Today was our summer child care provider's last day. Sarah has been wonderful, reliable, kind and fun. She and the kiddos spent a lot of time at the beach and playground and played a lot of board games. This morning, before I left for work, there was a lot of very sweet sounding giggling going on. We'll miss Sarah, but she'll still be in the area for a while, so this shouldn't be a permanent goodbye. Harper keeps asking me if she can babysit again, for an evening here and there, and I keep telling her "yes" and then she asks me again and I tell her "yes" again. She wants to make sure.
In other news, our cousin Nell (Eleanor Altie Stoddard) is spending the week with us. She's been a true delight to have around. Nell is my Uncle Tommy's only child. Tommy is, as you may recall, my Champ's son and my mom's baby brother. So Nell and I are first cousins. Anyway, last night the kids put on an excellent play. It was a play about a play. Very postmodern. If I do say so, I think all 3 of them are very talented actors. Here's Nell and Pat, fully in character.
These kids are the three youngest descendants of Champ and they are really quite the posse. Harper and Nell have been as close as two people can be for all of Nell's life. I have some cute pictures of them sleeping nose to nose when they were littler. They LOVE to be together. Harper would rather be with Nell than just about anyone. But Nell is a couple years younger than Harper and this week I've noticed Nell and Patrick really connecting. I'm happy about that. Harper is enough older than the two 9 year olds that she's starting to see them as littler kids. Because it's true that she's becoming pretty mature and grown up. I don't think it affects her adoration of Nellie, but the dynamic has definitely changed, as I'm sure it will change again. I like to think about how the three of them have each other and will always be close. Very beautiful. Champ would be proud.
I want to share a couple other tidbits with my readership (hi Mom!). When I picked up my CSA vegetables today, Maryellen, our favorite farmer, mentioned the blog and that reminded me that I've been meaning to mention Old Shaw Farm. We've been part of their CSA for several years now and it's absolutely one of my favorite things about summer. The vegetables are beyond delicious, beautiful to look at, and plentiful. And the Griffin family are delightful folks. I first met Maryellen through work because, besides being an organic vegetable farmer, she is an attorney with Vermont Legal Aid, helping people who need legal advocacy and can't afford it. Pretty cool, huh? Today, Maryellen and Peter's daughter, Waverly (4) gave me a picture she'd drawn. You don't get that kind of attention buying veggies at the Price Chopper or even the Coop!
The last thing I want to share is how exciting things have been for me at work lately. This week and next week I am working with Pati Hernandez in a daily theater workshop for women. I worked with Pati quite a few years ago and ever since we've been trying to make this project happen again. Pati is amazing and someone I greatly admire, so I'm feeling really lucky about this opportunity to learn more from her. The other work-related thing that's going on is that our sister program that serves the region just north of us is closing August 15th. I won't go in to the reasons why, but the result is that I'm very involved with coordinating short term and interim services (and will also work on longer-term planning) for that county and a half. I started my work with the battered women's movement in that community (working for the closing program) and as I left our initial planning meeting in Newport today, it felt like a full-circle kind of homecoming to be involved with the work up there again. The community is very supportive and I saw some old friends/allies. Now that the community has expressed support for the plan, I'm going to be hiring and mentoring new advocates to serve the region. A pretty big project, but one that somehow has me feeling serenely competent.
Whew, all this running, working and blog writing has me happily exhausted! And the summer air smells sweet tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment