Trying Spontaneity On For Size

Writing here only once a month is awful. I have no idea where to start. I last wrote to you on a Friday, 2 days before I was to host Bunko for the neighborhood.

I think I had just hit "publish" on that last post when my daughter came upstairs and said, "The basement fridge is warm."

Folks, that's not something you ever want to hear, and especially not when you're expecting to entertain a dozen people at your house in 2 days. So we ran back downstairs, where the fridge was humming away -- but not to any purpose, apparently -- and frantically started emptying it out into our camping cooler, along with all the ice packs I could find. We filled up that cooler and went back to the kitchen to get a drink of water and discuss strategy.

"Dammit, I HATE to spend money to get a brand-new refrigerator for the basement," I groused.

I really wanted to use that word here. Groused. I was definitely grousing at that point.

"You could put the new one up here," suggested Susie.

"Nah, this one is practically new - not worth the trouble to move it," I said.

We continued to gaze at the kitchen fridge, admiring how clean it looked because we had removed all the magnets and other detritus from the doors (remember? Bunko was coming. I had to clean up.) Susie looked up at the top and said, "Maybe we could just buy a tiny fridge and put it up there."

And that's when we both turned to each other and --- I swear to you -- simultaneously shouted, "WE HAVE A TINY FRIDGE!"

In fact, it was only a few feet away from that cooler we had packed full of rapidly warming food -- Brian's dorm fridge, that had been sitting there empty all summer. I mean, if I had just looked up ONCE during that whole cooler-packing scene, I would have spotted it.

The miracle of the tiny fridge

So we survived and I hosted Bunko and then I went and bought the cheapest possible fridge I could find and stuck it down there in the laundry room.

You know what? It feels sort of good to see it down there in the laundry room, all shiny and white - or maybe that good feeling comes from knowing that nothing in there is more than a month old.

Okay, we also went on a trip this past month, because Larry was pining away for northern climes and the humidity and mosquitoes around here are horrendous and my job is portable, and gosh, aren't we spontaneous?

No. No, we're not. It was utterly exhausting, packing to go away again at the exact same time as Brian was packing to go back to school and Rachel was packing to go away for a week to Civil Air Patrol Encampment, where she is a staff member and gets to yell at 12-year-olds for 8 whole days and no, we don't understand it, either.

So, 2 weeks ago, we woke up at 4 AM Saturday to see Rachel off and then we helped Brian get ready to go and Larry drove him to school that night, so they could be in front of the dorm the minute it opened the next morning. Susie and I spent Sunday trying to clean up the mess everyone left behind and also pack for the trip. THIS WAS NOT EASY.

Then Larry got back and we headed north, but the trip took 3 extra hours because it turns out a lot of other people are heading north on a summer Sunday afternoon, plus we never thought when we put the bikes on top of the car to measure how high up they were...

I mean, SHOULD we have thought of that?

...and then the GPS put us on a highway with low-clearance bridges, which was utterly terrifying, and then there were big orange signs announcing that anything taller than 8 feet had to get off the highway NOW, so we did. And then we were wandering over back roads in Connecticut to find a highway without murderous bridges, all while the GPS kept trying to route us back to the highway of death (or, at least, of broken bicycles).

Keep in mind that Larry had woken early, unloaded a car full of stuff that he carried up to a third-floor dorm room, and then driven 2 hours to get home BEFORE he even started this trip. All of which could explain why, by this point in the drive, he wasn't enjoying the forced scenic route much.

But we got there eventually and our AirBnB wasn't located in Murder Alley or anything and yay! We were on vacation. Whew.

We biked to pie.

Right off the bike trail

We wandered around town. We ate amazing ice cream. I worked. A lot. But I sneaked in a visit to WEBS, which happened to be in the same town we visited and LARRY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT EXISTED. Yup, he randomly picked a town with one of the best yarn stores in the US. I knew that, but I didn't tell him. I'm nobody's fool.

yarn store loot 

Then we drove east, toward Boston, because we're footloose and fancy free now with just one kid in tow, but we had to hurry up because I had a deadline and had to get back to work. We lodged at an Air Force base half an hour outside town, where we went bowling 3 nights in a row, like we were Ricky and Lucy or something.

Wait, did they bowl? Maybe it was Rob and Laura Petrie. Whatever.

We don't bowl often, but when we do, it's VERY patriotic

And then we spent a day in Boston, where -- Susie being allergic to museums and such -- we just walked all over and ate a bunch of food. It was an excellent way to spend the day. I hadn't been there in, oh, 15 years, I think. Last time we were there, Larry was toting Rachel in a backpack and simultaneously carrying a screaming David over any bridges with "holes" in them. Fun times!

The North End was awash in authentic Italian food.

"Best cannoli I've ever eaten" -- Susie

And then we drove home. And because, finally, I had thought to throw out the rotting zucchini BEFORE we went on vacation, nothing smelled bad. Which is my idea of a really great homecoming.

The mosquitoes are still here, though.

The End.