Summer has finally arrived in New England and waking up feels more like a celebration than a groan these days. And with all this sunshine comes more moving around. A week ago we said Ate Logo to Hannah after one short week together buying sandals and peanut butter. "Our little girl, all grown up and off savin' Brazil." From what, I am not sure. She is now living in Copacabana 4 blocks from the beach with a host family who have 2 sons her age. No wonder I have not heard from her except to say she arrived safely and her head hurt from speaking so much Portuguese. She will, indeed, Fala Portuguese for the next 6 months with all her classes in that Iberian tongue. Hopefully her head will not hurt the whole time.
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On the home front, after waxing dramatically on and on in my last post about the comforts of my minivan I was slapped upside o' my head by a short course in physics. Here in the Ocean State, you see, most folks consider the turn signal to be an optional feature on their vehicles, rather like the cigarette lighter. They figure that of course you can intuit where they are planning to go in a split second, even while traveling at 35 mph. My powers of perception being a bit blurry from my time away, I failed to foresee that the Ford Focus in front of me was actually a volunteer driver for the tennis tournament and would be turning right, right now, to pick up some players at the tennis courts and transport them back to the Hall of Fame. In order to avoid hitting the vehicle rapidly approaching in the opposite lane and the two ladies walking home from the beach on a sunny evening, I was forced to firmly apply my anti-locking brakes and get a better focus on, yes, his Focus.
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For the exorbitant cost of one undented bumper and a new headlight I could be sitting comfortably in a Herman Miller Aeron chair. I could even have his and hers in matching shades of black if I purchased them from Sit for Less. But no. I am stuck here waiting for the consequences of my unexpected meet-and-greet to be finished. In the meantime, I left my laptop cord in Maine and the washer and dryer broke in our house even while Andy was busy replacing a leaking window in our bedroom so all things considered, my brief honeymoon with life in the fast lane with all its modern accoutrements has come to a smashing end. Oh, and did I mention the flat tire? "How do I miss thee, Costa Rica. Let me count the ways..." I know, I know, all of these things could happen in the tropics as well. And they did! Let me just insert my brief bastardization of Shakespeare in a reverent moment of fantasy.
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And speaking of bastards...no, not you, honey. It would not be summer for Andy without the feel of four tires on hot pavement beneath him as he steers through an assortment of States and sometimes distant lands, logging thousands of road miles on some vehicle or another. To this end, Andy imported his brother, Buster, and the two of them left two days after Hannah to drive across country, the first wave of the family to hit the Oregon trail. They are somewhere around Ruby Ridge in Idaho as I type, where Buster owns the abutting property to Randy Weaver, whom you may or may not recall as the poor guy who invoked the ire of the FBI for various trumped up reasons, resulting in a stand-off and shoot-out at his cabin where he and his family had retreated from "a corrupted world" to worship God, home school their kids and live thru the apocalypse they believed was imminent. Turns out they were right, albeit for the wrong reasons. When the apocalypse came knocking in the form of our government, it ended the lives of his 14 year old son and his wife for what was ultimately determined to be the heinous crime of missing his court date and violating his bail. Right here in the land of the free and the brave while I was delivering my second baby, Christiana. Although reading the Mayflower, it turns out even the Pilgrims were not so tolerant of religious freedom when it was not focused in their own myopic vision. Okay, I promise not to use that word again...
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Christiana is busy bussing tables at the Salvation Cafe and living the life of luxury with her best friend and surrogate family on Meadowlark Lane. Micah is in Maine and me and my happy sidekicks are here in the smallest state with the still-longest name waiting for our wheels to join him. Altho, technically, he won't be there. He is heading to DC this week to spend time with friends from Costa Rica on Capitol Hill. Yes, summer is in full swing and the Kittels are on the move. You never know when you might encounter one of us...
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K3
K3
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P.S. I might have said, "when one of us might come into focus" if I had not promised not to.
P.P.S. Have you voted for us on our 2010 Antarctica trip yet?
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