Melanie's Blog - The Itinerate Mom: August 2012

I cannot begin to recount all the ways my boys wix their mords and wetaphors but it was a very entertaining weekend. Because they are both so good at enunciation, they quickly quip, correcting anyone’s misspeak…. “You said labster ravioli.” “Well I meant lobster.” “Are we having mobster ravioli?”

Judd, Kelcy and Ryley came to Vermont Friday night. They stopped in Portland to see Malindi and drop some furniture for her apartment makeover. The family arrived in time to check out my new apartment in the daylight (the tour takes nanoseconds.) We went to dinner at the nearby Shepherd’s Pie. I was enchanted that Ryley was enchanted when a little 4 year old girl bounced out of the girl’s room to meet her Dad wearing a Hello Kitty dress and little fuzzy kitty ears on her headband. “Kids are so great.” It was very crowded on a Friday night and we had a significant group appetite. Perusing the appetizers, I suggested, “Let’s have the mussels.” “We have plenty of muscles here” says Kelcy, flexing his biceps overhead.

We made a stop at the Route 4 Country Store for a deck of cards in case we got stuck home with bad movies. Judd liked that the gas station has pulled-pork as a drive-by entrée when you come to fill up your car. But no BBQ was going at the end of the gas pump stands at the time. The same dude who cashed us out was the guy who sold my Pittsburgh visitors a bowl of jimmies earlier in the week sans ice cream. The store also boasts 55 flavors of soft service ice cream and claims to be Vermont’s finest chocolatier. Very handy to have such diverse provisions just 4 minutes away.

We went to the 9:00 pm showing of the Bourne Legacy at the Nugget Theater in Hanover. We had about 20 minutes to cruise the college town before our show: more activity in one block than we ever see in Augusta in a whole weekend. Everyone in our movie-going party appreciated the reference to high midi-chlorian* rates in the Bourne movie. Or was it mitochondria?

From Wookipedia:

Midi-chlorians were intelligent microscopic life forms that lived symbiotically inside the cells of all living things. When present in sufficient numbers, they could allow their symbiont to detect the pervasive energy field known as the Force.

"Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you."

―Qui-Gon Jinn, to Anakin Skywalker[src]

The boys slept on airbeds which we moved into the apartment because it’s been pretty cold for the screened porch…Also the blaringly bright safety light on the garage makes a rackety noise keeping you safe from sleep as well as scary shadows outside.

scary spider shadow about to eat my TV

We awoke to a purple hot air balloon becoming inflated across the street. --Got gas? At $200 a person, it’s “the cheapest balloon ride in New England.” We decided to walk underneath for free. http://www.balloonsovernewengland.com/virtualtour.htm Judd and I slept in late (til 7:00am) and took a morning walk to where we thought our Maine friend’s Jana’s mom’s house overlooks the golf course and water. We continued the conversation as to whether we should downsize to a littler house or a big apartment or a fixer-upper or an already-done’r.

When we finally got the boys up and showered, we stopped at the little Cheesecake bakery on my corner but they had no breakfast –only bread, cookies and yesterday’s coffee. They suggested ?MacDonalds/?Dennys?

We breakfasted at King Arthur’s Bakery. We saw people in Bread Camp. We ate cinnamon rolls, scones, mango-raspberry pot au crème, pizza, Danish, hot, fresh coffee. We shopped for pizza and baked donut supplies and told Grind-your-own-Flour stories. We sat on the throne for photo ops.

I live very near the Quechee Library and we stopped in so I could sign up for a membership card. Judd noted four male pony tails out of 4 guys in the building. I think he wants one. (a pony tail, not guy-in-the-building.) The library used to be a drive -thru bank and has a large walk-in vault inside where the videos/audiobooks are stored. We scored some free videos…

I made the kids walk across the street to SIMON PEARCE to see the glass blowing and waterfalls. The boys were very good sports and ooo’ed and ahhh’d appropriately at the craftsmanship and the views. Over the course of the day if I took one boy’s hand, (“the boys”- yes they’re 17 and 19y.o. now) the son would allow me to walk along swinging hands….. I could almost envision us skipping… but I made myself stop.

We made a short drive, past the polo fields, POLO GAME 2PM TODAY, to the Quechee Gorge. We walked 0.4 miles down to the gorge and saw some hard core hikers (i.e. older than me in flipflops) looking for walking sticks along the carefully manicured path. During our picture-taking at the Gorge, Judd’s camera timer failed and we asked a couple to snap us. Judd mistook a Southern accent for British on a lady with big dyed brown hair. I conjectured she dyed it brown because she wouldn’t like blond jokes… (“Because she doesn’t get them,” says Ryley)….. We discuss accents walking up the hill. Judd commented on how lucky we are that we can’t argue about anything worse than this trivia. We have so much FUN we don’t need dysfunctional.

Cheese tasting at the Vermont CABOT mall proved educational. We learned that

cheeses are like people: the older they get, the sharper they get…. There were samples of horseradish cheese, spicy barbequed cheese, cheesy popcorn, dips, spreads. I said, “Hey Kelcy—there’s a spread over here called ‘butter.’” He looked sad that the passsers-by chuckled, maybe because I made the joke instead of him.

For a little while we got lost in the antique mall (table after table of people’s over-priced garage sale items next to each other.) The boys were drawn to tables with straight razors /divers bell helmets /swords…http://landandseacollection.com/id187.html

Judd was off looking for little trains…….I was attracted to Fiestaware and old trays and handkerchiefs and displays of ice-cream scoopers… I found Kelcy but Judd and Ryley were missing. I sent Kelcy in to look and out came Ryley. It truly felt like we were trapped in a bad comedy sketch.

Next stop on the Vermont-in-one-day Tour: the VA CUTOFF road to see where I work at the White River Junction VA. The boys like my massive desk where I can’t even reach the corners, and they appreciated the four windows. They liked better the “goldfish” and mini-scoop jelly bellies.

http://www.futurememories.com/fincredibles-fake-goldfish.html

Judd messed with my camera at LuiLui’s where we had a late lunch and now the camera will only take panoramas…..but imperfectly because I can’t seem to follow the match-the-dot instructions.

“I tip according to how much they flirt with me. I tip a lot.” - Kelcy

“She’s so skinny if she stuck her tongue out, she’s look like a zipper.” - Melanie

Driving back to my apartment we look to see if we can glimpse the polo game going on. It wasn’t. Kelcy said, with a deadpan sad face, “that’s the only thing I wanted to do today.” But we know it wasn’t.

I posted too much one evening and the next morning I freaked out that ethernet stalkers would be at my door...... I forgot....

Here's what I said without the address

Quite Alarming

I moved out of the Norwich, over-the-garage, not-so-private-entrance apartment today. Last evening when I wanted to make three trips downstairs to pre-pack my car for a speedy getaway to work this morning, I had to go across the back deck, where the landlady was entertaining her sister and niece and nephew.... That wasn't SO bad....last week when I arrived 'home,' tired and hot after 12 hours at work, I walked through their dinner party....

Yesterday, I tried to get to Quechee before 5pm so I could get a post office box after work.

About .25 miles down Main Street, I let myself in the new apartment (which is actually an older, historic building than the last apartment.) Inside there was a form to fill out to assess the condition and cleanliness of the place as a baseline and I diligently went around to each cupboard and electrical outlet and wall switch to make sure everything was starting in good working order. I turned on all 4 electric stove burners at once to make sure THEY all worked and within a minute or two while I was running water in the sink, the smoke detector went off. LOUDLY. Even though there was no smoke. I turned off the burners but, having no furniture in the house yet, I couldn't reach the alarm on the wall overhead. I walked to the adjoining apartment which is actually the landlord's business. Someone was still there and called the landlord for me who lives right up the street. A neighbor across the fence offered to come over with a ladder. In the interim, I went out to the car and got my freshly forest-green painted nightstand and precariously crawled onto it in order to reach the alarm. No manner of button-pushing would turn the alarm off, but finally I was able to knock it off the wall and take out the battery. With green knees (why didn't the paint dry after 3 days? the 93% humidity?) I greeted the landlord when he arrived with a step stool. He was very friendly and helpful and also helped me schlepp a corner hutch out of the garage which I will turn into a book shelf or TV stand.

Landlord gets bonus points for being so responsive. And the landlady gets bonus points for leaving a new purple orchid and a super clean microwave as an apartment-warming. I bet I lost mega points for calling them up the first day.

ASIDE:

The white building that this video zooms across the water to see is my Quechee Post Office on the Green .... (the Green was just all gone after Hurricane Irene last fall.) It's a place they blow up the balloons for the Quechee Hot Air Festivals... They were blowing up right across my street one morning!