North had eleven days at home between camp and college. It took them three days to do all their laundry from camp and I took advantage of having another person home to give them some more chores, like cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming, weeding and cooking dinner. And of course, there was list-making and packing, tending to pre-college administrative tasks, and chatting with their recently assigned roommate.
But there was plenty of time for other pursuits.
Caffeinated Outings
North and I went out for coffee or other beverages four out of the first five days they were home. We didn’t plan it that way, but on the first Monday they were home I needed to get yard waste bags from the hardware store, and I invited them to come with me and stop at Takoma Beverage Company and they did. We got coffee and split a chocolate-cherry scone. Then two days later I was going to the Langley Park farmers’ market in search of peaches, and I invited them to come with me and stop at Starbucks and they did.
The peaches we found at the market were hard and greenish. I was skeptical they’d ripen but we’d walked a mile or so to get them, so I bought them and hoped for the best. (Two days in a paper bag with a chunk of apple did the trick.) We got pupusas, too, and these were good as always. We ate them at a table in front of Starbucks, where we got refreshers and a cake pop. I arranged the peaches, pupusas, Paradise and Pink drinks, and the pop for a photo and posted it to Facebook with the caption that “Today’s outing was brought to you by the letter P.”
The next day, after North’s psychiatrist appointment, we stopped at Lost Sock for coffee and alfajor cookies (dulce de leche and coconut). While we were there I said since we’d been to three out of four of our habitual spots for mother-child coffee runs, we should be completists and go to Koma sometime before they left. They laughed and agreed. And then on Friday morning, when Valerie cancelled on them at the last minute, they texted me and asked if I could meet them there, so I did, and we got tea and a strawberry Danish.
Outings with Friends
Having been gone most of the summer, North had a lot of friends they wanted to see. The first Monday evening they were home they went to Ranvita’s birthday party, which was held at a Chinese restaurant. The next day a big group of friends went to the Montgomery County Fair and then swimming. They were gone most of the day. On Friday evening they went to a drive-in movie with El and saw a double feature (the newest Deadpool and Alien movies). They said neither movie was one they would have chosen to watch without the drive-in part of the experience, but they had fun. The following Monday, they spent most of the day at Miles and Maddie’s house. The twins brought North home as I was cooking dinner and came inside to see the kittens and exclaim about how big they’ve gotten. (The kittens have each tripled in size since we got them three months ago.)
Medical Appointments
North had several routine visits with healthcare providers, but the most notable one was with the neurologist who manages their migraine care. What was notable was that it was the first time in the almost two years they’ve been seeing him that he didn’t need to brainstorm about new medications or treatments because the new preventative they’ve been on since mid-May is working remarkably well. It’s a once-monthly injection they give themselves and the first couple weeks it didn’t seem to be helping much. Luckily, the doctor warned us it might take up to three months to show results. In June they had thirteen migraines (down from an average of twenty or more) and in July it was ten. When we had the meeting, almost halfway through August, North had only had four. (They’re up to eight now for the month.)
And because they have effective rescue medicine that can be used twice a week, plus another semi-effective one that can be used five times a month, this means they hardly ever need to go to bed with a headache or power through one anymore. The doctor also mentioned that for people for whom this medication works, it often keeps getting more effective with time. I can’t tell you how happy we all are about this turn of events. Beth commented how easy it’s been to get used to being able to make evening plans without considering how many meds North has already used this week. We can just assume now either they won’t get a headache or if they do, there will be enough meds. It is downright liberating.
Montgomery County Fair
We took advantage of this freedom to go to the Montgomery County Fair late Saturday afternoon instead of earlier in the day, which is a more migraine-friendly time for North. We all, but especially Beth, like to ride the Ferris wheel after dark, but between the kids’ bedtimes when they were younger and not wanting to risk a late afternoon migraine, many years we couldn’t stay that late. There was another potential problem, though. Rain was forecast on and off all day. It had not rained yet when we left, but the sky was threatening.
We arrived a little before five and walked around the rides to see how many tickets we’d need to ride our favorites. Then we loaded up a card with the requisite number plus a little extra and the kids and I got in line for the swings, which then closed with no explanation. As we walked to other rides and they closed one by one, we gathered it was because it was about to rain. And rain it did, a real gully washer.
I was afraid we’d just wasted a lot of money on non-refundable ride tickets on the last night of the fair, but determined to make the best of it, we headed for the animal barns. This was something that North’s friends hadn’t done when they went earlier in the week, and they do like to see the animals. Even with an umbrella, I got kind of wet on the way there and to top it off I slipped and fell into a puddle at the entrance to the rabbit barn and got the whole back of my pants soaking wet.
Everyone else at the fair had the same idea about what to do in the rain so the animal barns were crowded, but we there was enough room to walk around and see the goats and sheep and rabbits and poultry and oxen, plus a llama and an alpaca. North’s favorite is the rabbit barn, so we stayed there the longest. There were a bunch of white rabbits there with black rings around their eyes. They looked as if they were wearing eyeliner. According to the sign, this kind of rabbit has been bred since the nineteenth century, starting in France. North and I got to pet one. It was very soft.
The rain was letting up, so we got some food while we waited for the rides to dry out. North said “the interesting food” is at the end of the midway, which their friends had not visited. Between us we got pupusas, a spinach crepe, and cheese and grapes from the dairy shed. Dessert round one consisted root beer floats, ice cream, and a red velvet funnel cake, which we threw out after eating only half of it because no one liked it enough to make it their primary dessert.
While we were eating, I’d seen a woman walking on stilts and blowing bubbles and that reminded me of the Halloween parade because there is always someone on stilts there and we talked about how North might enter this year because they will be home for fall break and how I may someday volunteer to serve as a judge.
There was an announcement that the rides were open, so the kids and I rode the swings, and then North did the Genesis, a ride with a long row of seats that goes up and down and side to side. All the lines were long because it was a Saturday night and the last night of the fair and everyone had to take a break at the same time because of the rain. Beth got in line for the Ferris wheel while Noah and I were watching North ride the Genesis. I was also watching the changing colors of the lights on the Ferris wheel, which were lovely in the gathering darkness.
When we joined Beth in line, I told her that being at the carnival rides put the lines from John Prine’s “When I Get to Heaven” in my head: “I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl” and she kissed me before I could finish the lyric. The fair sometimes reminds us of going to the Lorain County Fair in Ohio when we were in college and puts us in a nostalgic mood. When we got up in the air, we could see the whole fair lit up, which is always fun.
My last ride, with both kids, was the Mousetrap, a very strange little ride. It’s a tiny roller coaster inside a building that’s almost completely dark. The painting on the outside depicts mice pursued by cats, so I guess you are supposed to be a mouse darting this way and that in the dark.
By this point, we’d finished all our must-dos, but we had some tickets left, so North rode the Sizzler, one of those innocent-looking little carnival rides with clusters of cars that spin in one direction while the whole ride is going in another direction. I got quite sick on one of those as a teenager (like throwing up sick), so I contented myself with watching and singing along with Beth to the music playing—“Summer Nights” from Grease. Beth said I could call the blog post “Summer Loving,” but I explained it was about more than the fair. Noah went off in search of fried Oreos for dessert round two (North got a pretzel).
As we left the fair, we saw a big ad for Corktoberfest on the side of a trailer. We see it every year and every year North says they read it as Cocktoberfest, which would probably be another kind of event altogether. Then everyone said I should call this blog post Cocktoberfest, even though we did not attend the wine festival, which as you may have guessed does not even happen until October. We did see roosters, someone pointed out, quite innocently. What can I say? We were tired and happy and a little punchy from our night at the fair, which could have been a disaster, but wasn’t.
Creek Walk
The next morning the kids and I went wading in the creek. We do this almost every summer, generally near the end. The most common route is to start with a trip to Starbucks and then enter the creek near the Jackson Avenue bridge and that’s what we did. We walked through the creek to the Carroll Avenue bridge, opting not to continue all the way to the playground, because we all had afternoon plans and time was running short.
We found the spine of an animal in the water and couldn’t determine was it was—too big for a squirrel or rabbit, too small for a deer (unless it was partial), maybe a fox? It will remain a mystery.
It was pleasant to walk in the cool water with sunlight filtering through green leaves all around us, even if the morning was not that hot, and even if the walk was on the short side. No one fell and got hurt. No one was stung by bees. This activity is not without peril, but we keep doing it anyway.
Cobbler
That afternoon North and I made a peach-blackberry cobbler with the blackberries we picked and froze last month. They made the filling, I made the dough, and then they rolled it out to cover the fruit. There are four fruit-based desserts I make every summer. It starts with strawberry shortcake on Memorial Day, progressing through sour cherry sauce for ice cream on the Fourth of July, blueberry kuchen whenever we pick blueberries, and then this one, usually toward the end of the summer. Making it on the same day we took a creek walk really did make it seem like summer was truly almost over. And it was Beth’s last night cooking before North left, so she made one of her classic summer dinners—barbequed tofu, corn on the cob, and fried okra.
DNC
The following night we watched the first night of the DNC for two reasons. The president of Beth’s union was speaking briefly and there was going to be a 90-second video Noah helped edit at work. The CWA president spoke with a group of other union officials a little after eight and Beth texted him to say he did a good job. By this point, we’d been waiting for more than an hour and a half for the ad, with everyone running out the room every now and then for snacks and bathroom breaks. The video was originally supposed to be the first thing played in the program, but the order of events got switched around and Noah didn’t know when it was going to play, just that it wasn’t first anymore.
By nine, North was thinking of bailing and taking a shower so I ducked into the bathroom to start get ready for bed so I wouldn’t need to wait a half hour to get in there if the ad came on soon. Sure enough, I was washing my face when I heard shouting from the living room and I ran in, face sudsy, washcloth in hand, to watch this. Turns out it was the walk-in video for Kamala’s cameo.
Beth, North, and I were all in bed by ten, but Noah stayed up to watch more of the convention and the next morning he told us there was another ad about abortion he’d worked on that he didn’t realize was going to play. Here it is.
Television and Ice Cream (and More Coffee)
And then the eleven days came to an end. On Tuesday we finished the second season of Grownish as a family. The next day, North and Noah watched a couple episodes of Good Omens because he had the day off, and North and I got to the midpoint of the third season of Emily in Paris, which was our goal since finishing the season wasn’t in the cards.
On Wednesday, two nights before we left for Oberlin, I made breaded tofu sticks because they are a family favorite. North requested applesauce to go with them, so I made blackberry-applesauce with our stash of frozen berries from the berry farm and served it with carrot sticks and slices of garden cucumber.
Thursday morning North wanted to go to Starbucks yet again because it was the first day the fall menu items were available, and they wanted a pumpkin-cream cheese muffin and some kind of apple-flavored coffee. I prefer to wait until it’s autumn, or at least September, for these kinds of treats, so I got a plain latte and a croissant.
Speaking of treats, we have a long-standing tradition of ice cream (or frozen yogurt) on the last night of summer break. About a week before we left, North and discussed the question of whether it should be the night before we began the journey or the night before we parted ways in Oberlin. The first would include Noah; the second was closer to the first day of school. Finally, I said, “Why not both?” and that’s what we decided to do. (Before that even happened, though, we went to Sweet Frog the first Thursday North was home because they were having an as-much-yogurt-as-you-can-fit-in-a-cup sale for six dollars, but it turned out you needed to give the cashier a code, which we neglected to do. Live and learn.)
The following Thursday, North’s last night at home, we met up with Noah (who came straight from work) at Mount Dessert Island Ice Cream in Mount Pleasant. Remember how we were working our way through Post’s list of best places to get ice cream in the D.C. metro area earlier this summer? Well, we hadn’t been to one since the end of June, but North suggested we do one last one. We’d been to the top three, so we picked this one because it was number four.
We found a parking space right nearby, which was a stroke of luck in that neighborhood. (A side note: Beth and I lived in a group house in Mount Pleasant for three months during the summer of 1991 when we first arrived in D.C.) The store is very small, located on the first floor of a rowhouse, with benches out front. Beth got white Russian, North got a float with blueberry soda, Noah got something with chocolate chips and caramel, and I got fig. Have you ever had fig ice cream? It was excellent, tasting of the fruit and brown sugar all the way through. It wasn’t just vanilla with fig chunks. I highly recommend it if you’re local.
The next afternoon after a morning of work and packing and whatnot, Beth, North, and I hit the road for Oberlin, via Wheeling. More about that trip in the next installment…