In the beginning of the summer, we bought a little wooden yawl. We knew when we bought it that it wouldn’t hold our family of four. So the most practical thing to do, since we can’t all fit in the first boat, is to build a second boat, right? So that the two people who aren’t in the sailboat have their own little boat to play in?
Yep, that’s what we thought, too. The kids love canoeing, my husband loves wooden boats, and with wooden boat kits from Chesapeake Light Craft, we thought it would be fun for the kids to help build our second boat.
They are having the time of their lives. Every weekend, our daughter asks, “Dad, are you working on the canoe?” She pouts when he works on it without her.
First step: stitching the hull
Stitching the hull
Glue in the garage
The hull
Glassing
Clamping the rail
The kids have stitched wood, glued, clamped, sanded, applied fiberglass, and epoxied. I’ve even received text messages with videos of our daughter using power tools.
I’m not sure when the boat will be ready for launch, but it’s sure going to be a pretty canoe. I can’t wait for the kids to take me out in it.
Our daughter gave up her seat in the sailboat this past weekend, and I took it. It was likely to be our last chance to sail before it gets too cold. Already it was chilly for a small, wet boat: sweatshirt and long pants weather rather than sweatshirts and swimsuits.
“I don’t know,” my husband said. “There’s a wind advisory. Gusts to 20 knots.” He looked out the window at the brilliant autumn sky. I sipped coffee and was happy for my slippers.
He looked down at his phone, at the forecast again. “It ends at 6pm though, I think we’ll be okay to go out this afternoon.”
When we arrived at the lake, the sun glittered on its surface, which was free of boats.
Beautiful day for a sail. Or so we thought.
After rowing a short distance from the dock, the wind blew us steadily into the middle of the lake while we hoisted the sails, and then zipped us fast across the dimpled surface.
“It’s not so bad!” I said.
“Yeah, I’m glad we came out,” said my husband.
“The wind is perfect, look how fast we’re going.” It blew splashes of water over the bow, into my face, and down the neck of my sweatshirt.
“The mountains are protecting us from the gusts.” The puddle from the bow splashes grew deeper.
“We’re probably going to regret saying these things.”
Then the sail whipped and snapped and we lost our momentum. We were pointed towards a bend in the lake where we don’t normally go, because there’s not usually wind enough for it. The boat tugged, tipped, took off for a second, and then stalled again.
“The wind is swirly,” said Brian as he pulled the mizzen sheet to fill the main sail to point us where he wanted to go. “Unpredictable.”
I shielded my eyes to look out over the water in the direction we were headed, toward the bend off to the right. The water was getting pretty choppy. “Wow, the wind is tunneling down that part of the lake up there, between the mountains. I see white caps.” Which we were headed towards in our tiny little boat.
My husband looked up at the mountain behind us, where tall trees not blocked by the mountain to our right were twisting and bowing in the wind.
“Coming about,” he said.
The water was not calm any more. The direction of the chop did not match the direction of the wind. My back was soaked. My bare feet were wet and numb in the puddle I sat in. And the boat continued to jerk and snap in gusty air that kept changing direction.
I’ll be honest, I was scared.
We made our way back up the lake in squirrely wind that was growing stronger and more erratic by the minute. We watched the sailing team who had come out onto the water to practice also struggle. They seemed to be having as much trouble as we were. They had jammed rudders and flapping sails, or they’d fly along with their mast at 45° and their rails almost in the water and then suddenly the mast would be straight up and down.
The further we got toward the far side of the lake, the gustier the wind — and it didn’t seem to want to let us turn back. I wanted to turn back. I thought about a crazy thunderstorm I was caught out in a boat with my dad when I was a kid, and how now that it’s over, it seems like a grand adventure.
I hoped this sail would seem like an adventure once it was over, too. At least the sky was blue and there was no risk of getting struck by lightning. Capsizing in the cold doesn’t seem quite as bad as getting struck by lightning. Maybe.
We finally cruised in close enough to roll up the sails and row to the dock.
“Well,” my husband said, “now we know. If there’s a wind advisory we should listen. That was too much for this boat.”
We’ve got soccer games and swim meets until the weather will be too cold for wet sailing, and now I’m sad we might not be able to sail our little boat until spring. Last weekend was an adventure on a glittering mountain lake under a brilliant October sky. It was gorgeous. I was glad when it was over. Now that it’s over, and we’re safe on land, I want to go out again.
Even at noon in October, the light is beautiful. It shines gold on earth, making the blue sky even bluer.
On my flex day yesterday, I walked the path I used to walk every day when we lived at our old house. I listened to the New Yorker Fiction podcast and snapped photographs of October meadows against a cobalt sky.
I read fiction this morning. On a Tuesday, on the couch, at 7am, with my smoothie.
I never read fiction in the morning. I read it on the weekends after my chores are done. I read it at night after my day’s work is done. Fiction is a reward: it is my treat for working hard. It is my delayal of gratification.
Usually on a weekday morning with my smoothie, I sit on the couch not with a novel but with my phone, scrolling through communications at work that took place after I signed off the day before, catching up on P2s (internal blog posts), and going through my calendar and to-do list for the day. Then I switch to coffee and start writing for work, whether replying to backscroll on Slack, responding to P2s, or simply saying good morning and hanging out (via text) at the water cooler.
Today with my coffee I’m writing for my own blog. Like reading fiction, blogging is a reward to me. I love days off so I can write for me or for Butterfly Mind, even if only for a few minutes.
So why all these rewards on a Tuesday? I’m working this Saturday and I’m taking a flex day today. While it’s often tricky to work a weekend day, what with soccer games and swim meets and transporting kids and having kid friends over and doing generally anything with the family since weekends are the only occasion we all four have time off together, I love working a weekend day when I can. Weekend work is often quieter and more focused because there are fewer folks online working, but also, weekend work means a flex day during the week.
And I love days off during the week.
I ran by the grocery store after dropping my husband off at work this morning and it was quiet and empty. Going to the grocery store when everyone else is at work is pretty high on the list of why random weekdays off are awesome.
When I take a weekday off, the house is also quiet and empty. The kids don’t need to be driven anywhere, and I can take care of things we are often too busy even on the weekends to get to. I have a stack of doctor bills and FSA paperwork to go through today, which I’m dreading, but at least I’ll have a quiet space to do it in. I’ll also be able to take care of this lawn that’s out of control after Saturday’s rain.
Maybe I’ll even go for a walk outside instead of on my tread desk, and listen to Annie Proulx read on the New Yorker Fiction Podcast.
And during the day, despite whether it’s morning or night, or whether I’ve finished all of my flex day to-dos, I’ll take breaks to write in my journal and read fiction, simply because I can.
If you like the sound of this kind of flexibility in your work, why not join us? We’re hiring.
The garden is transitioning from summer to fall. The milkweed is mottled and scraggly, the sweet basil is yellowed and setting seeds. The parsley bolted, the Thai basil fell over under its own weight.
It’s time to do some cleanup.
Yesterday it rained all day. It was one of my favorite types of autumn Saturdays: chilly, grey, raw. We spent most of the day running errands. We bought new alarm clocks for the kids, harvest candles for the mantle, pumpkin-pie-scented wax melts to make the house smell autumny, and at the last-minute, mums for the garden.
Our daughter and I spent a good half hour inspecting the different colors of mums, gravitating repeatedly to particular ones (white for our daughter, burgundy for me), thinking about the colors in our garden, looking at pictures of the flower bed on my phone, and brainstorming what we needed to clear out and where we could put our favorite-colored specimens.
Today, the drizzle and pregnant grey are gone. The sun shines bright in a clear blue sky, and raindrops glisten on the green grass. The mums are out there waiting for me. I see our daughter’s white ones in a happy clump where the parsley once was. The wind is chilly right now, though, despite the brilliant sun. I’ll need a jacket and gloves while I work.
For now, I’ve got my slippers on and am sipping coffee from the chair by the window. Leaves shiver on the pear trees across the street, maple branches swing, and coneflowers and salvia nod in the wind. I’ll plant the mums when my cup is empty.
Don’t let anyone tell you words don’t have power. When my husband and I shopped for toilets recently, I could not stop giggling at the language used for selling what we all want most from a toilet: to hide the evidence. More than that, our trip to Home Depot showed me that having a gift with words doesn’t always mean writing novels. You can name paint chips. You can classify laminate flooring.
You can market toilets.
VorMax for maximum vortex flushing
The Optum™ VorMax™ box needs to be read in a booming, between-plays hockey arena voice, with flashing disco lights.
VorMax™ flushing system delivers a POWERFUL stream of water that SCOURS the ENTIRE bowl.
That’s a potent sentence, even without the hockey voice. It conjures images of a high-velocity, unstoppablevortex of clean, clear water extracting everything in its path, like a movie whirlpool that’s so powerful it sucks ships to the bottom of the sea.
I puzzled a bit over the “dirt” word choice for the CleanCurve™ Rim, though. Do people usually have dirt in their toilet bowls? Perhaps that was just thrown in to draw attention away from the more graphic word in the sentence: “buildup.”
A whole bucket of golf balls? In a single flush?
The marketing on this one makes me want to buy the toilet just to try to flush golf balls. It also made me laugh at the cleverness of conveying “ewww” invormation in such a sterile way. Look how white! Look how clean! Look at the sparkle in the “Fight stains with Everclean®” image! Even though it’s not golf balls you’ll be flushing, your toilet can look like this, too.
The next one is my very favorite, though.
AquaPiston: it’s a locomotive in there
This toilet is going to work hard for you. You’re going to open up the tank and it’s going to be like a train locomotive, with pistons pumping, and water sucking, and the toilet bowl flushing with such force it might pull tissues out of the box and down into the vortex if you’re not careful.
I can’t remember which toilet we ultimately ended up buying, but I had a lot of fun shopping for it.
I sure would love to see all the jokes the marketing teams wrote when describing the glories of their toilets.
Butterfly Mind 