Notes from Maine - 2023/08/13
We’ve had a busy week. My family is staying with me and this week we also had an old family friend staying with us as well. There was a beach trip—did you know it’s hibernation season for teenagers at the beach? Two years ago, my nephew stayed in the ocean so long that I had to give up. I waded back to shore, dragging my sand-scarred, hacking, coughing, shivering body through the surf while he continued to ride the waves. This year, he burrowed under towels and slept the whole time. My sister and I swam a bunch. It was fun.
Mom has reached the part of her “vacation” where she’s roaming around saying, “What’s my project? What am I doing?” I’ll have to think of a decent answer to that question soon. We’ve been working on the gazebo up at the camp. It was a simple platform with a timber-framed roof. We’re adding a little framing so we can put up screens.
When we were growing up, my Grandfather had a “Cook House” across the driveway from the house. It was a small building, screened in, to house the grill and a picnic table. On warm summer evenings, the family would gather out there for meals. You didn’t have to be trapped in the stuffy kitchen or assaulted by blood-sucking insects. I suppose we’re recreating that by screening in the gazebo.
My nephew wants to put up signs along the driveway as you approach the camp. His suggestion was “Live, Laugh, Lake.” We also need to name the camp. It sits on Long Pond, so I suggested either “The Long Pondering,” or “Long Ponderosa.” My father used call his house the “Sun Dapple Glen,” which I suppose should have been “Dappled,” but he always liked to change the spelling of things. The main building of the camp could be “Dapple Too,” and the gazebo, “Dapple Three.”
Another possibility could be, “The Sick Pig Retreat.” If someone had trouble remembering how to spell our last name, Dad would sometimes say, “Sick. Pig.” It never helped.
Back at my house, the tomato hornworms arrived this week. We’ve dispatched five so far. People driving by the house were treated to the sight of us all bent over, searching the tomato stalks, and jumping up and down when we found one of the pests. The plants weren’t doing that well anyway. I should have put down more mulch when I planted. It’s okay, I have both a farmer’s market and a grocery store where I can buy as many tomatoes as I need (which is not that many).
My kitchen is still a disaster.
The hotplate, dishwasher, and dishes are the only reasons to go into the kitchen. The living room is a convenient place to stop, sigh, look up at the ceiling, and try to remember where the food is. It’s scattered. I have to pour some concrete next. It’s a daunting step just because it involves so much lifting, shoveling, mixing, and cleaning.
In the garage, I’ve been finding little treasures parked next to the garbage cans. My mom steals things from the closets if she thinks they are no longer needed. I believe that she stages them out with the trash as a test. If I find it and put up a fuss, the object comes back inside. If I don’t, then maybe that object will make its way out to the curb on Wednesday morning. Whatever. I’m pretty good at letting things go.
She’s outside right now in porch jail. Several years ago, we finished the front porch with a gate and white railings. I capped the bottoms of the balusters with another upside-down rail. I wasn’t thinking about the crevices on those lower details. She hates the dirt and mold that collects in there. If she wasn’t standing there, pointing at it, you would probably never notice, but she does. So she’s sitting on the porch, holding onto a baluster and cleaning with her other hand. This is the project she assigned herself.
The town Fair was this week as well. A bunch of us went over and walked around. I got to watch the attendant hose down the Pharaoh’s Fury after one of the guests painted the side with used food. I saw a Polaris side-by-side levitate across a mud pit to record a winning time of seven seconds for the feat. I’m not certain they needed to time the event. Only one machine was able to get through the mud. The rest had to be plucked from eyeball-deep mud by a chain hooked to an excavator. My friends were yelled at because they were standing in front of the yellow building (too close to the action).
None of our group got sick this year, which is nice. There’s still a debate as to why my nephew got sick last year. Some say it was the Fair Slushie. Others believe it was the drugstore sushi he consumed, which was not Fair related. Some portion of each Fair is dedicated to reminiscing about previous Fairs. We had interesting recollections from last year. There was a massive screaming match (broken up by security) between the concessions and the midway. There was also a collection of very lifelike (or deadlike?) baby dolls in the exhibition hall. These were the kind that are meant to resemble real infants very closely except that some of them seemed to be purposefully made to look deceased. It was odd. Nothing so exciting this year, but still lots of fun.
