown
Marvin Gaye with Shaggy - Sexual Healing


Now, listen. I'm not proud of the fact that I like a lot of silly, poppy, non-technically-excellent music, but it's just the way it is.* I mean, the Dixie Chicks? Cher? Seriously. But, I can't help it. There's something about these songs, their beats or spirit or something that just make me feel happy inside, that make my heart do a little dance. There are other times, more somber times, when I listen to melancholy music. But those are other times, and today I'm happy, not very introspective, not terribly interested in what angsty insomniac musicians can help me reveal about my own deepest feelings.

One of these days I'll reveal the secret playlist which sends me into a veritable trance and send the words and writing flowing throw my veins. Until then, let me know what music you're into right now.

*More on why I feel the need to defend my music and be self-deprecating once I figure out why that is...

Weekend Review

First, I've started a new Flickr account with new photos and a new badge to the right. You can go to my photo page here.

Second, the job has been officially snatched away to California, but the more I get used to the idea, the more I like it. Maybe it wasn't all I cracked it up to be at first, you know? Everyone keeps telling me that it must have happened for a reason, that everything does. I'll go with that, for now. In the meantime, Ed's grandma is sending up the all-powerful novena that I get this other snazzy job I'm gunning for. So, basically, it's a done deal. She and God will have it out, and let me tell you, she always wins.

Third, I had a great weekend. It was HOT as Dante around here, and we zoomed all over the Upper Valley with Ed's parents, who were visiting. The photos document some of the madness, but they miss the part where we ate at the best greasy-spoon diner just down the road, how we crossed the bridge over Quechee Gorge and spotted the best new swimming hole, how we went couch shopping and found the most excellent golden yellow couch which will arrive, sparkly and new, on our doorstep on Thursday. The photos also miss the part where my parents, Ed's parents, Ed and I had dinner in Hanover, laughing and joking and revelling in good times. That was the best show of love and family, so much different from the last awkward time they met almost two years ago.

Fourth, Ben Folds and this song "Mess," currently playing on my iTunes, are stellar. It was six years ago when I watched the Heighstmen perform it for the first time, and when I fell flat-on-my-face in love with acapella and every song the Heightsmen ever sang. And this love, my friends, goes on.

Fifth, we have been to the swimming hole in Meriden two out of the last three days. We are quickly claiming that spot as our own despite the throngs of other sweaty summer dwellers of the region who visit as frequently. No bother, we can share. Swimming holes weren't meant to be exclusive. The best feeling, though, is rolling up to the dirt pull-off, traipsing into the brush and down the muddy, root-laden cliff, side-stepping rocks and clinging to sturdy branches, reaching the rocks below and shedding layers until swimsuits and river shoes are all that remain. Standing on the edge of a granite outcropping, hearing the rush of the falls above, staring into the sink and launching 3-2-1 into the bubbling pool. The rush of cold water over my wilted heat-weary skin is better than most everything.

Sixth, I am so busy with life, and it's driving me a little crazy. I make lists at work to get done what needs doing, and I find myself coming home and making more lists of more stuff that I want to do, that needs to get done, that keeps stacking up and leaving time for no loafing, and I LIKE to loaf! I need more loafing. I'll need to put this on the list, to pencil it in so that I don't miss it entirely.

Six is enough; I'm off to do something else.

Kaboom

Yesterday, my job and my life sort of...exploded.

I can't say I didn't see it coming, even if I didn't know in what form it would rear its ugly head. The thing is, I've been so damn happy, I just knew something had to break. I've been riding around with the windows down, counting the blessings in my life, in the form of a great apartment, a lovely Ed with an exciting school plan, a beautiful summer, a fun place to work and good things to do, and just fearing that things were too perfect.

I didn't expect that the break would come in the form of my temporary but oh-so-permanent feeling job being snatched from underneath me. But, it did. And it sucked a big bag of suck. I found out inadverently in the middle of a department meeting that the job I've been filling (and planning to fill permanently at summer's end) is most likely being transplanted to our office in Oakland, California. You'll note that I have just moved to New Hampshire from California, that I have just signed a one-year lease on an apartment with my significant other who is soon entering a three-year law program in Vermont. Lest there be confusion, my job may flee to California, but I must stay right here.

Blast, I say. What is the deal? I thought I'd been through all the job uncertainty I'd go through for one season, but here I am, cast back into the flaming depths of it again.

After the meeting, I sat at my desk unmoving, staring blankly out the window with my heart and my head pounding. What just happened, I wondered, and shifted my glance to the stack of work on my desk. Sighed. Shifted my gaze back to the window. I just didn't understand. I filled the last two hours of the workday with mind-numbing paperwork and digital organizing and fled to my car, where within its relative safety and anonymity, I began to get mad.

By the time I got home I had worked up a load of unanswerable questions and resolved conclusions in my head: Why had they hired me in the first place, told me they thought it would become permanent, duped and tricked me, smiled and winked about the end of the summer? Didn't they appreciate the work I'd been doing? Was I not doing well enough? Were they praising me to my face and then snarking about me behing closed doors? They don't like me, they really just don't like me! I am unemployable, incapable of getting and keeping a job that isn't horrendous. I...I am useless. Waste of space stupid girl job boss life tree window car turkey stoplight balloon clown%$&*#@$

Suffice it to say that I held my shit together for roughly twenty-three seconds after walking in the door of our apartment, and after that, poor Ed had to do his best to keep me from breaking things as I punched emphatic fists of rage into the air and flung self-deprecating remarks around the room.

All in all, I'd say I handled it quite well.

Anyway, a multitude of calming discussions ensued with those whom I love best, and by the time I went to sleep I was feeling A-okay. This morning, I woke up and worked myself into a righteous grump again, and left for work with the world on my shoulders but resolved, at least, to do what I could about this unjust, ridiculous situation.

At work, I asked questions and got the facts, the clear explanation as to why, exactly, the organization seems intent upon ruining my stable little rosy life. It makes sense when it comes right down to it, and I can't argue except for my own sake, which to me, happens to be very important but all in all a useless cause. On a more positive note, I talked with a woman in my department who is leaving her job, which she loves to a decent degree, next week, leaving it vacant and to be filled within the next few weeks. I knew about this yesterday, but in my negative stupor, declared at once that it was a job that the likes of I would simply hate! Hmph! But today, well, today it seems like sort of a fun job, like something I might enjoy and do quite well at.

And so I wrote a cover letter, and I reworked my resume, and tomorrow I re-enter the silly game of applications and waiting games, interviews and appropriately timed pauses and levels of enthusiasm, the good mix of friendly and refined, during the one-on-one. I'm thinking it won't be so bad, you know? I know these people. I've worked with them for almost two months, and they're mostly pretty rad. Now I've just gotta get one of them to see how freaking rad I am.

Oh La Lune

Ed and I went for a walk in the dark after dinner last night, and the moon, oh my, it was HUGE and ORANGE and excellent, hanging there over the trees and church steeples of this sleepy New England town.

Erin reminded me that the full moon is tonight, so check it out. It should be quite marvelous.

Smirkus Au Lait

For four summers during college, I worked as a camp counselor. I took care of kids, dragged them to where they needed to be and tucked them into bed at night. They were cute and trying, in doses, and kept me busy and exhausted most of the time. By the time dinner rolled around and I had changed into my costume, according to the evening's theme, I was completely worn out and ready to collapse. After a swing on the trapeze or a mad juggling circle after hours, it was to bed with me only to awake the next morning, rub the sleep from my eyes, pop on my clown nose and start another day at camp. Circus camp.

Based on every kid's fantasy of running away and joining the circus, Circus Smirkus was founded twenty years ago and has operated a summer camp and touring troupe of kid Smirkos ever since, providing a place for adventurous kids to learn, perfect and showcase their amazing talents to crowds across New England. Smirkus's own branding dubs it "Vermont's Own Home-Grown Country Circus," and that, my friends, it is. Based out of a big red barn in Greensboro, this non-profit lives and breathes the Vermont way of life, and brings a little of its magic to all the kids who come from across the country and world to take part every year.

I was dragged in from the sidelines the summer after high school, when one of my classmates called me in a panic in mid-July saying they needed a last-minute counselor for session four and could I be there tomorrow? My friend had been a Smirkus Camper since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, and had become a counselor a few summers before. I took the job in a heartbeat, happy to leave behind any babysitting gig and overtime shift at the grocery store which may have come my way. I arrived and was inculcated quickly: we work hard here, but we play harder. Song and dance is for all the time, and costumes are never far behind. There are themes for everything, and circus magic and tradition drive everything we do. This is art and sport, grace and grit. We do not have elephants or bearded ladies.
Monkeys, neither. Sigh.

Over the next four summers I became a true Smirko, picking up juggling and acrobatic tricks, building my costume box from scraps and unlikely finds, and counting the days between the end of exams at school and the fateful day when camp, and summer, began. I watched kids arrive, new and unsure, and leave two weeks later, grander and stronger and more confident than they'd been before. They returned year after year, having grown an inch or seven and later, having become teenagers, with cracking voices or shaved legs. The pipsqueaks of yesterday were suddenly taller than me, and had become the stars of the show. As counselors we were looked up to and considered cool by the campers, but really, I was in awe of them. They spent two weeks away from home, meeting new friends and sleeping in weird dorms, working their bodies harder than most kids do in an entire summer, breaking in new skills, gaining bruises and rope burns and smiling the entire time. Somehow, after all that, they still had energy for dinner dress-up, freeze tag, capture the flag and campfire songs. I never wondered why it was next to impossible to wake them at seven every morning.

If Smirkus camp was T-ball, the Smirkus touring troupe was the major leagues. To be selected to join the tour, kids had to send an audition tape and attend a weekend try-out where they performed routines under the pressure of showing their best talents while letting the judges and directors see their personalities, showmanship and stage presence. A fraction of kids who tried out were chosen for the troupe, and a handful of veteran troupers limited the spots available, returning year after year and being selected by default. This is some serious business, and some serious pressure, when you're nine or ten years old.

At some point during every summer, the camp would get the chance to see the troupe perform nearby. We would load the kids into a big yellow bus and listen as they chattered, starstruck in anticipation, for the coming performance. The troupers were gods to the campers, celebrities within the Smirkus world. They represented their biggest dreams, having set before them the size-29 clown shoes the campers one day hoped to fill. And the truth was, I always felt a little bit the same way. I looked forward to seeing the show more than anything, excited to watch the troupers sail through the air under the big blue Smirkus tent. The show always stopped my heart and dropped my jaw. These kids were talented, and more than that, just regular old kids when the show was said and done. I felt just like my campers, wishing that I could be up there, strutting my stuff for a crowd of cheering Vermonters, with my ten-year old world stretching out before me, achieving the impossible, defying gravity and harnessing the magic of every startling moment. Maybe this was what filled the tent every night, and what brought the kids back to camp every summer.



Yesterday, Ed and I drove to Manchester, VT to see the Smirkus troupe perform their sixth show of the summer. I haven't worked at camp for three years now, but have managed to get back to visit every now and then. I miss it, all the fun and exhaustion of three months spent with hilarious and wonderful circus folk. But life gets in the way, I suppose, and now I'm on to other things. Yesterday though, I was back in the thick of it again, and I was surprised at what I found. As we walked into the tent and found our seats along the back bleachers, I opened the program to see thirty smiling, familiar faces staring back at me. They're my kids, my campers, making it in the big times. There's Lindsay, who started camp the same year I did, a shy and awkward eight year-old with one killer cartwheel. There's Book and Spencer, Maddy and Cat, laughing it up as clowns under the famed Smirkus big top. And there's me, in the back-row bleachers, clapping and laughing and smiling like an idiot, prouder than any mother duck that my ducklings are all grown up.

Wherein I Claim Likeness to John Adams

In a biography of John Adams by David McCullough:

Emphatically independent by nature, hardworking, frugal--all traits in the New England tradition--he was anything but cold and laconic as supposedly New Englanders were. He could be high-spirited and affectionate, vain, cranky, impetuous, self-absorbed, and fiercely stubborn; passionate, quick to anger, and all-forgiving; generous and entertaining. He was blessed with great courage and good humor, yet subject to spells of dispair, especially during periods of prolonged inactivity.

Ed read this passage aloud yesterday and smirked at me as if to say: See, New England lady, it's in your genes, your heritage, wether you like it or not.

And the truth is, I sort of do.

Doing My Part

I've been doing some rebelling lately, not the most of which is my morning protest which I participate in ritually on my drive to work. I often listen to Vermont Public Radio on the commute. It's subdued enough that it doesn't wreak havoc on my morning, but is full of enough news-like things and factual tidbits that I feel like I may be getting smarter, as opposed to what happens if I listen to Dave and Lana's Morning Show, for example. Anyway, at exactly the same moment every morning on VPR, they do the weather. Or I should say, this very slow-talking, long-pausing, fury-enducing craggy old man reports the weather from some museum in St. Johnsbury, and it literally drives me batty. I can never change the station fast enough, often being forced by the sheer speed of sound and the comparitive slowness of my changer finger, to listen to three or four drawn out and syllables and pauses, thereby bringing on my own mid-commute panic. This man, he drives me insane. Why can't he just talk faster? Why must he speak at the pace of drying cement? Why, oh God why, the long and painful pauses between words, and worse yet, between syllables within words? Does the VPR programming team really think that this man, this boring, tortoise-paced man, is the best choice for morning-time, when people are groggy and irritable enough as it is?

And so, in protest, at the very moment this man begins his weather shpeil, I do my civic duty and change the station. I try to time it right, not changing the station before or after he begins, but at the very moment. I imagine myself as one of many unsatisfied morning-weather-listeners, protesting in this symbolic way each morning, part of the movement of teeth-clenching, indignant station-changers. I delude myself, mostly, into thinking VPR notices, that they will take heed of this message: I will not be subjected to this indecency! I will show you, I will! Hmph!

And I will continue to do so until this man is removed from morning programming, or until the day I die, whichever comes first.

Rockwell style

The sun came out this afternoon and we zoomed up Brook Road and wandered around my old high school campus. Suddenly this time there's a whole line of trees missing from where they used to be. These were perhaps my favorite trees on campus, lining the edges of a dirt road which led to the playing fields and up to the potato patch. My jaw hung open for a second when I saw the gaping holes and strewn roots of true New England old growth, and I'm still not really sure what to think. Things there still feel so much the same, but in six years, some things have begun to change.

We left campus and headed for the swimming hole, parked the car on the side of the road and scrambled down a steep bank to a rock precipice next to a roaring waterfall and overlooking a deep pool. I jumped first, holding my breath and bracing myself for the rush of cold water. Ed followed and whooped in midair, cannonballing into the sink. The water was cold, but nothing compared to the Kennebec in March or the river on the PCT where we swam in May. Cold enough, however, that it socked the air right out of my lungs and left me gasping and straggling for a way out of the water. Some locals were there and stood, mouths agape, as we hurled ourselves over and over into the gurgling brook below. They had come to the swimming hole for how it sounded: fourth of July, hot summer daze, cigs by the water. We had come for the glory.

We came home and cooked the all-American dinner of summer champions: potato salad, baked beans and (soy) hot dogs on the grill, err, toaster over. It was a picnic fitting the occasion and we toasted our Long Trail ales to summer, to sun, and to Saved By the Bell. No, not really.

Lebanon was where the party was tonight: face-painting, dunk tank, crocheted relics of times passed. We ambled by babies in strollers with balloons and mothers with weary looks. We stood by while seven kids ran in circles playing hide-and-seek, and Ed tried to sabotage the counting like Buzz does to the oldest sister in Home Alone."23-19-8-4-36-109." Very mature. I sucker-punched him in the gut to try and make him stop, but it only made things worse.

We ate ice cream and found a spot on the lawn under the fire station wall to park our blanket and wait for the works. We were early, but soon people filled in around us and babies were screaming and mothers were whining and glow sticks and laser light-up swords abounded. The fireworks started at 9:30 to a spark and a fizzle and went out, I assure you, with a bang.

It's back to work with me tomorrow, and just in time. One more day off and I might start to think I was a kid again and sign myself up for Girl Scout camp or those swimming lessons I've been meaning to take.

Boston, Blue Jeans, Bicycles

Happy Fourth!

It's not feeling very festive around here, though. The sky is gray again after three fantastic days of sun, but I'm planning to hit the fireworks later tonight, assuming the impending thunder storm holds off long enough. There's a block party going on in Boston, where I spent the Independence Days of my childhood. Every year I watched the local kids ride by on bicycles decorated with balloons and streamers in the annual neighborhood parade, listened to the reciting of the Declaration of Independence on Mr. Johnson's victrola, and held my breath during the judging of the cherry pie contest. My parents are there again this year, but Ed and I are home in New Hampshire, having just returned from the bustling city.

We travelled south to take advantage of holiday sales and stay the night with my brother in Derry, then headed on Sunday into Boston to wander the old stomping grounds and see Jenny and Dave. The Moebuises. Woo our friends are married!

Ed and I were both in the market for new blue jeans, our old ones full of holes and desert wear, so we hit the mall and put on our game faces. We needed them, too. I must have tried on over 20 pairs of ill-fitting, oddly shaped and overpriced jeans and come up entirely empty-handed. As I walked out the door of the day's fifth dressing room, I wondered who all these jeans were built for, because it certainly wasn't me. What is the deal? Am I SO oddly shaped? Is tall and thin a new shape for designers, or what? What struck me, though, was not that I didn't find a fitting pair, but that each ill-fitting pair didn't fit in a different way! This pair too long, this pair too bulgy, this one a little short and these too baggy. It was cool, albeit frustrating, to see the facts staring me straight in the fitting room mirror: people really do come in all shapes and sizes. And some poor designer somewhere is struggling to keep up.

I finally found a pair that fit on Newbury Street on Sunday, on sale and work-appropriate. Praise the Gap, the search is over.

We met Jenny and Dave for drinks and nachos, and it made me really happy to see them. It's weird to think that two years have passed since we graduated, that they are moving into an apartment in the Fens and starting work and school in Boston, the way Ed and I had planned, that so much has happened and so little has changed since we saw each other a year ago.

We came home yesterday after driving around Lake Mascoma and bubbling over with summer excitement. The sky was so blue and the sun was so bright and we stopped at the general store by the shore and bought a soda. Everything here is meant for some story, some movie or book, some photograph album filled with the best memories of everything. I love living here; it feels like I'm finally back home. Last night after dinner we filled my bike tires with air and zoomed over the Connecticut River bridge into Vermont. We idled by the train station and through neighborhoods to the park, a river overlook, and back again. Riding bikes in summer on a holiday weekend with my Ed is the best, the best, the best.