c a m p i n g

Top Ten things to do on a Saturday

Best thing to do on a Saturday?

Besides reading an email that one of your oldest/ dearest friends Finally had that baby!

is to semi-spontaneously go to the Cape for the day. Which is what we did yesterday.

1. Wake up at 5:30, drive 3.5 hours to meet friends at Campground Beach in Eastham. Frolic, read, munch. Enjoy low and high tides. Send someone out to get homemade doughnuts and iced coffee at Hole -in -one bakery just down the road. Ignore scary voices in head and eat doughnut while wearing a bathing suit.

2. Go to Mac's Seafood in Wellfleet. Eat amazing lobster rolls, lobster bisque, fish n chips, onion rings etc. Hit playground next door. Force kids to use potty. Wipe a bit of sand off of them and head home at 7:30 pm to avoid bridge traffic.

3. 11 pm- Carry filthy kids from car and deposit in bed.

A bit crazy? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.

on the gym

I recently said I would never join a gym. I am not a fan for a number of reasons.

But yesterday I visited one. Because I am a Carlisle and we specialize in hyperbole and we also specialize in full thighs.

Some Reasons Gyms are scary...

I am convinced that flesh eating bacteria is everywhere in a gym. I know that many people don't wipe down those mats. I don't relish the idea of dying or having all the layers of section of my skin trimmed off and wearing a special bacteria-sucking vacuum on my person for a year because I was trying to grow bigger biceps or lose my mummy tummy.

I don't even like walking through a gym. I feel like maybe people are staring at me. Maybe because I am cute or Maybe because they think I waited to long to join a gym. Maybe I don't like walking though a gym because I am waiting for Keanu Reeves to chide me for tripping on a perfectly good floor (which really happened the last time I joined a gym).

The Machines. Who designed them? They terrify me. I got on an elliptical machine and had to pause a moment to remind myself explicitly that there were two enormous pieces of heavy plastic and GOd KNows What Else hovering right around either side of my head. Lean one way just a bit and WHAM, I could be down, in front of all of these toned and fake- tanned gym goers.

In college I fell off a treadmill and my walkman hit me in the face. At least my ipod is light weight.

I am trying a gym out for a week mainly because of the Zumba classes it offers. What is Zumba? I don't really know but it seems to be some sort of latin fusion dance. Latin with a tad of afro and hip hop mixed in. It is FUN. The music is awesome. An hour is painful but quick. So much better than trying to run. And no, I have never taken a latin dance class. I pretty much stink at it. But that's the thing with me and dancing. I am no good but I don't care, it's too much fun. I told myself this and then comforted myself with the thought that I would always plant myself at the back of the class. But then the instructor has us turning around constantly and I can't avoid being in the front occasionally. Halfway through the class I realized that most of the attendees can't copy the instructor anyway, so I felt better.

After this class I felt so happy. And bedtime with the kids was much easier for me (I said in an earlier post that they usually fall asleep quickly but Ez can be a nightmare to get ready).

If Robert Louis Stevenson's mom made him go to bed early in the Summer too, well I rest my case.

Image courtesy of Molly Carlisle

By 8 o'clock on a Summer evening we darken the shades. Turn on a fan. I close the doors, wash up my boys and we read stories. Then it is bed. And once in awhile I can sit on the front porch with my eyes closed and enjoy the silence (coming from my kids at least). The peace. They used to protest. But they fall asleep quickly.

Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?