Ellie Violates 3-Mile Limit

Labor day is supposed to be a fun three day weekend but to me it always marks a kind of sadness because it harkens the end of summer and the beginning of the semester, the latter often leading to me laboring more than usual.  Saturday I took Ellie to swim and then Cristin took us all to see a house which was completely impractical for us to own but happened to look out over a beautiful swath of Buzzards Bay.   Here are the wonderful views, and here is Ellie’s room.   Her clothes are nice and dry because she can just throw them on top of the propane burner in her only closet.  She also sleeps on an angle with the horizontal because that is the only way we could fit her bed.  After that we headed out to the boat into a building SW breeze.  I have gotten just plain lazy this summer and to be honest my CO2 footprint guilt has kicked in and we found ourselves making yet another journey across the harbor.

We have had nearly as many days on the boat this summer as last and have used about 1/4 the gas.  We tied up on the secret decrepit mooring in Molly’s cove and I got out the new swim ladder.   This is the third swim ladder we have owned in a 14 month period because they are easily forgotten and when you drive 30 mph with a swim ladder hanging down, it doesn’t fare very well.  The boatyard manager did some research and found a model that will kick up.  I know he had to be snickering a little bit but he seemed genuine when he told me that this happens more than I might imagine.  We tried it out and it worked well and everybody got suited up.   The water is a good temperature but it is that temperature (low 70s) where you initially feel cold and then you adjust and then you don’t want to get out.  Phoebe gave herself around 4 seconds to adjust which was not quite enough.  Ellie didn’t get past her ankles.  I suited up and jumped in onto the floaty net things we had bought on amazon and Cristin handed Ellie to me and she just sat on me while I paddled for about an hour while Cristin and Phoebe zoned out.  When we got back to the boat, Cristin hauled Ellie up and, well for the sake keeping this post civil, let me just say that I had effectively spent the last hour in a cesspool.

We headed back home and went straight to our new Tex Mex place Frontera Grill which is, to my palate, pretty good.  The San Diegans probably wouldn’t like it but they have some theory that you have to be close to Mexico (and for some reason not Texas) to have good Tex-Mex.  This might have been true before the beginning of global trade and migrations but not so much anymore, consider for example the Indian Restaurants in Toronto or Italian Restaurants in NYC.   Sunday was a whole day of travel to the Northeast tip of Massachusetts for the annual Cornell get together at which I failed to take any pictures.  We went to Salisbury beach and then back to the Itratos in Newburyport.  They have a beautifully restored (and extended) old house and I think Cristin was thinking of chaining herself to it.   The ladies had a fantastic time with all the other kids and slept hard on the way home. Monday was supposed to be split day so I took morning duty. The ladies and I had pancakes at the Hollywood scoop and then went to the zoo. When we got back I inflated our waterslide and put up our new Target tent and officially rendered the backyard trashy.