My new favorite flea market ...

... is definitely the one in Ventura, held at the fairgrounds. It's right by the ocean, so there's a lovely breeze. The prices were excellent (by California standards, anyway) and there were a lot of mom-and-pop style vendors along with the usual selection of flea market pros and sellers of bungee cords.

We took a break halfway through to sit on the grass by the water and watch the surfers. My knowledge of surfing begins with "Gidget" and ends with "Lilo and Stitch," but Bill explained the difference between long boards and short boards to me; he's a "beginning/intermediate" surfer, which means that he can actually stand up on the board.

So, one of the reasons I forced the family to spend this year's vacation driving around New England was because I had these wonderful dreams of finding treasures in out-of-the-way junk stores and flea markets. I've already promised that next year we're spending our vacation near a beach and that no one will be forced to wait in the car while Mommy goes shopping.

I love old sewing baskets with old notions in them. I got this basket, plus the great barkcloth pin cushion, at a flea market in Vermont.





I found this batch of old fabric scraps in Vermont, too:



This fabric came from an antique mall type place in New Hampshire. The place promised three floors of antiques and collectibles, but was just about to close when I arrived. The proprietor asked me what I was looking for (a question I hate, because I never know what I'm looking for), and I answered, "Uh ... old fabric?" He shoved a pile of old barkcloth at me and said, "You can have all of this for five bucks." It was kind of cute, and I felt rude saying no, so now I have a ton of it. If anyone would like some, please let me know. I'd be happy to send a piece to you.



The cute framed collage/applique type picture and the stuffed dog came from an antique store in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The picture is going up in the playroom. The stuffed dog is moth-eaten, but his face was too soulful to ignore.





I found these last two things in a shop in Gloucester, Mass., which is also the home of Turtle Alley, which sells delicious pecan, cashew, and almond turtles covered in white, dark, or milk chocolate, among other things. It's another place we found from a write-up in Jane and Michael Stern's book ROAD FOOD (which has been one of our primary guides to travel in America).

These two pairs of pillowcases need a good soak but are made of a beautiful, thick old cotton. One set is trimmed in what might be hand-done broderie anglaise. I love old bed linens, although these will probably need to be handwashed and air-dryed, which is probably beyond my Erma Bombeck style housekeeping capabilities.



I love this little guy. I know exactly why he appealed to me -- because he reminded me of some of photographer Davina Zagury Feinberg's images of old toys (click on "Reminisences," then on "Dolls and Toys").

Vacation Pictures

So the first stop on our vacation was New York City. We stayed at the shabby but conveniently located Holiday Inn Soho (which is really in Chinatown, if you want to be technical about it). The first day we got cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery in the West Village and took the kids to Abingdon Square Park, where we met up with a college friend and his wife and new baby, while Mary made three new life-long friends whose names she didn't bother to learn. I love that about her -- she goes up to strange kids at the park and asks, "Do you want to play with me?" They run around screaming until the other kid has to leave, and then she moves on to the next kid. I don't know what this says about her future love life, but I can only admire her confidence.

We ate at a few good restaurants that were hip enough not to feel depressing but were quite child-friendly. All three were downtown: Kitchenette and Bubby's, which both serve yummy comfort food and have a nice shabby chic atmosphere, and a great Cuban restaurant called Havana Alma de Cuba. Here are James and Mary at the Cuban restaurant:



And here is James sitting in a restaurant highchair (for the very first time!) at Kitchenette:



I took a quick trip to the fabric district with Mary. We went to the Tinsel Trading Company, which has a wonderful selection of new and vintage ribbons and trims. We also went to B&J Fabrics, which I'd never been to before. Nothing was cheap, but they had a huge and swoon-worthy collection of fabric, including a lot of printed cottons. I eyed the Liberty prints with longing, but finally splurged on two yards of Japanese cotton.

After we left New York City, we drove through a little bit of Connecticut and then up through the Berkshires and Vermont into New Hampshire. We spent a wonderful week at the lake. Our favorite thing was definitely the drive-in. Parents of babies never get to go to the movies, but we just stayed inside and let James yell his head off without bothering anyone. The drive-in was in Fairlee, Vermont, about a half hour drive from the lake. The first night we arrived too early, so Bill and Mary spent a lot of time chasing each other around the empty field. The small refreshment stand, run by the two ladies who I think must own the drive-in and the motel right in front of it, served popcorn with real Vermont butter and cheeseburgers made from local beef. Okay, made from local cows. I'm sorry! They were delicious.



The second time we went, on a Friday night, they showed "Sky High" and the place was packed. There were lots of families -- kids throwing footballs around -- and vans full of teens. People brought lawn chairs and blankets and sleeping bags. The speakers were playing oldies -- good ones, like "Build Me Up, Buttercup." It was awesome.

After we left the lake we drove across New Hampshire and up the coast into Massachusetts. We ate at the Clam Box in Ipswich, where I recommend you get the whole belly clam, rather than the milder-tasting "strip clam."

Here's Mary in front of the Atlantic Ocean.

It's taken a while to settle in after our vacation. We've spent the last ten days glued to the television watching hurricane coverage, or scanning the Internet for fresh outrages and then calling each other on the phone to say, "Did you see the footage where Shepard Smith blows up at Sean Hannity? Did you hear Michael Chertoff on NPR saying that as far as he knew, there weren't any refugees at the convention center? Did you hear the president of Jefferson Parish on 'Meet the Press?'" And so on.

This clip of Charmaine Neville, neice of Aaron Neville and a talented performer in her own right, brought me to tears. I found it via a link on Andrew Sullivan's site. I stopped reading political blogs after the last election because I couldn't endure the gloating, but I like Andrew Sullivan, and have enjoyed, in a grim way, reading about his growing disillusionment with Bush and the Republican party.

Bill suspects that the peoples' outrage at the government's fatally half-assed response to the hurricane is waning, and that the media has been cowed by accusations that they're playing "the blame game." We have a reproduction of the little sign that Harry Truman used to have on his desk -- "The Buck Stops Here." Wouldn't it be incredible to have a President who could stand up and say, "I take full responsibility for the mistakes of my appointees, and I'm going to do my absolute best to make up for it"? This one never will.

A lot can be said about George W. Bush, but I think I can sum up his character thusly: George W. Bush is the kind of guy who, if you were married to him, would never, in a million years, ask for directions on a road trip, but would just drive around for hours with the kids screaming in the back seat, rather than reveal his "weakness" to a total stranger at the gas station.

On Vacation

We're on vacation. First we spent a few days in Manhattan, and then we drove through the Berkshires, up through Vermont, and into New Hampshire, where a friend's parents have kindly given us the use of their lake house for a week. Bill and I were married here in 1991. It's also the place where I'd forced him to propose to me in 1990. I was twenty-three, he was twenty-four, and we had been dating for about eight months.

For years I've wondered, what the hell was I thinking? I couldn't, for the life of me, recreate the thought process that sent me rushing pell-mell into marriage, pulling poor helpless Bill along with me, when we were barely out of college. I had an epiphany on the way up here. It wasn't so much that I wanted to get married. I knew that we were too young, that getting married was crazy, but the craziness of the idea was part of its allure. Specifically, I wanted Bill to be crazy. He's one of the most rational, clear-headed people I know, and I wanted him to be so in love with me that he was willing to do something uncharacteristically rash and stupid.

In retrospect, that's maybe not the best reason to get married. But it all worked out. I'd like to think that it was due to an unusual amount of perspicacity on my part. But it was really just dumb luck.

Tonight we all went to a drive-in in Fairlee, Vermont, and saw "The Island."

Up Late

Today James and I went in to record commentary for the seventh season Simpsons DVD. I think everyone was surprised and (mostly) amused to see a baby at the record, but he was quite good, and I like to think that some day he'll get some mileage out of it.

We recorded the commentary for "22 Short Films About Springfield," which I still think is one of the best episodes ever. (I also love "Bart the Lover," "Lisa's Substitute," "Krusty Gets Kancelled," the Treehouse of Horror episode where Nixon says "I'm not dead yet! I just published an article in 'Redbook'!" and the controversial George Bush episode. And the baseball episode. I love that one.) I wrote the bit with Bumblebee Man. When that part came up I explained how I hadn't known the Spanish word for "woodpecker," so I called my mom, who also did not know the Spanish word for "woodpecker." But Bill said it was okay, because there was never any intention of using real Spanish anyway -- it had to sound Spanish, but be easily understandable for non-Spanish speakers. We ended up calling it a "woodpequero."

(I also said that the design for Bumblebee Man's wife was based on an old boss of mine, a woman who terrified me so much that some mornings I barfed before going in to work.)

That episode was written in 1995. Back then I was still in my twenties, with no gray hair, no children, and no immediate plans to have either. This is how much my life has changed: after the record, I put James in his carseat, tried to eat some of the delicious (free, and not cooked by me!) food they'd set out, ended up spilling mozarella caprese all over the front of my favorite new shirt from Target, wrapped up a sandwich in a paper napkin and snuck it into my bag to eat in the car later, realized I was late for picking up Mary at day camp, realized I'd lost my car keys, and then realized I'd left the car keys in the car.

I have not become the writer I had hoped to be. I'm not even really the mother I had hoped to be. But. But. It felt good to remember who I was for a while. It felt even better to do it with a beautiful boy on my lap, and a beautiful girl waiting for me to pick her up, and my sweet husband next to me.

Much to Do

It finally struck me that we're going on vacation next week and that I can't possibly finish all the things I'd been hoping to do before then.

Before we leave, I hope to make a sock monkey for the son of a friend who is letting us stay with him in Boston during our visit. We're also going to New York City for a few days and spending a week in a friends' parents' house on a lake near the New Hampshire/Vermont border. Ben & Jerry's Factory, here we come!

I also want to do a quick paint and decoupage job to this table before we leave. I found it at the Long Beach flea market last month. I wanted something cheap and small to put next to the glider. I didn't want anything too elaborate, or too nice to decoupage, and I didn't want to pay extra for the layer of chalky white paint that flea market types always add to their old furniture to make it "shabby chic." This little table was $15. Perfect.



James had a check-up yesterday. He's gone up to the 85th percentile in head size. We're pleased, because his head size was initially in the 50th percentile, which is perfectly normal anywhere but in this family. We all have huge heads. Heads of Pufnstuffian proportions. So we were all a little surprised to find out that James' head was merely average. I joked to Bill that James was going to be like Marilyn on "The Munsters" -- normal to everyone except his freakish family. But now he's one of us. Gooble gobble.