Cake expectations

Another year older, and none the wiser.

At breakfast I was presented with a selection of gifts from my favourite fair trade shop, Ten Thousand Villages, so that was very lovely.

The Man had taken the day off work because we planned to go on a family outing, but the weather was so atrocious we decided to postpone it. So later in the day I took myself off shopping while the Man stayed at home and got beaten at Scrabble.

Among other places I called in at L.L.Bean (sports goods and casualwear) because they had a sale on. My, the floorwalkers there are attentive! It was like being surrounded by very polite gnats. But after three hours attempting to shop there and elsewhere I had nothing to show except a reusable water bottle and some pyjama bottoms. Ah well. Shopping's not my best sport.

When I got home I could smell a cake baking in the oven - and there I'd been thinking I'd have to make my own. We decorated it together, what d'you think? It tasted good - very light. It would definitely have been a worthy contender at Linton & District Annual Garden Show.

'Over and out

The Girl was away on a sleepover last night and spent most of the day at her friend's house, so it was just me and the Boy rattling round at home today. We read, played Albany Monopoly (I lost as usual) and messed about in the pool with our inflatable menagerie. Between times I also managed to get a few jobs done around the house.

The Girl came home late afternoon, apparently having had not much sleep at all. In fact it sounds like it was more of a napover. But she seems happy enough on it and has gone out again tonight, with her dad and her brother (they're up to something, but I can't quite put my finger on it).

Overnight we had so much rain I thought the house would wash away, but fortunately it didn't and the weather has been warm and dry again today. Tomorrow - who knows? Flood warnings have been issued, so that may be a clue...

Monsoon season

Well, so much for summer - yesterday was just to tease us and it's been torrential rain as usual again today.

The day began very hot and muggy, making the basement the most comfortable place to be, so I took the opportunity to do a little sorting down there. I generated one large box of items for the next yard sale/charity shop opportunity, and several bags of rubbish for the wheelie bin. So it was a morning well spent.

The weather broke mid-afternoon, and the rain hammered down. I went outside in it to check how the gutters were coping and came in drenched after only a few moments. It has been the wettest summer anyone here can remember, and guess what - more rain is forecast for the rest of week.

The Man adds... Having read about the Titanic, the Boy has vowed never to go on ships. Hopefully, this doesn't extend to arks.

Lone shark

Relax, I don't know anything about sharks, except that this one's called Fin.

It has been the first bona fide summery day today - temperatures touching 90F, blue skies and no rain. Having failed to drum up any playdates, the children managed to make the most of each other's company. They arranged the shells and pepples we'd collected at Cape Cod in the flowerbed, then involved themselves in an extended game of beach holiday/orca trainers in the pool.

Meanwhile I cleared out the conservatory-sort-of-thing tacked onto the back of our house (here it's called a 3-season room), having remembered last night how to turn on the lights and fan in there (there's a secret switch) and realised that, now that we've had its leaky roof fixed, it could actually be quite a pleasant space rather than just a dumping ground for tools and rubbish.

The kids were still swimming in the pool at nine o'clock tonight. Extravagance though it is, it can be a real boon on a hot day (as well as being a fund of interesting wild water-life).

Turtle contrast

More sea-life facts, continued from yesterday

Sea-turtles, by contrast, are solitary creatures. By the time they hatch out their mothers have long moved on, and they never know their parents or siblings. Having no-one to teach them life-skills (unlike the social orcas) they must survive by instinct. Instinct doesn't always serve them well: young turtles often end up in cold waters around Cape Cod by mistake and, close to death, they have to be rescued then rehabilitated at the New England Aquarium. The best hope for a baby sea-turtle is to land up on a mat of seaweed, on which it can float around living off the food that gets trapped in the weed. But even that's no guarantee as it has many natural predators, not to mention the risk of a careless human running over it in a motor boat.

It doesn't sound much of a life, but sea-turtles have very tiny brains so chances are they don't worry about that unduly. Anyway not all turtles are loners, as this photo reveals.

Killer instinct

Thanks to the Boy's current fascination with sea-life, I now know plenty about killer whales. For a start, they are actually dolphins. They are cooperative creatures, living in family pods all their lives, doing their hunting together and then sharing out the food. They have large brains. Having no predators, they are top of the ocean food chain. They are playful, and quite sociable with humans, as demonstrated by this photo.

Tee time

Mini-golf has become a bit of a recurring theme in our lives lately. We tried out two different courses on Cape Cod; on Thursday evening we played it with friends; and the Boy frequently goes to one or another course with his buddy. Tonight we had the novelty of playing by floodlight on an award-winning scenic set-up near Troy, involving rocky outcrops, waterfalls and the like.

I have to report that the Girl managed to hit an outrageous hole-in-one. She belted the ball up the dog-leg green, it hit a fence-post, bounced back onto the green, hit the edging wall and plonked down into the hole. The Man was as gracious about this as he could be given that his sole unrealised ambition is to hit a hole-in-one.

Mini-golf seems to be hugely popular in general - there are at least three courses within a 30-minute drive of our house. Tonight the place was cheerfully buzzing with families and young couples, and we had to wait at every hole for the hen party ahead of us to finish. I don't think it's such a big thing in Britain, is it?

Apart from a trip to the farmers' market this morning we had spent the rest of the (very summery) day at home. The Boy had complained of a stomach ache in the morning and had taken himself off to his room to recover while listening to a 4-hours-and-9-minutes audiobook in its entirety. Hence the late-night golfing adventure, really, as we all needed a change of scene.

Tattered Pages, and tea

It's a while since we've been to our favourite secondhand bookstore, Tea and Tattered Pages, so we called in today and traded some of our used books for someone else's. Actually they don't serve tea there anymore, so now it's just called Tattered Pages, but as the Girl observes, that doesn't have so much of a ring to it. The children enjoyed browsing the books and petting the store animals, a cat and a miniature dachshund.

We had lunch out, then invited ourselves to the Exiles' place - or at least, I delivered the kids there then went off to do some distraction-free grocery shopping, before returning for - at last! - a welcome cup of tea.

This evening the kids enjoyed cooling off in the pool, heedless of the rain that started to pour down. At least they got out again well ahead of the thunder which crashed so close it actually shook the house.

Back on track

When I suggested some tidying up today the Boy initially wanted to charge me $30 for his services. I managed to bargain him down to 25c. Together we transformed our back room from this:


to this:


Of course, presented with a fresh new canvas to work on, the Boy was soon doing this:


Yesterday's photo was taken by the Man at the airshow on Sunday. It really was a flying lawnmower. How did they do that?

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

Or is it...surely not? A Flymo??

Damp Busters

I'm sure the forecast today was for 'chance of showers' and not 'constant steady downpour', which is what we actually had. Still, the Girl was happy - she likes rain, and rushed out to dance gleefully on the driveway.

I had some work to do on the computer this morning, so the children obligingly vanished themselves to their rooms and enjoyed their own company for a couple of hours. We restocked with library books in the afternoon, because a rainy day is a good excuse for reading. The Boy now has as many reference books about Orcas as anyone could possibly want.

Tonight we have had one of our occasional family movie nights, huddled together in our office watching The Water Horse and scoffing Pringles. And it's still raining.

One small step for a Girl...

I managed to get the Girl to tidy her bedroom today, which was no mean feat. It was exciting to find out that she still has carpet in there; it'd been so long since I'd seen it that I'd forgotten.

This afternoon I set the world to rights with Exile #2 in her kitchen while our children mostly did other things elsewhere around the house - hours well spent all round, I'm sure.

Tonight I cooked a new recipe. As a Briton it's always a bit of a challenge using American cookbooks on account of all the unfamiliar-sounding equipment and ingredients: broilers and skillets; scallions, cilantro, arugula, confectioners sugar. I've been here long enough to have got the hang of most of the words, and happily my latest cookbook has lots of pictures anyway. But cooking and DIY (caulk, sheetrock) are probably the areas where Britain and America are most divided by their common language.

No prize, just glory, to the first British reader who can translate all the culinary terms.

Plane Silly

The Man writes... today the Boy and I watched an air show at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. The show featured a remarkable collection of working aircraft from WW1 and before, including bi-planes, tri-planes and the oldest flying plane in North America (built in 1909).

Sadly the aircraft went through their paces in the context of a baffling panto-style melodrama - featuring a love triangle between such characters as Sir Percy Goodfellow, Trudie Truelove and the evil (German) Black Baron - which the Boy described as "really lame". Call me po-faced, but isn't booing Germans a bit old?

Meanwhile adds Albaniana the Girl and I drove on to the town of Rhinebeck. It's a very attractive small town, completely walkable and lacking in chain-stores, a reminder that American retail isn't all fast food outlets and malls.

Beetlemania

It's a funny old summer we're having. It can't seem to really get going, and though it's generally warm there've been none of the sweltering temperatures we experienced last year. Not that I'm complaining, I don't much care for extreme heat and humidity, and the fact that it has rained nearly every day for the past month and a half means I don't have to fret about watering the garden plants. Instead I am fretting about Japanese beetles, which are having a bumper year and munching through my well-watered plants at quite a rate, despite the Girl's efforts to pick them off.

The Girl was at a birthday sleepover last night that was so successful it lasted until lunchtime today. For want of willing human opponents, the Boy played Albany Monopoly against Blankie and a cuddly Orca. Blankie was not without tactics, but the whale was absolutely hopeless. Of course they both lost hands (hems/flippers?) down to the Boy who ended up owning half the city.

And I've been engrossed in Anne of Green Gables most of the day - really a very lovely book, especially compared with all the written-by-numbers Animal Ark stories I've been having to read to the Boy lately.

Summer reading recommendations, anyone?

Digging around for a story

There's an annual Archeaology Camp held for slightly older kids at the Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany. Today they had an open day, and because the Girl has expressed an interest in archeaology recently we went to check it out.

We viewed several neatly dug holes in the mansion's lawn, then moved inside to examine the finds which the kids from the camp had laid out on little trays. It wasn't exactly a Famous Five-style haul of treasure, and unlike on the average Linton dig they hadn't found any ancient human remains, but the fragments of brick, broken glass and rusty nails were certainly displayed and labelled very professionally.

Other than that, little to report except more rain again, and a return trip to Judy's Tiny Shoppe, where we bought birthday gifts for a friend, and the Boy managed to secure a good deal on (for some reason) an extremely small lobster.

Bowled over

The Boy had a bit of a triumph today at the bowling alley, beating two other boys a couple of years older than him. I was also very impressed that in the final game my children teamed up and played cooperatively against the rest, which is not something I see every day.

Surprisingly for America, there are not loads of signs up at the bowling place warning you of the dangers of crushing your fingers with the balls etc. As remarked before, they go in for warnings and 'do not' signs in a big way over here. This always seems at odds with the tradition of adventure and risk-taking this nation is famous for - but of course this is also a very litigious country, so the warnings and prohibitions are for the most part just acting as disclaimers.

Establishments are wise to be cautious! The Boy had trouble loading books into the heavy-mouthed book-drop outside the library this afternoon and came away nursing some pinched fingers. As he mournfully sucked them better he asked me 'Was there a warning notice up?' When I told him, 'No,' he brightened up considerably. 'So can we sue them?' he asked.

Project managers

The children have been working on projects most of the day. The Girl is researching manatees. She would like to adopt one (no, not to keep in the swimming pool - she just wants to help fund one that lives in Florida) but I've said we'll only help her do that if she can show us she really knows something about them.

The Boy, as suggested yesterday, has an interest in Orcas, so he's been busy building his giant model display-tank, with me as the hired hand and wielder of Stanley/Exacto knife and scissors (cutting up removal boxes is hard work).

This evening I've been preoccupied with one of my own projects, the Fair Trade Town thing. The committee had a fairly productive meeting round our dining room table, while the Man and the kids kept out of the way at an ice-cream parlour.

At home

Here is the Girl, let loose at last on my sewing machine! This symbolizes my respect for her increasing age and wisdom, as the machine is a fancy-schmancy one and I don't let just anyone use it.

She is making a patchwork cushion, which she hopes to finish tomorrow. The Boy meanwhile has been planning his latest cardboard extravaganza - an Orca whale tank. Almost life-size. It'll be awesome.

And I've been busying myself with domestic challenges of one kind and another. Who would have guessed at the stain-removing properties of damp cornstarch? It's amazing what you can learn on the internet.

How to write a best selling how-to book

There were a couple of shelves of books to borrow from at our rented place on Cape Cod. Many of them were by Bill Bryson, which was surprising in an American house. The book that diverted me most, though, was this one.

Even though I am over 35, I'm not actually trying to find a husband as I'm quite fond of the one I already have. But there is something relaxing about reading a self-help book knowing that you've no need put it into practice, and I was intrigued as to how far the author would go with her premise of 'see yourself as a product - devise a sales strategy and go market yourself.' Also as to how many times she would mention that she went to Harvard Business School (so many that I lost count).

The stated aim of the book is to help any older woman find herself a 'wonderful' man to marry - with a subtext that, for the sake of pragmatism, she may want to stretch the definition of 'wonderful'.

My favourite bits of the book were towards the end when I should have been several months into her fifteen step 'program', but perhaps no nearer to finding my elusive Mr Wonderful. The advice is to take an audit of my lifestyle - am I making sufficient effort to meet men? I am to look at my pets - are they helping or hindering me in my man-hunting endeavours (presumably: dog - useful, if walked where men are; cat - rubbish, have it put down). And if I have children, are they distracting me from looking for a man? If so, I should just ignore them for a year or so - they'll still be there with their selfish need for attention when I've landed my catch, after all.

Not all her advice is appalling, if a husband is what you are seeking, but the endless marketing-speak is pretty unbearable: "don't sleep with him on a first date - you want him to see you as a 'big ticket item', not an 'impulse buy'". Sounds like a contestant on the Apprentice, doesn't she? But you can't blame her for that. She went to Harvard Business School, you know.

Funky chickens

It has been a beautiful day, sunny but not too hot. A good-sized chunk of it was spent with friends at a summer party. The hosts live in a 17th Century farmhouse, surrounded by land and chickens, with a swimming pool out the back which the kids all enjoyed leaping about in over the course of the afternoon.
From there the Man took the Boy and his best buddy to play mini-golf, and the Girl and I attempted to shop in the saddest mall on Earth - it is failing so badly that all but about five stores in it are abandoned and empty. We were there ten minutes before closing and I wasn't too sorry to have to leave, it was spooky being somewhere so deserted.

Our last call of the day, after dropping off the buddy, was to the Exiles' place - having just remembered that we were supposed to have fed their fish. But we pulled in right behind the Exiles themselves who had that very moment returned from a weekend away. So we were caught hook, line and sinker (though we're told the fish looked none the worse for their day of dieting, thank goodness).

Trails and tracks

I don't know if it's the weather or what, but no-one in the house can keep awake this evening - except of course the Boy, the only one who should by rights be in bed by now. He is busy conducting a noisy re-enactment of Disney's Cars in the sitting room while the Man and I have been taking it in turns to fall asleep on the sofa. The Girl is not at home, but sleeping over (perhaps) at a friend's house.

The Man deserves to be tired because he did his bit trail blazing up at school this morning. The rest of the family went along too, but as there were chainsaws involved I supervised the kids elsewhere on the site. We explored several of the existing trails and I got a sense of just how extensive the property is, and how many mosquitoes live on it.

After lunch we delivered the Girl to her distant play date destination, and the Boy to a different one closer to home. When I went to collect him later he was having a whole lot of fun with a sprinkler and a paddling pool, then on a bouncy castle, then in his friend's bedroom full of train track. Not surprisingly his only thought on leaving was 'When can I play here again?'

Lapping it up

Today has been rather sad as we said farewell to my parents. It has been great having them here, and although we didn't get a whole lot of sightseeing done I think they had fun spending time with the children, swimming (when it wasn't raining), meeting some of our friends and generally hanging out. We look forward to when we next see them - which will be quite soon, actually, if everything goes to plan.

In true end-of-vacation fashion, it has been a gloriously sunny day. We squeezed in a trip to Five Rivers this morning, where I discovered that taking a good-all-round group photo is harder than you'd think (here is the best of about five attempts).

Before they left there was a final swim, during which the Girl was challenged to start swimming laps. Now we're not talking Olympic-sized pool here, but eleven, then thirteen and tonight twenty lengths is no mean achievement for a smallish swimmer. She has plans to up the count each day, so I'll keep you posted.

Packing puzzle

I accompanied Mum on a last minute shopping trip this morning, while Dad kept an eye on the kids. This afternoon we descended en masse on a seven year-old's birthday party (it's ok, we'd been invited). There was ice-cream and cake, and water-sprinkler fun, though the Girl enjoyed herself most pursuing two resident kittens round the basement.

The Boy took with him a little trick box, persuaded the birthday girl's dad to hand over a quarter then amazed him by making it 'disappear' ('And once it's gone, it's gone,' explained the Boy, with a wicked twinkle in his eye). But then the dad one-upped him by making another quarter disappear into thin air using only his bare hands - magic!

Mum could do with a little magical assistance - not to make her recent purchases (mostly gifts and quilting supplies) disappear, just to shrink them small enough to fit in her existing luggage. Do any of you know any good packing-related tricks?

Date night

The Man and I are recently back from a trip to the movies and a meal out. We saw Away We Go, which is a sweet and funny film, then ate well at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Thank you to our (temporarily) live-in babysitters!

Earlier in the day the rest of us went to explore the Boy's boringest (yet actually quite good really) destination, the Albany Institute of Art and History. There was an interesting new exhibition about the Hudson River to celebrate the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson sailing up it (there's a whole lot going on around that in New York state this year). The Girl was completely hooked by the Egyptian exhibit, even more than the Boy had been the previous time we visited this museum with him.

We've had to dodge rainstorms again throughout the day, but supposedly we're set fair for the next couple of days, the last of my parents' stay with us

Storming summer

Yesterday's quiz photo was taken in Stockbridge the other day. The whole town seemed to be taking part in a sculpture exhibition, every front yard and open space adorned with large pieces of artwork. Some more impressive than others. The fallen tree sprayed silver (that's what it looked like anyway) had an asking price of $5,000. Damn, we really missed a trick there (and well done Exile for making the same link).

Mum and I drove out to the middle of nowhere to another quilt shop today, where we were then stranded for quite a while as a storm broke around us - very enjoyable. This afternoon the Boy took his grandparents model train shopping again, while the Girl and a friend hung out in the pool during a sunny interlude before the wind, rain, hail, thunder and lightning resumed.

Pool resources

Another lovely sunny day. We had an impromptu pool party with most of the Exiles and their guests and another couple of friends who happened to phone at just the right moment. Lots of splashing and floating around on inflatables and general fun, and thank you, Exiles, we enjoyed the cherries.





By the way, any ideas what this is (and, for a bonus, how much do you think it would set you back to have it for your very own?)

Big joy

The radio weatherman this morning promised us a perfect day, and he was right - sunshine, warm but not too hot, and for once not even the threat of rain.

The morning was taken up for some of us watching the Wimbledon men's final on a live internet link - great match, who did you want to win? Then in the afternoon we made good use of the pool before heading over to the beautiful garden across the road for an ice-cream party with all our nearest neighbours. The kids had fun catching frogs in a small pond - the same frogs, we realised, that often keep us awake at nights with their strange plunking croaks.

The Boy was very thrilled today when his Grandpa presented him with a rather lovely old model railway engine, 'Big Boy'. He keeps opening the box just to look at it because, as he says with sighs of happiness, 'I love to admire it!'

Happy Fourth

The Man and I spent this 4th July back at the Mohonk Preserve in the Catskills, this time minus the children who prefered to stay at home with Grandma and Grandpa.

So we went for a more ambitious hike, which for a large section involved scrambling over and under rocks and through narrow crevices - a trail called the Labyrinth. It was pretty challenging, but worth it for the moment we emerged onto a plateau of rock so high up we could look down on a hovering hawk.

From there we went even higher, up Sky Top, a stone folly, from the top of which we could (said a notice) see four states.

A weird moment happened part way through our hike when we'd been walking a couple of miles or more mostly through quiet forest with just a few other hikers to say hello to. Then suddenly we were in the grounds of a grand hotel, in the middle of a 4th July parade with a band and a fire engine and people dressed in stars-and-stripes shorts.

'Ark at that

Half an hour ago I was reading the Boy to sleep, but unfortunately the person who ended up asleep was me (which is not unusual after a chapter or two of any Animal Ark story, it has to be said). So I'm a bit groggy now, although the Boy is still going great guns.

It has been another day of dodging showers, though we all managed to get wet in the pool over the course of the day, too. In the evening we went over to Five Rivers and had enough time to get ourselves round the Beaver Tree pond before the rain came down again. We saw several frogs, some enormous snapping turtles and (first time for me) a real live beaver - albeit from a distance.

Tonight it is hot and muggy, and there are a lot of banging and crashing noises going on outside - for once not thunder, but fireworks being set off ahead of some date they like to celebrate here around this time of year.

Cultural exchanges

What I forgot to mention about the Berkshires yesterday is that the area is the cultural hub of New England - theatres, galleries, music and dance venues at every other turn. It seems that a couple of our Exile friends made the most of one of these artistic resources last night, so hats off to them (though a ballet to the music of Radiohead sounds like an experience well beyond my pain threshold, I have to admit).

It has mostly been a rainy day here, though it dried up enough to entertain a couple of neighbours out on the deck for an hour or so this afternoon. My mum had baked scones, which we served with butter and jam, and though our guests couldn't quite bring themselves to drink their tea with milk I think they enjoyed this little 'taste of Britain'.

Tonight it has been our turn (some of us at least) to be the 'foreign guests' - at an Indian feast hosted by friends at the Hindu Temple in Albany. Meanwhile the rest of the family have been to the cinema where they've no doubt sampled plenty of traditional American popcorn.

Haven-ly lunch

Mum and I set off today on a trip to the Berkshires (pronounced as it looks, not as in the English Barkshire). It's a rather wealthy region of Massachusetts - splendid New England houses standing on spacious well-manicured lots, lush greenery everywhere, picture-perfect little towns, and the Berkshire hills as a backdrop to the whole scene. All very lovely, but slightly unreal.

We started off at Stockbridge - Norman Rockwell's town - and drank coffee at the historic 18th Century Red Lion Inn. Then we explored the art and craft and gift shops for a while before moving on to Lenox.

Similar shops here, plus several holistic/yoga sort of establishments, and many cafes and restaurants. Someone recommended the Haven for lunch, and it was very good indeed: low-key and reasonably priced, serving fresh, locally-sourced ingredients tastily prepared in not-scary-sized portions (which left room for a delicious cookie or two to follow). Top rate reviews from this customer - seek it out if ever you are in Lenox.

We toured a bit more, then on the way home back through Stockbridge we stopped and looked around the Berkshire Botanical Garden, which I've been meaning to visit for a while. It was smaller than I expected, rather English-looking, in many places not unlike the lovely garden of our neighbour opposite in Linton.

The temperature was comfortably warm, but most of the day we felt in imminent danger of a soaking. Luckily in the end the rain (and thunder, and lightning) only really set in as we were heading home, so we managed to stay dry after all.