Hello and Goodbye

Crazypants week! Said hello to a new dolly from Nana Red.

Then bid adieu to Nana Red (after having many laughs over Baby Girl's shenanigans).

Said hello to all thirty-ish of my new students! Was totally shaking before class. Professor Nervous Nelly! But my first class went fine and I think I will have them eating composition out of my bare hand by the end of semester.

Then we said hello to my in-laws, and Loverpants' grandmother from Vancouver.

Baby Girl was especially fond, as in squealing with delight whenever she found him with at least one arm unoccupied, of her Uncle Joe.

She was also a big fan of Pennie the puppy, and the feeding thereof.

It was our sadness to have to say goodbye to all of these fave peeps once more...Life's comings and goings are sometimes overrated, no?

Zooey

The Franklin Park Zoo is not far from our home. Since my little punk is pretty animal-obsessed, I thought it would be nice to mount a trip to the zoo on a nice overcast Thursday when the complex would not be too teaming with other punks and parents.

Well it was a grand day, but Baby Girl could have done without the lions, tigers, and bears. Here, she'll tell you all about it:

Let's talk about the chooochoooooooo! It's fun to watch it go by and cry chooooochooooo!

And not to mention those stairs in the monkey house? Puh! AWESUMMMMM.

Of course there was the rusty truck that I climbed into with all the punks and stared contemplatively at them while pooping in my pants.

And lest we forget about the carousel. Someone started crying when it ended. Hah! Wah? Me? Protest when the amusement ceases? Please.

Okay so I bawled.

Burlington, VT

We spent the fourth in Burlington, Vermont. We chose to go away for this particular weekend because the Loverpants Family is usually left slapping our hands together like seals ARF ARF ARFING for an invitation to someone's backyard barbecue...so this year, we made our own party, and we had one of the best trips Loverpants and I have ever made. ***

One night we were tooling around the parks along Lake Champlain and we had to pull a U-ey and Loverpants said, "Dead End." Baby Girl, aka Pete and Repeat in the Back Seat cried DEAD END. At any point the rest of the weekend when there was a dull roar, Baby Girl would cry DEAD END! It got to be near slapstick humor (you had to be there) and I think it was an appropriate theme.

***

I had been feeling backed up, pent up, cordoned off, completely at a dead end for the entire month of June. My dad visited, I graduated and then...and then I washed a sink full of dishes ad infinitum. Every day was gray skies and rain. Summer in Boston would not begin. Failure to Launch. I found myself hen-pecking Loverpants for the smallest, most stupid things. Even Baby Girl was getting a little ornery, and believe me when I say I am glad that child is restricted to phrases like DEAD END because otherwise I know she would be saying, "Ma? Another day of pretending the tupperware is my lunchbox and I'm working at a construction site? Seriously? Yeah, NO."

***

There was no traffic in Burlington. There was no bitterness from baristas, no loud neighbors shagging and yelling angrily and yelling angrily while shagging from upstairs. There was an indoor pool in our hotel, there was new tupperware and a new mock construction site in our suite, and there were new smiles to behold from my daughter, and new laughs to have with my husband, and new skies over new bodies of water to gather for my own collection of vistas.

***