Salaygoos Salaymah

Gerbil was married outside to a beautiful girl in a beautiful setting. Then we ate. We are very excited for them both.

SJZ took photos for Gerbil, so I tried to keep the boys in line at the dinner. It was hard work and hard to enjoy the meal. They were surrounded by little cousins and all they wanted to do was play and dance and scream. I was surrounded by my cousins and all I wanted was to chat with them.

After the food, we were able to do that. We hosted some Hags in our room and there were about 37 children there. It was great to be surrounded by so many good folks. We are so proud to be invited to such parties. Woody Allen says he “wouldn’t want to be part of a club that would have me as a member.” I hope the Hags are not ashamed to be related to me. I am thrilled to belong to them.

We spent the next day with the Nags - Uncle Harold and Aunt Laura (pics forthcoming) hosted us for lunch and then took us to Ipswich to see old houses and yacht harbors. From a little beach side hill, we could see a power plant in New Hampshire and a hill in Maine. It was a wonderful Sunday drive. We stopped by Karl and Karen’s home for a pit stop, to see their house, get MTN2 a fiddling opportunity, and to gear up for our most difficult trick yet - driving through the night.

Our last stop in Boston was the Aquarium. SJZ and the boys (minus HEN)went while MTN (and HEN) got his suit tailored, hair cut (finally!!!!), and some other stuff. The main attraction at the Aquarium was Myrtle the Turtle and seeing the scuba divers feeding fish in the big tanks. OMN loved the Jellyfish exhibit because the day before, digging around the Swampscott beach with cousins, they found some dead jellyfish. He will probably have dreams about them.

In the car, the verbal/musical equivalent of doodling, OMN sings, “I want to be on a rockin’ ship….no I don’t, cause there’s bad pirates there…” MTN2 won’t stop singing the country song, “I’ve been watching you, Dad ain’t that cool, I’m your buckaroo I wanna be like you…” It would be cuter if he hadn’t told me the other day, “You are evil. You are an evil man.” (I was only enforcing the no treats after brushed teeth rule.)

We have found that we really enjoy being in the car (not including navigating).  Eastern scenery is very green, and the weather has been temperate.  We have a bunch of Radio West and This American Life and Pardon the Interuption podcasts in addition to our music.  The best music on the trip has been Brandi Carlile, the Wreckers, The Wailin’ Jennys, and a few singles, including Kanye West, The Cult, Frogstomp and Brad Paisley.  I think I will get Paisley’s new album.  If I could ever get everyone in the car asleep at the same time, I would listen to all the Rush and Van Halen I have on the iPod, but, SJZ can’t tolerate that too long.  I was listening to The Dixie Dregs (prog rock) and I asked her how she would classify it.  “I would call this….Guitar Vomit,” she said.  Well put.  If she sleeps, I will bring Alex Lifeson to life.  I think she’s in love with Ira Glass.

As soon as we got to our destination in New Hampshire, we decided to go to Maine.

We looked in our Eat Across America book and it suggested lobster rolls in Kennebunkport, the vacation location of the Bush family, especially 41. We were up early and off to our last state. We took state roads across NH and then US-1 up to Kennebunkport. Kennebunkport has a small mainstreet with touristy crap, including the clam shack where we spent $25 on fried clam patties and a bun with buttered lobster tail chunks. The clam patties, insofar as they were battered and deep fried, could have been onion rings and our boys would not have known the difference. The lobster roll could have been $7 instead of $15 and nobody would have known the difference. We were kind of let down.

We drove all over town looking for a furniture maker, Huston and Company.

http://www.hustonandcompany.com/

They were totally nice and their showroom had amazing work. They took us through their shop and gave wood scraps to the boys.

From there, we went to put our toes in the atlantic ocean. Pics forthcoming.

We have stopped for so many roadside emergency potty breaks that OMN doesn’t think he needs to use actual bathrooms. “I will tell you a good place to stop, okay there’s one stop there!” That crazy astronaut lady that wore Depends on her drive from Texas to Florida to kill her lover’s lover doesn’t seem nearly as crazy anymore.

Next, the wedding.

SJZ wants to move to Boston. Swampscott to be precise. So I’ll be starting up a hedge fund…

Just as Jesus set a standard for how many times we must forgive (70 times 7), SJZ has set a standard for how many times a child must ask for a treat at 30+3.  She made no indication that the treat would be granted, only that the child should “go ahead and ask me thirty more times!”

When we were in Scranton, PA the other day (I forgot to tell about it), we thought about going to look for the Welcome to Scranton sign from the TV show The Office, but we didn’t want to drive all over the place looking for it.  I told SJZ I just wanted to go to the office and introduce myself and get to know everybody in person.  “We’re so close,” I said.  She said, “Don’t be ridiculous…it’s Saturday.”

We forgot to budget for toll roads.  I am surprised at how I am not indignant about toll roads.  So far, we’ve spent $225.20 on diesel.  We’ve spent $42.30 on tolls.  If you know how to start a hedge fund, please leave a post.

SJZ wants to know if anybody from the east coast has ever gone back to Britain to find the original cities: York, Jersey, Brunswick, Haven, Hampshire, Mexico…

INSIDE JOKE TO NASHVILLIANS:  We saw a truck with “CALABRO: A FAMILY OF CHEESES” painted on the side.  Pic is forthcoming.  I asked SJZ, “How would you pronounce that name?”

Driving to Boston today to stay with Kristine. Our boys are going to have a hard time keeping track of all their new (or reacquainted) friends and cousins. They are lucky to know so many people across the country. Old friends are the best kind of friends, and cousins maybe moreso.

Some lessons we’ve learned so far:

1. It is easier to sustain consecutive driving days than driving days followed by touring days. We arrived in Chicago and had an easy Sunday before gearing up for touring again, and it worked well. In New York, we just kept going and going after we arrived. That was hard.

2. Young people get homesick. We didn’t plan for this. It is especially hard at night time. MTN2 said (this morning) that he just wants to sleep in his own bed. We figured that all these neat places and good friends would sustain their emotional health through the duration of the trip, but….

3. We haven’t used our portable DVD player yet. It’s kind of a badge of honor thing, I suppose. Several older road trip veterans told us that road trips are when family become family - singing, playing, discussing, learning. My answer to them is: seatbelts. Our kids are strapped down every minute we’re in the car, so it’s not entirely fair to compare to the old days of stuffing the fam in the station wagon with a deck of cards, some pillows and some sing-along tapes. But we are holding out on the DVD’s just to see how long we can make it.

4. After our second day of driving, SJZ and I made a bet to see who would be the next one to blow up at the kids. They give us good reason to yell about every six or seven minutes. But this was after OMN was squirting his juice box on the roof and drying to get the drips to land in his mouth. So we made a bet of who could last longer without yelling. If you make exceptions for yelling at them to stop when running towards right into traffic at Columbus Circle, we have yet to give in. (The terms of the bet are fairly compelling for both of us, as is the simple will to not lose…) Consequently, we think the boys have actually been better. I make an analogy to teaching at the high school. I would like to be a tough nose teacher and, for lack of a better word, force them to read and write what and how I want. But I have learned that my options do not include getting them to do my bidding. My options are to fight with them or not fight with them. So I choose not to fight with them (9 times out of 10…sometimes I can’t resist.) The same is true of the boys. It seems getting really angry over some infraction does not increase the odds of future compliance.

Of course, SJZ just wants to win. So when MTN2 smarts off at me, she’ll look at me and say, “Are you going to take that?” Yes, I am. At least until you give in at which point it may be a free for all…

5. It’s better to give each post a title to draw the reader in.

On to Boston.

French Toast for breakfast, a quick jaunt to the Long Island Rail Road station, an hour ride into Penn Station, then survival on 8th avenue. We spent a glorious and long day in Manhattan, including catching up with a friendly cousin and an old friend.

Most of our day was spent at the Museum of Natural History. The boys’ favorite spot was the underwater portion (with the blue whale, a giant squid getting eaten by a sperm whale, etc.) I liked seeing all of it. I haven’t been to a natural history museum since the one in Denver, so it was reminding me of that the whole time.

After the museum, we went to Central Park and met Karli. She took us to the carousel. OMN and MTN2 were in heaven. The carousel played two songs: Welcome Back Kotter and some 80s pop song. I thought that was funny. I can’t imagine the caliope on the river in New Orleans playing pop songs. It seemed a little out of place for a classic carousel over 100 years old.

We found a playground in the park and let the boys loose. They spent the whole day up to that point hearing nothing but “quiet please….don’t touch…wait…go…hold on….stop….slower….hurry….don’t touch…no….” and it was amazing how much energy they still had after all that walking. They ran around the park until their faces were bright red.

MTN2 is friendly and it makes me sad to see him approach strangers (older kids, that is) with friendly intentions only to be spurned. He reacts by acting wierd or silly, which doesn’t help. He is so full of imagination and mirth, but it goes largely unappreciated. I think SJZ and I are the only people that really know him.

Sky met us for dinner. She’s a high school friend that I wish was our neighbor. She works as a jeweler in Manhattan. She is basically the hands of an artist who designs what Sky builds. Our visit was cut short by Time (Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore…Sonnet 60). But we made a connection and that will sustain our friendship (along with some more frequent emails) until the next time we meet. We look forward to her branching out and creating her own designs. For her sake, I hope we can’t afford them.

The train ride back to Long Island, the boys fell asleep, HEN fell apart and we made our way pioneer-like (never quitting) back to our hosts. Bedtime was teary (exhaustion, mostly, but also homesickness).

Today was our most ambitious day, but well worth it. All things considered, the boys were wonderful. Breakdowns were brief and overall, they tried very hard to be good. They are terriffic.

We went to the Huntington Station branch on Long Island for church today. It is a bilingual branch full of bilingual people. They meet in the upstairs of the public library, but it is decked out in LDS furniture, art and other acoutrements. Clint taught Sunday School and it was a wonderful lesson about the parable of the talents and the sheep and the goats. He wanted to play the Cake song (Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell) but decided against it.

After church we went to the Cold Spring Harbor labs (CSH is the home of Billy Joel…) for a picnic lunch of cheese, bread, juice, fruit, olives, etc. Very very good. And the lab is like Club Med for scientists. It is not a university, so it’s just researchers, no classes, no students (except the ones researching). Clint’s lab is right on the water, so when he needs to think or wait or whatever, he walks out the door, picks up a fishing pole and sends a line into the harbor. There is a beach area on the center’s campus, some gardens, some fields, tennis courts, sand volleyball lots; it is lush with greenery. I’m sure this isn’t true in Winter, but in June, it is as green as LSU’s campus (a veritable jungle).

The kids played in the water. We have pics, but they are of the analog variety, so they will have to wait to be posted later.

Brats, fruit salad and spinach in a cream sauce for dinner. Clint and Rachel have been excellent hosts.

From Keuka to Long Island, we stopped in Corning and went through the glass museum. We watched a glass blowing demo and they made a vase (that broke). We were hoping that they could blow us a new windshield for the Golf. No such luck. We also hoped to find a nice vase for JB’s wedding…but they were a bit pricey.

We arrived at the George Washington Bridge entering NYC just when everyone was turning on their headlights for the night. I have to concentrate when driving around so much traffic, so many exits and ramps and splits, and a google-maps printout as our only guide. (Driving in Summit County has made me soft!) But crossing the bridge was a highlight of the trip. We played 1000 Clowns’ “I Love New York” which would be funnier if you had ever heard of it. It’s a rap song from some sampler CD we got. The boys rap along and it really got us excited.

Arrived at Clint and Rachel’s place well after 10 pm. Clint and I stayed up chatting until after 2 (which, in my defense, is only midnight SLC time). We talked about almost everything BUT our mission, which, I think, shows some emotional progress on my part. Clint is a scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He researches corn mutations to better understand which genes are causing what. You will be able to read his work very soon in either Science or Cell….hopefully.

Today was one of the best driving days of our trip. Good weather, good time, only one breakdown from the boys. It was nice.

Owen is a bit homesick.