Upon reflection on my weekend alone with Hazel, I think the key to success was keeping busy. I know that I get unduly cranky when I’m bored, so maintaining an environment of constantly shifting foci would surely stave off any whininess Hazel could muster (or at least keep her off-kilter enough for me to trick her into staying quiet). To start, I took Hazel on her first real walk down by Rockland Harbor. We’ve taken her down to the boardwalk of our coastal town many times before, but always within the confines of a stroller, five-point harness holding her in place. Given that Saturday morning was so cloudy, the place was pretty empty and I felt safe in letting her meander along at her own pace, wandering from one side of the boardwalk to the other, scooching down whenever she felt the urge to take a closer look. I suppose even when you’re only 30-inches tall, you still need to duck down for greater meticulous investigations.

The great thing about the boardwalk is that it leads to the Ocean Street Playground. This is our recreational area of choice since the larger one by the library is always full of young toughs delinquentin’ it up cuss-tastically. The overcast morning delivered to us an empty playground too, so we swung on the swings and slid down the slide without having to worry about pesky sharing. Eventually, another dad and kid duo did show up, which was fine as they were both amiable and Hazel is just more social than me. The father of the pair, a New Zealander by birth, was very gregarious and as we chatted, I surprisingly realized that our wives grew up together. In fact, they had been in touch by email ever since we moved back to Maine, but have been unable to meet up. Now, thanks to the Dads, their young Jack was able to meet our young Hazel. For a big place, Maine is pretty small most of the time.

Apart from other fun trips to the beach and such, I took the opportunity to interlace the weekend with loads of music. Sadly, the extent of most Mainers musical tastes hover around country music and classic rock. While both genres have something to offer, there is just a ton of music out there, more than I could ever hope to hear. Since I grew up in the pre-Internet world (more or less), I was limited to whatever the radio or my family played, i.e. Alternative Radio, Oldies, Bette Midler, and Celine Dion. I felt that I had to do a lot of catching up as a young adult and want it to be easier for Hazel. The Internet will help, but I should start now. So with my iPod on shuffle, she heard some weird stuff. I think she also heard most of the Super Mario World soundtrack as played by xoc.

So long as she dodges her generation’s equivalent of The New Kids on the Block, Britney Spears, or High School Musical, then I’ll be one proud papa.

My work trip to Chattanooga ended very nicely. I even found time to walk around their downtown, which is darn nice what with the river walk along the Tennessee River, the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge, and the spacious, wide sidewalks leading to loads of quality restaurants. The nice thing about doing consulting work with schools is that you are typically done by 4 p.m. at the latest.  I am happy to report that many a Frisbee floated in the Chattanoogan sky that eve.  If that city wasn’t in the South, I could totally see myself living there.

While at our client’s school, I was able to admire some of the artwork in the library, including several prints by John Falter. In fact, I liked them so much that I did a little bit of research on a few of my favorites. “The Bridge” stood out for its chaotic layout and stark portrayal of a Revolutionary War era battle, soon-to-be Americans bayoneting the hell out of some British jerks (no offense, Dan) who were trying to cross some bridge, hence the title (no image online of this painting as far as I could find, dern it). After a bit more Googling, it turns out that the bridge in question is The North Bridge of Battle of Concord fame, a integral moment in American history and one of the reasons why I had today off from work.

For today is Patriots’ Day! Most of the workin’ folk of Maine and Massachusetts had today off from toiling thanks to those long deceased minutemen. I spent the day most patriotically, starting off with a nice three-hour yard raking session. “The Pond” has all but dried up in the back, and I am determined to make use of as much of our property as possible. Those American revolutionaries didn’t charge into battle with rifles that couldn’t shoot a man with his finger in the barrel just so I could sit back and let a full third of my half acre estate fall into forgotten disrepair. No sir. As a true patriot on Patriots’ Day, I left no leaf unraked, no fallen branch uncollected. I’m happy to report that the yard looks a large percent better and ready for some shade gardens and such. And I even unearthed an action figure — a humanoid camel who turned out to be none other than Sandstorm, the cool camel captain!

Following all this patriotic lawn work, I loaded the family up and drove us all over 40 miles to the nearest Target for some all-American consumerism. Truthfully, we just needed to stock up on some things for Hazel’s first day of daycare, which is tomorrow. Rather than just settle for our local Wal-mart, we made a day of it and head to Augusta, our state’s fine capital. How could we have better paid tribute to those fallen nascent Americans than by touring the cerebral cortex of Maine’s democratic government? No better, fair readers, no better at all.

America, we breathed you deeply today, this glorious day, this Patriots’ Day. Amongst the olfactory tinge of the Union worker on the line, the immigrant family yearning to be free, and the odorous smoke of freedom-ringing fireworks, we sniffed fries and burgers. So, on the way home, we had a drive-thru dinner, like true American patriots.

Lord Moulton, an English judge, gave a speech a little less than a century ago in which he discussed the three domains of man. On one side, he described an anarchic realm of complete free will—everyone does whatever they like without any consequences. Diametrically opposed to this we find a world of totalitarian enforcement in which every action is regulated by a strict adherence to the laws. No one can make the right decision, so we have police forces, governments, and lawmakers to tell us what we can and cannot do. In between these two extremes, Moulton talked about a balance in which people acted “rightly” in accord with obedience to the unenforceable. He maintained that we should aspire as humans to live a life in which we self-regulate—we act of our own minds with respect to others and to society as a whole. I’m all for that middle ground, a world of ethical actions without the thumb of authority holding you down. Of course, sometimes we need rules and regulations, such as fines for littering and such. Sometimes punitive measures are reasonable. Other times, they’re pretty silly. Here’s a story from the local news:

My question is: How can you tell when flatulence is intentional? I mean, if the person of (brown) note has his or her—I’ll maintain gender equality with my pronouns here, though I bet this is more of a male student problem—ankles in the air and is holding an ignited lighter in place with the hopes of sparking a fart, then that could be intentional. But what if one slips by? What if it’s Chili Day in the cafeteria? And, if you do wrangle up some pooting perpetrators, would you really want to confine all of them to a sealed up detention hall? That’s pretty cruel to all the other detainees who are simply there for fighting or giving that Algebra teacher who still lives in his mom’s basement a hard time.

I’m not going to submit this to Fark.com, but feel free to do so. Florida usually takes a beating on that page, and I’d hate to see Maine dragged through the mud as well.

Major happenings within the Family Rags this week. To start with yours truly, I’ve been keeping my nose to the grindstone at work for the past week or so, preparing for a test run of potential new and interesting responsibilities. Earlier today, I facilitated my first solo seminar for work - not to go into deep detail (though I am happy to do so via email for those especially curious readers), but we provide consultancy services which involve philosophy, storytelling, words and their meaning, as well as entertaining a group of people for four to eight hours at a clip. It’s not exactly my dream job…

My dream job would be a superhero whose mild-mannered alter ego is that of a comic book artist who just so happens to captain his local Ultimate Frisbee team. Hey, it could happen!

…but it’s darn close and nailing the seminar today - which I did - has opened up several doors which have the promise of lifting Megan and I up a bit financially. Being a former English major, I never expected to earn much. So far, nearly ten years out of college, those expectations were met very readily and frugally. I’m not saying to take me Porsche shopping, but I just might be able to treat Megan and Hazel to ice cream with two kinds of sprinkles on top this summer. Stay tuned for more on this.

On the Hazel side of things, she said her first word today. Well, not exactly a real word, but she used speech to communicate a desire, and that counts in my book. Up until now, if she wanted something, she has grunted or whined while eying whatever her determined target might be. However, today Megan took Hazel to visit her great-grandparents. Not Hazel’s, these are Megan’s great-grandparents - well into their 90s and still with minds as sharp as anyones. Plus, they speak in that stereotypically New England way (like the “Pepperidge Farm remembers” guy) which I could listen to all day for a month without the awesomeness wearing thin. Anyway, following the visit, Megan had a long drive back home. Halfway through, Hazel started screaming. Unsure of whether she was just tired, feeling hungry, or sitting in a dirty diaper, Megan kept on driving in the hopes that the bumps in the road would soothe her off to sleep.

No such luck.

Eventually, the screams started mixing with one syllable repeated in groups of two: “Ba-ba.” This, apparently, is what Hazel calls her bottle of milk. Sure enough, when they got home and I brought Hazel in, she was muttering “ba-ba” between sobs and snorts. Megan readied the bottle and Hazel was overjoyed. She ate a bunch of ounces and felt right as rain after. Like I said, she didn’t use a real adult word, but she used a specific term for a real-life object, so it’s good enough for me. The English language rallies on!

Since having Hazel, I keep asking my mom what my first word was. Either she doesn’t remember or I keep forgetting her reply, but I have no idea if I was a “ba-ba” man or not. Given this autobiographical oversight, I now have to focus my energies on what my last word will be. I sure hope it isn’t “moist” - I’d hate to give Future Megan the jibblies.

Before Maine, Megan and I lived in Vermont. For much of my Connecticut family, moving to these northern reaches of New England is tantamount to moving to Siberia or the Himalayas. Some ask us if we had snow in August. Others maintain the belief that I commute to work via dog sled. But with global warming, winters up here are like the CT winters of my youth. In other words, they’ve gotten kind of soft. Case in point, our first winter in Vermont, we received next to nothing for snow all winter. In fact, we got so little snow I never once had to drag my snow blower out from the shed to clear a path. Often a broom would do the trick on our deck and walkway.

The snow blower was a gift from my great-uncle Lew (not to be confused with the term “great uncle” - he is one of these as well). My Uncle Lew lives next-door to my folks and used to run a hardware store. When the store finally closed, he brought all the stock home with him so if you needed any tool, he was guaranteed to have three or four of them unopened in his basement. He also stalks garage sales, junkyards, and the sides of roads for mechanical treasures in need of repair. Knowing this, you can rest assured that the snow blower he gave us was old. It was most likely assembled while the latest song from newcomers Men at Work cranked over the factory sound system. The machine is so old that it can safely be called a snow blower and not the politically corrected moniker of snow thrower as are advertised today. Why they changed the name, I can’t say; some marketing people just liked it better that way.

So our “one-lung” snow blower sat dormant for much of its Vermont tenure. We moved to Maine during the tail end of Winter ‘07. Initially, we shacked up with my in-laws. They’re lucky enough to have a tractor with a snow blowing (throwing?) attachment, so any snow we got didn’t stand a chance. Once again, our one-lung’er sat in storage, unused and unloved.

Now that we are in our own house with our own driveway, snow removal is solely up to me. While I failed to get the snow blower out of storage before the first storm of the season, I did have her out for the past few. Of course, I had no guarantee that she’d start up at all. Nonetheless, during a swirling storm, I brought the machine out to the snow-strewn driveway, filled the tank with oil and gas mixed to the right ratio (I think), primed the engine, and yanked on the starter cord while hoping for the best. The first few dozen pulls did nothing, but then I cleverly held down the bar you have to hold down to run the engine and pulled once more. The snow blower burst into noisy, rattle-y, fume-y life.

So while everybody else - and I mean everybody else – on our street has their driveway plowed, I can be found pushing what looks like a Commodore 64 around while a steady stream of snow catches the wind and whips me in the face.

^*I don’t mean Paul, the other one-lung’er in our lives.

Megan and her mother went down to Portland for a day of chain store shopping on Saturday, so Hazel and I had a whole day to ourselves. In between naps (hers, not mine), we read books, played with plush animals, and even took in “The New Yankee Workshop” AND “This Old House”. If there is a better formula for weekend fun, I have yet to pluck it from the ether.

Just after dusk, I packed up the daughter and headed north to my in-laws’ for pizza and to pick up Megan. As Hazel snoozed in her car seat, I was left alone with my thoughts on the 45-minute drive. Most of the trip takes place on Route One. Instead of the Boston-Post Road of my youth with its movie theaters, mall, and Milford Amusement Center (we’ve got the fun!), this stretch on the First Highway of America has woods, trees, forests, and a few stands of pine and spruce. During the brief mile or so through downtown Camden, I was treated to many houses and B&Bs aglow with the holiday spirit. Megan loves Christmas but I always rein her in with the amount of lights we string up each year. Being festive is one thing, being the house that puts Clark W. Griswold to shame is certainly another. However, I think I’ve found a solution in the vein of a five year plan.

The Five Year Plan: Megan and I are going to buy a bed-and-breakfast. Not only will this allow for Megan to decorate her little heart out with yuletide abandon, but this is a business that would make the most of her loves of home decorating, cooking for large groups of people, and designing graphic media in the way of advertisements and such on a year-round basis. Plus, we live in the perfect place for such a business, as folks from far and wide love to come to Midcoast Maine and will need a place to rest their fanny-packed patoots. And even though there are quite a few places with rooms to let in the area already, I’m sure our youthful outlook will stand out in a world of doilies, wallpaper, and mounted moose heads.

Which brings us to what to name our future inn? Not counting a play off of the street or neighborhood our future inn is built upon, the names fall into two distinct categories:
Names Megan Has “Taken Under Advisement”/Suggested Herself:

• The Sleeping Inn
• The Stay Inn
• The All Join Inn
• Reynard’s Roost

Names Megan Would Bludgeon Me With If They Were Corporeal 

• The Seroton Inn
• Original’s Inn
• The Millennium Falk Inn

The last one is a name I think we can really make work in a deceptively dorky way. If the name is changed to the Mill Falc Inn, we can say that the building used to be a granary or something. Or, with the name Mlle. Faulk Inn, our business becomes surrounded in the colorful history of Mademoiselle Faulk, a French dignitary whose emigration to New England immediately following that unpleasant incident with the orangutan caused quite the stir among her fellow Parisian aristocrats. 

Additional names are welcome. Also, should anyone have the urge to own a stake of a soon-to-be successful hospitality venture, this five year plan could be moved up to three.