Summer Time When the Livin' Is Easy - and Busy

I know it's been forever. I'm just not a "blogger." I have too much going on in my life to keep up with this thing on a day-to-day basis and no incentive really to do so. But for the family and few friends who might peek, I thought I would post some photos of our vacation to Maine. See below for a slide show of our summer so far...

We traveled ME 2 weeks ago for one week, and it was both Bob's and my first time visiting. I wish we could have stayed longer! The Maine summer climate is much milder than it is here in steamy, sultry, seventh ring of Hell that is summer in South Carolina. Tthe ability to breathe and to walk outside without sweating half of your weight in water was just wonderful. Example: the hottest day while we were on the coast of ME was 83 degrees fahrenheit and little humidity, while here in SC the hottest day was 102 degrees with 98% humidity. Ahh, Maine I love you. I want to marry you - well, your summer version anyway. Just kidding Bob! I don't think it's legal to marry a whole state in any case. *Grin*

Seriously, though, I do love Maine. We went, in order, to Portland, Camden, Freeport (a brief stopover), and Mt. Desert Island. The seafood is incredibly fresh and inexpensive, which is a huge plus for a woman who can eat it everyday of her life and never grow sick of it. We ate lobster at a little dockside place on Mt. Desert Island called Thurston's, and it was the best lobster I have had in my entire life. It was super-fresh, sweet, succulent, tender, and cooked to perfection, and if you buy the lobster dinner for an additional 6 bucks or so, you also get corn-on-the-cob, a generous slice of blueberry spice cake, and a drink. I recommend the soft-shell lobster, which Bob had; since we'd never heard of such a thing he ordered the soft and I the hard so we could compare the two. There was a littler blurb hanging on the wall where we ordered that explained that each person is different and has his or her own preference. The soft shell seemed to taste sweeter and the flesh was lighter, while the hard shell has denser meat. You get more meat out of a hard shell, but my personal preference is for the soft now. I also ate haddock for the first time and am really glad I did: its light, mild flavor reminds me a bit of tilapia, only better. There are tons of great seafood places along the coast, but Thurston's had the best lobster I tasted; go early - around 4 or 5 p.m. - if you want to avoid the crowds (though we stayed until 5:30 and it still had tons of seating). For a great chowder, I recommend The Corsican, a little place in Freeport. Yum.

Better than all the incredible food is Maine's natural beauty. Now, coming from a woman who's traveled quite a bit to some beautiful places and hiked and camped in many of them, when I say Maine is amazingly gorgeous, you know you can trust me. My favorite place was Mt. Megunticook in Camden Hills State Park. Bob and I hiked up (warning - it's a steep hike so it is probably too strenuous for folks who don't exercise regularly), and the views of Camden harbor and the surrounding hilly countryside were just amazing. The day we hiked it, there was a swarm of dragonflies at the top, flitting about like faerie, their metallic blue bodies glittering in the sunlight. Bonus! The trees are different in ME, consisting mainly of conifers (spruce and fir especially), birch, and maple. Oak trees are there but they don't seem to be as abundant as birch and maple. And flowers like Queen Anne's lace, coneflower, coreopsis, hydrangea were still doing great in the last week of July, whereas here everything droops by mid-afternoon because of the heat and humidity (despite our best attempts at keeping them watered). And in the South, our hydrangeas and Queen Anne's lace are long gone.

So check out Maine if you haven't yet, and go back to visit if you've already been! Hope you enjoy the photos!

(Post Script: Our camera went kaput on the trip, so these photos were made with my iPhone, hence the less-than-stellar resolution. Oh, and I'm also including some of our garden pics. Bob tomatoes! Delish!)

The Ol' Switcheroo

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! I hope all of you who are mothers/caregivers/legal guardians felt as loved, appreciated, honored, and cherished today as you should be each day of the year. As my grandmother has always said, "A father's work's from sun to sun, but a mother's work is never done." I didn't understand that until I had my own child almost eleven years ago. It has grown easier to some degree - especially as far as the mindless menial tasks go - but in other ways it has grown more difficult. And I understand what a thankless job it is; at least it is so until one's children grow up and they begin having children themselves.

Soooo... I had an account under a different name, one that is almost impossible for non-Francophiles to remember and spell, and so now I am listed under my actual name. Pondering this point now, I realize that "Critser" isn't easy either; it is a surname that is regularly misspelled and mispronounced. Look, I tried to get my husband to take my last name, but he staunchly refused, being hesitant to have his friends give him a hard time. *Grin* So here I am.

I'm trying to decide if I should import all of my previous posts from the other account to this one. Hmmm... That would require more work than I am willing to do at this moment, but I may change my mind later.

I'm so excited that I have the next week off from school. For those of you who have not heard me whine yet, I am in nursing school. Yep. A 30-something mom & wife in nursing school. I have plans to give the house a good cleaning and to go the to library (in desperate need of a book fix), and I also hope to do lots of dog-walking and jogging. Other than doing these tasks, I plan on relaxing a good bit and reading, reading, and reading. My brain feels so full of care plans, pharm facts, review of systems... I am happy to let my brain "air out." Nursing school is most emphatically not for sissies. Then the next 5 weeks begins and I'll be doing psych rounds. Fun! (No, I am not being facetious! I'm really that geeky.)

On that note, I'll wrap up this inaugural post with a quote by someone whom I've admired since I was a child:

"I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past." ~ Clara Barton