...and we're out...

Last night of summer vacay. Am I ready to go back to school? 

 Well. I love being on vacation as much as the next librarian, but I've just had so much summer, it's been so rich, we've been so lucky, had so much time together as a family and with a lot of people we love. It would be greedy of me to say no.

 The answer is yes, I'm ready to head into my new adventure.

  I'm full of summer.

It's been enough; perfect, really.

I've seen my share of discarded silver sandals and plenty of flipflops at the various ponds, beaches, docks, and parties we've frequented. And taken portraits of them when I could.

And I have one more Artist Profile for you in the works. But Urchin Goddess needs her etsy site set up first. Now she has the photos to do it! In the above photo, I am modeling one of her gorgeous necklaces. In fact we did a partial trade for it, for the pics. I can't wait to show you more.

~Lucky, lucky me~

The summer that kept going

Mini golfing. The beach. Gorgeous swims. 

In the words of Marcel, 

"Well, that's just how it looks right now."

If you are ever sitting on an amazing, uncrowded beach, looking at the gorgeous view and listening to the waves, and a small person offers to do your hair, you will be glad that you thought to bring your brush and your red leather coin purse full of hair-ties. Because this is pretty close to my idea of heaven.

awesome yellow owl, keeping watch over the golf course

There are two mini golf courses nearby us. One is the from-a-box, kind of pre-fab, boring and perfect kind (located at letter A on the map). The other is this one (it's located at letter B in the map). Privately owned and constructed, awesome and a little bit funky. One hole has a buoy suspended directly over the hole itself that you have to set in motion if you want to have a prayer at getting the ball in there.

If you are a snob about your mini golf "green perfection," you should go to the other place. Yeah, so OK, some of the greens here have wonky little invisible hillocks and sometimes the astroturf knap is like completely worn down, almost slick, so that your ball gains speed when it otherwise wouldn't.

It's all part of the experience. The other place has no bright yellow owls, either.

check out mama's form, 

tied for first place, thank you

Sometimes your mother wants a picture of you two together and your grumpy face is fantastic. (Smiling pics came later...).

Oh. And who is this guy?! This guy is clearly not my baby, he doesn't even look much like my ten year-old. He's a total guy's guy here, like a 22 year-old major league catcher who's giving a charming and articulate interview. Holy Handsome, Batman!

~snail racing~

Two snails were racing as the tide went out the other day.

According to The Week-End Book, snails travel at 1.916 feet per hour. Does this figure reflect the speed of snails at leisure? Or an average of sauntering snails and snail athletes? Because these two contestants here appeared to be hustling.

I don't know if they made it to the water before the tide went all the way out. Maybe you'd have to calculate the rate that the tide was going out, and this might involve calculating the slope of the beach, and I'm more content to have born witness to the moment that these snails and I shared. Even if I don't know the outcome. Life is uncertain, after all.

Sand forms. This is part of the Waldorf curriculum: making amazing beautiful free-hand forms, sometimes mirrored, or not, and the idea is that you don't lift your crayon (or stone, in this case) once you have begun the form. You are committed. Being there in the moment helps, trusting your hand and eyes to work together. I asked Sylvan to make me one to copy and this was what he made.

Some of our party balanced stones as per usual. Though the Stillmans were notably absent on this day, it was really otherwise perfect. (We felt you with us in spirit! Note to S: The water was actually delightfully swimmable, really pleasant even, and not at all ankle-numbing.)

ah, summer

 mr. twinkle eyes

The baseball season wound up with success. The main success in my mind is kind coaches and good spirit of the game, plenty of runs, catches, surprise double-play unassisted (!), even a rainbow. A very dear young fellow who was sometimes kicking flowers and dirt and other times making some awesome plays, best smile on the team! And my very own sweet guy was a team leader, praised by his coaches for his sportsmanship and manners.

We spent the day as a family on Mount Desert Island to celebrate 13 years of marriage. We hit all the high points (ha!): Pirate's Cove mini-golf (I got a hole-in-one!), then lunch at our favorite beach with plenty of rocks to skip and balance, then one of our favorite hikes up Parkman Mountain, catching up with friends, ice cream, dinner, and a surprise chance meeting with a dear, dear friend on the street!

 these two beauties were collected, then lovingly grudgingly tossed back 

when informed of the "remove no rocks policy" of the park

 he listens to the rocks

 kiss sandwich!!!

And now, summer vacation. I made it through my first teaching year! WooHoo! And as it turns out, I have a new adventure coming for the fall... I will be the school librarian at a school for 8th/9th graders in the same district as last year. This is thrilling on a couple of counts. 

 red leather chairs for reading: 

yes please.

First, middle school (early high school) students are my favorite age group. They are prickly and interesting and hilarious and it's sort of a precious time in their lives, one that can be awkward and awful sometimes. (And I love reading YA literature.) There is so much that is possible in middle-ish school that becomes harder with older high schoolers.

Second: ONE SCHOOL instead of five! One learning community that I can be part of on a day-to-day basis! Hoorah! This is quite exciting, to think of the possibilities for spur of the moment exchanges and developing relationships with teachers and students that I will see every day. I feel so lucky. And am devouring a lot of YA books this summer, which is awesome.

I visited a very venerable library in Boston this past weekend and I wasn't supposed to take pictures, but I took some before I knew... It was a librarian's geek-out holiday.

And finally, because we've had a lot of rain and gray already this summer, I wanted to show you something blue and summery. Rafter's delight and lots of silliness and the water was warm enough so I could even stay in and play and be part of the shenanigans. This was a rare moment of calm...

Moosehead Annual Report

~favorite shot of Moosehead 2011~

~This post's for you, Joanie. Busy hands.~