A Minor Vacation Miracle

The Bayside Inn -- highly recommend! Lovely hosts and location!

We went to Maine for vacation and family things, and stayed 5 nights in Boothbay Harbor at a charming inn. We'd stayed there in 2021, and due to COVID surging, there was no breakfast served. So, we went to a small cafe with outdoor seating across the street. This year, though, there was breakfast, and as you may know, when you stay in a small inn or a bed-and-breakfast, this can be an interesting time for social interactions with strangers. 

Case in point: We stayed at an inn for our anniversary pre-COVID in our general area, and breakfast was a landmine -- one morning a guest asked if we had kids, and when we said no, it didn't work out, she continued with "but it's not too late! You're still young! (I was 43) and finally I had to say forcefully, "I DON'T HAVE A UTERUS! IT'S REALLY OKAY!" Sigh. 

Back to Maine: We cycled through 5 different couples during our stay, and at NO TIME did ANYONE ask us if we had kids. Or why we didn't have kids. Bryce did offer up with one couple that we live "just us and the cats," but that particular couple was very interested in talking super loudly about themselves, so it didn't result in any conversation down that line. 

HALLELUJAH! 

Is it because now we're older? Or is it because people like talking about their own kids and don't think to ask if you don't volunteer information about your (nonexistent) kids? Were we just lucky? 

IT DOESN'T MATTER. It was glorious. Maybe, just maybe, this could be the new normal! 

And now, some gratuitous Maine pictures: 

Last day, soaking up Ocean Point

Lobster Cove

Bryce tidepooling at Ocean Point (low tide)

The gardens everywhere were gorgeous

Somehow, it wasn't even 70 but I was SO SWEATY

Ocean Point with Tropical Storm Ernesto high tide waves

Muscongus Bay in the fog


The Wedding People by Alison Espach


It's funny how time changes you as a reader. This is a book that, had I brought it on vacation even 5 years ago, I would have DEFINITELY thrown across the room and then put on indefinite pause within the first 25 pages. The description sounded fascinating -- a woman has left her tattered life behind and flown from Missouri to Rhode Island to a fancy hotel she has always wanted to go to but couldn't afford, because she has decided to end her life. But wait! That sounds terrible! The premise is actually that she checks in at the hotel, and finds out through an administrative error she is the only person in the entire hotel who is not a part of a big, fancy, Wedding Week for a very Bridezilla bride (and groom). She gets absorbed into the wedding shenanigans and... well, read the book. 

It sounds dire. But it was actually laugh-out-loud funny as much as it was a completely accurate and wrenching depiction of the loss and grief when your life falls spectacularly apart and you don't know how to "do life" now that your life is upside down. 

I was so angry, though, at the immediate infertility subplot (that actually turned out to be central to the book, no "sub" about it), that I went to the description in Book of the Month, and felt like an idiot because when you scrolled down a bit further than I had, it clearly has a content warning for "infertility, depictions of attempted suicide, descriptions of miscarriage, divorce." I felt less mad after that, and once I really got into the book, I forgave it entirely. 

This book is INCREDIBLE. [What follows are not actually spoilers, if you can believe it...] I absolutely loved Phoebe, the main character who has lost absolutely everything -- she's done 5 IVF cycles, she got pregnant with her last embryo only to miscarry at 10 weeks, she has an academic career as an adjunct professor of 19th century literature that's stalled out, her husband has left her, and she's lost her beloved cat. 

The descriptions of doing IVF and failing at it (or IVF failing you, to be kinder) are SPOT ON. 

A couple notable IVF quotes (chosen for no spoiler-ism): 

"Maybe I just need to accept that my life is a Russian novel. ... I just mean, a story can be beautiful not because of the way it ends. But because of the way it's written." [I love that SO MUCH.]

"For years she had been thinking about was what she should put in her body to make it a super womb, and she was tired of it. Fuck my body, she thought, but did not say it." [Relate, relate, relate... I had major fuckit-itis when we were done, too]

A couple notable funny quotes (chosen for no spoiler-ism): 

"Everyone at the gallery walks around like, Oh, my, look at this white canvas. Look at what this painter has done with all this white space. He has chosen not to paint it! He has defied the conventions of painting by not actually painting! Isn't that bold? Doesn't that make you want to pay thousands of dollars for it? And some people are like, Yes, yes, it does, actually." 

"...and then she goes off about how I might want to think twice about marrying an older man in waste management like she did."  "I thought Gary was a doctor?" "My father owned landfills. Gary is a gastroenterologist. Totally different jobs, but my mother is just like, Like I said, they're both in waste management. Two men, on a mission to help the country deal with their shit." 

Funny AND IVF related: 

"Technically, they're called retrievals. But they should be called Egg-stractions, right? I mean, come on. It's just sitting right there." 

This was a book that when it was over, I was sad not to exist with the people in it anymore. The characters were amazing. AND, the book was very satisfying. It didn't have a trite ending. It didn't make me mad at the end at all. I loved the message of it. I loved that it was serious content matter, but also seriously funny. Laugh-out-loud funny, disturb Bryce while he's reading a very serious math book kind of laughing. (On that note, I had a very embarrassing moment at breakfast in the inn we're at in Maine where we walked in to get coffee with our books, and a lady said, "that's some serious summer vacation reading material," and like a total dingdong I held up The Wedding People and said, "oh yes, this one?" and she looked confused and said, "ummm no, THAT one" pointing at Bryce's book, which is, sigh, this one:)

Clearly, obviously, the more "serious" book


Really, I loved everything about The Wedding People, except for the brief moment when I felt sneak-attacked and then realized I just hadn't read all the information given when I picked it. And then I loved it more for how it handled all the things infertility, loss, and involuntary childlessness.

You Don't Need Kids To Have Silly Fun

I have thought for years that Bryce and I sort of became our own children. We decided it was important to keep traditions like hiding Easter baskets, fun Halloween activities, building a campground in our backyard woodsy area, and things that we would have enjoyed with our kids, had that worked out. Why not have fun with ourselves?  Sometimes, this looks like...pranks. 

This is a red mylar balloon. 

It was given to me in MAY attached to a tote bag of goodies for Teacher Appreciation Day, from a student and her family. Does it look sad and a bit worse for wear? That's because it is a nearly THREE MONTH OLD BALLOON. 

Did you see that there is no string? Bryce did that. But cut slowly, over time, like a demented serial killer. 

He started by weighting the string with a paperclip, so that the balloon would not fly straight up to the ceiling, but instead float about like a creepy disembodied head ominously declaring TODAY IS YOUR DAY. It scared the cats. It startled me, all the time. 

It started sinking. I was like, "oh good, we can slit the mylar and put the thing to rest." 

Oh no, living with a scientist is truly an experience. 

He removed the paperclip. Then he started cutting sections off the ribbon, so that it would maintain what I think he explained as "neutral buoyancy." It continued stalking about the house. You never knew where it would end up -- floating down from upstairs, turning corners into the bedroom while you're innocently folding laundry -- and eventually, drifting into my guest/craft/puzzle room where I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, looked up to see BalloonHead sneaking into the room, shrieked, and then IT GOT CAUGHT IN THE CEILING FAN, which made a sound like machine gun fire (to someone who's never actually heard real-life machine gun fire). I screamed Bryce's full name, and then remembered he was in an important meeting in his office. Whoops. 

Why would I blame the wandering balloon on Bryce? BECAUSE HE KEPT HIDING IT WHERE IT WOULD SCARE ME. He put it in the damn REFRIGERATOR the other day. If I fall asleep on the couch, a delightful summertime luxury, he would try to set it up so it was floating over my head. So, even though he hadn't sent it up to scare me while puzzling, it makes total sense to blame him. 

Now the balloon has no string/ribbon. It skulks about, grazing the floor (and continuing to scare the cats). It somehow still makes its way on the stairs to other locations. It greeted me at the door from the garage today. And, apparently, I can't throw it out until it is truly beyond resuscitation. 

This is like a) a game you would play to torment your children, b) a weird dad joke kind of situation (it's totally something my dad would have done when I was growing up), c) a strange science experiment, and d) as much as it startles me, hilarious fun. 

I will actually be sad when the scary red balloon finally meets its end.