The annual Fourth of July parade and celebration of my mother’s birthday. The WW2 veterans, in their dwindling numbers, make me cry as usual. Whit sits on a tractor at Home Depot wearing camouflage fleece, lobster-embroidered khaki shorts, red Old Navy girls’ flip-flops, and Mardi Gras beads. I take them both to see Up in the pouring rain.
I start to realize the pain in my knee is something real. Big bummer. I have a cortisone shot which hurts like hell but doesn’t much help.
We hike on Mount Washington and camp overnight. With five adults and six children. Getting six kids to bed in a room with four triple-decker bunk beds is a challenge. Crazy thunder and lightning all night long another challenge. Pouring rain and snow in the morning for the hike down a route that is very difficult even in good weather is a third challenge.
Judith Warner’s column about the resentment and pressure to be silent that educated and privileged women face touched off an interesting blogosphere conversation. For me the real questions were around judgments we make about others based on superficial indicators. I then wondered about how this is a short leap from interviewing, which is a big part of what I do for work.
I read Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks, Perfect Life by Jessica Shattuck, and Home Game by Michael Lewis.
Whit starts to swim on his own, wearing his lucky hot pink swim shirt (hand me down from his sister. and ultra manly). Oddly, but in a way that echoes his contrarian approach to life, he is only able to swim underwater.
We have a birthday dinner to celebrate my 35th birthday with three of my very dearest friends and their husbands. It is a wonderful evening filled with love and laughter.
Grace acts (as a pirate) in her first play, the camp production of Peter Pan.