I swear I had a post in my head ready to go, just needed to sit down and type it up.  Now that I’m at the keyboard, I can’t remember one word of what I intended to blog about.

Long and busy days here, though I’m not sure what I’ve been so busy with.  Not much fun happening, behind on laundry and the fridge is alarmingly empty.  Must be mid-summer.  Art Child has been busy with her art intensive, and I’ve been trekking all over the borough for drop off and pick up.  The other day, I had to meet her in the East Village.  A fun neighborhood, one of the few left in Manhattan that still feels like New York, art, artists, small businesses.  We weren’t in the fun part, but I got a couple of photos.

To get to that area from my apartment is kind of a haul, required train transfers and many flights of stairs to get from one station to another without leaving the subway and having to pay another fare.  By the time we got home my back was on fire.  I was just starting to relax into one of the back meds when I heard that siren call, “Mom, the toilet’s overflowing!”

Does everyone else have low flow toilets now also?  Low flow saves a lot of water, theoretically.  Unless you try to flush more than one square of toilet paper.  Because that requires many flushes, and often an overflow.  I don’t know what the heck happened, but this was more stopped up than I’ve seen in years.  And I couldn’t lift the damned pail to force water down.  The good news, Nerd Child got a complete plumbing in NYC lesson.  The bad news, the many hours it took to clear the clog.

The whole thing earned me a day at the beach, no?  Maybe.

Oh, I went.  With Husband and Art Child, so we went to one of the NJ beaches, supposed to be cleaner and nicer.

In the parking lot, some lovely plantings around.

 

It was going to be a perfect beach day.

It just didn’t quite work out the way I hoped.

When we got our stuff spread out and settled, a cloud settled on top of us and the wind increased.

Then we realized the family next to us was the Loud Family.  The cloud will pass, right?  Those kids will go back in the water, right?

So I took a little walk with my camera.

The cloud passed and those kids did go off somewhere.  Then we realized it was the mother–who did not wander off again–who was making the most noise.  Then another cloud came.

But okay, the family left, yay!  Everywhere else the sky looked blue.  Surely this massive gray cloud above us was going to move off any moment.

It started to move off, then it came back.  And the Louder and Larger Family settled right next to us, complete with screaming children and mother spraying sunscreen in futility against the wind.  Thanks, my sandwich was missing something.