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Well, I finally caught the cold that Matt and Teddy have had for the past ten days, and it’s a doozy. My head feels like it is full of cotton balls and my throat is killing me. We’ve never been sick on our trip to Vermont, and we’ve never had the kind of weather we are experiencing – rain nearly every day. In fact it’s pouring as I type this.
We did go to the Waitsfield Farmer’s Market this morning, which I intend to blog about at some future point during this trip. But it occurred to me this morning that I haven’t really done much to locate us or explain where exactly we are or why we are here. So I thought I’d do that in this post.
My father and stepmother (known to the boys as Poppy and Nènè and to the rest of the world as Thom and Joan) run a small inn and restaurant in Waitsfield called The Millbrook Inn. Here is how I describe it in my book:
In 1980, my father and Joan left their publishing jobs in Manhattan for the Millbrook Inn in Waitsfield, Vermont, exchanging suits and the Upper West Side for flannel shirts and plumbing problems (a more perfect Baby Boomer script could not be found – no less than Diane Keaton herself filmed it eight years later). Waitsfield is in the Mad River Valley, which is named for the river that twists and corkscrews its way through almost the exact center of the state just to the east of the Green Mountains. The valley is notable mostly for its quiet pace; there are no McDonalds or traffic lights, very little to distract one from the spectacular views that are the backdrop for everyday existence.
I spent all of my summer and most of my school vacations in Vermont and also went to college here. So since I hate the heat and love the mountains, and since Delaware is beastly in the summer, and since my employer graciously allows me to work remotely, and since Dad and Joan graciously let us stay in the Octagon House which is in back of the inn, overlooking the pond in the backyard, we have come here almost every year since Tommy was born. It’s a fairly small space for four people to inhabit for three weeks (and we are shortly to be joined by Matt’s sister and her husband for eight days) but it works for us. It’s lovely and cool up here in the woods and we get to watch herons land on the pond, and even see the occasional deer in our “front yard,” as we did yesterday morning.
I think this is going to be an interesting trip to blog about because from the looks of things we are going to be inside a lot more than we are accustomed to on this trip. Normally we’re out all day every day, swimming in the morning and afternoon and going for long walks (and eating maple creemees, which I will explain at some later time) in the evenings after dinner. This is the first year where the weather hasn’t cooperated. It’s going to call for some creativity I can tell.
But today we took the boys to the video store and let them have at it, with the end result being that tonight after dinner, as I lay prone on the sofa blowing my nose every two seconds, they watched some God-awful Scooby Doo cartoon movie before bed. Where I am soon to go myself hoping to wake up feeling much better in the morning – to if not a sunny sky, at least one that isn’t raining on me.
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