Foggy Blogging

I'm back, and ready to blog.

But you've heard that before, haven't you?

It's been a crazy summer here at Castle Ne'er-do-well. Like everyone on the East Coast, we froze in a fog through most of July. The weather broke in a big, impressive way on August 1 for the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta--a sparkling day, which we and our neighbors enjoyed by kayaking out to Hog Island to watch the fleet go by. I think that was my second time in a kayak all summer--the barometer of a bad season.

But I wasn't worried, even when the weather started a rollercoaster ride of freezing and fair after the sailboats went home. I knew our friends Linda and Michael were coming up from Rhode Island on the 15th, with their 24-year record of bringing us stupendous weather. Sure enough, the skies cleared as they drove up last Saturday, and we were hot and happy all week until the fog enveloped us Friday, when we wanted to do indoor stuff anyway. I kayaked three times in that one week. My friend Shelly and her son Graham are coming up from Connecticut today and Hurricane Bill is expected to suck the fog out to sea with him, so I anticipate further kayak adventures tomorrow and maybe Wednesday. That could be about it, because my kayaking buddies Lisa and Peg, who live down the road in the summer, head home to Minnesota Thursday.

Fortunately, the bad weather made it a pleasure to sit inside and work--often a conflict this time of year in Maine. I feel I have to spend as much time as possible outside listening to the wind in the leaves--the world's most relaxing and renewing sound--because the leaves dry up and change tone around mid-September, beginning the long slog to June. This time, I had no trouble staying inside at the keyboard, and finished revising THE FILIOLIi (now called SMALL PERSONS WITH WINGS) around the end of July. My editor Kathy Dawson liked the changes, calloo-callay, although I suspect she's going to want more.

Just now it's foggy and muggy and I'm sitting at the dining room table with Brionna Blodgett, a member of my writers group at the school who, remarkably, wanted to keep going on her story this summer. She's pounding away on a school laptop as I write this, periodically raising her head to discuss some conundrum or other. She also was working full time with the Brooklin Youth Corps, going to basketball camp, babysitting, and heaven knows what--when do these kids have time to lie in the grass and watch the clouds?

Or, this summer, the fog.