Skip to main content

Summer Vacation


Where I Went on My Summer Vacation
  • Lost River Gorge
  • Polar Caves
  • Fuller Rose Gardens
  • Hampton Beach Sand Sculpture Competition
  • York Beach
  • One Stop Fun
  • Rumble Tumble
  • Galway Lake, NY
  • Charmingfare Farm
  • Freedom Trail, Boston
  • Christa McAuliffe Planetarium
  • Whale watch
  • Fort Foster, ME
  • The Butterfly Place
  • Darien Lake, NY
  • East Aurora, NY
  • Letchworth State Park
  • Genesee Country Museum
  • Jello Museum
  • SEE Science Center
  • Hershey, PA
  • Butternut Farm
Things I Did on My Summer Vacation:
  • Spelunking
  • Climbed a rock wall
  • Had my face painted in melted chocolate
  • Rode a Ferris wheel
  • Bought a brain jello mold
  • Jumped waves
  • Saw a sunspot AND a solar flare from a telescope
  • Was a human landing pad for butterflies
  • Climbed 294 steps to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument
  • Finished a manuscript
  • Saw hump-backed whales
  • Ran with zucchinis
  • Fed goats
  • Did a full wheel in yoga
  • Listened to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, The Star-Spangled Banner, and Pomp and Circumstance on the piano about a billion times
  • And last but not least, chased a chipmunk and a snake off my porch, but not simultaneously.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Sky is Everywhere Contest!

I first heard Jandy Nelson read an excerpt from The Sky is Everywhere during her graduate reading at Vermont College of Fine Arts. The words absolutely sizzled from her lips, and I couldn't wait to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, I had to wait until the publishing world caught up. When I read the finished book, I started it over and read it again. Then I bought a copy to give to my sister. (Yes, I GAVE it to my sister.) Now, thanks to a pay-it-forward contest, I am soon to have my very own copy and give away yet another copy. Casey McCormick began a pay-it-forward book contest for The Sky is Everywhere in an effort to spread the love, and to generate new sales for a talented author. Her contest inspired other contests, one of which was sponsored by Melissa Writes Fiction , and I won that contest. Yippee! So, to make good on my promise, here is my own pay-it-forward contest. Please read the rules below, because this contest is a bit different. The most important condi...

The Greening

Sadness spreads like a sower scattering seeds. The seeds find fertile ground in her and land there, burrowing into her skin, into the deep down places where they sprout, nurtured unwittingly by blood and bone. Shoots spread forth growing both inward and outward, and she wonders if she will ever be able to root them all out. It is like pulling at a dandelion only to have stem detach from root and downy fluff fly off, enabling dozens more dandelions to take root. There is no cause for the sadness; it just is, like cold in winter, like leaves in fall, like rain in April. It sits there, within her, growing bigger each day, a pregnancy gone horribly wrong, and she feels the shame of it. But a breeze blows by, bringing different seeds, renegade seeds, hopeful seeds. They sprout in the midst of all the sadness; they choke it out. When she looks out the window today, she realizes that the world around her is greening. She decides that she will too. She will choose joy.

I Think I'm a Grown-Up Now

I'm reposting something I wrote on my personal blog two years ago. I can laugh about it now that I don't feel the need to visit the guidance counselor's office anymore. The answer to my question was so obvious--had been obvious for years if I had taken the time to see--but apparently I had my blinders on. Or my rose-colored glasses. Or my peril-detecting sunglasses. One of them, at any rate. ***** Mid-Life Crisis The question of what I want to be when I grow up is plaguing me again. Sometimes I think I want to be like Mrs. Murray in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle---a brilliant scientist with a lab in the barn, cooking stew over a bunsen burner. But then I feel too old to go in that direction, not smart enough to be able to pick up and retain that scientific knowledge quickly enough, and not balanced enough to do it all gracefully. Inevitably, I would poison my family with an accidental slip of something into the stew. So I'm back to wondering what I hav...