_Lobster Chronicles_ Linda Greenlaw

I'm still not sure if this is the first time I read this, or a reread. I have no idea. I went camping on Isle Au Haut once.

Saga of Isle Au Haut from pre-kid days:

http://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/6017.html
http://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/6977.html
http://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/10725.html (This last has the actual trip description.)

Those entries don't mention _why_ I wanted to go to Isle Au Haut; I'm pretty sure it was part of a multi-year NP visit thing I was doing while reading Nevada Barr novels.

Anyway. The island is a little odd, but nice, if you can survive the mosquitos. Greenlaw's family has been on the island (they used to own the Keeper's House, apparently, and the land the light is on before that) for a long time. She went off to swordfish, and was played by Mastroantonio in _The Perfect Storm_. Junger's recommendation is on this book. In this book, she describes a mediocre-bad lobstering season as she tries to fulfill her life goals of settling down with a family and a house. She makes some progress in this book -- indications are she makes more progress in other books.

The book has great narrative momentum. The stories are light and funny, despite what is sometimes some tragic material. If you like to feel like you learned something, she's happy to teach you about a variety of topics, historical and natural. I read it as this month's book group selection for Mayberry, NH (<-- not its real name). The group gave is about a 3.5 collectively on a 5 point scale. It was tricky keeping discussion centered on the book. Usually this means that we were all more or less okay with the book, but it didn't strike a chord deeply enough in any of us to get riled up enough to be passionate about talking about it.

C. talked a little about what she saw as odd decision making by the author / protagonist. I noted that a lot of what she wound up saying and thinking -- as depicted in the book -- looked to me like conflicting impulses (wanted to get married; aggressively hostile to actually being set up with someone). In conjunction with some other funny but not necessarily entirely positive descriptions of things like the EMT project, I concluded that a lot of what makes Greenlaw seem odd (and the other people on the island) is a set of adaptive mechanisms that are basically what let them _stay_ on such an isolated rock, with all the attendant dangers of being more or less stuck there whenever there is bad weather especially in winter.

The book has been out for a while, but it has aged fairly well.

Decluttering: toys edition v.x

I decided that since both kids were at school and then with sitters for the day, I'd been walking with M. this morning, and my Dutch lesson was moved to Thursday (and then we wound up canceling for complicated Reasons), I might as well get rid of some Stuff.

This round of decluttering was focused on toys, for a couple of reasons. First (and probably most important) whenever A.'s toys start colonizing new areas, T. inevitably gets his hands on them and starts methodically destroying them. I don't think it is intentional; he's like that friend you have who can't have a water bottle in their hands without shredding the label. Not just removing the label. Shredding it.

Anyway. I had entirely removed her toys from the table and the island to a bin. Then I went through the bin, repopulated a very small container on the table. I then started decluttering the living room shelving and the upstairs hall and A.'s room (I'd already gone through T.'s room with him). I acquired an empty green bin along the way and started putting toys in it that are not Pink -- a green fidget spinner, a Happy Meal Minions toy that we had at least two of, a green sensory toy that lights up and has tentacles. So now T. (altho he doesn't know it yet) has a bin of his own toys to destroy. Fingers crossed.

I'm pretty careful when decluttering toys to focus first on getting rid of things that there are many copies of, and reducing the number of copies to a manageable number, and then rearranging the shelves and other storage so there are no suspicious empty spaces.

The whole process took many hours. I ran roomba downstairs, let it recharge, and then did the upstairs hall. Now roomba is doing the green bathroom. There was a _lot_ of sand from A.'s hair last night. Things look a lot better now, and the floor is no longer incredibly annoying to walk on barefoot.

ETA: I went to Julie's Place for dinner and had the new burger (bigger than the 4 ounce yet smaller than the 8 ounce. Really, the perfect size). T. and his sitter were there already; she felt awkward that T. didn't want me sitting with them. I didn't care; I just wanted to drink my drink and decompress from all the toy shuffling and going up and downstairs from the basement to the second floor. R. joined me after a bit. He rode the Bianchi. I brought the i3 thinking I'd head to Pepperell after to pick up A. We swapped, but both went home for a moment. Then he took the car to go get A.

I ran roomba downstairs and upstairs. I skipped the playroom downstairs, and the bedrooms upstairs. There was still sand from last night. After I ran it in the green bathroom, I noticed there was a suspicious amount of splatter on a part of the floor where that should _never_ happen. R. investigated and did some tightening of Things around the toilet in that bathroom and the master bathroom. With luck, that moisture is what has been attracting ants on and off for the last month or two, and the problem will go away.