Alabaster Mom

I would love to tell you that I remained calm. I wish I could report that I knew exactly what to do. Instead, I found myself standing in the tall grass along highway 494 near Eagan, Minnesota, wailing, "Oh, my baby. My baby." This was on Sunday. We'd spent the weekend with friends in Cologne. The day before had been full of fun activities. Our friends have a boat and we took the kids tubing on Lake Zumbra. It was my daughter's first time tubing. Our friends have three boys and she watched them do it first. The boys flew behind the boat, laughing and bouncing along on the waves that formed as Dennis guided the boat in circles, steering clear of nearby fishermen and a pair of loons. Soon, it was A's turn and she replaced one of the three boys on the tube (all clad in life vests). I sat in the back of the boat and took video clips of the kids careening across the water, having the time of their lives. After the tubing adventure, we found a great bistro for lunch ...

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. - Henry James I could hardly wait to get to the farmers' market yesterday. Parking is a mild annoyance and the market (held downtown) can get pretty crowded, but I remind myself of how much I will miss it when we're knee-deep in snow in a few months. I picked up corn on the cob, zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes (I'm growing my own but they aren't ripe yet), lettuce, cauliflower, green beans, and peaches. I've recently re-committed to Weight Watchers so I just need to make sure I don't supplement those nice veggies with Oreos (I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but pretty much all Oreo flavors are technically vegan). . Somehow, it's already August. My friend Nancy is a teacher and she always says that August is "like one big Sunday night" but I'm not a teacher and I'm not even close to letting summe...