Mickey's Musings

Sunday wanderings

I've been skipping around Blogland and looking at everyone else's blogs and was disappointed that so many people aren't really blogging this weekend and the I smacked myself upside the head, 'cuz neither have I been!

It was beautiful here today and we went out and did touristy type things, which is fun sometimes. We went down to the Inlet and had fish sandwiches and sat and watched the "Bennies"and watched the fishing boats and smaller boats going in and out of the inlet. The smell of suntan oil mixed with the salt air was sweet. Afterwards, we went about 20 miles in the other direction to the boardwalk in that town and I got fudge and my son waxed nostalgic and played a video game in the arcade. It's amazing how many flavors of fudge there are now. I got cookie dough fudge and chocolate cheescake fudge and peanut butter with chocolate chips and regular peanut butter, yum :)

And when we came home, I set up my chair out on the front porch and I blew bubbles :)

Helping hand?

We stopped at one of our favorite restaurants to have a meal while we were in Maine. Sitting at one of the outside tables was a woman eating. She had an infant in a seat next to her. About 10 feet away were a young boy about 3-4 and a young girl about 2-3. They were "playing" on the edge of the parking lot by picking up the stones and tossing them in the air in the direction of everyone's vehicles. The woman occasionally glanced over at them. The baby gurgled and attempted to swat at the woman who never turned to look at the baby.

The little girl began picking up handfuls of stones and distributing them in the grass. I cringed. We have small stones around the landscaping at home and I know what a pain it can be when they stray over into the lawn and then make their way into the lawn mower where they are spit out at my unsuspecting bare legs! As the girl head back with another handful, the woman gestured for her to return them to whence they came. The little girl's expression never seemed to change, she deposited them back into the lot and at the woman's request came back to the table where she climbed up on the seat of the small picnic table and began to jump up and down. She was joined by the boy, who sat at the table and seemed to sulk a bit until he discovered that he could go around and bop the baby repeatedly on the head with one of the baby's plastic toys. The baby continued to try and get the woman's attention and continued to fail. My son returned to our table at about the time that the woman was packing up to leave. Something had transpired between her and the young boy, as he had become agitated and was less than cooperative as the woman began to pack up to leave. She put the baby on her hip and started heading toward the street as she continued to argue with the boy who was now throwing a toy in the parking lot. He sulked away from her as she told him to pick up the toy. I thought she would be heading to a vehicle parked in the lot, but instead, she headed out towards the highway where there were vehicles parked along the shoulder of the busy highway. I didn't see or hear her say anything or motion to the little girl who just filed in behind her. As they made their way along the busy highway, between the cars parked on the shoulder, I never saw her so much as glance back at this little girl. The boy, all of about 4 years old, was walking ahead of her on the shoulder. I heard a voice next to me, "I can't believe she's taking those children out on the highway like that!" When they finally made it to their vehicle, we heard a child crying in protest. I can only imagine that once out of sight the boy had suffered the wrath of the woman's displeasure with him.
All of this resulted in a discussion between my son and I about whether or not the children should have been permitted to walk along the highway like that. He had seen the way she *seemed* to treat these children with apparent indifference and that was what really bothered me the most. They were all clean, looked well fed, they did seem to listen to her when she required their attention, it was her lack of.....caring that bothered me the most, her indifference, I felt fearful as I watched that little girl walk along the highway behind her, it wouldn't take much to distract her, would it? What if she tripped? Was I over reacting? My son, in his infinite wisdom listened to me tell him about the stones and the jumping etc and he asked, "Did you ever think to offer to help her?" Actually, I had, I told him, I was going to entertain the baby a bit so she could eat, but the baby didn't seem to really concern her. I wondered though if I should have asked if I could give her a hand and I wondered what right we had to criticize when we weren't even willing to offer her a hand getting those children back to the car.

Vacation Part one :)

Yes, I know, I didn't even mention that we were going away :)
We went to Vermont and then up to Maine. Maine, as always was amazing. Vermont was a shocker, the people are so incredibly nice and the scenery is wonderful.

We began our trip with the electricity going out here at home. I don't think I've ever left for Maine without if being sweltering hot here before we go. It doesn't matter if it's June, July, August or September. The loss of power naturally stressed me because now I couldn't do that last minute vacuuming that I like to have done before a trip. I suppose it's a akin to the whole clean underwear syndrome *G* Seriously, it had more to do with the fact that my good friend Trudy was going to be coming in to give Sebastian his insulin shot 2x's a day. All things considered though, with the way the place looked when she was over the night before, *anything* was going to be an improvement. We encountered a good deal of rain on the way through NY state and had some trouble with the confusing signs to Vermont for Rt 4, we finally rolled into Fair Haven and found the streets rolled up, with the exception of a cop and 2 firemen that we chatting outside the fire house. We stopped and asked for directions and they all seemed a bit surprised that we were heading out to Half Moon State Park, they said it was "God's Country". We were very surprised when one of the firemen offered to show us the way there. He took off like only a fireman can, roaring past the 30 MPH signs at about 50! Down the winding rural roads we went finally turning off onto what can only be described as a dirt road in the woods, complete with sharp drop offs, holes in the road the size of Vermont and no lighting. It was one of those roads that they use in horror movies and I was really glad I had suppressed the (slight) urge to see the new Eliza Dushku movie. after a good 15-20 minutes and this still at full fireman speed, we came upon Half Moon and a locked gate. Thankfully the attendant was awake enough to tell us the trick to the gate and of we went to our site. It was raining, so we decided to sleep in the truck for the night. I hate mosquitoes. I will probably repeat this at least a half dozen times just to remind you. What *was* Noah thinking?! Anyway, we loved Half Moon so much that we decided to stay two more days. We found a cute little restaurant downtown, The Wooden Soldier, that had the best french toast I've ever eaten. The maple syrup was delicious. After eating there every day but one (we got up too late on Sunday) the owner was nice enough to let me buy a jug of the maple syrup that she uses. When we asked the waitress if she knew the best way for us to get to Ben and Jerry's, she said she didn't, but she'd find someone who did and promptly brought a man over who'd been sitting at the counter having his breakfast and said he'd be happy to help us! I thought that either I'd stumbled into Mayberry or these were pod people!

The Rangers/helpers at the park were so nice too. Kyle was the Ranger and Michele was working in the office along with Kyle's huge black Lab, named Dublin.

My son made friends with a mother goose and her two little babies and tried feeding them his left over bread, but it was a bit of a struggle because the fish kept jumping up and stealing the bread! We were surprised to see a really large, well fed snake sunning itself about 5 feet from the tent on a log in the water one morning. We saw a smaller one a few days later. We were extremely delighted to see porcupines, as we've never seen them in the wild. And Aeryn Sun was pleased that a deer came out and stood in the road every afternoon as if to greet us.

Our first adventure was to the Ben and Jerry's Factory tour The factory resembles a small amusement park complete with a graveyard for flavors that are no longer offered and a brightly colored playground for the kiddies. The gift shop is small, but colorful offering a cute assortment of T-shirts and socks and mugs and cups and other assorted items. We settled on a couple of mugs and I got a Half Baked refrigerator magnet. At the end of the tour you receive two small samples, that day the samples were Brownie Batter and something Oatmeal, that my son liked. Naturally they have an ice cream shop there and I was surprised that they charged me $2.50 *each* for a 2 small cups of vanilla ice cream for the dogs. The servings wasn't very large either. After treating the puppies, we had a couple of cones ourselves and was really disappointed when the man in front of me rather snottily questioned the girl behind the counter about whether the two different scoops in his cone looked the same size to her? I'd never seen anyone return an ice cream cone before like that. After having so many nice people in Vermont, this crabby guy stuck out like a sore thumb. The rain was coming down pretty good at this point and it was getting pretty chilly, but we still made our way up the hill and over to see the graveyard after letting the puppies back into the nice dry truck! They were pleased by this and rewarded us by not barking.

Next adventure - The Vermont Teddy Bear Factory

We're back!

Got back early this morning. The film is at the store being developed and the bags and wash are strewn about everywhere. Just gonna relax today. I'm putting together a trip post, it was wonderful!

Change

When I was a little girl, we lived on Grove Street. It was a dead end block with lots of trees and other children to play with. My father would give me a dollar and I could ride downtown to Smittys and buy him a newspaper, a pack of Pall Malls and I could get a Baby Ruth bar. There was a duck pond and a train station and a really neat library and a skating pond. When Wally Schiarra went up into space, everyone in town was very proud and they held a parade for him when he came home, he was one of our own. I just thought it was neat that he and I had the same kindergarten teacher, Miss Lindstrom. My father worked part time as a police officer in town, he seemed to enjoy it even more than his "real" job as an executive. His father had been a Captain in the NYPD. It was an ideal existence. Summers we went to our summer house on the lake, where I learned to swim and did arts and crafts.

When I was 10, we moved away.

All the other children came out into the street and waved to me as we pulled away. The house was brand new, my mother had looked over plans and looked at other houses and she decided on one and they had it built, right there on a quiet lagoon that lead to the Barnegat Bay. Frankie Valli would later sing about "walking home every day over Barnegat Bridge and Bay. I don't think there is a bridge named the Barnegat Bridge though. It was desolate and cold and I had to take the school bus for almost an hour every day. But, I loved the way the ocean smelled in the Fall when I would leave my windows open at night and the sea air would waif in and I could hear the waves crashing a quarter mile away. I loved the way the wires would arc in the salt air and I loved being able to go to the ocean every single day.

When I was 18, they sold this house too and got two more.

Tonight we took the long way home along the beach. It takes us past the entrance to where I used to live. I asked my son, who's learning to drive, if he'd liked to drive around in there. There are only two streets and they are wide and almost no one parks in the street. Everyone stows their Porsches and Mercedes in their garages. As we drove down my old street I looked to see how the old house was doing. I couldn't understand how I could have missed it, but I couldn't find it. On the way back up the block, I asked my son to slow down even more and I actually looked at numbers on the mailboxes. There, where my lovely home had stood, a beautiful two story Colonial, there was now a huge adobe looking house. It seemed that the house was too far forward too and I realized then that they had down away with the trees that had been in the front, the ones where I'd had my prom pictures taken, the ones that my father had planted, the ones where our dog was laid to rest, now there's someone else's living room. My mother's azaleas were gone. The front steps where some boys I went to high school with had painstakingly left a message made from peebles, so I'd know they'd come to "the shore" to visit, was gone. But most of all, I thought of Kip, our black and white Husky. He'd gotten away from my father one night when he was walking him and my dog, Teddy, a grey and black Husky. My mother had cried and cried. I'd never seen my father look so horrible. She said it was because he was drunk. My brothers came up from the house at the shore and they took him home and buried him there in the front yard, right between the living room windows, that was over 30 years ago. Teddy is long gone. My parents are gone. Now the house that was their dream house is gone too.

Sunday sunshine?!

The sun is trying to peek out here in the Northeast after another deluge of rain yesterday and last night. The backyard finally decided it had drank enough and refused to take in anymore as the rain poured down. On the up side, the roof decided *not* to leak during thislast onslaught. What a huge change from last year when we were sweltering hot and dry, dry, dry. I don't think they're going to have a drought this summer, considering all the snow we got and now all this rain.

Got the Pooh and Tigger collar and leash yesterday at Target and the Mickey and Minnie one, but we really wanted the Simpsons one, so we're going to check the Target in the next town today.

It will never cease to amaze me how fast gossip can spread. Something happened at work the other night and I was amazed that less than 24 hours later it had made it's way to the next town. Just as well really, as I said to someone else the other night, they shouldn't worry about the gossip factor, someone else will do something to replace this week's tidbit and this will soon be old news.

The sun is really making an efort out there and I hope it succeeds, I'd really like to be able to do some work in the back yard, but I'd like the yard to be a bit drier, I don't feel like raking muck and the grass needs to dry before I can mow it.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

My Favorite Vacations.....

Are spent with my son and my puppies :)

Vacation plans ?

As Ithy and Nin head off on their adventure to Tulsa, to take tons of pictures *G*, anyone else out there have any vacation plans this summer? If you had unlimited funds, where would you go?

Excuse me?!

My tenant called, apparently the water company had left a tag on the door that said to get in touch with them. Since she pays her own water bill and it's in her name, she rang them up. They proceed to tell her the they have been trying to access the water meter in the house for 7 years!
7 YEARS...yeah, right. My tenant has lived there for over a year and shot that right down, since they tried to tell her that they had been there this past April. "No," she politely told them, "they hadn't been there". It's interesting too, because they came and replaced the water meter about *5* years ago. They told her that they'd been prorating the bills.....really....now if they've been prorating for for the last 7 years, then how did they give the last tenant a final bill?? And they had the nerve to insult my tenant about the ethnicity of her name, nice. Anyway, the post over at Dizzy Girl's about her problems with the electric compnay reminded me of this, what ever happened to the days of utilities being service oriented.

Wow!

This is so exciting!! Thank you soooooo much, Ithy! Oh my! And look how easy it is to type things in! I was doing everything "long hand" html over on the other site! Now, I just have to read all the directions and get real brave and try to "decorate" the place *G*

Isn't Ithy a smartie! Wow, wow, wow :)

Have a fabu vaca and don't forget...lots of pictures!! *G*

This Is Mickey's New Blog!

Or it will be soon :)

A Post To Test

I'm a little teapot, short and stout....

La La La La La!

Da daaaa!