autumn walks

Nano would like to put a bid in for the pack to move to Providence, immediately, so that he can spend all his available time in this park. Which, you know, is right across the street. Need he say more?

No, he thinks not.

homecoming

Coming to Rhode Island is always a peculiar brand of wonderful. I love my parents' home with the sort of delight that only comes after your family has lived in dozens of homes for the past few decades and you know the true meaning of settling down.

It's also - did you know this? - beautiful here. The crispness of the clean air, the wide boulevards, the riotous fall colors, the sweet wooden houses. Providence's East Side fulfills every single inch of my rigid aesthetic boundaries. It is very simply beautiful without making any challenging demands, like New York does. New York asks you to love it in spite of the grime and the grit and the damage. My parents' neighborhood embraces you with pastel wood patios and original details and ginko biloba trees.

My parents' house is all familiar furniture, airy doorways, bright glass windows. Everything is a memento, everything smells fresh and clean and in its right place. There are tiny bite marks on the coffee table - I put them there when I was a toddler. There is a painting I made, hanging in my father's study, of a palomino horse with no dimensionality. I remember the smell of the book from which I copied the horse. In my ten-year-old mind, I named her Isabella. I was sort of obsessed with horses.

I love New York. But when we come to Rhode Island, I can see some watercolor-dripped future where we live in a tiny vibrant city in an old, wide-streeted neighborhood with wooden houses and ginko biloba trees and a PT Cruiser.

I'm not sure if I've made my peace with the conflicts between loving the city and relishing this easier, prettier and slower life. Maybe one day, I will. But I guess it's Thanksgiving and we spent all day cooking in the kitchen and introducing our dog to a new place and it's been such a good day, so I'll just be thankful for both worlds.

isn't it a lovely day

I know, darlings, I've been terrible! You know, something about the magic of our vacation felt lasting, like I've been carrying this tiny piece of the Catskills around with me. Which would technically be a rock. But a really relaxing and restorative rock!

Some things I didn't photograph:

Driving through the back roads along the edge of Catskill Park, Stuart behind the wheel, listening to Gomez and taking little side streets to see if they took us up the mountains. They didn't.

Standing frozen on the dusky street near the house, watching a widdle bunny wabbit giving me the hairy eyeball as I tiptoed for a closer look.

The crowded horror of the Saugerties Garlic Festival, with three hundred stands and two hundred of them selling garlic. GARLIC! So much garlic and nothing to do.

Singing along in the dark to songs coming from the window speakers and shining the flashlight regularly into the woods checking for bears.

Trying to figure out exactly how many chipmunks were living in the high-rise chipmunk apartment building that was our retaining wall in the garden. Five? A million? No one knows.

Driving thirty minutes into the mountains following signs to "Brauhaus German Beer Hall!" only to get there and find a retired persons bus tour unloading for the, NO KIDDING, Annual SCHLOTTFEST! What's a schlott? We didn't know! We were afraid! We ran! back to the car, and sang "Love Train" as "Schlott Train" all the way back down the mountain.

Climbing, climbing, CLIMBING up the Plateau Mountain outlook trail on Friday afternoon only to give up after two hours as dusk was falling and heading back down the mountain, my shaky legs carrying me stumblingly behind the reassuring back of Stuart, because I knew he'd turn and catch me if I did stumble.

The feeling of being safe and cozy in the passenger seat as Stuart ably handled the roads, even when we didn't know where we were going and just exploring in general compass directions, like, "let's go west!" or "look, we're off my map!" Being so proud of his driving.

Pawing through the mounds of dusty books at the Woodstock Library sale, chatting across the table to each other about what we were looking for and what we were finding. Walking about with two bags of paperbacks for seven bucks.

Delightedly chowing down on hamburgers we made ourselves, on the grill, with bacon! We were so proud, grill-less city slickers that we usually are.

Fighting the random invasion of wasps into the bedroom, well, Stuart fighting them as I stood shrieking in the bathroom. Deciding that the wasps were doling out pissed-off revenge from our evacuation of their cozy home in the garden umbrella.

Getting thwarted every time we tried to do a specific activity, like visit someplace called "Cider Press and Country Store" that had no cider, or going to Hunter Mountain and having the sky ride not working yet or going to the bowling lanes and it being league night, or heading to hike Kaaterskill Falls and finding it closed. And being reminded by all this thwarting that what we really needed to be doing was the dolce far niente, which is exactly what we went back to the cottage to do.

Waking up in the cozy quiet buzz of morning, nothing planned, nothing demanding, just us. Relaxing, talking, eating and driving and laughing and, oh, oh, it was marvelous.

It was the perfect vacation. I guess I did have a lot to tell you after all.

girl from north country

Hey, so, you know how I've been a good little blogger lately and told you funny stories for days and days?

Well, sucks to your assmar, because we're upping sticks to the Catskills for five days to live life offscreen. No TV, no internet - just a little yellow cottage, a stack of books, a few board games, great food, a clawfoot tub, and our love to keep us warm. Plus a space heater, I hope.

By the time we get back, I'll be clawing my face off from internet withdrawal, but in the meanwhile, I'll enjoy unplugging from the grid.

Take care of the city for me, y'all. I'm going upcountry.

ten good ones

Ten years ago my mother and I had just moved into our townhouse in West Houston and I'd started my senior year and had my own car and sadly, Diana had passed away in Paris, and my friends took me to Guadalajara on Sam Houston Tollway for Mexican and they put a sombrero on me and sang happy birthday in Spanish.

Last night, I went to Lupe's with my brother and my parents and Stuart and they put a sombrero on me and sang to me in Spanish.

I'm glad to say I've got the same great family and the same great friends ten years later, friendship and family that's only gone from strength to strength.

I'd also say I'm proud of the past twenty seven years but those first few, I was pretty darn drooly and liked to play pretend a lot. Then I wore a lot of lavender and dated silly boys. I like to think I started firming up at seventeen into the person I am today, so this is sort of an awesome anniversary. And hey, presents are neat, too! Thanks, y'all!

So have a glass of bubbly on me! Make it a nice dry one. Check is in the mail.

vacay-shun

Big hair. Big cars. Big stores. Big sky. Big 27 tomorrow!

I'm home in Houston, obviously.

cia, nsa, wtf, stfu!

On Saturday, we woke up earlyish and headed out with Erik and Juliet to Eastern Market. I interrupt this narrative right now to tell you:

Eastern Market rocked the face right OFF my face.

We got delicious coffees at Port City Java and then wandered through the stalls, running our hands over fruit and peaking into the display cases inside. We had a delicious breakfast at Bread and Chocolate after deeming Montmartre a little lush for our wallets, and then Erik and Juliet went off on their errands while Stuart and I wandered around the insanely awesome Capitol Hill Books, the flea market, and the fruit stalls.

We bought a few delicious Asian pears and two cups of steaming hot cider for the Metro journey and then took the Metro to Gallery Place/Chinatown only to find that at 3:20, we could only go into the Spy Museum at 5PM. So we bought our tickets ($15 each!) and wandered around the area until 5, whereupon we were unceremoniously directed to a 30 minute line to take the elevator upstairs. We were, at this point, seriously rueing our decision, but all told I really enjoyed the museum - I just didn't like the feeling of being fleeced and herded.

I'm taking a brief pause to wonder if this has to do with the difference between a private museum and the more publicly-minded ones, like the Smiths and the Met. We couldn't take pictures? What, so we could buy exhibition books in the bookstore? I understand why you can't take flash pictures in some museums (damages the artwork) and why you can't photograph priceless artifacts, but most of this stuff was either replicas or cleverly-designed information stations. Why, exactly, couldn't I photograph it?

Also, there were an enormous amount of very interesting interactive aspects to the museum, mostly touch-screens that you could learn how to "train" to spy and stuff, and half of them in any given room were frozen. WTF?

But it was interesting, and informative, and cool. Then we went to Columbia Heights, to Juliet's place, where she cooked us (and our exhausted tired bodies) some awesome dinner - and then she and Erik were both very nice about the fact that Stuart and I pansily bailed on going out to a bar, preferring to drag ourselves back to Erik's place in Capitol Hill and pass out at, like, 10PM. We still, at this point, had not stooped to taking a cab, prefering to spend our money on pears and museums and wine, so we took the metro to the D6 at Union Station (which I really liked, by the way) and tiredly rode home.

So that was Saturday. Tomorrow, there will be some talk of monuments and a lot of opinions about public transit in our great nation's capitol, so DC-ites, consider yourselves warned. Also consider yourselves warned about the whole set of boring generic tourist photos, and be thankful that there are only 40, people.

Tomorrow, also, is a certain someone's birthday. Wee cake and gifts and things!

six foot eight weighs a fucking ton*

So today, we woke up at 9 AM and left Erik's place in Capitol Hill at 10:30 to much rain and empty bellies. We caught the D6 heading to Union Station and grabbed breakfast in the food court, an unsatisfying apple fritter, only to spot the adorable and wonderful-smelling Corner Bakery on our way out.

After that, the rain had calmed down enough for a leisurely walk to the Supreme Court (!) and the Library of Congress (!!). I am not ashamed to say that my first thought on viewing the Main Reading Room was that it puts my beloved Rose to shame, and the sheer breathtaking BOOKINESS of it all put a little tear in my eye. Actual tears, people.

Of course we went to the Air and Space after that, which regressed Stuart about twelve years until I was suddenly married to a geeky plane-obsessed teenager. LOVES. The walk from the LOC was drenching and I kept my chirpiness until we were halfway there and then I got very, very quietly miserable. A bite at the food court (! another FOOD COURT) solved it, without actually sating any of my Good Food Requirements in life. Boston Market, how bleh you can be.

The museum rocked. And the LOC rocked. I've been a little whelmed by the whole Capitol/Mall area simply because in bad weather, it's just huge buildings with huge distances between them - I'm looking forward to hitting the streets for dinner and wine tonight and seeing cuter, more stroll-conducive neighborhoods tonight.

Tomorrow? Eastern Market for breakfast and shopping and then the Spy Museum, baby.

Also: so many pictures that will bore you. Yay for generic tourism.

* what I've been humming in my head all day.

patriotic

We're leaving for D.C. tonight, to spend three days at Erik's place, exploring Our Nation's Capital And Other Capitalized Concepts As Well (like Drinking and Walking and Stuff).

I'm not sure what it says about my frame of mind - i.e. out of it - that this was all I could think to tell you, and basically what I'm really doing is asking for ideas of what you absolutely love to do in D.C., cannot resist doing in D.C., public acts of lewdness excepted.

Sitting in Lincoln's lap, however, is an acceptable suggestion.

weekending

This weekend was worth the nearly-six-hour bus trip on Friday evening and the returnus interruptus of Sunday. As one of my birthday gifts, my parents sent Stuart and I to Gloucester (GLOU-cester! if I'm being irritating), Massachusetts, to go out on the Hurricane II, a whale-watching boat. It was a four hour trip and you may roll your eyes at my/our geekiness, but it's my second trip to the Stellwagen Bank to watch the humpbacks do their 40-ton thing.

It was awesome. I'm obviously married to the right person because Stuart thought it was awesome, too. We saw about 20 different humpbacks, one of them a calf, and watched them nap and play on the surface. Stuart even saw one of them breaching, but I missed it.

From four hours on the boat in Gloucester, we popped over to Rockport to get some coffee and wander along the exceedingly cute wharf - all these little shops selling knick-knacks and "local art". Gloucester was more a working town, with a cute but functional Main Street, but Rockport was clearly more touristy. I loved the houses in Rockport though, and Stuart might actually have gotten sick of me nearly crashing the car on Route 128 to slow down and look at them.

Then, with only one purchase from the kitschy wharf (delicious apple strudel to take home to my parents), we went home and relaxed over dinner with my parents, waking up the next day to barbeque with them in honor of me! Turning 26! TOMORROW! There was obviously cake.

There will be more cake tomorrow, when I drag all my friends to a cute little bistro in Queens to celebrate with me and eat strawberry shortcake, yes oh yes, because it's my birthday. Perhaps there will come an age where a whole day dedicated to feeling special and important topped off with cake will cease to excite me, but I hope I never get to that age. Wait, no, that sounds tragic - I hope I sail blissfully by the point where people stop caring about birthdays.

I love birthdays! So I'll be 26 tomorrow. Isn't that neat?

Unrelated to how neat my birthday is (AND IT IS), I get this strange sort of nostalgia every time we visit New England. Rhode Island counts too, of course, but going to Providence is all about visiting my parents and so my delight in the town is tied up in them. But we've been three times now - once, our honeymoon in Bar Harbor, last fall for camping in the Berkshires, and now to Cape Ann - and I'm not sure I can describe how happy the entire region makes me. Not so much the big cities (Boston, I'm looking at YOU) but the smaller towns and the coast and the mountains and the people and the seasons. I love it, love it, love it.

Who knows if we'll ever leave the city. I mean, we love it here, we have a home and a family of friends and good jobs. Even for someone like me, who's never imagined spending her whole life anywhere, I can see myself never leaving New York City.

But if we did, I hope it'd be for someplace like New England.

the charming westport motel for your convenience

$70 bucks a night. $32.95 if you want the room for 4 hours or less, between the convenient hours of 9AM and 4PM. And right off I-95, so when you've been stuck on an almost-immobile freeway for two hours, you can finally give up on ever making it back to the city in time to get a decent night's rest for work tomorrow.

Not that I work in the morning, mind. I live the life of eating bon-bons and ready trashy novels, obviously. But with the clock creeping towards midnight, we gave up and crawled into the damp open arms of the Westport Motel, strip-mall-driveup-stylee. It was, hands down, the dingiest motel I've ever stayed in that hasn't resulted in an enormous cockroach climbing across my face in the middle of the night. Not that I wasn't half-expecting it, mind.

So, I-95, you have defeated us yet again. I learned there's nothing like sleeping in a room that smells exactly like my favorite high school boyfriend's - years of stale cigarette smoke - to make waking up a singularly bizarre experience.

Of, course, Stuart one-upped me here. He aptly described our sheets as being old enough to vote.

weekending

It felt like summer this weekend, of which I'm glad. I spend too much time in summer moaning about the heat of summer when really, I should switch modes so that I enjoy it like some plant lapping up the sun.

Stuart and I went home to Rhode Island for Father's Day and if I'd taken the camera - if I hadn't just fled our hot apartment on Friday with nothing but a weekend bag and a cranky mood - I could maybe show you how my parent's house was the perfect place to be this weekend. We woke up late on Saturday and had breakfast while watching the unbelievable Ghana-Czech game (1:09 in, first goal to Ghana!) and then we lazed about and I did laundry and sat in the fragrant shaded garden sipping water with my mom and let my hair dry by hanging it over the back of the comfy chair.

We curled up into the TV room to watch the USA game while dad went to the store for dinner and man, was that game a bloodbath. After the game Stuart and I jumped in dad's truck and went to Swan Point Cemetery (so gorgeous) for Stuart to practice his driving. Is that weird? Apparently, everyone in Providence does that and it's one of the oldest, biggest cemeteries around - the back end of it is quiet and empty on a Saturday afternoon and the curved roads are perfect for driving practice. When we got back, my parents and I flitted around getting dinner ready - steaks and hash browns and salad and wine - and after dinner, we watched the meerkats on Animal Planet (Stuart: "Shouldn't the little ones be meerkittens?"). Bedtime got stretched back because I couldn't stop reading Scott Westerfeld's Pretties until I finished it, ditto for Stuart and The Gods Themselves. It's so nice to fall asleep right after finishing a gripping book.

We woke up Sunday, early, and jumped in the car to drive over to Seekonk to pick up the wicked cool Auto-Wrench I had reserved online from Lowe's for dad. All the cool dads have those, they're flying off the shelves. A special stop at McD's for dad's favorite bad indulgence - sausage biscuits - and we were home.

By the time we left RI at 4PM, we were stuffed with saganaki and fresh corn and watermelon, and the IKEA stop went well - new organizational tools for the office, whee!

Doesn't that all sound boring? That was my weekend. But it felt so good, so relaxing, all the rush and hurry of my city week just drained out of me. My parents' house is this oasis of neat and comfortable calm and their company buoys me up. I wish they lived closer, I wish I had a car and I love my city life and the subways and the heat and the calamitous fun but this weekend, a little, I wish I lived someplace where it was easier to remember what's great about summer. Fresh corn, flip-flops on grass, afternoon rests on cool wide sofas, the sparkling bay blinking through the trees as you turn onto a quiet boulevard in the air-conditioned car ... I will just have to make all those things happen for me here.

Except the car part. After two hours approaching the Trib in traffic last night with a seriously full bladder, I don't need the car much.

island time

Click here to see the whole set of pictures from our trip.

Stories, as always, to follow.

cmere you little... ATCHOO

There were two evil demons on our flight home yesterday and no, I don't watch too much Buffy. One was this little hellion scream-demon in the shape of a three year old child which, if you're counting, is way too old to still be excused from SCREAMING THE ENTIRE FLIGHT, and by the way? In case you feel like sympathizing with him? Had a MULLET.

The second was this Englishman who just set his entire nation back about two billion points for being the rudest human being I have ever wanted to poison slowly with bleach - his pile of electronics which spilled into the aisle actually tripped a moderately old lady flat on her face and all he grunted was "jeez, SORRY" when everyone gasped with concern, as he went back to his movie. He also stretched out to sleep over both his wife AND child, as they lay trapped in their seats under his bulk.

I tell you this by way of blaming both the Hellion and the Asshole for the cold I got on the plane. The terrible no-good screaming-throat snotty-nose cold that's knocked me for six and people, I don't GET sick. I had to call in sick this morning which broke my hard-working little heart (ahem) because nothing looks more sketchy than calling in sick the day after a vacation, but I figure once I tell them about Hellion and the Beast they'll forgive me.

Oh, and England was great, thanks.

bugger this for a lark, the 2006 edition

We're off to the Isle of Wight today. I keep referring to it as "going home to England" because it's Stuart's home and in a way, it feels like mine, too - or one of them. My gorgeous gracious mother-in-law is celebrating a birthday and we'll be there to celebrate it with her, in the garden with friends and barbeque and wine.

I find it amusing that we're skipping London entirely this time. On the way in, we get a ride from the always brilliant Dave from Heathrow down to Southampton where we catch the ferry to the island. On the way back, we're riding the rails to the home of the darling Uborkites to spend our last night with them, before catching a coach from Reading to Heathrow. Skipping London completely! This is unthinkable to 20-year-old me, who adored London and couldn't really see the merit of visiting the rest of England. Now, I feel like I've seen enough of London and love visiting England for the people - and the peace and quiet of the relative country.

I didn't do a packing spreadsheet this time, but I did write down notes about what I was taking and our suitcase is meticulously packed on the floor of our bedroom. Tickets and passports and documents galore are all ready, as is a ziploc bag full of cables and chargers. Last time, there were so many petit disasters surrounding the trip:

1. Have BA international flights canceled because of strike at Heathrow, fly Newark-Detroit-Amsterdam-UK with 2 hours notice to be at the airport in Newark.
2. Stupidly nearly lose Most Important Document Ever, cause mayhem and heartache to everyone around us, mostly my dad who was on the receiving end of some very panicked UK-US cell phone calls from the Portsmouth ferry terminal.
3. Okay, that's only 2 petit disasters but damn, they were big enough.

This time, I'm determined that everything within my control (I'm looking at you, AIRPLANE) will be under control. We're packed well, we're organized well, we've printed out everything we need, and we're going to travel in style, not chaos.

So off we go to England. I am, as they say, chuffed. See you darlings when I land stateside again.

eleuthera means freedom

I've finally spent some quality time with Photoshop and flickr and if you click on the screenshot above, it'll take you to a sixty-picture set that documents our three days in paradise. I'd like to say that going to the Bahamas - and specifically Eleuthera - was the best thing we did all December. It'll have to come in as a close second*. But now in the cold of winter, on the last day of 2005, even knowing that we'll have to work twice as hard to save for our next vacation, looking at these pictures reminded me it was worth it.

We ate delicious food, spent hours upon hours snorkeling happily in the calm waters, walked out onto the patio at seven AM to greet the birds and the sun and the morning, played cards and drank wine and rum and watched the stars at night, drove on whatever side of the road we felt like because there were so few cars, looked fruitlessly (get it?) for Eleuthera's famed pineapples. I can honestly say that was the only disappointment on the island. Other than that, it was picture perfect.

And even though our last day and night was tinged with falls off horses, allergic bug bites, a disappointing Hilton (!!) and a very bad night's sleep, if that's the price we had to pay for those three glorious days on Eleuthera, we bore it as best we could.

I already want to go back and snorkel some more next year. Enjoy the pictures.

* The other great thing I did this month involved paperwork and crossed fingers.

driving, Nick's, China, and sundry

All in all it was not-too-bad of a drive back to New York. Really, we were driving first to Newark to drop my brother off at the airport, then back to Astoria. I was glad to have my dad drive us back last night because it meant that we got a trip to Nick's in Forest Hills for arguably the best pizza you've probably never bothered to try. My dad, long skeptical of my taste in restaurants, has experienced a small renaissance in faith with me, after we took him and my mother to Nick's then Agnanti's (best Greek in Astoria) on two consecutive visits. My daughterly need for approval is fat and contented.

We polished off the end of Izzard's Definite Article ("Dear Paul bracket saint apparently, just fuck off! Love and kisses, the Corinthians."), which my dad hadn't seen, and I went to bed while Stuart lovingly futzed with installing Tiger on his iMac, to prepare it to receive his glorious new iPod. Oh, we are such an iFamily.

But possibly one of my favourite moments of yesterday happened in the car proper. My father and I had been goodnaturedly arguing about China, their human-rights record, and the question of US-China relations as it pertains to that record. We had some Cuba and Russia thrown in as examples when Stuart woke up and the following exchange happened.

Me: "I'm willing to negotiate with you on the point of market forces being used to drive information and openness into China's economy, but I'm still uncomfortable with the adoption market question."
Stuart, just waking up: "Whoa. What'd I miss? How long have I been asleep?"

Oh, I also enjoyed my hot cocoa from the Starbucks at exit 88. So, all in all, not a bad day.

going where the weather suits my clothes

It may not look like the very best picture of Eleuthera. It's not. But for some reason, it's everything I'm looking forward to for the next five days - driving down narrow island roads, oceans to either side of us, and a breeze.

See you next week.

(photo from statico.)

son of a SON OF A BITCH*

I'll tell you what's funny. What's funny is that because of my first serious boyfriend, I totally abhor Jimmy Buffet. The guy seriously worshipped Buffet, and it made me hate everything about him. He - the boyfriend, not Jimmy Buffet - named his car after Buffet's daughter. He named his dog JB. He liked to talk about how one day he'd give it all up and sail around the Caribbean like some weird cross between Buffet himself and Tom Cruise in Cocktails. He wore hawaiian shirts like they were ever a good idea.

It made me HATE JIMMY BUFFET by extension. I still think Parrotheads are mentally disturbed, obsessed with a man that's not actually as much of a "free-spirit" as they seem desperately to believe he is. Do we even KNOW if Buffet was ever any kind of sailor, ever? Or did anything but visit Key West that one time and write crappy songs about it, forever to be played in hotel bars anywhere near a beach, but otherwise with no inherent musical VALUE whatsoever? The ex-boyfriend, apparently, is still a Parrothead. And I am still a Jimmy Buffet hater. But that's not what's funny.

What's funny is that I'm going on vacation in a month to the very place that Cheeseburger in Paradise was apparently born.

Bring on the endless renditions of Margaritaville. With tinny drums. And a Parrothead on the mike, living the "dream". If a rash of Buffet is what it takes to get a slice of paradise in Eleuthera, AHOY ME HEARTIES, I'm in.

* ten points and a shaker of salt to anyone who knows what this is referring to.

rainbird

Bugger this for a lark, we're off to Florida.

gone fishin' (adventures in camping, part two)

When little kids are toying with the notion of running away to join the circus or the dot-com boom or whatever, they have the almost genetically ingrained tradition of tying the cloth satchel to the stick, hoisting the stick over their shoulders, and soldiering bravely into the unknown.

It was sort of like that when we left our cozy, rain-washed tent on Sunday morning. We'd puttered about after breakfast, washing the dishes and rearranging the wet/dry stuff in and out of our tent. I'd lifted the heavy tarpaulin off the sides of the tent to air both rooms out, but we let it all down again before we left. Stuart had prepped and adjusted our rods and gotten the tackle ready. And off we went, rods on shoulders and water bottle in backpack and a small lunch and everything.

Well, we didn't catch much for the first three hours, but I learned how to cast out decently far and got far too much enjoyment from reeling back in to really patiently catch fish. We'd found a tiny rock outcropping from which to fish, along the southeast perimeter of the small lake, and after not catching anything there for three hours we decided to move to the less picturesque beach where the locals were fishing.

I'd gone on a walk with my camera, whistling "You Are My Sunshine" and, morbidly, "Teddy Bear Picnic", so that the bears knew where I was. I imagined the bears snugly watching television in their RVs, hearing my whistling and rolling their eyes, thinking, crap, we've got to go be BEARY now. After I misstepped and slipped in a tiny creek , though, and my already crapping-out hiking boots got even wetter, it was time to drag Stuart to the habitated part of the lake.

Actually, they called it a pond but it seemed a lot bigger than the ponds I've known, so I'm calling it a lake.

After another half-hour of Stuart's fishing and my reading at the picnic tables, we decided to take a break and venture into town to find a bait-and-tackle shop and maybe a hot cocoa or two. The stop at Ed's Variety Store yielded the following pleasant exchange:

"Where's the nearest bait-and-tackle place that might be open today?"
"Oh, probably Walmart."

So with a laugh and a nod in the direction of evil yet convenient megachains, we followed their directions to the as-unassuming-as-possible North Adams Walmart, where I got a hot cocoa from Dunkin Donuts and two camp chairs, while Stuart bought some heavier-duty bobs and weights and a mysterious spray meant to be like crack for trout.

I dropped him off at the lake and meandered back to the tent to make us two cups of warm tea in the empty Dunkin Donuts cups. See? Renewing resources, I thought. It was a little stressful lighting the camping stove by myself because I am crippled with fear by almost anything requiring small, volatile tanks of gas, and flames. So I held an oven mitt over my face while I lit it, because damn, yo, they can replace arm skin but I like my face, thanks. My neurotic precautions were unnecessary and I made two delightful cups of tea, got back into the truck which we'd resigned ourselves to finding incredibly convenient to have around, and drove to the lake.

Once there, I settled into the camp chair and three sweaters, while Stuart proceeded to catch sunfish after tiny, adorable sunfish, which he didn't have the heart to kill and grill, so he slid them back into the water, somewhat cheerfully exasperated by the coy trout closer to the center of the lake, beyond the reach of his casting. Me, I even caught a sunfish, which means those little buggers were just gagging to get hooked.

When I started to whine about being cold, Stuart reluctantly gave in and we headed back to the tent to build a fire in the evening gloam and roast hot dogs, covering them in the packets of condiments I'd been stealing at every convenience store along the way. We told each other stories, asking questions about each others' lives that didn't know yet ("what's the worst trouble you've ever gotten into?" "ever cheated in school?" "best camping story", etc), and then sang our childhood songs while roasting marshmallows and polishing off the shiraz. My feet, which had been perpetually damp since we got there (trench foot, ahoy!) were toasted and warm and that may have been another pinnacle of the trip.

At bedtime, we put out the fire in the sprinkling rain, bagged our trash and put it neatly in the car, and snuggled down with books and flashlights until sleep stole over us both.

totally not the hilton (adventures in camping, part one)

This weekend I went to the Berkshires with Stuart, the "berk" part standing for "ber(ser)k" because it was pouring rain from Rhode Island when we left with a truck full of camping gear, dumping buckets all 3 hours to Savoy Mountain, and absolutely pissing it down when we arrived at our campsite.

Which wasn't even our original campsite. That one, beautifully situated right under an apple tree though it was, looked like the very swimming pool for us to drown in. So we found another site that looked sturdy and spacious enough to hold us, the car, and the canoe we'd have to use to leave after the floods, and Stuart and I pitched our tent.

Which was an insane experience all its own. Two people, in the pounding rain, both wearing rain slickers with hoods, yelling to be heard in the noise, trying to raise, hoist, and peg a tent. I started crying a little right then because it was ruining his birthday weekend, all this rain, it would be ruined and we'd have to hole up at a motel, and I cried because I wanted it to be perfect. But you couldn't tell, couldn't really see the difference between tears and raindrops, so I stopped crying. We somehow got the tent up, we somehow dragged the tarp over it, and threw ourselves into the front room to strip down before entering the sacred and dry second room. It felt safe and warm in there, comparatively.

We passed the time with salami and cheese sandwiches, and precariously made cups of tea, using our camping stove as close to the entrance of the front room as Stuart dared light it. We played Uno, read our books (Heller for Stuart, Penelope Lively for me) and flashed the maglites through the thin tent walls, trying to scare off invisible bears.

"What about psycho killers!" I woke up with a start and asked him. I hadn't thought about the killers, the machete-wielding lunatics that could be roaming around in droves outside our little tent.

And in the morning, when I woke up and woke Stuart up, there was no rain, no bears, and no psycho-killers. There was only the dripping from the trees and the leaves standing out in yellow and red on our blue tarp. We'd survived the first night, and it wasn't raining. After twelve hours and dire predictions and the quiet belief that we would, in fact, have to throw in the soggy towel and up-sticks to a motel, we were still there.

We had baked beans and cheese on toast for breakfast, and listened to the drip-dry forest around us. That may have been the best moment of the entire trip, because it wasn't raining and there was tea and toast.

Stay tuned tomorrow for stories of peeing naked, tiny sunfish, whistling for bears, and one big Walmart.

unbearable

Last night we watched the documentary Grizzly Man, you know, just to give my nightmares that extra fanged, drooling-with-hunger oomph they really needed. Nothing says "camping trip!" like carniverous, desperate Grizzlies. Except maybe carniverous, desperate Grizzlies that are holding signs pointing into their lairs that say in childish handwriting, "camping trip!"

Luckily, though, I seem to have hit upon the solution to all my bear woes. No, it's not endless bear puns like "it might make me lose my bearing!" or "can you just grin and bear it?" It's better than that. It's this:

That's Bow Bear, people. Thus named back in the year 1983 for the enormous yellow bow around his neck and because I was three. The bear may have a somewhat girly name and I may have clothed him strictly in dresses for the first six years of his life, but I'm quite sure he can hold his own against a black bear foraging for my tender human flesh.

The way it'll go is this. We'll put Bow Bear outside the tent each night, to stare dilligently and ferociously into the dark woods. A black bear will undoubtedly come crashing through the brush to eat me whole. It will see Bow Bear sitting calmly at our tent door.

Wild bear: "Oh! I'm sorry, I thought this one was... oh, well, have you made reservations?"
Bow Bear: "...."
Wild bear: "Really. WELL. Citysearch assured me, well, honestly, I just don't know, is there any way..?"
Bow Bear: "...."
Wild bear: "This is certainly awkward. I would think, perhaps... no?"
Bow Bear: "....!"
Wild bear: "Fair enough, old chap. I'll just be... I'm.. no harm done, just, going to..."
Wild bear runs off, embarassed and a little confused.

See? I'm sure it'll work just as well as those bells you're all talking about.

camping and cookouts and bears

Stuart's birthday and mine share the similarly awesome attribute of falling around two classic American holidays - mine around Labor Day and his around Columbus Day. To celebrate his birthday actually being on Columbus Day this year, we decided to plan our first American camping trip together.

After grappling with the monster that is the New York state parks department website and information (why, Catskills? why do you have no listed campgrounds? huh?), we settled on camping in Massachusetts' beautiful Berkshires. All the campgrounds we had in mind were only two hours and change from my parent's house in Rhode Island, and they all looked beautiful.

I can now say that after wrestling with reserveamerica.com for the better part of the afternoon and pestering rangers' offices with questions, we've settled on Savoy Mountain State Forest. We've reserved a campsite which the ranger assures me is mostly secluded and with a beautiful hillside view, ringed with old apple trees.

We've got a borrowed tent promise, we've ordered the extra-long sleeping bag for Stuart, we've ascertained what kind of firepit is on site, and whether we can get a three-day fishing license, and now basically all that's left for me to do is WORRY ABOUT BEARS. I will accomplish this by dividing the task into three parts.

1. Worrying about bears mauling us to death in our tent.
2. Worrying about bears swimming out into the pond and mauling us to death in our canoe.
3. Worrying about bears mauling us to death on a forest pathway.

Basically, the constants are Mauling, Bears, and Death. Any tips?

you can't leave home again

I'm going to tell you a story in the form of a timeline, with the real point at the end which is almost totally unrelated to the timeline. Bear with me.

Friday, August 19th, 2005

7:10pm, Ryde Ferry Terminal - tearful goodbyes with Katina and Keith, Stuart's parents. In lieu of anything useful to say in the face of so much heartbreak, I say several times that we'll be back at Christmas, it won't be too long, just three months.

7:20pm, Wightlink Ferry - as the boat is pulling away from IoW, I casually ask Stuart if he has the Advanced Parole, which is the document that is the only reason we were able to leave the US before his Permanent Resident Interview and other things that start with capital letter of Importance.

7:20:02pm - Stuart blinks and goes, "AP?"

7:20:03 to 7:30pm - I proceed to fucking totally and completely lose my fucking shit as Stuart frantically searches through his bag over and over again, saying that he'd taken it out over the course of the week and didn't remember where he'd put it or whether he'd put it back into anything we were carrying with us.

7:35pm - We land at Portsmouth, me crying like I simply cannot stop crying, Stuart grim-faced and totally freaking out about both the lost document and his wife who is now a small puddle on the deck of the ferry indistinguishable from the seawater.

7:40 to 7:44pm - I proceed to simultaneously freak out, rip apart our suitcase and call my dad on my dwindling-powered cell phone to tell him to call the INS and ask what the ramifications of this are. I already know the ramifications - without that document, Stuart cannot come back into the country unless they give us a break and acknowledge that they did grant it to us, otherwise he is seen as having abandoning his case progress and OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK HELP. Stuart is meanwhile on the payphone desperately trying to get in touch with his parents to tell them to turn around, come back to Ryde, pick us up so we can go home and tear the bedroom apart and freak out some more. It was a hectic four minutes.

7:45pm - we get on the next island-bound ferry and give the man 17GBP for a two same-day return tickets, and he assures us that we'd only have to pay a couple pounds extra for a morning ferry if needs be. Actually, he totally fucking up and LIED and we found out back on the island that it would cost us another 11 pounds to take the morning ferry and I swear, I hate ferry monopolies so much, SO FUCKING MUCH, anyway whatever.

7:50-7:55pm - I continue to freak out and cry. Stuart asks me to stop crying or else he's going to lose it. I try to stop crying. I am functioning on the principle that if 1. you don't have something and 2. you don't know where it is, then 3. there's no reason it's not completely lost to you forever. This is a depressing ideology. Stuart worries that I am mad at him. I tell him with tears streaming down my face that if we just find this goddamned thing, I won't ever care, I won't ever be mad, I just want to find it.

7:56pm - I'm freaking out to Stuart that he'd thrown it away with the NYT that had been in his bag. He says, "but I didn't throw the Times away! It was on the dresser! And now it's just in the bin, IN the bedroom!" And suddenly the heavens part. A mental picture snaps into my head, almost unbidden, to my mind: something fell behind the dresser a few days before. Something that had been on top of the newspaper. Something I'd just assumed was a stupid flyer or leaflet. SOMETHING PAPER, SOMETHING THAT HAD BEEN THE AP. OH MY GOD IT'S BEHIND THE DRESSER. I cry again, just out of relief, and because it's become something of a habit for the last 20 minutes.

8:00pm to 9:30pm - we land in Ryde and spend the next hour and a half trying to get through to Stuart's family to have someone come pick us up and look behind the dresser. Meanwhile, dad has confirmed the bad news, that the INS officer had said our "best shot" would be to just fly to JFK as planned and put ourselves at the mercy of the INS officers there, riding on the theory that at least they'd only detain Stuart for 24 hours which would be long enough to try and solve the problem. Heh. DETAINED. I cry out of relief again, and hope to a god I don't even believe in that I'm right, that it's behind the dresser. I try to stop crying when Stuart brings me the world's shittiest hot cocoa from the vending machine. He says, "I'm such a twerp." To make him feel better, and to prove solidarity, and because I'M THE ONE THAT LET THE DAMN THING FALL BEHIND THE DRESSER, I say, "well, then I'm missus Twerp." And I am.

9:30pm - Keith shows up at the terminal, having been told by Stuart's sister (who was the only person we'd managed to locate) that we'd lost something and needed fetching. Keith was a hero about it, not even berating Stuart and I even further for our stupidity, just offering us a small travel-document case that was identical to the one he and Katina use to travel. I cry just from the relief of the bear hug he gave me when he picks us up. When I tell my dad it's been found, he tells me I'd better find the next Greek Orthodox church and say several prayers to several saints for Stuart's and my bafflingly continuous good luck in the face of our own stupidity. The next day I will drunkenly charge Jen with this task. I hope thankfulness prayers work by indirect lines.

9:45pm - We walk into the house, knowing that Katina has managed to locate the paper behind the dresser, and find her sitting in the kitchen looking tired but happy to see us again. My face must have said how mortified and awful I felt, because the first thing Katina says is, after a pause, "Merry... christmas".

9:45- to 10:30pm - Katina, Stuart, Keith and I laugh our heads off about how funny this is, how ridiculous it was, how fantastic family is. We tuck in for the night after a much-needed glass of wine. When getting into bed, Stuart finds Bow Bear. Seems we didn't realize we'd come home for more than just the papers.

Saturday, August 20th, 2005

7:15am - exactly 12 hours later, we board the same ferry to Portsmouth. We see the same ticketing agent, who does a double take at this family that can't seem to get it right the first time. There are a few less tears, there are a few more laughs, and the second goodbye goes down a little better than the first.

The moral of the story isn't that we now know how to carry documents around, or even that I managed to get my teddy bear the second time around. It's that Katina said Merry Christmas and made me laugh for the first time in hours, and family is always good to come home to. Twice.

vectis

It's hard to describe the Isle of Wight. When Stuart and I first met, I think he played it down a bit. Perhaps all natives do. Is it because it's unremarkable to them? That can't be it, because as we drove through the west side of the island and I'd gasped my delight at one more stunning vista, I asked Stuart and his friends, "You know how lucky you are to call this beautiful place home?" and they all said yes.

So perhaps it's because it's their little gem, their little secret paradise of Englishness. When Sharon and I were lazily discussing where the bridge to the mainland could feasibly be built, at the end of the conversation, I said, "well, economic and other reasons aside, I wouldn't want a fixed link if I were an islander because I'd just be selfish. I'd want to keep this place to myself." She smiled and agreed and perhaps I sold myself to her in that moment, to her and Dave and Stuart, as understanding a little bit about the quiet charm of the island.

I can't wrap my brain around the difference between the island's physical size and the size of the feeling it imparts. It's only thirteen miles by twenty. That's smaller than one neighborhood in Houston, about the size of Queens. Yet there are probably about a hundred little towns. The roads almost never go in a straight line, thanks to the majestic downs that intersect the island. The attitude and atmosphere from the southern tip to West Wight to Cowes to Newport changes almost completely.

Even though it's small in size, it's not small in spirit. It feels not just like an island, but like its own country. We went to explore Carisbrooke castle and when we got there early, we tromped down into town to buy breakfast of bread and cheese and coffee. When we got back to the top of the hill with our spread, we sat down and through a break in the trees could see the valley below with Carisbrooke town nestled right in. It could have been Switzerland or Austria, with its open-air freshness and quaint quiet.

The bus took us careening across the southern end of the island where the downs rise up from the cliffs and the cliffs drop down to the sea. It could have been the north of France, or Canada, in the majestic harmont between cliffs, downs, and choppy grey sea. But it wasn't. It was this tiny island, this thirteen-by-twenty stretch of England that feels at once so English and yet so unique, so impenetrably island-cultured that people can't help but refer to the land across the Solent almost as if it were a foreign world.

I am trying and failing to capture what it feels like to be in a place so familiarly friendly and pleasant, and yet so proudly different and remote. And I don't mean remote in the sense of unconnectedness, I mean remote in the sense of removed, unlike, other-than. And I, being someone that has always lived under a certain standard of that remoteness, have fallen in love with this island. I loved every bend in every road. I had a peculiar connection and fascination with the sheep. And my American pronunciation and grammar, which I have so proudly and stubbornly clung to when visiting other parts of England, melted away a little. I had no problem asking Stuart to get me a jumper from upstairs, asking Katina if she wanted us to stop in the newsagents, putting my bags in the boot. I didn't mind bending my ball-busting, charge-aheadness to the slower, more rocking gait of this bit of rock. I relished every minute of being foreign because it didn't feel like I didn't belong.

That's what it is, I think. Somehow and unpredictably, the land I stood on led me to feel like there was something in it that I could belong to. Not a house or a photograph, but an understanding. Perhaps it's that age-old kindred with your beloved's homeland. But perhaps there's just something I understood about the island, something I appreciated, something that meant it became a place much larger than just pensioners or regattas, just island-roads or esplanades. It really is its own, enormous, splendid place.