As I got my head together this morning with a pot of Starbuck's finest, Fat Bastard sat in the middle of our backyard nibbling on clover flowers. FB had nibbled my heirloom lettuce down to the nubs yesterday, and he had to settle for clover flowers until the brave little lettuces revived themselves.
While Ian was at school, I read a bit about the thimerosal connection with autism.
The kids had a half day from school today. The school year always ends with a whimper, not a bang. Day long assemblies. Slim pickins in the cafeteria with the food from the bottom of the freezers. The kids fart around for the last week as the teachers make their vacation plans and clean out the desks. The entire month of June should be written off. For Jonah, a few wasted weeks at school isn't a bad thing, but for Ian who just started his special ed school, this wasted month is a disaster.
He'll have three weeks of summer school in July and then off again for August. By the time that school gets going again after the Jewish holidays in mid September, he'll have been without serious attention from a speech professional for 6 months. I have a strong urge to wring someone's neck. FB better waddle away from the lettuce at a sharp clip.
We spent the afternoon inside listening to Philadelphia Chickens
Norwegians, as I discovered during a four-day hiking expedition to the wind-swept Hardangervidda National Park a few summers ago, embrace the outdoors with an almost reverential fervor. During a trek with a hiking companion, Tim Goldsmid, I met Norwegian hikers of all shapes - from a family with a pair of blond-haired children in tow, bobbing as they tried to keep up with their parents, to an older couple sharing sips of tea out of a stainless steel thermos on a rocky outcrop along the trail. While we were on vacation thousands of miles from home, many Norwegians often escape for a one- or two-day wilderness trips. Outdoor recreation is a way of life there.
"Hiking is a very special tradition here, because so many people live close to nature in Norway," said Anne Marie Hjelle, the director of the Mountain Touring Association, known as DNT. "Starting in kindergarten, children spend time in parks and the forest. Nature is all around us here, and it's something Norwegians feel very special about."
But while Norwegians fan out into the national parks in the summer, the country escapes much of the tourist crush that deluges Europe's more populous mountain regions. The well-traveled destinations in the Alps - among them, Chamonix, France, and Zermatt, Switzerland - bubble over with vacationers ogling the snow-crowned peaks. Norway offers the perfect antidote: a remote and ragged landscape carved by majestic fjords into vertiginous peaks and verdant valleys that remain largely out of the path of the tourist stampede.
Sounds good, doesn't it. This weekend, we'll have to settle for Bear Mountain.