The Doggett Days of Summer

well, here it is the last week in august, and the girls went to bed wearing stocking caps. i kid you not. gus wore some newly acquired footy pj's with polar bears on them. is it cold here? the tomatoes which are not growing in my garden, but in my lovely friend's, have late tomato blight. could it be because the average temperature for evenings hovers near 50 not 60 this year. ahhh august.
since i didn't post daily all summer, and i am going on a trip, and won't be back until september, i thought i would blog a bit about our summer. so here they are, the doggett days of summer:

there's eleanor on the rocks.
we went to the coast one day in june. it was really, really cold and windy. the kids were doing death-defying feats on the rocks. this just about captures it. yes, she was really on a cliff of rocks and the churning ocean was just below.
here are gus and eleanor on their bikes for the 4th of july parade.

a good time was had by all. i made a fool of myself in front of some law enforcement personnel with a streamer. the only thing missing was a MARCHING BAND, like this:
see, corvallis, this is how it's done. (lovin the cute band director, too.)

this here is country fair. where else can you dress like a fairy and meet a 15 foot tall flower? where? and gnomes? they got them, too.

oh my it's late now i must go to bed. more soon.
love to everyone.

what's a meme?

i've been tagged for a meme. first off, i am not sure what it is, or worse yet, how to pronounce it. and, rather than going to bed, which i should be doing (since babies can come at any hour of any day or night), i am going to figure it out and try to do it. here goes:
wikipedia says a meme is:

A meme (pronounced /miːm/)^[1] is any thought or behavior that can be passed from one person to another by means of imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.

so, it rhymes with theme, apparently. nice that i can still read the phonetic alphabet. college ed is good for somethin. boy, what else wikipedia says is pretty interesting, too. i guess blogging itself is a meme. not to mention everything else, pretty much. what a concept.

here's what this particular meme is, from lisa:

Quirky Meme
Mention six quirky, yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them. Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that lets them know they've been tagged. If you participate, let the person know who tagged you you've posted your quirks!

1. i can't think of anything, so i guess that must mean i am totally NORMAL, which is something i have been actively trying not to be since about the age of, oh, whenever it was that i first read Anne of Green Gables, and decided i wanted to be quirky in exactly the same way she was, imaginative, creative, forgetful, prone to catastrophe, dramatic, and someone who used words like 'kindred spirits' and 'bosom friend' and 'we almost perished.'

2. i cannot tolerate caffiene very well. it makes me way too talkative (even more than my normal babble speed), then grumpy and then i just want to nap, and, if i have coffee today, tomorrow at exactly the same time, i will want coffee. this is too much! even if i live in the land of a starbucks on every corner, i will not give in to the coffee devils. resist resist resist.

3. i like toaster ovens. is there any more that really needs to be said about that? i think not.

4. i'm good with language. is this boring? is it quirky? well, what it means is i have, in my short (getting longer all the time) life learned bits of several languages that i've retained a fair bit of, majored in language studies in college (japanese) and can remember lyrics to songs so well i will drive pretty much anyone riding in a car with me insane if we listen to the radio and they don't like people singing along. i am not japanese, at least not in this incarnation.

5. i balk at regularity. i don't like to have the same breakfast 2 days in a row, or any meal, for that matter. i don't like to keep the same schedule week to week. it seems boring and stuck. this causes problems in parenting. i like to fly by the seat of my pants. it's crazy-making for children, i think. i guess it's why i like to travel so much. travelling in places where the countries change every few hours is really interesting. not the same breakfast or lunch, or even language! wow! in my old age, i see how rhythm and discipline are helpful to me. doesn't mean i gotta like it, does it?

6. i have worn glasses since i was 7 years old. maybe 8. i started out with a patch, for a lazy-eye situation. would that i had that patch now. it was a really good one with green on the inside. i hated wearing it. i have tried to wear contacts, never with much luck. so, i wear glasses and attempt to keep the finger prints off them. they're quite dirty right now, better fix that.

well, i don't know if i did that right, but, there it is.

addendum: i would tag other people but that feels too much like a chain letter to me. so if you read my blog and want to do this meme, go right ahead. and tell me about it so i can find out just how quirky you are in a boring way. do you, too play the oboe, own an autoharp, collect handkerchiefs? dig on origami? wonder why toenails don't just grow in colors, since they look nicer that way? i wanna know, i really do.

Il Mundo In Un Susafono

(props for this photo go to brtsergio. i stole it from his flickr photostream)
We have just returned from an evening with the Corvallis Community Band. Another Tuesday night was made a bit more special with a summer band concert. What is it about summer band that makes me feel so--well, happy? I do not particularly enjoy playing the music that is played in summer band, marches and such, or at least I didn't when I had the chance, what? 20 years ago. There's just not a lot an oboe can do with all that brass. There is an oboe in the Corvallis Community Band, and they don't play just marches, either. In fact, tonight's performance featured a clarinet soloist who was pretty damn good, and dressed in evening wear. Me, I would have done it in my CCB sweatshirt, but then, I can't play the clarinet that well, and never could. The kids did less playing at the park and more watching the band this week than last. Many questions arose: Is THAT a sousaphone? Is THAT a tuba? Why do they call it a sousaphone, is it because of John Philip Sousa? (We've recently read John Philip Duck by Patricia Polacco, one of our favorite author/artists) Where's the basson player tonight? What's that kind of drum? Why is it called a snare drum? Is that the bass drum? Oh, can you hear the kettle drums? Do these people own their instruments? Are they volunteers? Can I go play in the park?
I believe that Lee Nelson proclaimed that Harlan, Iowa had the longest running summer band program in Iowa, and I only know this becaues I happened to be at one of the concerts during the 100th year. I could be making this all up, but I don't think so. There is a certain kind of nostalgia that rolls in off those down beats and oompas and tweetle tweets that gets me right in my midwestern heart. Now, it helps that one of our first evenings in Corvallis happened to be spent (serendipitously--as was the mode) at a summer band concert. And it helps that my little brother is so far away probably running a similar summer band concert gig--or maybe retirees do that, what say you Phil? Nevertheless, I was glad that I had decided to brave the 'hot' weather (um, no this is not hot compared to you in the mushi atsui midwest) and spend an evening hour on the lawn, listening to marches, waltzes and other sundries. What else is summer for, if not for summer band. And if I had to pick a world to be in... well it's nice that this one includes sousaphones.