I feel so alone without you

Charlie and his friend Aliza played last night at a local café at an open-mic night! I am biased, naturally, but they were pretty good! Charlie's guitar solo at the end is impressive. It's just over five minutes. They wrote the song themselves.

Regatta redux

My sisters and I, back in the day, spent a lot of time at the river when our brother was a big rower. We were there, we said, to support our brother, but we had ulterior motives: to swoon over my brother's crew friends. We were so goofy and obvious; we bugged our poor brother to death wanting to know if this one or that one had a girlfriend (or, even worse, "liked" one of us).

This past Saturday, I was once again on the riverbanks to watch another rower: our son Charlie. He did a crew camp for one week and they had a mini-regatta for the parents. It was so fun to see the kids in the boats. Charlie said he learned a lot, and he really seemed to like it.

Watching him race, I was reminded of my brother. They could be twins separated by a generation.

So mo cation

Emma had this idea of doing a mini getaway with just the moms and the boys.

When Charlie and Tristan (Emma's son) heard that the moms wanted to do a "so-mo-cation" (short for son-mother vacation), where we would do whatever they wanted, they sort of guffawed in disbelief. "That means no outlet malls," they said, "no shopping at all." 

I guess they know us all too well. We promised no shopping.

We decided to take a few days in Ship Bottom, NJ, an old-fashioned sort of shore town with lots of charm. We spent a lot of time "together" doing different things. But we also played cards, walked on the beach and went out for lots of meals (did you know that 13-year-old boys are ALWAYS hungry?).

I'm sure the boys would have preferred not to have to suffer the nagging of mothers about sunscreen, hats, healthy meal choices, etc., but I think they enjoyed themselves. The moms definitely had a great time, as always! 

Here are some photos, I hope not too many!

Long evening shadows. We had showers in the afternoon and towards evening took a walk to the beach.


The so's .....


and the mo's.

Me and Charlie

Emma and Tristan

Tristan carries Charlie




At the bay




Group pic, getting ice cream

We happened upon this vintage auto show.

Rock entrepreneurs

This is the sign that Charlie (12) and our neighbor Jake (13) made on Sunday afternoon. Then they set up shop right outside Jay's driveway, close to the street, and started rockin´ and rollin´. They were there for about an hour. Guess what? They made $10 each. (But they cannot spell!!)


This was taken during their rendition of "Hey Jude," with Jake on the drums and Charlie on the lead guitar and vocals.

I love a 7th grader

This is Charlie about to go to wait for bus 078, due to pick him up at 7:37 this morning. He is a brand new 7th grader, wearing a Van Halen t-shirt, sort of already too small for him, since he painted it himself earlier this summer out of an oldish t-shirt. He was in good spirits. He did not give me permission to walk him to the busstop (I didn't expect he'd say yes, but I had to ask)...

How they grow, these little critters. It seems just like yesterday ... well you know the drill.