Odds and ends

Josephine just peed in the potty and announced, "Princess pee!" And then she marched out to the family room, where Princess Margaret had collapsed on the veterinarian surgical table. (This is where we treat the poor little dogs who drink soda and cats who look too long at the sun.)

"No touch princess!" Margaret commanded.

So big changes in the Royal Castle these days.

Our new au pair arrived two weeks ago from a very small village in Austria, replacing Julia who seemed to think such things as "university" would be more rewarding than caring for the Royal Family. Sigh. First Julia, then Supergold, and now Ted Kennedy -- and frankly, I am glad bad news doesn't come in quadruplets.

I can not stress enough how much I liked Julia. You know if I didn't you would have heard much more about her...

Supergold, by the way, was the little fish that we brought home from the county fair on Sunday night. (That is, 36 hours before we discovered him listless on the bottom of an old flower vase.) Oh, my first book! "Mired: The Short Life and Fast Times of Supergold."

Oh! The other things we won at the county fair! Lucy -- a third-place ribbon for her painting. I call it "Square Rainbow"...see here:


I entered a half-dozen chocolate hazelnut crinkles in the over-hyped drop cookie competition -- and I got honorable mention, but that's really not very good, I don't think. (I blame the chocolate. Or actually, I blame myself for not thinking to buy the semi-sweet chocolate specified in the recipe and instead, hauling over the step stool, scrambling around the top shelf of the pantry, and emerging with a half-eaten bag of old Nestle chocolate chips...)

Next year, I might try filled cookies. Less competitive, I hope. Or maybe I'll just transfer my unrealized ambition to my children and force them to raise prize-winning tomato seeds. That makes the most sense, right?

Okay, okay, okay

I'm not making any promises!

Our trek (no mountains, but an awful lot of SUVs on the NJ Turnpike) to Cape Cod was lovely. The girls peed in the potty, ate lots of gummy worms and candy buttons, caught baby toads -- c'mere, frogggggy! c'mere, c'mere, c'MEEEER! -- and got attacked by a family of teenage ducks in a freshwater kettle pond. No worries there. Adolescent ducks don't have teeth!

Most embarrassing moment: Josephine, sweetly licking an ice cream cone at Arnold's Lobster Bar, shouts to a nice-looking couple in the parking lot -- "Go WAY! Go way people, broke your head! Go!" (Crazy gestures!) "Go way, broke your head! Fly away, people!"

When I ask Lucy, "What is wrong with these babies?? Why are they so crazy??" she says to me, "You need to ask God. He made them. At least he made their bones. The doctors made their skin, I think."

I have no pictures because...the babies broke my camera.

Now that we're back we're enjoying the rule-crazy pool that we joined for the month of August. Last Saturday: Twin 1-year-olds spotted in the baby pool wearing matching Lilly Pulitzer bathing suits. They climb out and their skinny bikini-mama wraps them in matching pink Lilly cover-ups, which is to say that those babies were wearing $300 worth of summer wear that will last exactly 58 days...

Okay, off to health-care reform rally!