I have been waiting to write this as my computer is out of commission for the moment, but I couldn't wait any longer or it will be October. So I'm writing on an iPad. Does it make a difference? We'll see.
We've been happily and summer-ly busy since the Poconos, first with a visit from Annie who helped celebrate Mary's birthday and joined us for an evening at Tanglewood. My college roommate Steve was here with his wife for more Berkshire cultural things including Thursday morning French conversations at Edith Wharton's museum home.
Then we went up to Vermont where our car broke down about an hour away from our destination. What could have been a disaster turned out much better than expected as a series of fortuitous incidents and very nice people helped us get it towed and repaired at a much lower than expected price. Anyway, we enjoyed being with Charlie and Annie at their lake cabin.
And then, Thomas arrived. So did his parents. Joe and Leonor were here for almost a week and we had a grand grandparent time with toys and books and strolls and hugs. We managed to take Thomas to a Moby Dick marathon reading, that both his parents and grandmother read at. I should add that Thomas did not last 26 hours through the marathon reading but a respectable 30 mins or so. Margaret and Andrew arrived too late for that but they joined us the next day for a hike up Monument Mountain where Melville met Hawthorne! 168 years ago.
Not everything revolves around Melville, though, and we have gone to a movie (Eighth Grade), a play (West Side Story), a baseball game, King Kone, more hikes and swims and canoe rides, and golf games. It's been raining quite a bit but that hasn't dampened our ability to rest and relax. Margaret and Andrew took a few days off and went to the Rhode Island beaches, and stopped at Pomfret and the Vanilla Bean on the way back here. We got to watch D while they were gone!
Mary's brother Tim has moved back to Pittsfield with the aim of staying here in the glorious warm weather months and then head back to warmer climes at the first hint of snow. He's found an apartment in town, and we have seen quite a bit of him. We even ran into him at the hot dog ranch one night.
We see that Janet, and I think Peter, were in Atlanta for her annual conference on audio description. Out in Dundee, Claire is back home from her summer camp job, armed with a big bag of juicy peaches. She starts her new job soon, and we hear Daniel has his first job at a high end men's salon.
The other day, we were outside a coffee shop, on our way to Northampton for the day, and Mary said out of nowhere, "this is summer!" That captured how sunny, warm, carefree, content, green, everything was. Hope you are having a little, or a lot of that.
And welcome again to Everett! Did you hear someone say "Fantastic?"
Love from up here.
