Happy belated 4th of July, everyone. Hope it was a blast.

It's getting hot here -- high 90s hot -- so I'm saying a fond farewell to my garden peas and everyone else who wilts under these shimmering skies, and rooting for my tomatos and cukes now.  This is my first year with a real garden here, and while the soil definitely needs building up, some of the plants are making it through with flying colors. Valiant.

I was sorry to miss the JKS Reunion on the 3rd, and am waiting (im)patiently to see the pictures. Next year, definitely.

We took a gorgeous little sportscar for a ride this weekend -- a convertible -- and yeah, it made me miss my old 'Vette. She was lovely, black with a cream-colored interior and t-tops, and driving her was so much fun. Something to think about. There are summer adventures rising all around us, and I think we're going to grab a few of them.  I'm excited about that.

Hope your summer is beautiful so far.

Funny day.

The morning was spent mired in all sorts of tangled thoughts. Happily, they finally smoothed out.

The afternoon was spent restless and mulling. (You'd think I'd recognize the symptoms by now.)

Tonight, out of seemingly nowhere, came a flash of a new character, and a possible story.

I feel good about the little I know so far.  Excited. Intrigued.

And then, while I was making notes and just sort of free-writing what I knew, the feral cats showed up so I gave them food, went back in about a half hour to see how they were doing, and got to watch a power-play dance between a young possum, an older possum and a skunk, all jockeying for what was left on the food plate.

No malice or fighting, just an interesting weave of animals.
 
The skunk was gorgeous.

James Taylor and Carole King in their Troubador concert last night.

It was wonderful.

I'm kind of at a loss for words, here, on how to explain how astonishing and grand it is to sit maybe 17 rows from the stage and see two artists you grew up listening to, people who know how to reach inside, find the questions and present them so magically.

I'm at a loss.

So, I will start at the beginning.

We set out early to do some shopping and have dinner before the concert. Saw this hawk and these cute sheep (nice view, huh?) on the ride there.

 

Dinner was fun. I had some absolutely lovely shrimp and crab tortellini with a smoked cheese and sundried tomato sauce, and we got zeppolis to go. (I really do have to find a decent zeppoli recipe. The best I ever had I bought in a brown paper bag down at a stand in Englishtown Market back in NJ, and ate them while wandering the auction in the dead of summer. YUM. Love Englishtown. Miss it, too. They have an excellent pickle stand, with barrels and barrels. What a delight.)

Anyway, this was my first time at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, and I like it. It's not too big and almost every seat is decent, even the nosebleed ones. We had good seats, down on the floor in front of the revolving stage. Maybe 17th row. And oh, when Carole King and James Taylor came out, did this crowd holler!



They were wonderful. Charming, funny, friendly, and good friends themselves.



So Far Away brought me and the girl in the row ahead of me to tears, although she was actually blotting her face with a tissue. I wasn't that far gone, but Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, with both of them singing, was a knock-out, as was Fire and Rain and You've Got a Friend. Right to the heart.

 

They took a 15 minute intermission which was cool, and reminded me of the old days. I loved it. We had a great time, and it looked like they did, too.





The tour merchandise is beautiful. We picked up a program full of photos and a mug, and now I'm hankering for the Troubador CD. If you get the chance to go to this concert, do it. Truly a wonderful evening. 

What a great weekend.

Saturday my boyfriend Stew and I went back up to Bethel, home of Woodstock, to see Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band which includes Edgar Winter, Gary Wright, Richard Page, Wally Palmar, Rick Derringer and Gregg Bissonette. It was hot and muggy with a chance of t-storms as always, so we geared up not with umbrellas but for some weird, giddy reason, with Kit Kats, Raisinettes and these:   (The fake blueberry and grape are pretty good.)

So we're winding along some gorgeous backroad through the woods talking, laughing and eating candy, when there, sitting right on the edge of the road, is a big, fat, ginger-colored bunny. I mean, right there. I yell, "A rabbit! Wait, wait, a rabbit!" as we go by slowing, and the rabbit doesn't move, thank God, but now I'm freaked because someone is bound to hit it. Plus, it's a house rabbit, not a wild one.

The road is narrow but we find a place to turn around because I have to go back and get that rabbit, and try to find its owner. Stew parks and I jump out and trot back up the road toward the rabbit, parallelling it so it doesn't dart onto the pavement, using my "Hello, pretty bunny," voice. The rabbit gives me a sideways look but its ears are up and it's not panicking. I cross the road (after a truck and trailer barrel by at fifty, right past the rabbit) and get within three feet of it. That's when it turned and disappeared back down a tangled slope into the woods, and I couldn't get it. (What was I going to do with it if I did get it? Knock on doors, I guess. I don't know.)

So I turn to head back to the truck and there's two guys standing on a porch across the road watching this whole thing.  I yell, "Do you know whose rabbit that is?" And one says No and the other says Yes. Sigh.  They say it's a wild rabbit. I say it's a domestic rabbit. They say yeah but the owner let it go a while ago, and now it's a wild rabbit.

Okay. I'm trumped. Back to the truck.

We get to Bethel Woods with enough time to re-visit the Museum, where Stew surprises me with a very funky and beautiful, semi-psychedelic bag (Jersey Girl Diane Barcelowsky's One World Sakroot bag) I'd admired in the gift shop which is going to be perfect for vacation.

So we wandered around, and took some more pics overlooking the original Woodstock concert site.

  

and there was a beautiful, exuberant little girl there in a bright blue tutu dancing and spinning around in the grass, just for the sheer joy of it.

The concert was great. Ringo was funny and chatty and personable. A delight. Edgar Winter was fabulous and Free Ride live, for me, was one of the highlights.

 Edgar Winter and Rick Derringer.

My pictures aren't that great but the music was:

  



I won't tell you about the end, which was really cool, but be prepared to enjoy Free Ride, Rock and Roll Hootchie Koo, What I Like About You, Kyrie, Dream Weaver, even more, and of course, the best of Ringo. Fun, fun, fun.


Now, we hung out a little afterwards, eating french fries and getting yelled at by security (irritating and unnecessary), and then hung out another hour on the tailgate, laughing, eating licorice and watching the endless trillions of cars inch their way out. All in all, it took us almost FIVE HOURS from the end of the concert to actually walking back home into the door, including a detour round a mountain on some really deserted wooded roads, a quirky little convenience store stop where we brewed up a fresh pot of coffee and bought bananas, thirteen deer by the sides of the roads and one raccoon, passed the rabbit-spot where there was no body (YAY!) and finally got home to find five feral cats waiting patiently on the stoop for their dinner.

It was a blast.  

Sunday was lovely, relaxed and lazy, so of course we had to cure that by going fishing down at the river. Now, I've never gone fishing at the river so I'm thinking you park the truck, get out, set up your beach chair and I read while he casts.

HA.

We drove through no man's land, through a corn field to a stand of underbrush and woods, sprayed citronella bug spray from head to toe, gathered our gear (mine was a beach chair, a book, a notebook, a camera, a bottle of the worst green tea with honey that I've ever tasted but it was cold so it was necessary, and a purse) and then hacked our way through the waist-high greenery down the steepest hill with the most treacherous dirt path I've ever slid down to get to the river bank, where we slogged through ankle-deep mud to get to a gorgeous river stone beach where I got to relax in the shade with my book and the video camera while he went waist-deep into the river to woo the fish.  It was pretty, peaceful and soothing, the view was spectacular, herons and an eagle flew by, and the sound of the water flowing was lovely. It smelled like a hot, wet dog for a while because the water was low and the stones baking in the sun but I got used to it fast, so it was no big deal. Plus, there were the most enchanting little frogs no bigger than crickets hopping around the stones, and that was really cool.

It was fun. I'd do it again.  We used to crash through woods, muck around in mud and scrabble down precipes all the time when we were kids, and it was good to do it again.

Even carrying a purse and a beach chair. 

Well, I see I've fallen behind again. I think it's because right after I wrote the former post that burbled about what an interesting day it had been so far, one of the cats went and vomited up a hairball into one of my shoes, and I figured it was a sign to quit while I was ahead.

Father's Day was lovely, though; one of my boyfriend's sons came for lunch and we had scallop and chicken and veggie shish-ke-bobs which were delicious, and it was just one of those smooth, fun, relaxed afternoons that feel so good. Monday was gorgeous and so we got on the bike and went adventuring and out to lunch, and looking at RVs.

Just looking for now. But oh, two of the best vacations of my life -- and that includes the adult vacations of flying around, cruises and Caribbean islands -- were the six week-long cross country RVing family vacations my parents took us on. The first time we went i was 13, and we went northwest from NJ to Colorado and Montana and Wyoming and up to visit my relatives in Saskatchewan, where I met my lovely cousin Sheila and we became fast friends. (We started writing to each other after that vacation, and are still at it all these years later.)  

(As I'm writing this right now, hanging out on a lounge on the patio, a doe is grazing next to me not 20 feet way, enjoying all the lovely fresh clover. Bizarre.)

Anyhow, the second fabulous vacation -- and maybe the best, most fun of my life -- was the RV vacation we took when I was 18 and just out of high school. This time we went southwest, down to Texas and Arizona and Mexico, back up to Colorado to visit relatives and home across the midwest. My younger brother and I played a lot of games of pool and became great friends during that vacation, my little sister and I skirted authority and became partners in mischief and my parents were carefree, relaxed and wonderful, in 24/7 good moods and putting up with all of our misadventures with only occasional threats of grounding. I met interesting people, made some very interesting memories and wouldn't trade that vacation for the world. 

This is why looking at RVs is dangerous. It makes me want to do it all again.

Uh-oh. I feel a restlessness coming on.

What a fun and interesting day so far.
 
It started early, with the sun beaming in the windows and since it feels like we haven't had much sun lately, that alone kicked off a good mood and an urge for adventure. Armed with bottles of Citrus Prickly Pear Fuzes and blueberry power bars, we headed down to the park where one of my boyfriend's sons was running in a 5k long distance race along the river. The weather was gorgeous and the morning sun beating on all the wild carrots blooming along the river bank made the air smell just like hot, fresly-ironed cotton. 

Weird, I know, but true. 

Anyhow, watching the runners take off and then return was fun, and while I admire people who run for the pure joy of it, I can honestly say that unless there's a dire emergency, or a monster or a maniac is chasing me, or the delight of spring has seized my spirits and I'm so enchanted that I can't help myself from romping around, chances are you will probably never see me run.
 
After the race we went out to breakfast at a little restaurant that has a marble rye that I loved so much the first time I ate it that I actually got the waitress to sell me a loaf. YUM. On the drive home, we spotted a very tall, very whirly dust devil that looked like a thin tornado funnel rising up about 200 feet in the air, and spinning away in a factory parking lot.

Bizarre.

So we came home, got the Harley and went off to explore the countryside. We cruised along enormous fields of flowers -- crownvetch, daisies, wild sweet peas, yellow, purple, pink, flowers everywhere (is bliss too strong a word, here?) -- and stopped in the shade along the river to hang out for a while. We took a beautiful, deserted backroad I love, saw a Kingfisher flying along the creek, stopped for ice cream (I had an apricot ice cream cone, another YUM) and came home sunkissed, wildblown and happily tired.

Now I want to go out and play in my garden for a while. And then we'll see what's next.

And Judy, thanks so much for the beautiful postcard. I'm so glad you had a wonderful time!

Have a wonderful Father's Day, everyone.

I am knee-deep in lettuce, and very pleasantly surprised about that because this is the first year for my garden here, and I wasn't really expecting very many of the vegetables to perform. I'd ordered up a stack of heirloom seeds back in January, started them all in paper cups, lost someof the seedlings along the way thanks to the cats, who bit their heads off whenever they felt like it, but still ended up with a fair assortment of hopeful, spindly little plants to put out in the garden when the weather warmed up.

And now we're enjoying the lettuce and the peas while the other seedlings get bigger by the second. If they keep growing like this, I'll be enveloped by a vegetable jungle come late July and be having tomatoes for breakfast. (Not a bad idea.) We'll see how it goes.

So, all is good. A library in Staten Island is kicking off their summer bookclub with Such a Pretty Girl -- hi, Paula Amore! -- vacation ideas are irresistible, I met back up with a good friend, am thinking about manuscript revisions, am percolating another new idea, and the summer shopping sales are not bad at all. We have concerts coming up and many an adventure pending, so there's much to look forward to.

Hope your June is a gorgeous one.

Today was a fabulous day, although I think I might have inadvertently caused some angst. 

 I thought it was Father's Day -- it usually falls on the Sunday before my brother's birthday, which would be today -- so I pretty much went around wishing the men I know a Happy FD. Wrong. It's next week, the 20th. Oops.

On the bright side, my boyfriend and I went out on the motorcycle for a lovely ride through the misty mountains, stopped for lunch and spent a great afternoon hanging out with friends. I met a lovely little dog who came up onto my lap to be adored for a while, a handsome cat and had an afternoon filled with fresh air, lots of laughter and good conversation.

So, happy Sunday.  

This one goes out to all the good men I know -- especially my own wonderful father. and boyfriend -- who make the world a better place just by being in it. Where would we be without their generous kindness and warm smiles, their strong hearts and helpful hands, their limitless encouragement, quirky humor, adventurous spirit, unfaltering love and hopes for the future?  

It's my honor to know, and love you.

Happy Father's Day, guys. You're the best.

First off, today is my beloved sister's birthday! Happy, happy day, Sue. Wishing you all good things, always. xoxo

I've been refilling the well these days, which'll not only help me with rewrites but is always a pleasure, aiming my brain at whatever strikes its fancy and soaking up everything I can about it. Plus, I get to duck-sit again.

I am inspired. How are you guys doing?