Little Pond, Near Squam Lake. NH

View from the screened porch

I have never been a water person at all. In fact, after 2 near drownings, once in a river and once in a pool, I was mortally afraid of going into deep water as a child. When I was around 13 or so, and hanging out at the pool at the mobile home park I lived in, staying in the shallow end of the pool really became embarrassing. I was a good swimmer, but felt mortally terrified if I couldn't touch the bottom. However, personal embarrassment can be very motivating and one day I just dove into the deep end and swam to the shallow area. I still preferred to swim in pools, rather than bodies of water, but at least I conquered at least one issue that day. And I have kept swimming. I have done many, many laps over the years, especially while I was pregnant.

For the last few years, I have been feeling like we really needed to have a vacation on a lake. This seemed odd because of my pool preference, and also because I have never really done much boating or anything like that either (I get motion sickness very easily). But since I try to pay attention to my instincts, I told Doug we should do a lake vacation this year, since we had decided not to do a full on vacation in Cape Cod (I only go into the ocean up to my waist, by the way) this year.

And so, first thing on our first morning at the lake I found myself swimming along with the kids, from the landing outside our rental house out to a dock, in a very cold lake. Then before I knew it, I was in a canoe with my son, paddling around the lake. Luckily, my kids have not inherited my water fears (I was always careful not to show any of that to them) and they were very helpful in showing me how to use the oars, as well as helping me with the kayak, another experience I have missed out on. Always good to have scouts on hand, who have been kayaking, canoing and swimming for years already. Heh.

With the exception of the two days that it rained, we were in the lake several times each day. Doug took the kids fishing quite a lot and we played a lot of board games and cards. We spent a day shopping at the outlet stores in North Conway, and on another day we went to The Flume Gorge and I took the younger kids on a gondola ride at Loon Mountain, which was very cool (Doug and I did this last year on our little trip to NH) yet unbelievably terrifying. Doug stayed at the bottom with our older son who refused to go on the ride.

Besides spending so much time with the kids, my favorite thing about this vacation was sitting on the screened porch reading books! I read two whole books and got about halfway through The Great Deluge, which coincidentally, I started reading this on nearly the exact day that Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans. I am making an effort to continue to read more each day, mostly because this is a really good book and I'd like to finish it before I forget the first part of it.

Anyway, even though it was a great vacation, we are all glad to be home. I am having some trouble getting back into the flow of things, and am feeling distracted and a bit scattered. But I think things will be smoother when the kids go back to school tomorrow.

Surely you can hear my big sigh of relief about that!

Nothing Like a Good Book

View Along Armstrong Road, 2007, Oil on Panel, 12x16

My flight last week to New Mexico had two stops, including one plane change, so there was a lot of sitting both there and back. Before I left though, I took care to choose a good book. I thought it would be a really good distraction for me, plus I could read without any distractions. Nice, huh? I have always been a prolific reader, usually managing to finish at least a few books per week. But in the last few years with all I have going on, I am lucky if I can read a full page before I fall asleep each night. This annoys me to no end and I miss being able to breeze through books that seem so interesting. Reading this little each day makes it so difficult to follow a plot line or to really feel what the book is saying. However, despite the fact that I can hardly read one book each month I have not stopped buying books that interest me, and I am guessing I could start up my own small town bookstore with the number of books I have stacked next to my side of the bed, all patiently waiting their turn for me to get to them.

I have been itching to read a book that I have had on hand since practically the day it was released. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. And then Bridgette mentioned the book to me awhile ago thinking I'd like it and boy was she right! It was the perfect book. While I didn't read so much on the way there, I finished the entire book on the flight back home. It's about the author's family and how they spent a year eating only local and in season foods, or food they grew or raised. The purpose was to order to cut back their reliance on the foods that use incredible amounts of fossil fuels to get to our supermarkets as well as to support local food growers. It's a fascinating book, full of research combined with their experiences and certainly has inspired me to make some changes in what we buy and when we buy it. We already do some things, we try to grow our own food (try is the key word there, heh), we have the eggs and I do buy local food especially during the summer when the farmer's market is open. I mostly cook our meals from scratch and I do a lot of baking as well. But I confess to buying too many packaged foods, mostly crackers, pasta, and cereal, and I have a tendency to buy a lot of bananas and other fruits and vegetables out of season.

So I am all charged up now, and Doug and I are going to make a more serious effort at growing a better and more productive vegetable garden next year. This year the garden got away from us and while we had great greens for awhile plus strawberries, garlic, zucchini and the tomatoes are looking good, the rest got eaten by pests or smothered by weeds. Since I want to grow so many other things, I am putting together a new plan for the garden, which will be a ton of work (um, starting next month). But good worthwhile, albeit backbreaking work.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It is well researched and sure highlights how messed up our food system here in America has become.