Small Fry Talk

"What's your favorite color?" he asked her as he floated on a kickboard in the shallow end. 

She stood on the pool deck, lean and tan in her pink bathing suit. "What's yours?" she challenged him.

"Blue," he replied.

Blue is my fourth favorite color," she told him, cooly.

Her brother ran over, a hooded Piccachu towel on his head. "I like black!" he shouted. "Black, black, black! I'm..." he turned dramatically flouncing his cape, "Blackman!"

Heidi raised her eyebrows. We were eavesdropping on the neighbor kids as we treaded in the deep water. "He probably shouldn't call himself that," she commented.

I agreed. "If Emily was here she might go tell him that black isn't a color," I added.

"Is yours pink?" the boy in the pool asked the girl on the side.

"No, it's red," she told him.

"Well, pink is red plus white," he said, "so I was close." He paused thoughtfully. "Did you know your favorite color is famous in China?"

She wasn't impressed.

"It is," he assured her, "Red and gold are famous in China." He fell off his board and went underwater. 

Conversation over.

Room 105

Even after she was offered the job, my friend wasn't sure she was ready to leave our old school after 32 years there as a teacher (and three more before that as a junior high student!). After a tough year, though, she thought a change might inject some new energy into her career, and Heidi was moving to the same school, too. Even so, up until the last week of school, she was still on the fence. 

Then she found out that her room number at the new school would be 105, which was the same as her first classroom at our school. We agreed it was a sign, and today I went over to help her unpack her boxes and set up the other room 105. While there, we were greeted by several former colleagues who had also transferred, including the principal, and a handful of very welcoming staff. 

My friend seemed visibly more relaxed than she has in a while, and I think she's going to have a great year!

Got it in One

I was sitting idly in my chair, looking for ways to kill time while the appliance repairmen worked on our fridge and dryer, when I decided to check out the online world geography challenge, Worldle, where players are challenged to identify the border map of a different country each day. In general, I'm not that accomplished at the game. Beyond the obvious ones, it usually takes me three or four guesses to narrow it down. And if it's a Pacific island? No way. So today, when presented with something that resembled a sea cucumber with a posse of amoebas, I surprised myself when I correctly recognized it as New Caledonia.

Later, I was trying to figure out how I knew that, and at first I considered an association to Little Caledonia, a tiny Scots-influenced gift shop in Georgetown that closed in 2002 after 50 years in business. They carried all sorts of pretty little knick-knacks and were always good for a last-minute Christmas or hostess gift. In 1988, in an article called "The Right Stuff and a Bit of the Wrong Stuff, Too," The Washington Post Magazine stated that "Walking into Little Caledonia is like entering Charles Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop."

But the map itself of New Caledonia looked so familiar to me that I felt it was more than just the name that jogged my memory. Then I remembered reading the novel Miss Benson's Beetle, the story of a teacher and amateur entomologist in post-WW II London who sets off to find the Golden Beetle of New Caledonia. It is a quirky tale, but one that had me studying the map of that French territory for a few days after I finished.

But how was a French territory named after Scotland, you may wonder. James Cook dubbed the island in 1774 because, to him, its landscape resembled the Scottish Highlands. The indigenous name of the island is Kanaky, however, from the Polynesian word "kanaka," meaning human. I like that better, but what are the chances of a shop named Little Kanaky ever opening in Georgetown?

All Hail the Tomatoes

Before we left for Maine, I visited the garden and picked all the ripe or nearly ripe tomatoes. Then I packed them carefully in pairs in small brown paper bags and brought them along for the vacation. A wide windowsill over the counter in the kitchen of our rental house was the perfect place for all 15 to continue ripening until we needed them. 

There was also an old-fashioned brass desk bell on the same sill, and in a bout of whimsy, as we were selecting tomatoes to slice for our sandwiches to carry on the first hike of the trip, I proclaimed that the bell had to be rung whenever a tomato was used. Most of our group was game for this silliness, and for the better part of the week, we dinged in celebration of each tomato.

Back at home, one of my first chores was to head up to the garden and check on it. It seems like we found the sweet spot of traveling this year. The weather down here was unseasonably cool and dry while we were gone, and there was not a single over-ripe tomato on the vine. There were more than 10 pounds of tomatoes ready to pick, though.

And if I could be in two places at once? I would ring that bell for each and every one.

Easy Peasy

I wasn't planning to stay. 

After picking up the rugs we ordered for Heidi's new classroom and helping to carry them in, I was going to go home, do a few things around the house, and pick Heidi up later. But when we got to the room, there was too much to unpack before putting the rugs down, and I wanted to see how they looked. I started organizing school supplies, going through bookshelves, putting games away, hanging pictures, and sorting extension cords and charging cables. Before we knew it, a few hours had gone by, and not only were the rugs in place, but the room was looking pretty good. 

Setting up a classroom in August? It's what we do.

Off the Beaten Track

We had just crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge and the traffic was getting gnarly when the map app flashed a message on the nav screen: Alternate route available: Would you like to save 9 minutes?

Would I ever! I felt my body relax as I took the exit marked "beaches" and left he prospect of traveling the last 120 miles of our trip home in the treacherous stop-and-go traffic of I-95 behind. Our new route was not without congestion in its first few miles, but once we crossed the fancy Roth Bridge over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and hopped onto 301 south, it was clear sailing. 

We rolled through blue skies and sunny farm fields on the bay side of the Eastern Shore, never stopping once until we approached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Even then, we were mostly against traffic until we were nearly onto 395 south, but the express lanes rescued us, and we made it home 20 minutes quicker than the other way was predicted to take.

After 16 hours over two days in the car, the novelty of the new route, along with the open roads and pleasant beauty of that part of Delaware and Maryland, made the last leg more than bearable.

Tent Sale

"Oh look, they're having a tent sale," I said to Heidi, spying the huge white canopy set up on the side of the LL Bean outlet in Ellsworth. "Wanna stop?"

Even though (or maybe because) we were only 30 minutes into our 7-and-a-half-hour journey (the one that would ultimately end up taking closer to ten hours), we decided to make a quick detour and check out the inventory. It didn't hurt that dogs were also allowed in the store, and as we walked to the entry, I pointed to the tent. "Do you want to check out the tent sale first?" I asked.

"I don't want a tent," Heidi said, "but feel free."

I looked at her, confused. "They're not selling tents," I replied. "It's a big clearance sale in that tent." I pointed. Then I remembered where we were. "But I guess they might actually have a few tents," I laughed.

"I'll meet you inside."