Robert Andrew is 12 today, and I was thinking about the day he was born and his various adventures and misadventures since.
He’s a fabulous child.
Tomorrow, there’s going to be an extended reunion of Bis Nonna’s relatives, so we’ll get to honor Bob with a cake and maybe a present or two.
As for today: while birthdays tend to be low-key events at his house, I hear there are festivities planned, partly because of the insistence of one of his friends.
So, happy birthday to Bob, and wishes that his last year before becoming a teenager will be a full and happy one.

Whoever said the living was easy this time of the year? If anything, it’s more stressful: getting the same amount of work done with fewer people, coping with more traffic, living with heat and humidity.

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I know someone – a relative, in fact – who has connived and schemed his whole life to get what he wants.
He got his comeuppance recently via a very bad deal, the consequences of which, unfortunately, affect me.

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The grandsons slept over on Friday night so we could watch the fireworks across the street, and then spent Saturday with friends next door.
Fortunately, the humidity that’s been plaguing us disappeared, so it was a good time for us and our friends to visit the County Fair on Saturday morning.
The boys got to go on rides, play the carnival games (they won inflatable bats and a “hammer”, which they allowed me to keep as an office joke) and pick out souvenirs.

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for this.

I think it’s great that a single mother on the dole became a billionaire through that most unlikely of means, the writing of children’s books.
It’s also great that the Harry Potter series is not patronizing or sweet and that magic, not moralizing, is its theme.
I’m happy that the Harry Potter books “encourage children to read” and delighted that they irritate the Religious Wrong.
Further, I commend the town of Sandwich for celebrating the release of the last book with a day’s worth of events, starting at 10 am and ending, of course, at midnight.
Given all of this, I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t read more than one or maybe two of the Potter books all the way through.
The basic plotline – Harry’s nefarious enemies threaten his life, but nevertheless, Harry saves the day and learns a little more about his past as a result – bored me after a while.
I also became bored after about book three with the introduction of yet more predictably weird characters, especially the non-human ones, and the predictable deux-ex-machina solutions to Harry’s problems: a potion that lets him breathe under water, a device that lets one go backwards in time, etc. Not to disrespect J.K. Rowling, but Disney, not to mention the brothers Grimm, came up with a similar formula a long time ago.
In the future, though, it’ll be interesting to see if the children who grew up with these books consider them merely entertaining or among those rare written works which can actually be life-altering.
It’s beyond my imagination to envision how this could be, but in the world of Harry Potter, anything is possible.

Gerard Manley Hopkins – Binsey Poplars (felled 1879)
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew

I think this was a first: Bob made money for non-family work yesterday, and I am very proud of him.
One of my friends just moved to a new rental, a pretty attached garden-style apartment with a private back yard and a landscaped front yard.
She wanted to clean up the front a little, so Bob and I helped her prune, weed and put down 3 bags of really nice Hemlock mulch.
We also loaded the truck with her packing boxes, which had been sitting in plastic bags in her back yard; these went to the recycling center this morning.
My friend insisted on paying Bob, which was one of those unnecessary but very appreciated kindnesses that come your way so rarely that it puts you in a state of shock when it happens.
I told Bob he has a knack for landscaping.
He replied that may be so, but it’s “not (his) thing”, especially on a hot, muggy day in July.

As the weather got warmer and muggier, the pace at work has slowed down significantly in the past couple of weeks.
My sympathetic boss gave me leave to work offsite for partial days this week and next so that I could chauffer Bob to computer camp in Harwich, about a 40 minute drive from Mashpee.
Bob’s parents agreed to this, mostly because there aren’t a lot of activities close by to keep him busy this summer.
He’s been enjoying the camp a lot, and even though I’ve burned through a few vacation hours and about a tank of gas, the change of scenery has been enjoyable.

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The tomato plants are doing great, and I’ll have to re-pot them soon.
We’ve had so much rain recently that the nasturtium leaves are yellowing, not a good sign, but several plants are flowering. There’s even an occasional Morning Glory.

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