return fare

We had a great week in the ever-changing northern Vermont weather. Laurel and I ended up spending about five hours on the JFK tarmac yesterday trying to get back to D.C. but we finally made it home about 10:30pm last night and have moved her flight back to Omaha to this evening. If you’re going to be stuck on a plane, on the ground, for five hours then you’ll want to be on jetBlue – 60 channels of satellite TV. That little screen probably saved at least three or four people from certain death raining down from my perch in seat 23B.

Over the week we did a lot of eating; it happens that there’s not much that can be done to eliminate feasting during an entire week where the weather and events are fluid. Quite a bit was actually cooked at the house – primarily the breakfast and lunch bits – with a few nights spent eating out. The best dinner was a treat from the MagDad at Café Shelburne in Shelburne, Vermont.

There was, of course, the annual golf in miniature championship contested last Monday evening. As so often happens with these major events it ended up in a three-way tie with X, Phil, and I all carding -5 totals of 49. There was some complaining at the 16th tee box about a (ferocious) cat either preparing to pounce or laying on the fairway affecting someone’s tee shot. This mild protestation of cause-and-effect was shouted down, and mocked, by both progeny and progeny’s boyfriend.

We managed a few museums, horseback riding, swimming, a waterfall visit, children swimming endlessly, shopping, trips up to Burlington, bookstore visits, more than enough crossword puzzling, and a few games of Pitch Penny™.

Pitch Penny™ revealed a very interesting aspect of L’s personality. It appears that there’s quite a little competitive streak in the quiet reader. The game is a creation that tests one’s ability to scream forth answers that begin with a randomly chosen letter. The topics range from European rivers to fictional characters to Latin American geography. What L quickly sorted is that the eight million pages of books she’s read are suddenly worth something in this mythical world of “Goepps O’ the Woods”. In fact, she ended up being too good and was eventually forced into the adult group that couldn’t answer until the children had an allotted head start to each question. Now that I think about it, this little streak also raised its head when I had the kids at the pool and they played the “tons of loose change on the pool floor” event. The children are sat at the edge of the pool while I throw piles of change all about before they’re finally let loose to gather as much dough as possible. The only rules are no flippers, no goggles, and you can only pick up one coin at a time. That coin has to be returned to your pile on the edge before you can head back out for more. What I noticed was that the boys have a tendency to get a coin, come up for air, loudly declare the type of coin for the other submerged or recently surfaced brother to hear, and then swim back to their pile – sometimes spending a bit of time finding said pile. L. decided to simply dive/swim back and forth as quickly as possible with no talking, declaring, or sorting of her pile’s location. I don’t know what any of the means for her future but I’ve seen a new side.

Our three-inning Wiffle ball game was highlighted by X smashing a first-inning line drive into Maggie’s already wounded left knee and a second-inning heater into H’s left thigh. She also managed at third-inning short fly ball that tempted older folk into a headlong rush that could only end in tears and another out. I wouldn’t say it was new side of her – it simply reinforced the smiling assassin caricature.

I think Canada is working its way onto the books for next summer.

It’s nice to be back at the regular homestead.

t