morning strawberry

fresh sun

today was nice in most ways possible. the sun shone for the first time in so long! joe and i served breakfast, including to the visiting grandparents (who were kind enough to let the .5 join them -- he ate oatmeal i made especially for him with just a touch of maple syrup & cinnamon). after we finished cleaning up from breakfast, i put gideon in the ergo & he 'helped' me check out most of the guests who dirti-- i mean stayed at-- the inn this weekend.

the rest of the day involved a few bike rides around the block (on a great old bike andrew brought back to life recently) and some sitting in the sun. oh, and at some point mom and i got the bright idea to rearrange all the bedrooms to prepare for isabella's arrival. we're so excited for her to come! we had thought probably andrew could just sleep on the fold-out couch in the living room for the three weeks she will be here, but as mom and i looked at the room that up until today joe and i had been using as sort of a walk-in closet, we realized that most everything in it could be stored in the attic or elsewhere. needless to say, after a few hours of grunting and scraping and some stupid jokes about soiling our trousers with the effort of lifting heavy, cumbersome items, we had created a third bedroom. this small one will be andrew's; he aspires to cram himself and his belongings into increasingly smaller living spaces... although he doesn't CRAM at all, really.. he instead creates these lovely, organized, inviting little worlds in which anyone would likely enjoy spending time.

anyhoo, this evening joe and andrew cooked dinner on the grill (lime halibut, colorful veggies and corn cobs, pickled cucumber salad) and we sat outside to eat. gideon tends to get impatient when he knows there is going to be some food to try and he has to wait until the rest of us sit down..



he ate asparagus and some little bits of smooshed corn kernals. everything was delicious. here is a very poor picture of our very rich fare. now its off to bed with us.. good night!

for granny h

a moment barely caught, but one i felt obliged to share... your lovely boys.

elephants 2

a closeup of the elephants gideon so admires.

and the elephants' view:

uncle drew moves in, and other stories

so. i've got some time, yes. whether i have enough brain function to actually relay any interesting information, well, that's another story all together. we've been working our tails off, and getting pretty good at it, i must say. with the exception of tuesdays (our day off), i get up a bit before 6am to either cook breakfast (sun, mon, wed, friday) or help serve it (thurs & sat). last sunday i cooked breakfast (TO ORDER, mind you) for 16 people. had anyone told me in april that i'd be relatively confidently producing relatively edible food for ultimately pleased and gracious guests DOZENS at a time, i wouldn't have believed them a bit. it was a little crazy, but it went off without a hitch (thanks to abby the babysitter and joe the garnish assistant and server) and evidently even the guy whose eggs were FAR from "overEASY" had only good things to say. maybe joe is just full of it though, how would i know.

after breakfast cleanup -- usually between 9 and 10 -- i lay down with gideon for 3-18 minutes or however long thereabouts it takes to coax him to sleep. once he's out i peel myself off the bed, turn the monitor on, and head back to the lodge for cleaning and checkouts. checkout is between 11 and 11:30 and involves just the sort of administrative tasks you might imagine, plus a little last-minute shmoozing. we clean most days between 10 and 2, and then move on to "THE LIST." i have a (VERY-)slowly diminishing list of things we need to or would like to take care of at/for the inn, and of course we add things to it daily. a lot of it involves time in front of the computer; creating various word documents for various specific things, updating the database we've started building, ordering office/ cleaning/ maintainance supplies online, etc. we're supposed to cover the phones from 8 am until 6 pm, but we often end up working until 6:30 or 7. long days.

so monday was my birthday. i worked for 14 hours. we went to rockland on tuesday and joe bought us lunch at a surprisingly good italian place. that was nice. although gideon has taken to just yelling his lungs out whenever we're in indoor public spaces... we're not sure what that's all about... its pretty funny for those who are in the mood to take it. otherwise we get some pretty dirty looks. heh heh... needless to say we've stopped, for the time being, eating in the nebo restaurant. it really is quite fine dining, and i'd hate to single-handedly -- single-baby-edly? -- ruin the atmosphere for someone expecting a quiet, romantic evening. anyway, maybe we'll go out again when gideon's older. like when he's in some victorian-era elite phase. if he's anything like adam & i, he'll have great adolescent wealth in the form of awkwardness. he'll insist, for instance, on dressing in intricate layers of silken undergarments with hundreds of buttons, and wearing freshly polished, high-heeled pointy boots, and powdering his face and his big, fancy wig, and drawing a mole on his upper lip and speaking in his (relatively uninformed, though very well practiced) version of a high-brow english accent. can't wait for that stuff to come back around and haunt me.

speaking of the restaurant, andrew has moved out here to join the nebo ranks. it is so wonderful to have him around. he brings with him such a calm, solid sort of energy. both qualities which are in low supply 'round here, particularly in this busy season that is now officially upon us. he is working as the dining room manager, working the four nights-a-week we're open, and making me feel like i needn't worry about helping amanda solve restaurant problems... there certainly need to be some changes made, but i'm confident andrew can pick up what i half-heartedly started and create something seamlessly functional with it.

what's more than all that, gideon just adores him.