Have Mud, Will Travel

Once a boy can walk more or less unassisted at Blackrock . . .

It's a whole new ballgame . . .

A really, really dirty ballgame . . .

Get that laundry soap ready, Mom. Nothing can stop me now.

The Supermarket That Time Forgot

When A. was in law school, we drove many times between Albany and Blackrock for holidays and so forth, rocking out to whatever was on the radio, because my car was not equipped with anything so fancy as a CD player. We used to joke that we could always tell when we had entered A.'s home county because Metallica would be on the radio.

A. explained that rural upstate New York was always about twenty years behind the rest of America when it came to popular culture. Hence the popularity of professional wrestling when he was in high school in the mid-1990s and the ubiquitousness of Metallica on the radio well into the 21st century.

I was reminded of this when I went to the very small supermarket in the next village over this morning.

I needed some mousse for my hair*. I've been using Pantene for, oh, about fifteen years now, because I am nothing if not a creature of habit. That particular brand of mousse is not available at this very small supermarket, however. So my options were Suave, a relatively common brand; Herbal Essences, which brought me right back to the 1990s and those ridiculous shower commercials for Herbal Essences; and . . . White Rain.

White Rain? I didn't even know they still made White Rain. Does that not just scream 1980s to you? (Yes. Exhibit A.)

Welcome to upstate New York, where Metallica will never leave the airwaves and White Rain is still sold at your local store.

(I bought the Suave. I just couldn't bring myself to step so far back in time as to buy the White Rain.)

* The secret to my obviously carefully styled curls? Mousse and hairspray. Fancy, yes.

The Return of the Easter Vest

A few days ago when I was searching for something else, I came upon a Classic Baby Cubby photo.

THAT FACE.

That photo was taken on Easter when Cubby was almost exactly Jack's age. It reminded me that I probably had that sweater vest somewhere in the box of current clothing for Jack, so I quickly rummaged through the box when it was time to put Jack in some kind of respectable holiday clothing for the family gathering, and . . .

Totally made my day to find it and put it on this kid.

Before that, however, we all wore our usual stained and worn-out clothes for Easter egg hunting and basket finding.

Poor Jack had the lamest Easter basket: A toy plane, a toy turtle, and two small boxes of raisins. Sucks being the baby sometimes.

Cubby and Charlie fared better; they got chocolate.

And some work gloves that looked a bit disturbing dangling out of their baskets.

But the chocolate was of course the first thing to be examined. And disposed of.

It was a beautiful day with lots of chocolate, various baked goods, and some digging in the stream to make a dam. Plus a baby in an argyle sweater vest. Easter doesn't get much better than that.