Hello there, persons of the blogosphere! I write to you from atop the Green Mountains, or at least atop one of them, or at least not far from the top of one of them! We have left the wilds of the Greater Boston area for a four-day weekend in Vermont, an event that is becoming something of a yearly tradition. It is also an event that strikes me as particularly hypocritical, considering I spend the other 361 days of the year moaning about suburbia and how we need to move back to a city. You’d think being this far from a metropolitan area would make my a bit hyperventilatey, yet somehow it doesn’t. I think the sheer distance to a major city simply overrides my City Gene.
That and the fact that it is absolutely freakin’ gorgeous up here. You can’t spit without hitting a phenomenal farmer’s market (because, you know, that would be the classy thing to do), and the locally sourced produce and bread and everythingdelicious is out of control. Plus you just can’t make up views like this:
Or the fact that you’re just ambling through a side-of-the-road sculpture park and stumble upon the most pristine stream you’ve ever seen, the kind you need to wade into and skip rocks through immediately, lest you go back home and remember never doing it:
And then there’s Burlington. While I may not be the worldliest of women, I have been more than a few places and I still maintain that Burlington, VT, is one of the best spots in the world. Honest-to-god hippies stroll shoulder-to-shoulder with Gap-bedecked UVM students, while tourists and locals alike stop to take renewing breaths of the fresh, Lake Champlain-scented mountain air, the foghorns of ferries and the tinkling of head shops and the melodies of live-music clubs all mingling to make you realize you’re really lucky to be there right at that moment.
Every time we visit Burlington, Adam and I throw around the idea of moving there, temporarily shedding our Big City Dreams for a lake-rimmed college town where we could eat our weight in local goat cheese. Then we remember, Oh! Winter! Samosa stands and charmingly dreadlocked neighbors, sure. But constant multiple feet of snow? We’re just too feeble of soul for that.
Maybe Aura will realize the Burlington dream some day. Adam’s father and uncle both were born and raised in the city, and we tracked down their homestead yesterday. It, much like the city itself, looks like a good place to have grown up.
After all, and as we reminded Aura, it’s always nice to have a legacy, even if it’s far from the place you usually call home.
The pool isn’t the only inflated thing on that box.
May 20, 2010
As I may have mentioned before, we have no yard. We have lots of mulch and tons of weedy stuff and a downright precipitous rock cliff in the back, but zip for grass. I doubt this would bother me in the least except for Aura, who is a child and is having a childhood and therefore needs Outdoor Childhood Memories. Given this, I am easily suckered into buying any outside toy that can be used on non-grassy surfaces. We have a closetful of bubble toys, a virtual hamper of bouncy balls, the world’s most annoying ring-toss kit…the list goes on. But I still feel guilty.
I tell you this because all that guilt is my excuse for purchasing the following:
Yet I am still scrambling for an excuse to explain why the woman on the pool box infuriates me so. I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that I find myself reluctantly subsisting almost entirely on cucumbers and Fiber One bars (Oats ‘n’ Chocolate!). Whatever the impetus, this Mother Who Swims with Her Kids in a Silver Lamé Bikini is really annoying the hell out of me.
A closer look.
As I spent 20 sweaty minutes pumping up the pool today, I kept casting looks over my shoulder, unable to stop glaring at the Mother Who Swims with Her Kids in a Silver Lamé Bikini’s smarmy grin. Or, for that matter, the Mother Who Swims with Her Kids in a Silver Lamé Bikini’s abs, which I am fairly certain are approximately 273% more defined than my own. Also, those fake kids of hers might very well be better behaved than mine. Though I doubt that last one, since the boy looks a bit like a Kennedy and, well, we all know how THAT goes.
Twenty minutes is a long time to glare at one hussy, so I eventually let my gaze wander over the rest of the box. And I started to feel a little better.
The above? That’s information about the pool. In Finnish. Maybe’s it me, but trying to sell an inflatable pool to consumers in Finland seems a little…optimistic. As I pumped and then pumped some more, it occurred to me that selling pools in Finland is kind of like selling snowman-building kits in Ecuador. “Snowmen in Ecuador!” I chuckled to myself, enlightened by my own genius. I tell you, I may not have abs of steel, but I am positively AWASH in marketing savvy.
Then there was this:
Maybe this is also targeted to Finns. Perhaps the Splash and Play! marketing folks believe the Finnish people to be not only a hearty people, eager to thumb their noses at a naturally frosty climate, but also a people equipped with ginormous mouths. A race of humans who could actually manage the attempted swallowing of a six-foot-long piece of plastic, which is the only possible way the Splash and Play! pool could be a choking hazard.
And that right there really put it into perspective for me. I may not have a sculpted stomach, and my closet may indeed be woefully empty of lamé bikinis. But at least no one has ever believed me capable of trying to swallow a pool. In my book, this counts for a lot.
This one, though, I’ll have to watch out for:
If you could see what she does to Hershey’s Kisses…well. Let’s just say you’d be worried, too.
Since Friday morning, I’ve been wracking my brain for something to post about, something beyond a rundown of the numbingly boring drivel that became my weekend. But it’s SO MUCH WORK. Here, let me show you Post Ideas #1-3, all of which suck equally. I appreciate such equal suckage, though. It seems to make everything so much…fairer.
Failed Idea #1: The We-Discriminate-Against-the Vertically-Challenged Photo Booth
When you feed three hard-earned dollars into a photo booth at Bouncy Castle Kingdom, you really do think that the camera will catch your daughter and her two equally diminutive friends posing. You believe, even. But no. The booth is apparently only for those 4’5″ and above. I’d write to the manufacturer to complain about the lack of proper warning signage, but when I looked for an address on the back of the machine all I could find was a label that said HAHAHA SUCKER I EAT PEOPLE AS GULLIBLE AS YOU FOR BREAKFAST.
Failed Idea #2: Mulch. A Big Pile of It.
You know that saying A picture is worth a thousand words? Well, in this case, I’m thinking I saved myself about 18 words. They go something like this: HELP HELP SAVE ME I’M STARTING TO ACT SUBURBAN KEEP ME AWAY FROM MINIVANS AND HYBRID DOG BREEDS.
Failed Idea #3: Bubble Guns and the Rage They Inspire
Oh, and by “rage,” I mean mine, not hers. She was fine with the fact that the bubble solution in the Fun Bubbles Gun! just pours onto the freshly hosed-down deck with abandon. And onto my shorts, the only pair that fit properly at the moment. And onto my soul, which may very well never be redeemed by a higher power because I said about five-and-a-half especially bad words in front of an impressionable child when the bubbles floated over to the grill and popped on the burgers. Turns out ketchup CANNOT cure all ills, after all. Effin’ ketchup.
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So, you see. I am completely and devastatingly out of viable fodder. Will you help? Please? Ask questions and I shall answer! Suggest a topic and I will try to address it! IT WILL BE SO EXCITING. OR SOMETHING.
Those who participate might even get a little envelope of mulch sent to them. Or a three-year-old. No promises, though.
