MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk
Notes from the Homefront -- Theresa Jarosz Alberti, writer and mother... http://sapphire.albatross.org
A strange and interesting evening last night. It was the one-year anniversary of DH's friend S.'s death. S. was 42, died of skin cancer morphing into other cancers, and he was very into the punk rock scene. So this celebration/memorial was held at 7th Street Entry (the bar attached to First Avenue in Minneapolis, of Prince's Purple Rain fame), and was a lot of live punk rock music. It was both sad and fun at the same time. It was so hard to believe a year had passed.
Since we were going out, I got dressed up, my coolest clothes (which are still not that cool!)hair, makeup... And when we entered the bar, I got carded at the door! Woo-hee! I am sure the Nice Young Man at the door did a double-take when he saw 1964 on my license! I will be 40 in September, and thought my days of being carded were long over. He mumbled "I thought you were younger" and I just told him he'd made my night. Who knows-- maybe he just does this to all the middle-aged ladies to give them a thrill? But I felt younger all night!
Could you hear my screams of joy coming to you from Minneapolis, wherever you are? I actually managed to pull my 3 children away from their computers for the afternoon (their current summer addiction) and took them to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to look around... and they had a good time! Yippee! What more could an artsty-fartsy mom ask for? Of course when I told them what we were going to do, they grumbled. They complained. DD, our resident artist, told me that just because someone is an artist doesn't mean that looking at other people's artwork will inspire them. She was the loudest critic of my suggested plan. She was also, ahem, the one who ended up appreciating the trip most.
This museum is pretty big with all kinds of sections of art from different geographies and time periods. We mainly focused this time on European art, and some ancient Roman sculptures. DD has also been a mythology fanatic ever since she was little, so she was looking for the Greek and Roman mythological figures in everything we looked at, and was giving us background info and stories about all the images we saw (not bad for someone who will turn 13 in two weeks). Older DS really liked the more modern "invention" section, and younger DS was into any weaponry we saw. All in all, I was just so pleased that they could be so captivated by art for a good 90 minutes, that I didn't have to drag them whining through the museum. And I got to remind myself just how stimulating and inspiring it is to look at great works of art. I could feel my creativity turning on.
I didn't get a chance yet to write in about our camping trip to Madeline Island last weekend. We left Friday morning, returned home Monday afternoon, and it was really a great time. Madeline Island is one of the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior, a 20 minute ferry ride from Bayfield, Wisconsin. The island is beautiful, with a touristy section and lots of big boats in the marina, and yet half the island is underdeveloped and quite rural. We stayed in the state park, which had lovely campsites among the pine trees. Four other families from our neighborhood had also gone up that weekend, so we had a great time getting together, all 10 adults and 10 kids. There was a gorgeous beach where we would all gather, and we had campfire parties at night.
We did get to see several deer on our weekend (one morning, I was sitting in our dining tent alone and saw a mom deer and two babies walk right by me), and an otter crossing the road. We took our kids fishing and they didn't catch anything. A lot of time for relaxing... very nice. And hardly any bugs! The only bad thing about it was having to sleep on the ground. Even with my Therma-rest I tossed and turned all three nights.
I'm sure we'll be going back to Madeline Island for another camping trip. I highly recommend the location.
Sitting at the computer, sweating into a can of ice-cold Shasta orange soda, waiting for the macaroni to boil so I can make tuna salad for supper that my kids will complain about, not liking mayo, but hey, I try to cook things they like most nights. Tuna salad was one of those it's-too-hot-to-cook summer suppers when I was growing up, and it's my duty to subject my kids to the same.
It's been a wimpy kind of summer, with cool rainy days and some days worthy of pants and long sleeve shirts. And lots of mosquitos. We haven't been spending a lot of time outside because you do need a thick layer of bug spray to not get bitten like that arm in the old OFF commercials of the 70s. I haven't weeded my garden in ages.
So what do I want? I'm not sure, and this is probably not the best day to ask me. My find summer whine. It's too hot in this kitchen. Time to get out.