On the Way To College, But Also the Beach!

 

When you drop your child off at college, you cannot just go back to your hotel room and cry.

Just... I tried that once, okay? It's not a great strategy. Once I got started, I did not stop crying for a week. 

Instead, go somewhere. Anywhere. Ideally, someplace where you can DO something and not just sit, because if you just sit you might start crying, and if you start crying right when you drop them off you won't stop again for at least a week.

So the three of us spent most of the day with the older kid, moving her into her temporary new digs on the campus of the organization where she's going to help crew a tall ship and perform oceanography research later this fall--

--and then the rest of us drove up the coast to the Cape Cod National Seashore. You'll be sad to learn that we didn't arrive in time for me to snag my coveted passport stamp from the visitor's center, but we DID arrive with enough daylight left in the day to have a good, long walk along the shore.

But y'all know why I really wanted to go to a Cape Cod beach, right?

!!!!!!!

I love sharks. I love how they swim, I love the idea of booping them smartly on the nose so they won't bite you, I love tracking them online to see where they're swimming, I love asking people what their favorite thing about sharks is (mine is the Ampullae of Lorenzini!), and while I definitely do not want to get eaten by a shark, I love being somewhere where it *could* conceivably happen!

Last time we were here it was all four of us and we made a day of it. This time, the three of us all planned to stay out of the water and just walk, but as usual, most of us were more careful than I was--

--and somehow I ended up so wet that on the way home I had to sit on a towel like a toddler, but whatever. It's always worth it to touch the Atlantic Ocean!

I've read that since sharks hunt seals, if you see a seal, there's a good chance that there's a shark nearby, so imagine my excitement when we saw this!

Seals!!!

We saw SO many seals on this beautiful evening, and they were all adorable and looked like dogs and surely there were sharks stalking them just out of sight so we basically saw a bunch of sharks, too.

Also, so many pretty rocks and shells that we did not keep because we were on national park property--

--such a beautiful sunset happening on one side of us--

--and on our other side, always more seals!

I still VERY much missed my older kid, but you can't cry when you're walking by the ocean and seeing real, live seals in the wild, and it was nice to have this calm, quiet, lovely time with my younger kid who would be starting her own college adventure in less than 48 hours:

The kid even did me the huge favor of asking for my camera, and then getting some sneaky photos of me as payback for 18 years of sneaky photos of her living her life in the wild:

I look like I'm taking a contemplative evening walk, but I have left everyone behind and am marching along the beach focusing all my mental powers on searching for seals.

Found one!

And then, of course, the poor kid was reminded that even when she's holding my big camera, there's still no escape from the doting mommy photos:

We left at the ideal time, ie. not until my partner was starving, I was soaked to the skin and starting to shiver, and the kid had to pee like crazy.

It was perfect, because nothing less than genuine physical emergencies can generally tear me away from the beach, and by the time we got back to the hotel I, at least, was too tired out to do more than take a hot shower, put on questionably clean sweats, scarf my leftover burrito from lunch, and fall asleep without thoughts of despair about what my life is supposed to look like now that its entire purpose is all grown up and about to leave me alone with just my thoughts for miserable company.

Ahem.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Girl Scout Troop Trip to Boston: On Friday, We Explore the Aquarium and Attend the Ballet

Our last full day in Boston was another sausage day in the hotel breakfast room. Moral of the story: eat ALL the bacon when it's there, for you never know when it will be your last bacon.

We had a bit of a lighter itinerary on this day, because I wasn't sure how long each of our planned activities would take. First up: the bus to Airport Station, the subway to Aquarium Station, and then a short walk to the New England Aquarium!

My college kid and I have been low-key obsessed with eels after listening to this Gastropod episode together--

--so we were both delighted to see a real, live eel minding its own eely business:

Here is more interesting information about eels, because I know that now you, too, care a LOT about them.

Also, a scuba diver:

And seahorses! 

Did you know that seahorses are extremely challenging to keep happy and healthy in captivity? Their food pretty much has to boop them on the nose before they'll bite it, and if anything upsets them in the slightest they'll simply die about it. But, of course, it's not like the oceans themselves are generally humane places for sea creatures to live anymore, either. They like having stuff to hang onto, though, so this little dude seems pretty okay with life:

This piranha and I became best friends:

And here's a super rare blue lobster:

I'm also low-key obsessed with lobsters ever since that time I drove through the Maine woods for several hours while listening to an hours-long radio program on their local NPR station about the dwindling local lobster industry. Thanks to global warming, the range of the lobster is steadily moving northward, so much so that eventually New England lobsters will no longer be an American product!

Along with seahorses, jellyfish are my other favorite ocean creature to watch:

After a long morning at New England Aquarium, the troop walked over to Faneuil Hall Marketplace for a late lunch--

My cheesesteak was so bland that I wondered if I'd missed a sauce station somewhere, but I was starving so I hoovered it down anyway.

--and to finish everyone's Junior Ranger badges!

Because Junior Ranger badges aren't the comfiest thing to wear on the back of one's Girl Scout vest, I bought Boston National Historic Park patches for the kids to wear, instead. And I bought myself the 1993 National Park Passport Stamp Set because it features Boston National Park. That was one of the two souvenirs I purchased on this trip!

Does it count as a souvenir if a kid buys a bunch of candy, but then eats all of that candy before she gets home? Because that happened, too...

At one point I was supposed to be meeting up with my own two kids in Faneuil Hall Marketplace, but I lost them. I texted them to ask where they were, they texted back to ask where *I* was, and in response I sent them this photo:

The teenager arrived within a minute.

I hadn't been sure about how long visiting the aquarium and finishing up the Junior Ranger badges would take, so when everyone had their Junior Ranger badges in hand by 2pm, we had tons of free time left until our 7:30 Boston Ballet performance of Cinderella. The kids had a mini meeting and decided that people could head off to do their own thing until then, and we divvied up the chaperones to support them. I ended up with my own two kids and an afternoon agenda of bookstores and the Boston Massacre Site.

The kids were navigating, though, so first we walked a complete circle and saw Faneuil Hall again!

And then we figured out how to simply put away our phones and stay on the Freedom Trail path, and that led us handily right to the Old State House--

--and the Boston Massacre Site:

We'd only missed its anniversary by exactly ten days!

We were actually walking towards Old South Meeting House when we saw Commonwealth Books in a little alley to our left, and we ended up staying there for a looooooong time:

Here's the teenager examining a book that I excitedly brought to her and which I would actually end up buying. It's an 1899 first-edition book about our collective Special Interest, Gilles de Rais! The author definitely thinks he's a serial killer, which I do NOT, buuut the book has handmade pages, many of which remain uncut, and is in overall beautiful condition and a total steal at $35. I'm not really the book collector that the teenager is, but I couldn't pass up such a lovely copy on one of my favorite topics:

We had quite the trek over to the next bookstore I really wanted to see, but it was worth it because Porter Square Books was the BEST bookstore I think I've ever been in! It was super comfy with nice bathrooms (yay!), and check out the awesome displays:

This one was a display of each of the Boston Bruins as a book:

Lol at these poor guys!

I learned here that there's a new sequel to The One and Only Ivan! The One and Only Ruby is on hold for me at the library as we speak.

Fun fact: my college kid STILL won't read The One and Only Ivan! She says it's because it's "overhyped," but you and I both know it's because it has animals that are sad inside it. 

Even after all the wandering and candy eating and bookshopping, we still had time for one last stroll along the waterfront--

--and then just one more quick visit back to Granary Burial Ground because the college kid hadn't seen it on this trip yet and *I* hadn't seen Paul Revere's grave!!!

The burial ground was closed by the time we got there, so I Google Imaged what Paul Revere's grave looked like, then we peered at the burial ground through the bars of the fence until we spotted it. Success!!!

Time to go to the ballet, then!

Citizens Opera House is in walking distance of Granary Burial Ground, and it is the prettiest building I have ever been in. The auditorium is absolutely stunning, and I didn't even think to get a photo of the ceiling, which is even prettier!

The ballet was also the prettiest thing I've ever seen! I really thought that I'd seen myself some ballet, with all the university productions I've been to, but whoah. I. Have seen. NOTHING compared to this. I barely even followed the fairly simple plot of "Cinderella," I was so enchanted by just the sights and sounds and pretty dancing. My only regret is that they only showed Cinderella's carriage for, like, five seconds, and it was the prettiest part of the entire ballet!

Interestingly, the ballet had the traditional casting of male dancers in the roles of Cinderella's step-sisters, but they didn't do any gender-related jokes with it, and the program had a blurb about their choice and the ballet's partnership with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. I've been much more aware of the possibilities of men dancing en pointe this year, as our local university has a male-bodied dancer who dances en pointe with the corps in university productions, and my partner, the teenager, and I went to a performance of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo recently, also hosted by the university. Considering that this school year the teenager danced in a new Nutcracker reworked to remove its yellowface and heteronormative gender stereotyping, AND a new La Bayadere reworked to remove all its racist components, it feels like there is suddenly a revolution going on to wake up the world of ballet to all the possibilities of diversity in representation... just in time for my kid to graduate and miss out on most of it, dang it!

Ah, well. We can still enjoy the ballet world's growing diversity in representation from the audience, if not from the stage and the wings.

I think the kids were well-paid for their sophisticated choice of the ballet, in that they all seemed to have loved it, too. We left the opera house along with all the other fancy people--

--and went back by subway and bus to our comfy hotel rooms for one last night. 

The next day, it was one last hotel breakfast (still no bacon, sob!), one last airport shuttle, one last adventure through security, and two more flights home. The kids had each earned a Girl Scout badge, a Junior Ranger badge, and a fun patch. They'd navigated airports and TSA, mapped their way around Boston, figured out public transportation, and learned the social scripts for Italian bakeries, Chinese restaurants, and throwing tea into Boston Harbor. They ate new foods, tried new activities, talked to strangers, and visited a college campus. 

In other words, it was a perfect trip!

Here's our entire trip:

• Day 1 in Boston: Underground Donut Tour, Old North Church, Paul Revere's House, New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston City Hall Plaza Playground, Boston Public Market, and the North End
• Day 2 in Boston: Tours of Harvard and Simmons, Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, and Chinatown
• Day 3 in Boston: New England Aquarium, Faneuil Hall, bookstores, and Boston Ballet

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Girl Scout Troop Trip to Boston: On Thursday, We Throw Tea into the Harbor and Eat Ourselves Sick

Our Girl Scout troop divided and conquered on Thursday morning, with the rest of the troop heading off to tour Harvard, and my own personal Girl Scout and I venturing west by train and subway to visit one of the colleges she's been accepted to:

Their residential campus looks almost exactly like one of the residential areas at my other kid's college. The only difference is the color of the lawn chairs!

I don't *think* this college is still in the running, but it was a top contender at the time we visited, so during our tour I asked ALL the questions and took ALL the photos.

I'm surprised my kid has since agreed to let me come visit another college with her, but come on. I'm not going to leave a question unasked when it comes to my kid's future!

Anyway, here are some of my favorite things. This is a Makerspace open to all students. You KNOW I zoomed in on this photo to check out all their equipment--is that seriously a SERGER in the right corner?!?

Science lab, with plenty of high-end microscopes:

Good-sized dorm rooms, with VERY ample closet space:

I forgot to ask about air-conditioning, but I'm guessing it's a no. My kid has only very recently learned about the dearth of air conditioning in most college dorms, and she. Is. HORRIFIED, bless her heart. She'll have to ask her grandma for the same fancy Woozoo fan that was purchased for her sister for HER air condition-less dorm!

The campus is in a beautiful area, really green and residential for Boston, and I LOVE the idea of going to school in such a big city. Can you imagine all the wholesome and educational adventures one could have?

The kid and I had a lovely wander around, then hopped back on the subway back to downtown Boston:

We had a little more time before we needed to meet up with the rest of the group, so we got ourselves some Dunkin' to eat on Boston Common, then we walked over to Granary Burying Ground, where the kid had agreed to cool her heels and catch up on all her socials so I could take approximately one million gravestone photos.

I now present to you approximately one million gravestone photos!

Happy as a clam with her iced coffee and her phone. Teenagers are so easy to travel with!

Tomorrow, I will pitch a fit because I walked around this little cemetery for an hour and did not realize that Paul Revere is buried here, but on this day I was blithely ignorant that I had not SEEN ALL THE THINGS, so after photographing all the things EXCEPT Paul Revere's grave, back we hopped onto the subway and over to meet the rest of the troop at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum:

It was a little on the chilly side, but so beautiful out:

The children were universally horrified--and I was THRILLED!--to learn that much of this experience actually consists of a dramatic reenactment with costumed actors (thus allowing the kids with "Find someone dressed like they're part of the Revolutionary War" on their BINGO cards to check it off), role play, and parts for everyone! 

There was some big theater kid energy in this recreation of the Old South Meeting House.

We all got our own card telling us about the person we were on this night:

We participated in a dramatic reenactment of the meeting that led to the Boston Tea Party, then took a guided tour of a recreation of one of the ships involved:

Then, we each got to have a turn throwing tea into Boston Harbor!

This is basically the culmination of all my life's hopes and dreams. I was beside myself with happiness:

I'd bribed the kids into this experience by promising them a visit to Abigail's Tea Room afterwards. We got a bottomless teacup for each person so that we could taste all of the authentic teas that were thrown into Boston Harbor!

Most of the kids were troopers about tasting all the strange teas, especially after they figured out that they could cream and sugar it until it tasted like vaguely tea-flavored candy, ahem. And as a bonus activity for the Gamemaker badge, most of them also learned how to play Nine-Men's Morris!

The Harvard group had gone back to the North End for more treats. I am VERY jealous.

Abigail's Tea Room turned out to be a lovely place to hang out, and we ended up lingering until nearly their closing time. If you're in Boston and need a place to rest your feet or get out of the weather, I HIGHLY recommend it! The only bad thing about it is that I drank so much tea that I was very worried about what the rest of our evening would look like, since Boston is not overly populated with bathrooms...

And what did the rest of our evening end up looking like?

It looked like Chinatown!

Many of the kids were SUPER excited about Chinatown, and although we didn't have a plan beyond just, you know, *being* there, I think everyone had just as much fun as they'd hoped they would. There was yet another playground to frolic on, there was a Little Free Library with Chinese-language books to investigate--

--there were little shops and bakeries to pop into and out of as one desired--

--and to my immense joy I FINALLY bought my very first mochi doughnuts!!!!

We ended the evening at a restaurant that fit all ten of us at a huge round table with an equally huge lazy Susan in the middle so we could easily share around our various dishes:

It was SO delicious, and by the time it was over I was stuffed!

Fortunately, we had a nice, long walk back to South Station to aid digestion, then a long, long bus ride back to Chelsea Station, then another little walk back to our hotel, so that by the time we finally got into our room and I'd changed into my jammies and found a hockey game on, I decided that maybe I had just enough room for a taste of my mochi doughnuts:

I wish *I* lived someplace where you could buy mochi doughnuts, because they were DELICIOUS!

Here's our entire trip:

• Day 1 in Boston: Underground Donut Tour, Old North Church, Paul Revere's House, New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston City Hall Plaza Playground, Boston Public Market, and the North End
• Day 2 in Boston: Tours of Harvard and Simmons, Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, and Chinatown
• Day 3 in Boston: New England Aquarium, Faneuil Hall, bookstores, and Boston Ballet

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!