Sleepaway

The Girl is having quite a full and active summer this year, one way and another.  Her biggest adventure started today, when we delivered her across the state border to begin a week at a sleepaway camp in the Berkshires.

The camp is a collection of cabins beside a lake, very pretty even on a cloudy day.  Although this afternoon it was a bit chilly to imagine wanting to swim in the lake, I'm sure there'll be plenty of warmer opportunities over the next few days.

One of the Girl's friends is at the same camp, otherwise she's there with about 70 kids from all over that she's never met before.  We helped lug her suitcase up into the little hut she'll be sharing with seven other girls.  We met her camp counsellor, a friendly young Russian woman.  We watched her check in and make her activity choices (crafts, canoeing, archery).  And then we said our goodbyes and drove away.

It's one more small step for a Girl, into a bigger world.

Very cool!

We had business in Altamont this morning, submitting the kids' craft exhibits for the 4-H pavilion at the upcoming Altamont Fair.  It was a lengthier process than I'd reckoned on, as each child there was grilled by the judges, in detail, on how they'd made their crafts, what new skills they'd learnt etc etc - like they were defending a PhD thesis (or so I imagine). A far cry from the casual drop-and-run system of the Linton Garden Show.

Anyway.  At the Boy's request we then moved on to the Home Front Cafe. We hadn't been there for a long time.  They have introduced an exciting new feature in their ice-cream parlour:  "Below Zero".  Is it a chilled dessert, or is it a science show?  Why, it's both!  Some creamy gloop is squirted into a metal bowl, then right before your very eyes it is frozen into ice-cream with the dramatic addition of liquid nitrogen!  Cool in every sense of the word, and well worth $3 a bowlful.

The coolness continued this evening, with a little home tie-dyeing in the backyard.  The t-shirts are now resting (or stewing or whatever dyed things do) in plastic bags over night.  We're looking forward to the big reveal in the morning.

Out for a snog

S.N.O.G. - stands for Social Networking Off the Grid.  A couple of friends of mine are hoping to get a casual social group going which will meet monthly at bars here and there.

A few of us made it tonight to Wolff's Biergarten in Albany.  The last time I was there was for the USA-England match during the World Cup, when I came away partially deaf.  It wasn't quite that loud tonight, but not far off.  And there's nothing more relaxing, is there, than a night out shouting small talk? 

After an hour and a half trying to chat - at full volume - with the woman sitting across the table from me, only to have her keep turning to her neighbour to ask "What did she say?", I decided to call it a night.  So did the others.  They walked me to my car, and conversing in quietness was delightful.  But that's when I realised that it wasn't just the loud music that had been the problem during the earlier conversation.  The woman I'd been shouting to still couldn't understand me - on account of my funny British accent.

Sidewalk saga

The Boy had an appointment with the orthodontist this morning.  I sat in and watched the intricate tinkering with teeny brace fastenings, wires and springs and was very much impressed with the dentist's craftsmanship.  Apparently the wire-work is doing what it should and progress is good.

The Girl was invited to a friend's house near the library in the afternoon, and we cycled there together.  It was the perfect day for it, sunny and warm but not humid - nice to be out on a pair of wheels. 

Cyclists probably aren't supposed to ride on the sidewalk, but the main road is intimidating, and since almost no-one uses the sidewalk for walking anyway I reckon it's fair game.  I ended up having to bank on being the only sidewalk user today when I realised my handbag (purse) with my purse (pocketbook) in it had fallen off the back of the bike somewhere on my journey.  I did eventually pick it up again half a mile back along the route - completely untouched, as of course not a single person had passed by and found it.

Back to school season (ok, not quite)

It seems ridiculous, in early August, to feel that the summer is on the turn.  But the intense heat and humidity does seem to be easing off (hooray!).  The pool (in spite of its cosy new solar cover) is a degree or three cooler than it has been.  And the nights are drawing in - if we're not smart about it of an evening, the Man and I are starting to find that we're setting off for an after-dinner stroll around the block in the pitch dark.

So with the spirit of autumn in my heart, I took the Girl shopping for school supplies today.  This is a task I usually leave until the day before back-to-school day, when there is hardly anything left on the shelves to choose from, and I have to drag round three or more stores in order to scrape together all the required notebooks and binders, pencils and highlighters.  Today we were well ahead of the game, and completed our purchases in a remarkably brief one-stop swoop. 

There!  That's another satisfying tick on the To Do list!

To do list

I have a three page To Do list.  Home & Family.  Five Rivers.  Fair Trade.  Sometimes the sections overlap.  I'm trying to get as much done as possible by the weekend after next.

I've been slowly chugging through the list today, feeling a little thrill of satisfaction with every tick in the margin of my notebook.  The problem is, many of the To Dos involve emailing people, so of course when the people reply I find myself getting caught up in a whole series of emails, going off at a tangent, and requiring additional To Dos to be added to the original list... 

Everything is more-or-less important, though some things are more pressing than others.  The Home & Family page has the most items with added exclamation marks to denote urgency, e.g:

! Car service 
! Blood test [even though I've been putting it off for, oh, about three years]
! Tidy the house [see Blood test]

So tell me, what's on your To Do list?  And what's been on there for more than a year?

I confess

I occasionally shop at Wal-Mart. 

There, I've admitted it.  The "buy less, buy local, buy Fair Trade" advocate sometimes shops with "the enemy" - the Big Box behemoth, the destroyer of communities, the resource-waster, the exploiter of employees and squeezer of suppliers. I contort myself with justifications for doing it, but the fact is, sometimes it's just so damn convenient.

But maybe I don't need to feel quite so guilty.  I've just finished reading Force of Nature by Edward Humes.  Subtitle: The unlikely story of Wal-Mart's Green revolution, how it could transform business and save the world.

Well, there's a bold claim if ever you heard one.  But there might be something in it.  As the author reveals - in an even-handed, pulling no punches narrative that details at length the mega-retailer's history of crimes against environment and workforce - Wal-Mart actually is transforming itself into a global leader in sustainability.  Not because it's the "good" thing to do - that's just a fortunate by-product.  It's because Wal-Mart's executives have recognised that being sustainable is the profitable thing to do.  And they are convincing their 100,000 suppliers, and their competitors, that sustainability should be their goal too.

The book is well written, easy to read.  The story is fascinating, and the possibilities outlined towards the end of the book are potentially revolutionary.  It doesn't let Wal-Mart off the hook - it still represents a fundamentally unsustainable model.  But since the giant is not going anywhere soon, it's exciting to learn that it's now using its massive clout to inspire real, positive change in US, and global, trade. 

There you go - something positive to think about as Britain burns and the stockmarket crashes...