Quirky

The interactions and transactions of regular life often shield us from seeing the intimate, often totally banal idiosyncrasies of even our most favorite people, the very things that, once discovered, usually endear us to each other most.

Our annual week in Maine with sixteen people under one roof — a roof that houses two toilets, one shower, and really undependable water pressure — definitely makes hiding quirks and habits pretty difficult. Even though the people involved are my flesh and blood, with some of the kids resembling Stella and Zoey more than my daughters look like one other, they are strangers in terms of daily routines. In order to spend our a week together, we travel from Seattle, Bozeman, Boston, and a little village outside of Pamplona, Spain.

Morning habits are especially sweet because they expose us before we've showered, fully woken up, and made ourselves presentable, whatever that might mean.

At my high school reunion in May, I reconnected with an elegant old friend who lives in New York city. In my head, I imagined that he started off his carefree, bachelor mornings at some chic cafe enjoying a fancy coffee in a tiny cup, in total opposition to my fuzzy-headed, lunch-making, bathrobe-wearing morning routine. But no, it turns out that, at least culinarily, our morning routines are quite similar, both sponsored by peanut butter. And that mine might in fact be the more indulgent of the two since I at least insist on putting mine on toast, while he takes his right off the spoon.

http://heidibetts.com/2011/06/whats-cookin-hot-stuff-12/

In Maine, my early bird-ness was beat handily by my brother-in-law, Dave, and nephew, Sam, whom I usually discovered alone in the kitchen checking out the news, (Dave,) and baseball stats, (Sam,) no matter what time I awoke.

Dave makes a perfect 1/2 decaf, 1/2 regular pot of coffee, something I really appreciate about him.

One year when many of our children were young and sleeping was fitful at best, all of us mistook an unlabeled bag of decaf for regular, enduring the headaches and fatigue of caffeine withdrawal together, imagining we'd all come down with some weird bug.

Caffeine intake aside, our behaviors and activities in Maine are almost entirely predictable in the best of ways, looking something or another like this:

Mackerel time

A new tradition: the Three Stooges

The kids tracked me down and insisted on the traditional annual lobster photoshoot.