Night time

Love the way the lights glow once the sun sets. Here's our house once everyone has gone to bed.
Here's the bay with the lights twinkling after the sun sets. It really thrills me to see them start to shine

Fishing

Rob and Georgia deciding to buy a fishing rod.
Then using it on the dock.
They caught 2 mackerel pretty quickly.
They let them go but next year we'll eat them!

Pulling out the paints and pastels

We used our watercolors and I brought a fresh box of cray-pas. So fun to sit together and draw and paint.


We played cards and sat in the hammock.

Makes me realize how little I sit still at home....

Camden

Nasturtiums on the bridge in Camden.


Rob nibbling Georgia while we wait for our food at Boynton-Mckay Food Co.
http://boynton-mckay.com/
I love Camden.
There are such beautiful gardens right near the sea.

Blooming Hollyhocks that I keep trying to grow at home. I planted some seeds a few weeks ago. Hopefully it rains while we are away and we'll have some blooms next year.
There are a couple of fun kid shops in Camden so there is alot of panic and excitement from the children about buying stuffed animals and trinkets. Rob tried to have them earn money doing chores before we went on vacation so they each had about 10 dollars that they blew in 5 minutes.
One of the treats Lily bought was a box of Harry Potter Bernie Bott's Every Flavour beans. Here she is eating a vomit or ear wax flavor beans.

Ocean

I was able to go to yoga class this morning.

It is a gentle yoga class and she puts in some chi gong. Lovely. It helped me feel balanced and clear.

We are half-way through vacation.

It is painful to think of going back to our harried life.

I love forgetting to put my watch on and having no idea what time it is.

I love realizing we can switch our physical setting and get along quite nicely.

I love having the garden filled with hosta and beebalm and day lilies that are not mine to weed and water!

And the hummingbirds!

And the ocean view.

I feel very blessed. Georgia is not as out of control as last year. It is wonderful to have the cousins here

But all the while:

My friend back home is dying of breast cancer.

She might already be dead.

My other friend at home is to call me if anything changes and I have not heard from her.

I am worried and sad, but then I remind myself that does no good.

So instead I am sending her Maine while I am here.

She loves Maine and last week when I told her I was going on vacation to Maine, she started to cry. I held her hand and said, “I will think of you and send you Maine, birds and waves and salt air.” She nodded. She is very sick. She is so gentle and kind.

I am sending her blessings for a beautiful transition. I am re-reading the final Harry Potter before I go see the movie and there is much that is beautiful about death in that last bit. I am sending her the light on the water, the seaweed undulating just under the waves, hermit crabs and star fish. I am sending them all to her along with the love to help her in her transition to another, beautiful peaceful place that must be brimming with light.

Farmer's Market photos and venting

Day 5 of vacation in Maine. It is a breezy 82 degrees and I am sitting on the porch with my ancient laptop.

Georgia is big enough now I can actually get alone time. She is in love with her older cousin who is 13 now and she demands to be carried by her all the time.

My last day of work (which I crammed in at the beginning of the week so I could get 12 days off) I was talking excitedly about my coming vacation and my friend reminded me of last year. Reminded me how I had just discovered the tapping and I had to use it alot to get through the 10 days with Georgia who was either an angel or a writhing kicking mass of brat. Uggh. I had forgotten. I had forgotten how difficult it was to get her to sleep in an unfamiliar place and how nasty and crazy she was, trying my patience in new ways. Well, my friend at work lovingly but firmly, reminded me and suggested strongly that I drop my expectations “Let them plummet! There may be no alone time and you may have to manage Georgia at her worst.”

So I did. I decided just before we left that the vacation was a selfless thing I was doing for my family that might bring me solitary pleasures but really also might not.

The packing was heinous. We had decided we wanted the house clean when we got home because it is usually such a let down to walk into our home after being in a breezy uncluttered creaky summer house. Our house feels dark and landlocked. Everything seems crowded and messy. This year we cleaned and tidied everything and tried to pack efficiently, all on the days I was working too many hours. I was a wreck the day before we left. Everyone else I know had complained as they packed for their trip and I had half-heard them. But then it was my turn and it was terrible. I think what pains me is realization that all of the wrapping up and organizing and prioritizing that I hoped to get done in the preceding year as well as the hoped-for increase in income and comfort has not occurred. When I am packing my laptop from 1992 Rob says, “Really, that thing still works?” and I want to cry because I bought it with the strong knowing that I would pay off the $1200 it cost me in just a short time with my lucrative writing career and that didn’t happen. So yes, I am bringing the aged laptop because there is no other way to write and I love to write, damnit! And I can’t afford another new laptop with skype and wifi because we are still barely paying off medical bills. Grump! Then I pack ten books to read and realize one is The Omnivores Dilemma which I started and half-completed last vacation and never picked up again.

So I guess that while I know I am blessed to be able to go on vacation and get off work for 10 days to be with my family, it highlights how little free time I have and how little I have put into the goals I had hoped to be fulfilled by this, next year’s holiday.

Anyway, enough griping. It has been lovely so far. Georgia is a year older and much calmer and now that her cousin is here she is elated with her company. Rob loves to play in the water with the kids so a couple times a day he asks if I want to hang back and have some alone time! Fantastic! Because I gave up my desire to fulfill all my alone-time dreams this week and instead focus on the family, I am glad to hang with them and not always trying to escape and do my own thing. I guess as the girls get older they need me around less and they are willing to let me go. Which I thought might break my heart, but no. It’s OK.

Back to griping. I went to do my dicey banking at the beautiful moneyed Camden public library at their free computers like I always do because checks are being deposited and I have to keep track so I don’t bounce things. I find in my fifteen minute window that I can’t get into my banking account. Later, at the cottage, I tried to check my email on Rob’s phone, which he is using to watch the Tour de France results and keep up on his twitter, and my email account will no longer accept my password. uggh. Then I tried to check phone messages at home and my phone is off-line to voice mail which I don’t know how to check away from home. OK that’s my annoyingness. I could see that maybe the universe really wants me to be in Maine and not half at home, but I fret I am bouncing things and realize my attempt to control life from afar is easily thwarted.

Penobscot Narrows Observatory

http://fortknox.maineguide.com/

The view of the observatory at the Penobscot Narrows. We took a day trip to Fort Knox and this bridge for the first time.


The river coming together in one direction.



The unified Penobscot river heading out to sea.




Lily and her cousin taking in the view.

Hanging out on the dock at Bayside

Me and Lily warm up on the dock.
















Lily looking for a huge crab Rob spotted scurrying under the floating dock.

Georgia and me on the floating dock

























A sand dollar picked up from the ocean floor.

Row boat

I rowed out to the bay with the girls, taking turns. I really wanted some water time so I borrowed a little row boat from the people we rent our house from. Georgia was nervous but she faked a nice smile for me. I didn't even post the photos of Lily on the boat because she looked so very grumpy because her cousin wouldn't come out because she was scared of getting seasick.

Hammock and Starfish

Here Rob is checking his twitter while Lily and Georgia eat flavor-ice on the porch.

Back to the dock, starfish and swimming



Lily jumps off the high dock again and again and again until low tide comes and it's too shallow.



Me on the floating dock. No phone calls, emails, newspapers, TV. Time goes so slowly the first days of a vacation as we settle in.

More Sunset

I brought my Reiki Grid on vacation. I have been meditating and sending Reiki every morning which has been very satisfying.

Everyone has adjusted to the habit of 20 or so minutes of my meditation every morning. Well sort of, Lily was making fun of me the other day and she said in a high pitched voice, “I’m Mama, I’m always meditating.” while she waggled her head like Stevie Wonder.

It is interesting how inconvenient it is for other people when you try and fulfill your dreams and do what you need to do. But I recently realized most women my age probably spend alot more time grooming in the morning than I do. So, I’m trading in my grooming time for meditation. I feel so much more relaxed and whole as the day goes on, like I have done some important work that I am here to do and now I can just be present. I believe the meditation connects me to the power of the universe and recharges me. I believe the Reiki I send does travel and get to the people I love and that makes me feel happy and connected. But on hellish-packing-day I had meditated to a place of deep peace and I then still became a rancid troll (packing combined with lack of sleep combined with PMS is bad) and would have tied Georgia up in a velcro straight jacket for rebellious-smiling at me when I was scolding her for hitting Lily if I had one and if Lily wasn’t watching me.

Bayside - evening on the dock

We made it!
We emptied the car and went down to the dock
It was low tide so we watched the sunset.







Georgia blowing a kiss!










Evening comes and the lights come on across the bay.

Biddeford Pool

The trip to Maine was hot and long, but I was a genius and packed books on CD from the library. We listened to The Night Fairy which we have read before and The Secret Garden which I have never read, although it has been recommended to me countless times. We are still in the middle of that one. It is quite fun and gives Lily some hope that there are outstanding books out there that will amuse us now that Harry Potter is done.

My parents are watching Cookie. I miss her already, but am so thrilled to get a break from her. (Sorry Cook, but you bark and whine alot, chew stuff and steal food off the table. I’ll train you when I get home.) Jewel, the rat, is at my parent’s, too.

We will be gone for 10 days! Hooray. I am ready for ocean and sunshine!

We stopped in Biddeford Pool where Rob's uncle lives for our annual swim break 2 hours into our car trip. The day was hot and the waves were strong.

The last few years the ice cream truck has stopped when we are getting back in the car. This year there was no sign of it as we were packing up. I said, "Oh well, no sign of the truck this year. We'd better get going." Lily yelled, "Wait, I hear it!" Far far away was the sound of the truck's music. (The theme from The Sting.) I still couldn't hear it, but slowly it came and they got their Sponge Bob and Tweety Bird ice cream.

Flowers and Mermaids

Our friends had a party. We love their parties.
We get to eat amazing food and look in all the beautiful rooms at their treasures.
The mermaid sitting on the turtle! I love it.

I have been having lots of mermaid thoughts lately.
Feminine power deep deep beneath the waves where the water is cold and dark.

Lily ate four ears of corn in record time. This is the first summer she's had front teeth in 6 years! (She lost her two front teeth when she was 3 years old and the permanant teeth have finally grown in.)


Georgia keeps picking Lilies wherever she goes. She breathes deep with her nose in it. Today she sighed and said, "It smells like life."


























More mermaids! Love this baby mermaid. I never thought about baby mermaids. Hmmmm





Zinnias on the counter.
Nice bright red tomatoes, too.



Summer!

Hogworts Feast at Chandlers

Lily was skeptical once I told her that the feast was a regular restaurant and not the Great Hall in Hogworts castle.

She was quiet for a bit, with a furrowed brow...

Then she said, "But there won't be four tables! How will we know what house we're in?"

She wore her cape. She was Ginny Weasley. We met her friends there and they had a great time.
Chandlers did a wonderful job.
There was a sign at the entrance that said "PLATFORM 9 3/4"
Everyone was wearing their capes and carrying their wands.

I caught Lily with her beautiful smile (She doesn't like me taking photos of her these days.)






Georgia was Luna Lovegood. She wore Rob's Scottish woolen tie and a button down shirt.

Here she is at the snake, lizard, hermit crab, hissing cockroach area/

So cool!

She touched the hermit crabs and the snake, but the hissing cockroaches grossed her out, "Those smell bad!"




Georgia eating a chocolate frog.
After dessert they all went out and cast spells in the garden.