Wet, Not Wild

Tropical Storm Fay passed through The Zone last night and this morning. If any of you were listening to NPR, you probably heard Radio Mom giving weather updates from here. Fay made landfall at approximately 5:00 a.m. at Cape Romano, just south of Marco Island, in the 10,000 Islands. There are reports of intermittent flooding in the general vicinity and some power outages. Local reports showed winds peaking at about 60 mph in some areas.

It’s still raining here, but my neighborhood isn’t flooded. I live 4.5 miles from the beach. We have a few twigs and branches down, but otherwise are in good shape. We really need the rain, as does all of Florida. I hope TS Fay stalls over Lake Okeechobee and fills it up all the way.

Here’s a shout out to Time For The Bell and The Family Blender to stay safe and dry.

The Travel Zone

We just returned from “The Last Hurrah,” our final vacation of summer:  a 1300+ mile driving trip to Savannah, Georgia and back. We unpacked all the suitcases and are frantically trying to do all the laundry before TS Fay shows up here in SW Florida or school starts (8/19), whichever comes first.

I have to post the details of both the Oregon and Savannah trips, but they’ll have to wait until Fay fades. Hold a good thought that the storm brings us a lot of rain, little wind, and no power outage.

In the meantime, enjoy an Indian River sunset.

Technical Difficulties

Now that I’ve downloaded all 369 photos from my Oregon trip, WordPress is having some server problems that prohibit me from uploading any photos. I just tried to change my custom header, and WordPress somehow ditched the photos. So, I’ll get started writing the entries and can hopefully post them and accompanying photos soon.

Come on, WordPress, fix that bug!

Just a Bit Longer

I intended to upload all my Oregon pictures this weekend and start posting about our trip. However, we spent the weekend catching up on laundry and household chores. Yesterday, WineGuy left for work at 7:00 a.m. and walked back in the door at 9:30 a.m. feeling putrid. He must have had a flu virus:  fever of 103ºF all day, achy, headaches, slept all day, sweating profusely. He stayed home from work again today because he was still feeling weak. WG intends to go back to work tomorrow.

In the meantime, we planned our last hurrah for the summer:  a road trip next week. I’ve made all the hotel reservations, but now I need to reschedule the kids’ medical appointments. Oh, joy. Now I have to run all my last-minute school errands this week, clean Wild Thing’s closet and get him organized for school, and do it all again.

I must be crazy.

The Days Were Just Packed

Fresh from Oregon, The Zone got home at about 11:30 p.m. last night. I drove A LOT throughout The Beaver State (about 700 miles) and nearly 3 hours home last night from the airport. Home today having WineGuy’s car serviced (again), unpacking, and doing mountains of laundry. WG decided we should take another trip in 2 weeks:  road trip from SW Florida to Gainesville, FL to St. Augustine, FL to Savannah, GA back through Cape Canaveral and home. Oh, the joy.

I took zillions of digital pictures while I was away and will download them in the next couple of days. Typical Zone travelogue to follow. We were so busy that I didn’t have the time or the energy left to blog at the end of the day. For anyone who has never been to Oregon, go. Summertime is magnificent there. Also, I did manage to score a ticket to the Pinot Noir festival for WG. He loved it!

More later.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I just finished David Wroblewski’s debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Far and away, it was outstanding. Positively outstanding.

The novel is an intimate portrait of the Sawtelle family of Northern Wisconsin. The prose is lush and evocative. This alluring and compelling tome is the epic story of a mute boy, Edgar Sawtelle, and his family’s quest to produce their own breed of dogs:  selectively bred and trained to think for themselves. Wroblewski’s narrative is sweeping and evocative of rural America. The characters are well-drawn. The plot is artfully crafted, and the ending, although heartbreaking, is satisfying.

At 562 pages in hardcover, reading Edgar Sawtelle is a daunting task. However, the story draws you in from the first, the prologue seemingly detached from the story until the very end of the novel. The book follows Edgar’s family from the time it settled in Northern Wisconsin, through two generations, and ultimately through Edgar’s life until his teenage years. No spoilers here! We  watch Edgar, mute from birth but not deaf, grow and mature through the trials of his family life. We watch him as he trains his dogs and as they train him to become a better person.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is, without doubt, the best work of fiction I have read in years. This novel should be nominated for — and deserves to win — the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  If you won’t take my word for it, read what The New York Times and NPR had to say about this book. Pick up or  borrow a copy and read this book!

O, Oregon

The Zone leaves for its summer vacation in Oregon in two days. We finally got our hotels all set, but we are lacking one ticket to the one event that WineGuy has been pining to attend, the International Pinot Noir Conference. Specifically, the Passport to Pinot, a half-day tasting on a Sunday afternoon. Somehow, in our child-rearing, hormone-fighting, testosterone wrestling, WG failed to purchase a ticket for himself. He kept waiting, thinking we’d find someone to watch our kids for an afternoon there. Now, it looks like it’s too late.

I called the festival office. The secretary said there were no more tix left for that event, but that she’d put me on the waiting list. It was only small encouragement to hear that the office was acting as a clearinghouse for exchanges of tickets. I tried posting something on Craigslist, but it got flagged and removed for some reason that I’m still trying to investigate. I posted a request to the Portland, OR forum on TripAdvisor.com and have received nice responses, none containing a ticket.

Then, I called and emailed an acquaintance from the Snooty School. Let’s call her Barbie. I mentioned our Portland trip to Barbie months ago, and she continually offered to “hook us up” with her famous winemaker friends. She deigned to return my email saying she was busy with visitors. When I asked her for some help getting that ticket, she basically said “you’re screwed, but I might look into it.” Thanks. A lot. Bitch.

The final nail in the coffin is that the friend’s son, who was supposed to watch the boys on a Saturday morning so WG and I could go to the beerfest alone, has apparently backed out. I got some convoluted message from his mother yesterday after synagogue. The son put me in contact with a couple of his friends to babysit, but they never responded. My only hope is that the wine country restaurant where the son waits tables can make a connection for the winefest ticket for WG.

This trip is shaping up to suck entirely. Now, I’m going upstairs to pack the boys. They’ve been fighting, screaming, and throwing things up there for an hour.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

~ William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”