Today officially starts Summer Vacation for the kids...now if someone would just tell Mother Nature that as of June 21st she's supposed to turn the knob on the weather machine to 'sunshine'...

I'm on vacation as of two p.m. today. Naturally, we've got a few things planned and seeing as it's supposed to be Summer at this point...everything involves the outdoors.

*Loud Sigh*

There are slugs on the deck. And the pile of sand that has to be wheelbarrowed down to the beach? Waterlogged and really, really HEAVY. I now have a special pair of always wet sneakers to take the dog out because the lawn is long (can't be mowed until it's at least a little bit dry) and yes, always wet sneakers are every bit as gross as they sound but I figure better to have one pair of wet sneakers than 5 pairs.

*Looks out window*

I suppose light grey skies are better than dark grey, right? Right?

And the gloves and scarf I have stashed in the car for hockey...at least I don't need them outside the rink. So that's something...

I haven't had to wash the car for a month.

Ummm...

Ladies, I'm grasping here, to find the positive... can you tell? Hard to find the silver lining in a bunch of clouds that are all the same damned color.

Oink freaking oink

So, have you all been hearing much about the Swine/H1N1 virus thing? No? Yeah, well why is that? Think it's gone?

It so isn't.

Dudes, there are over 100 sick kids in my girl's school. They've let us know about 11 confirmed cases. But there were 400 kids absent today. FOUR HUNDRED. Out of about 580ish. Most of these were for precautionary reasons - or simply because it was grey and raining and who doesn't just want to roll over and play a little hooky on a day like this? Or on days like these since it's been raining for about 822 days now. But I digress.

Was my girl there? You bet. They had the school professionally cleaned over the weekend, she has NO symptoms and so she went.

Apparently there were tears - students and teachers alike, there are huge budget issues, layoffs are imminent and the feeling of having the school year cut short - even by two measly days - has left everyone feeling out of sorts and all unfinishedlike. My girl is heartbroken that she didn't get a chance to say good-bye to a special needs aide that is assigned to one of her best friends. Heartbroken.

I was planning on making cookies for end of the year presents...but I can't imagine wanting homemade treats during Germfest 2009. So tomorrow, while my babe accompanies me to work she is going to make some pictures and we'll scan them and email them off. Kind of blase but I know it'll make her feel better.

Only two more days of rain in the forecast...so I'm holding off on finishing the ark. At this point the only reason the pigs would be invited is to ensure a lifetime supply of bacon and ham, the virus ridden bastards.

Enjoyable

1. Sims 3. Waste of time? Quite possibly. Are there better ways to kill an hour while my husband watches Ax Men? I think not.
2. The new (to him) boat is in heavy rotation these days. This was the first time he rowed by himself to the other side of the pond. They were hunting for minnows, which they found. They also grabbed a glop of frog eggs, which turned out to be toad eggs. We now have two minnows and 35 tadpoles in our aquarium. 3. Love this gum. And no, I don't eat the wrapper.4. I was so sure that I wouldn't really like this series. A western? In space? Yes and yes. What this guy did for vampires? He does even better for space cowboy types.

May 21st

See now in real life...my birthday is long gone. But on the blog? It was only three short posts ago. I sometimes like how that works.

My requests were simple. It was to be the four of us, clam strips and ocean. The weather was beautiful and I hit the trifecta - I got all three.

We headed here for dinner. Based on years of driving by on my way to and from the beach and the hugely long lines I've seen - I thought we'd give it a try. It's not much of a website, but I suppose I'd rather have them perfecting the fried clam than learning html and java.

Our view:No vibrating, flashing beeper thingy here. Just a number. On a rock.

The girlie and I? Thought it was delish - the clam cakes (fritters, really) were to die for. The menfolk, however? Not as impressed with their choices. My husband kept looking longingly at the plates of all you can eat crab legs that kept passing by our table. Ah, well - live and learn.

Now, it was downright hot at home but in Newport? Um, TWENTY degrees cooler. Actually not cooler....COLDER. Still though, I thought we'd hit up the sea glass beach before heading home. It was high tide and we pretty much struck out but there were jetties to climb and periwinkles to rescue. "You want me to go again? Because I can go again. Did you cut my head off? Are my feet in the picture? Because I can jump again, y'know. If you need me too. Do you need me to? Just get one more jump. Just in case."Not a problem, kiddo. I'll take a thousand more of these if you want me to.

In summary? Fantastic way to spend my evening.

And as a bonus? We got to come home my other birthday present:

This soccer position has a name

It's called Butt to the Gut.

It's one of her specialties. Which is better than her positioning when she started dome soccer with names the other team's parents would yell out like "Hey, wasn't that a hip check?" and "ELBOW!" Mama didn't take photos of those.

Really, this kid oughta be on the ice but soccer's only a few hundred bucks while hockey is much, MUCH more. Plus she's not much of a skater and frankly, the money for two to play? Yikes.

She's also learned that if she puts her forearm out and braces it and runs through people without shoving her arm forward? That's perfectly fine. In fact, it's called a forearm shiver. And her coaches LOVE it.

Now, obviously she's not knocking everyone flat on their collective asses but she gets the ball up the boards like nobody's business.

This next move though? I don't have a name for this one...

Fore!

I know it's no secret that I totally love where I live. I mean, the exact location of where I live - on the pond. It also happens to be in a fairly small town - two stoplights, very sketchy cell phone coverage and no grocery store. The usual things, I suppose. It's not a bad little town but all the new houses going in are McMansionish and change is in the wind...

Anyway.

There's this driving range, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere (suppposedly it's totally close to a main road - but I've never driven that way so I can't be sure). No golf course nearby, surrounded by woods and a few houses...really, it's kind of nice as driving ranges go. I guess - because one thing I don't do is golf. Unless, of course, it involves dinosaurs or fake pirate ships and the only club in use is a worn out putter - then I'm in.

But the boy? Wants to golf. He got an inexpensive set of clubs for Christmas so I taken him to the range a few times. This past time we grabbed one of his friends on the way and we ended up getting there fifteen minutes after it closed. But, and I'm guessing this doesn't happen in all that many places, we walked up to the little ball shed and there were ten buckets of balls and a cash slot in the door. And a can of bug spray.

Now, the cash slot? Big enough to stick your hand in and remove all the other latecomers payments. If there were any other late comers, which there weren't. We paid for three buckets of balls - they wanted more, so I let them collect another bucket themselves (stealing from the honor system - nice, eh?) so they could shoot for another ten minutes until it was too dark to play. They practiced their Happy Gilmore shot, burned some worms (fast moving ball that never really leaves the ground) and made general fools of themselves...definitely not following any golf etiquette that I've ever seen.


This, apparently, is the look on your face after a ball you hit goes whizzing by your mom's head.