a bike, a kid and a dog

FREE. And 10 year's old. That's exactly how I feel going down the Chebeague Inn hill on my rickety old bike with the wind rushing in my ears and the sun beating on my face. I gave up wearing a hat several years ago because it always flew off and left me with the crushing question of whether or not to stop, ruin my breakneck downhill ride and pick up the hat. No more dilemmas.

We had great weather, mostly, and great meals mostly. I tried some new dishes and Arnie also tried out some new recipes but his were far more radical in the style of Spanish chef Adrian Bulli. Arnie offered to cook steaks but who knew that he would cook them right on the coals. Really? Oh, yeah really this guy is writing a book on grilling and this is one of his secret recipes. Don't buy the book would be my advice. And oh yeah, don't eat the steaks either unless you enjoy gritty beef. And then he was driven to grill the lobsters that we bought from local lobsterman Wink Houghton. Everybody but Kate agreed to eat a lobster. Cause after all we were in Maine. But you know grilling lobster takes a certain je ne sais quoi...That was the end of Arnie's cooking career for this summer. I'm thinking more burgers will be a more satisfactory dish for him next year. We could actually eat the food as well.

Kate and Lile must have biked the entire island and know every small path on their way to and from. One of the great advantages of this vacation which I must have said before is the ability to give the girls freedom to come and go. I don't worry because the island is small enough that people know who they are and the girls don't worry because the island is small enough that people know who they are.

With reports flying about the end of the world from Hurricane Irene, we agreed that it was prudent to leave a day early without even making my final stop at the Standard Bakery for ginger cakes. oh woe. We drove like 60 and +just got back to the City on Saturday afternoon in front or behind the now defunct Hurricane Irene from Casco Bay -- hard to believe that this makes our 10th year there -- in time to seek shelter. But like all news junkies I wasn't satisfied with the quality of this storm. It came and left without making a dent in Manhattan. i even left the bedroom window open on Saturday night figuring that when the winds came that I would wake up and experience this greatest of all storms. I slept quite soundly and woke to a strangely quiet city. No subways and no buses therefore the people who actually make this city function were nowhere to be found and so stores were closed, small restaurants were closed, cultural institutions like the Museums were all closed and only restaurants attached to hotels were able to serve meals. But the rain which was very heavy on late Saturday evening moved out on Sunday morning leaving the city hot and muggy filled with people roaming the streets with nowhere to go. Many were tourists who simply didn't understand what was going on. Who did. We even had an e-mail from Anne Lagarrigue and her family in Paris hoping that we would survive.

Miss Murray was definitely not happy about coming home and refused to do what dogs do for more than 24 hours and also refused to eat. A not so subtle statement....

reading Lists

I love reading lists and especially scour the New York Times and WSJ when they publish their favorite reads of the year. So while list making is one of my favorite things I can report that I've just finished making a food list for our week in Maine with each meal carefully delineated and organized with the appropriate and required ingredients. It sounds bizarre but it appeals to my soul. Especially since I'm the cook.

And now for the main event: the reading list. I'm gathering up the books that I want to read this summer or what's left of the summer. I've read Kathryn Stockett's the Help, started Great Expectations and was dismayed that Kate hated Time & Again by Jack Finney. I guess that means I have tor ead it again. I always remember his paragraphs about how noisy New York was with the sound of the shod horses on the cobblestones. He should be hear now. So some of my choices will go in my suitcase and some of them will accompany me the new fangled way: on my ipad. I used to estimate that I would read a book a day and pn most vacations took something I knew I should read, something by a new author, something that I wanted to read and just pure trash. Now I am just into pure trash all the time 24/7. And I just discovered a new author who I thought was a mystery story writer but turns out to be a combination between a mystery and what I think is a romance novel. No one has been ravished or fainted yet but there is alot of intense yearning and some pretty explicit wishes for future ravishment. And guess what: I'm loving it. Those are truly Great Expectations.

Kate came back from camp last night. She is brown as a berry because the concept of sun tan lotion to a 14 year old is totally foreign. And she heartily disliked most of the books that were on the Brooklyn Tech list. I have heard that many of the reading list books are depressing. depressing ok but not to be a good story teller and then land on the approved reading list doesn't seem fair to the reader.

I wish that I smoked

so that when I take a morning coffee at the local Cafe Piccolo and sit outside to enjoy the street and the air, I can feel Italian. But apparently this is not to be.

Time Traveller

Took a long weekend and flew down to Nashville to see Arnie and go on a road trip. One of my most favorite forms of entertainment. We drove, that is to say he drove and I was a passenger, on a sweet road trip to Lynchburg, Tn where we took a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery. i haven't drunk bourbon since I was at Sweet Briar and overdid to such an extent that I have never drunk bourbon since. You get the point about overdoing since that was more than a couple of years ago. But there was no problem there since this famous distillery is in a dry county! Then we had lunch at Miss Bobo's Boarding House which is a quaint little money machine that functions like an off shoot of Disney world. You have to book in advance, pay your money upfront and then sit with a hostess who makes the 10 or 12 other strangers at the table behave. It's quite fascinating. Just unfortunate that the food is not fascinating...then we drove on to Sewanee, Tenn, home of the University of the South And the countryside was lush and gorgeous with amazing rolling hills and mini mountains. We were following a travel prescription of a Nashville friend who suggested that we end up in the Inn on the grounds of the Assembly of God Chitauqua. (How do you spell that?) Wonderful old houses in this community that was orignally a gathering for religious denominations to come together to study religion. Any religion. Very old timey and very calm. It would have been a good place to know about when Kate was little because kids can walk around, bike and play with the sense that they are safe and secure in this community. Chebeague is like this, too

But perhaps the nicest part of the weekend beside a devinely trashy fried chicken lunch at the Monteagle dine, was that we met a really nice couple from Nashville that we will see again. Bravo for us.

And then just before we left I thought we should swing over to see Sewanee because I had this idea that it had some place in my family history. Which indeed it did. My grandfather according to Wikipedia was the rector of the church at Sewanee from 1922 through 1938. That's a long time. And then he became a bishop. but as we were there looking at the stained glass window of him in his memory it occured to me that my mother had worked for my grandfather at Sewanee after she broke her engagement to my Dad the first time. So it's not surprising that it had resonance for me.

We also learned about more Bourbon road trips. But that's a story for another day

Waiting on dinner

I'm always waiting on dinner and tonight i am going out with friends at 6:30pm so here I sit typing away in an effort to while away an hour and 1/2 without going home to walk Miss Murray. She can wait and beside it's going to rain. Actually I triple booked myself for tonight and probably irritated everybody. It's an old and bad habit of mine to try and cram everything into too little a window.

I stayed late the other night and went to a listening party at the Museum for an album by Kanye West and Jay Z. Deaf. That's how I was when I staggered out 47minutes later. Luckily one of the staff had handed me some ear plugs or I would have been howling like a dog...loud, oh so loud. When the music started the volume virtually blew everybody back in their seats. And I sat two seats away from Kanye West. How did I know that? Because sometime told me. I have friends in high places.