Tuesdays with Grandma

Yesterday, I was feeling pretty perky for a Tuesday, so I decided to use that energy for something good.  I went to visit Grandma.

Grandma lives in a senior retirement community.  It kind of reminds me of a cruise ship.  She has a lovely, clean apartment, and access to the following:  2 beauty parlors, a cinema with recliners, a quaint café, two gorgeous dining rooms, a little store to buy milk and other sundries, an exercise room, an art studio, and a library.  Oh, and a bar. 

“Have to have the bar!” Grandma says sarcastically. 

At the community, there are movies played and various cultural excursions offered daily.  They provide transportation to church, to the grocery store, and to the mall.  They offer diversions like Bingo and Po-ke-no, a game that requires a lot of pennies.  (Grandma is always flush with change.  If she’s had a good night at Bingo, she’ll pay for my lunch when I come to visit.) 

They play Lawrence Welk in the community room every evening at 7:00.

Here are some events planned JUST TODAY:  Pet therapy with Diane!  A Chair Exercise class!  Guest Speaker Mike the Getaway Guy in the Meeting Room!  Band practice at 7:00!  Beth’s Classical Music Program at 3:00!

I get excited looking at all of these events.

“Grandma.  Want me to come watch The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with you?  I’d like to sit in those comfy chairs.”

“A movie?  I’ve gone to four movies since I’ve been here.  I walked right out of the last one.  I couldn’t hear a thing.”

Grandma is overwhelmed by the calendar. 

“These city people always have to go go go.  They can’t just sit and be still.  When I tell them it used to take me 40 minutes to get to the mall, they just can’t believe it.  City people just expect everything to come easy to them.  They have to be entertained all the time. “

“So that’s a no to Poetry with Mary Lou on Saturday? “

“Poetry with who?”

Yesterday, I met her at her apartment.  We always walk to the café, which is about three to four corridors away. That’s how you measure distance there, in corridors.

“Just leave your purse here,”  Grandma commands.

I place my purse on the floor and deftly pull out my cell phone and slip it into my pocket.

“Can’t you be without that thing for even an hour?” Grandma says. 

I’ve been caught.  We go through this every time I come to visit, which used to be weekly but is now more sporadic.  Some days, I’m just not perky enough.

“I have to take it with me.  The kids’ school expects to be able to reach me if there’s a problem.”

“And what did your mother do when you kids were in school?  Stay by the phone all day? “

“It’s different now.  This is just the way it is.”

Grandma throws her hands up in the air.

“All this technology has to stop someday.  Don’t you think?  I mean, how much further can they go?  There has to be an end.”

“I firmly believe that computerized robots will take over the world within 20 years, rendering the human race obsolete,” I say.

“Well, I’ll be dead by then.”

We walk rather quickly to the café.  Grandma has a new hot pink walker.  The nice thing about these walkers, I have to say, is that if one gets tired, there’s a seat built right into the thing.  You just have to turn the walker around and plunk down.  Very convenient.

The café is bright and clean, and has an eclectic staff, which Grandma always comments upon.

“Look at that boys hair.  Have you ever seen something like that?”  I have to admit the boy’s hair, which is shaved on one side of the head and long and wavy on the other side, is unusual.  The long side is constantly falling into his eye.   He kind of looks like a cocker spaniel with only one ear.

The food is good.  I eat a grilled cheese sandwich with a pickle.  Grandma always gets a chicken sandwich on a roll.  We each drink a diet Pepsi. 

There is a large, two-sided faux fireplace in the café where a man has pulled up his walker, which he sat upon, slumped over, asleep. 

“That man was here at 10:00 when I was out for my walk this morning,” says Grandma.

“Aww, he’s like a puppy.  Curled up by the fire.”

“I don’t understand why they can’t sleep in their own rooms.”

It does seem to be a common issue at retirement communities.  There are scores of elderly men and women who choose to doze off in the most public of places.  You walk into the main lobby, and there are three of them, drooling and dreaming. 

We walk to one of the other lobbies so Grandma can show me the damage that occurred when the pipes froze last week during the Polar Vortex.  I have to duck under a tarp.

“How tall are you, anyway?”  Grandma, who did not have to duck, asks.

“I’m 5’5”. “

“I was 5’4” once.”

Back at her apartment, we settle in chairs and I get the scoop.  Avis back in Schroon Lake is still blind and living on her own.  Virginia is adjusting well to life in her nursing home.  There’s a new person who moved in down the hall.  They come, they go.  Mostly they go because they die. 

“I felt very overwhelmed at Christmas,” Grandma says.

“Where there too many people?  Were the kids too crazy?”

“No, I mean the presents.  I’ve NEVER seen so many presents.  Kids these days just have so much stuff.  We got one present at Christmas.  One year, I got a suitcase because I was going on a class trip to Washington D.C.  Your grandfather never got any presents.”

This is the part that gets wearisome.  It’s the same every week.  I want to tell Grandma that I’ve read Tom Brokaw’s book: I know all about the plights of the greatest generation.  (Full disclosure: I have not actually read Tom Brokaw’s book.) 

The trick is to smile and nod, and eventually the lecturing stops and she delves into some story from the past.  This week, it was about her father and the store he ran, the store that my grandfather took over when he and my grandma were married. 

Grandma is turning 90 this month.  She’s lived through two world wars, a depression, the introduction of the washer and dryer, the dishwasher, the microwave, the television, vaccines, Beatlemania, space shuttles, the computer, and (alas) the cell phone.  She’s lost her husband, her brothers, her parents, her newborn son, her 7-year old sister, and most of her friends. 

I’m cutting Grandma some slack.  But, since she disdains computers, I know it’s safe to blog about her. 

She makes for excellent blog fodder.  

The Force of Nature

My problem is that I make these grandiose plans that could not possibly be accomplished. For instance, I was going to climb the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks by the time I was 40. I was thinking about this when I was driving along Rt. 8, through the twisting mountains roads as Caleb was complaining of carsickness. Because I’m going to be forty.

Harry: When?
Sally: Someday.
Harry: In eight years.
Sally: But it's there. It's just sitting there, like some big dead end.

I’m the same age as Sally was. Which means next year, I’ll be older than Sally.

I may cry.

The trip to Grandma’s went how I expected. Grandma is a talker. For someone who complains she doesn’t see people anymore, she sure knows a lot about everyone. If you happen to live in the Schroon Lake area, there’s a great possibility that I know what you did, why you did it, who you did it with, and, most importantly, whether or not Grandma approves.

I was spot-on correct about Grandma lecturing me about modern-day toys. When Ben pulled out his Leapster L-Max, Grandma insisted the world has gone (in her words) “too technological. What with microwaves and 600 television channels and tweeters.” Yes- Grandma is opposed to microwaves, cable, and Twitter- though she has no idea what Twitter is. Why have a microwave when your toaster oven does the job just as well? I don’t have an answer, either.

I rarely have an answer.

“So is that thing educational or strictly for entertainment?” she asked about the Leapster L-Max.

“Oh, it’s educational. You can do math problems and reading problems on it,” I answered smugly.

This is when I received the lecture about how we push kids too hard at too young of an age. I looked at Ben. He seemed happy, and unlike a child being pushed. God only knows what she would have said if I admitted the Leapster L-Max was really mostly for entertainment.

Grandma is a paradox. She was bewildered when she learned John was the sole caretaker of the twins this past weekend. One might think she is stuck in the fifties and sixties:

“In my day and age, a man changing a diaper was unheard of,” she stated matter-of-factly. I’m not sure if she approves or not. (I think she’s jealous my husband changes diapers and her husband didn’t. However, if John had narrowly escaped a horrible demise during WWII, I may have granted him a diaper-changing reprieve.)

Then again, she has recently discovered the wonder of Betty Crocker cookie mixes. She insists the mixes, which only require a bit of Oleo, are as tasty as the cookies she used to make from scratch. I beg to differ, but that’s just an opinion.

When in Schroon Lake, I like to walk through town (upstreet, as Grandma calls it) and browse in the little shops. Grandma insists the prices in the little shops are too high and threw a party when the Dollar General came to town.

Last year, the bridge over Lake Champlain that connects Vermont and New York was deteriorating fast and was subsequently demolished. A new bridge is underway. Grandma’s biggest concern? That the temporary lack of a bridge will hurt the Walmart’s business in Ticonderoga. Because, darn it, Oleo is cheaper at the Walmart. God forbid that wonderful establishment ever go out of business.

So, in some ways, Grandma has embraced the changing times.

Speaking of technology, Grandma has a hearing aid now, which is funny, because when I was little I thought she had hearing like a- like a something that has really great hearing. You could not mutter ANYTHING behind that woman’s back. Now, she says “What?” about fifty times during a ten-minute conversation. My voice is a little hoarse from talking so loudly. Plus, I had to translate everything Ben and Caleb said, as they are unapologetic mutterers. Occasionally, Grandma’s hearing aid began whistling, and disgusted, she’d wonder why she bothers to wear the thing at all.

Grandma is a force of nature. She walks for 20 minutes a day in circles in her basement, which is, according to her furnace man, the cleanest basement in all of Schroon Lake. She does this to keep spry, and she is fairly spry for her age.

Last March she fell. Bruised and scared, she amazingly did not break one bone. Not even one tiny fracture. This has compelled me to take my calcium supplement every day, just like Grandma.

Mostly, when I visit, I like to hear stories from Grandma: tales from her past. Like the story behind the picture of Grandma and a bunch of her girlfriends in snowshoes, dated 1940. (This was what we did for fun back then! We didn't need any of those fancy gadgets to amuse ourselves...) Like how she didn’t put her wedding dress on until my grandfather drove by her house on the way to the church, honking as he passed. Like how the Word of Lifers (the well-meaning bible thumpers from the popular bible camp in Schroon Lake) came into my grandparent’s store and scared away customers with their proselytizing.

I’ve come to find that my Adirondack outdoor adventures aren’t going to happen when I visit Grandma. There’s too much talking to get done. I suppose the mountains will wait.

Yes, there's pictures!

Hinckley Reservoir

Schroon Lake Town Beach

Hey Mr. Sandman- bring me a dream...

The Amazing Flying Caleb

A short hike through Scaroon Manor

Remnants of the old ampitheatre. This was one of my favorite haunts as a child. Back then, Scaroon Manor was abandoned. There were trails through the woods and people came in to camp and hike, but it was usually pretty quiet in there. Now, the old resort has undergone a major state-sponsored reconstruction. It costs money to get in there now, which I find distasteful. I don't like to pay for my nature. Plus, I liked it when it was wild and abandoned and haunted. The old ampitheatre was tucked back behind the trees...

Pictures of the ampitheatre back in its hey-day.

They filmed Marjorie Morningstar here!

Someone may have gotten a little carried away.

Schroon Lake

The boys and their Gigi. They ALL love their stuffed animals.

As long as she's alive, her kitchen will stay exactly as it has always been. With no microwave. And that is very comforting.

I Love NY State in the Summertime

Part I


John and I are headed to the shiny island of Manhattan next weekend. He has a conference, and I’m tagging along for a slice of NY style pizza from my favorite NYC pizzeria, Sbarro’s.

This is why I love NYC: next Fri, there are 47 Off-Broadway performances, 4 Literary events, 2 major museum exhibitions, 24 festivals, 3 different world-dance performances, and a gazillion concerts to choose from.

So much to do, not enough time.

I know what I DON’T want to do. I don’t want to see a Broadway musical (with the exception of Promises, Promises- which is based on one of my favorite movies, The Apartment.) I don’t want to visit the Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, or Ground Zero. I don’t want to shop at Bloomingdales or Bergdorf Goodman. There are no exhibitions I am particular drawn to at the Met, the MOMA, or the Guggenheim.

I kind of want to shout at Al Roker at 7am in the morning. Our hotel is in Times Square, so I think this is a definite possibility.

I do not want to see the comic revue Naked Boys Singing, which is exactly what it sounds like, or Viagra Falls at the Little Schubert Theater. Nor do I care to see Puppetry of the Penis at the Green Room, which is also exactly what it sounds like, or Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party.

In fact, the off-Broadway selection in NYC has led me to believe that there are no longer any straight men involved in the theater. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Here’s what I kind of would like to do. I want to hang out with my darling Christine. I want to take a self-directed walking tour of historical buildings. There’s also a cool neighborhood in the Meatpacking District I’d like to explore, followed by a casual dinner at the Spice Market. There are also some (some is an understatement) used bookstores I’d like to hit. I’m a wanderer. I wander around, around, around, around, around.

Here were John’s suggestions: A Mets game (and they’re in town. Curses!) He also (and he was so excited about this) has a client who could TOTALLY get us a private tour of the Brooklyn Brewery.

I cannot believe we have been married for nearly 11 years. Seriously.

I’m not opposed to a baseball game, but they take up an awful lot of time- time that could be better spent wandering. Some sort of compromise will have to be met. Any suggestions for fun, frugal, NYC things to do? Preferably with shopping and eating involved?


Part II

Tomorrow, I am taking Ben and Caleb up to Schroon Lake to visit my cantankerous grandmother.

Grandma likes to remind us on a regular basis that she doesn’t get many visits. The main reason, according to Grandma, is that she lives on a hill and all of her friends are now too old to climb the hill. She then likes to remind us that it sucks to get old and that it is depressing to watch all of her friends die.

Can’t argue with that.

I think she’ll enjoy Caleb and Ben. I’m sure I’ll hear this type of statement at least once:

“When YOUR mother was growing up, she didn’t have all these fancy toys to play with. No- your mom played with her dolls and she played outside, summer and winter, and that was good enough for her.”

Grandma is 88, she still drives everywhere, and she has an opinion about everything. She amuses me to no end.

I’m going to drag the boys hiking and then we’ll take a dip in the lake. There may even be a paddle boat excursion in our future. I wish we could be there on a Wed. night to go square dancing! Perhaps next year.

Summer’s too short. Way, way too short.

The Man Who Named the Mountains

I asked two good friends to come to my house for an evening of sitting around the table drinking hot cocoa and working on a jigsaw puzzle. They both seemed delighted by the prospect.

(We are not lame. We are tired mommies, and the thought of just sitting peaceably, working on a puzzle seems… peaceful.)

Unfortunately, one of my friends came down with the stomach bug. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that while she was watching Ben on Friday (to give me a break from while I was otherwise preoccupied kneeling at the porcelain throne), Ben threw up grape juice all over her white rug. I mean, the stomach bug is everywhere right now. She could’ve gotten it somewhere else. Her husband might have brought it home, since he is also puking. Or her son. (I have massive guilt.)

So, Janet and I worked on my Carl Heilman puzzle; a gorgeous picture of the Adirondack peaks taken from Mt. Van Hoevenberg.

My goal is to climb the 46 peaks within the next ten years. Completing this puzzle is my backup plan.

The names of the mountains are written along the border of the puzzle.

“Nippletop Mountain?” guffawed Janet. And how often does an opportunity like this come along? I got to say the following:

“My great, great grandfather named that mountain.”

I am not putting you on. My grandfather’s grandfather was Orson Schofield Phelps, the legendary Adirondack guide who took many an explorer and hiker on wild adventures through the backwoods and up the high peaks. His nickname was “Old Mountain Phelps,” and legend depicts him as a primitive, rustic character. (That’s him to the right; he was a handsome devil.) Truthfully, Phelps exaggerated his backwoods personality to gain the attention of tourists. Tourists preferred a colorful, stereotypically provincial backwoods guide to the more polished and professional alternatives.

Phelps forged trails to the tops of Mt. Marcy, Hopkins Peak, and Giant Summit. He is credited for naming a number of the Adirondack high peaks, including: Haystack, Skylight, Basin, Saddleback, Sabale, Gothics, and Allen. Phelps Mountains is of course named for him.

As for Nippletop Mountain? A pragmatic man, Phelps said this about the controversial name: “Nippletop was named by its Creator; the name suggests itself at sight.”

Phelps was born in Vermont, but was enticed by the beauty of the Adirondack mountains when he accompanied his father to the Schroon Lake region (where my grandmother lives) as a child. He eventually settled, of course, in Keene Valley, amidst the mountains he so loved. His daughter, Avis, married Merton Roblee. Merton and Avis were the parents of my grandfather, Hilton Bishop Roblee (nicknamed Joe), who grew up in North Creek.

I tried to keep it from you but now you know- I am famous.

There will be no living with me now.

Here's great-great grandpa as depicted by American painter Winslow Homer.

The infamous Nippletop Mountain. Picture brazenly stolen from http://www.manhattantransfer.blogspot.com/.

Information about Orson Schofield Phelps was found from my copy of The High Peaks of Essex: The Adirondack Mountains of Orson Schofield Phelps, By Bill Healy.

Why I Hate the Adirondack Northway OR Life is Not Always Fair OR Wild Bobcats Attack!!!!

Warning: the following post contains a very sad story. I would say it’s definitely Old Yeller sad but not quite The Champ sad. I’m on a “write about the Adirondacks” kick. I really can’t say how long this might go on. This might be it. We’ll see.

I have a nice backyard. It is about a quarter of an acre, is completely fenced in, has some lovely trees, a small garden, and a large deck where the kids zoom around on their ride-on toys and occasionally fall off, wail loudly, and then do the whole thing over again. I enjoy my yard.

Compared to my mom’s backyard growing up, however, our backyard is a big fat disappointment. Our front yard too, for that matter.

My grandmother’s house is set on a hill, and in the winter, you can see the lake from the living room picture window when the leaves on the trees no longer impede the view. Their house was built right next to my great-grandparents’ home, formerly a white colonial with a barn where they once kept chickens. The yard behind both houses was endless and sprawling, flat until it reached another steep hill. My mom used to ski down that hill in the winter. From atop of Charley hill, you get a panoramic view of the lake.

The yard was complete with a rambling stream and what my mom always referred to as her frog pond. She recalls running down the hill, watching out for adders in the tall grasses, playing for hours by the pond as her Shetland sheepdog enjoyed the wide open space. Their home basically backed up to an Adirondack wonderland, a country paradise, complete with deer, a variety of chirping birds, and other wild visitors like skunks, raccoons, and wild bobcats that were always set to attack.

Rawr.

I’m kidding about the wild bobcats. I do know that a common form of Schroon Lake recreation was to go to the dump to watch the black bears forage for food.

In the late 1950s, construction of the Northway, an extension of I-87, began. Crews blasted their way through the north, dynamiting rocks and creating a freeway that would lead from Albany up to Canada, the only freeway in the Adirondack Mountains.

They bulldozed their way through my mom’s backyard in the 1960s.

When I was little, I used to pour over compilations of Peanuts comics. Perhaps you remember the ones where Snoopy believed a freeway was going to bulldoze right through his doghouse? He was really quite panicked about the whole thing. (As you would be too, if you had a doghouse you enjoyed perching upon more than anything else in the world.) Reading those strips, I could only think of my mom and her family, sitting at night in their living room, listening to the explosions going off behind them. I'm sure it brought back unwanted memories of the war for my grandpa. Teddy the Sheltie would shake and forever be afraid of thunder afterwards. The stream and the frog pond would dry up. They would become completely cut off from Charley Hill.

The funny thing is, after the Northway was built, my grandparents rarely used it. There is an exit to it in walking distance from their house. Instead, they took the winding back roads to Glens Falls or North Creek or Ticonderoga. I did not drive on the Northway until I was an adult, taking it over the shorter jaunt through the mountains because of inclement weather conditions.

I’ve never known that backyard without the Northway behind it. I used to lie on a cot in my uncle’s old bedroom, silent beneath the slanted ceiling of my grandparents’ cape cod home, and listen to the cars swish by on the Northway. I imagined they weren’t cars, but waves from the lake.

The Adirondack Park is so large. What were the chances the Northway would have to come right through my mom’s backyard, the home of people who had lived, breathed, and worked in these woods their entire lives? And whose parents and parents’ parents had done the same?

Alas, the Northway is now taken for granted. It was originally supposed to be built parallel to route 9. I don’t know why that plan failed. I do know that the “forever wild” clause in the state’s constitution was amended so that road could be built. “Forever wild- unless something comes up.”

Most people build their homes off of roads. Rarely are roads ripped through private lands. Such is the beauty of eminent domain, which I realize is at times necessary (or is it?), but it doesn’t make me hate it any less. I doubt that people who drive through the Northway give any thought to what was lost in its making. Instead, they demand more from it: cell towers that will enable them to gab instead of enjoying the scenic vista as they drive by.

Wow. I sound like an environmentalist wack-a-doo. Oh well, I guess I’m entitled to that one day a year. I’m totally thinking of starting a Facebook cause against eminent domain, however. You in?

And y’know what? When that kid walked into Alaska and injured himself and died and then when a whole BOOK and a subsequent movie were written about him, I didn’t hear one person call out for cell phone towers in the Alaskan wilderness! You may say, but Holly, I don’t think there were cell phones back then. To which I say, oh.

Honestly, I can’t imagine my childhood memories of Schroon Lake being greatly improved by the absence of that road. I still had a fantastic time playing in the backyard with neighboring children, creating crowns out of wild black-eyed-susans, learning to swim in the lake, hiking up Mt. Severence (a glorified hill, actually), and visiting with my grandfather, who I believed was the kindest and funniest man on the planet. I remember how dark it was at night, so dark you couldn’t even see the Northway and wouldn’t know it was there except for the occasional beam of headlights and the sound of a car on its way to who knows where. I remember that the crickets were louder there than anyone where else I’ve ever been.

I’m not opposed to the cell towers. Who cares. People live there, and deserve cell phone access like the rest of us. Anyway, there are already electrical wires entangled in the autumn leaves. And let’s face it… many of the homes (or shacks or trailers) aren’t so pretty to look at either. Especially the ones with tires and rusty trucks and the virgin Mary in a tub in their front yards. And I certainly don’t want to kick them out. Mostly.

I just hate the Northway.

I did often try to imagine what it would be like if that fence that protects us from the zooming cars was not there and the grassy yard went on, uninterrupted. Now, I imagine how much my kids would have liked the frog pond and how fun it would have been to climb up Charley Hill. What could have been shall never be. And all you can do is shrug and remember what my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Doty, used to drill into our heads: life is not always fair.

View from Charley Hill

View from Grandma's Front Porch

"The Adirondack Experience"

The twins and I have just returned revived from a weekend of Adirondack fresh air. That’s actually not quite true. As I write this, Daniel suffers from a fever. Ella has goopy eyes. Things are going downhill fast over here.

Just the same, the weather up north was cold but pleasant, the pine trees fragrant, and the foliage, though past its peak color, was still quite brilliant in some spots.

There’s lots of news up in Schroon Lake, NY, which is in another large area of NY that is not New York City. Big news, actually. A cell tower is being constructed upon a hill close to my grandmother’s home. We asked our aunt and uncle when the cell tower would be completed.

“They’re just putting the branches on it now,” was the reply.

Perhaps you are familiar with the time-honored tradition of adhering branches to cell towers. I was not. This was apparent by the quizzical expression on my face. It had to be explained.

You see, the Adirondacks is a rare and enchanted place where little villages are interspersed inside the largest state park in the country. This is all lovely, but LIVING inside a state park means that your cell towers should not seem like non-state park cell towers, which are, let’s all just admit, ugly.

I had heard of this problem before. The APA (Adirondack Park Agency) makes a big stink about anything that might disrupt the natural landscape, including cell towers and other technological eyesores that pop up. However, recently a Jewish couple ran off the road and got stuck on the Northway… the husband froze to death after their car ran off the road. NO CELL PHONE ACCESS! This was a problem not only because, well, he died, but because he wasn't able to be buried within 24 hours of his passing, as was his religious custom. Hence, a Schroon Lake cell tower! What excitement for Schroon Lake teenagers! And hikers who like to talk and walk! And people named John Mark!

I would have thought that camouflaging the cell tower with paint would be sufficient, but apparently not. It shall be made to look like the strangest tree you ever did see. And that’s NOT ALL! Here is another example of where your tax dollars are going:

On the Northway (stretch of road from Albany up to Canada) are scattered rest stations. The cell tower will not be built on this state-owned land, however. Instead, some dude with lots of land is renting out space for this treeish cell tower at the fair price of about $1400/year. Why, you may wonder, would the cell tower just be built in an area that wouldn’t cost New York State a million bucks within the next 100 years? Because, imagine if you will, a New York City couple in their rented Prius driving north on the northway to go to a charming B&B in Schroon Lake. They decide to pull over to take a whiz at the rest stop. There, seemingly glaring at them, is a massive cell tower that is donning a tree costume. The horror!!! Their whole trip might be ruined. Heck, sleep for years might be ruined… think of the nightmares you might have if you spotted a cell tower dressed as a tree!

The APA will not allow cell towers to appear in public places because it might ruin the “Adirondack Experience” for some tourist.

The visit with grandma went pretty well, I think, though she may or may not have implied that I should contact the Supernanny for help with my children. This may or may not have had something to do with dinnertime, which, by the way, I HATE.

The twins weren’t terrible the whole time. Actually, they did very well on the five hour drive up there, but one of them was a complete monster on the drive home. In fact, the drive home is making me question their Halloween costumes for this year. I have already purchased plush Minnie and Mickey costumes, which are adorable, but I’m thinking a lovely angel costume and a red devil costume, complete with horns and a pitchfork, might be more fitting for this particular year.

Today, I was driving while my sister and mom were sleeping as we passed the “Leaving Adirondack Park” sign. I had to face that melancholy moment all on my own. We ventured down Rt. 365 through the town of Holland Patent, which may just be the town I hide out in if I ever decide to run away and form a new identity as a mysterious stranger in an idyllic small town, and soon popped back onto the thruway back to Rochester, flat-landed city that it is.

Home again. Sigh.

Loon Lake Marina

I call this one "Reflection of my Soul in Foliage"

Schroon Lake Boathouse Theater