theBarnstorming

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May 01, 2007

Will Grill for Sex

I have given this entry a racy title to provide some interest for those of you who would otherwise be bored by an entry which is, fundamentally, about friends, food, and babies, with plenty of each on the docket. I promise that the racy title will become relevant at some point, but not likely to a satisfying degree. Read forward at your peril. Not much happens from this point on.

Last Thursday we got in the car and drove to Massachusetts. As we were nearing the exit that would take us from I-87 across the I-90 extension and onward, through a series of small, wooded roads, to our destination, Williamstown, Massachusetts, my brother called and, in the course of the conversation mentioned his "wife." My brother is 21 and unmarried. He has no wife. Confronted with the "wife" mention, Robbi and I got agitated and proceeded to miss our exit. It turned out that the "wife" comment was the product of my brother being "funny". He has no wife, but on that stretch of I-87, missing one's exit means committing to another 20 miles before having the option to regroup. So we took the long way to Williamstown, through beautiful Troy, NY, and pulled in late to stay with our friend Gina.

We slept in the playroom, surrounded by toys (Gina's son Diego plays with the toys). In the middle of the night, this toy came suddenly to life. It started to glow and began speaking.

Through the haze of sleep I could not make out what it said, but it spoke the phrase three times, a demonic incantation. I was terrified. Robbi denies having heard the voices. If and when I ever have a child, I will avoid this toy.

The next morning we rose early for breakfast with my sister Andy, my brother Alex, and my brother's non-wife Megan.

We ate marvelously at the local breakfast place, The Chef's Hat. Alex is a regular at the Chef's Hat. They know him by name.

After breakfast Alex headed to work, and Andy, Robbi, and I headed to Hopkins Forest with our small tribe of dogs for a spirited walk. It was raining lightly, but we decided to risk it. The weather gods cooperated and we had a fine time.

After the hike we drove up to Bennington, VT, where Alex works. He helps fix up really old, really high-end cars that sell at auction for millions of dollars.

He and the guy he works for spend years fixing up each car, delicately refinishing old parts, carefully machining replacements for missing components, delicately recreating features like leather upholstery and canvas hoods. It's very cool work.

And also very manly.

I tell myself that if I work very hard I will someday be as manly as my brother Alex.

But deep down I know that it will never be.

Friday night we had dinner with some old friends, Barbara and her husband Craig.

They are very nice, interesting people, excellent cooks, and loyal Idiots'Books subscribers, but the real reason we went to their house was to visit the minor Robbi Behr art gallery in their dining room.

See Robbi admiring the recently reframed prints from her senior thesis.

Craig is an enterprising sort of fellow, and so he designed this enormous swing, based on his design for a four-sided ladder. Basically, one stands on a round disk suspended from four cables. There are handles for the weak of heart to grab, but the truly gifted operators of said swing don't really need them. Craig and Barbara's daughter Camille was one such prodigy. Unfortunately, I neglected to photograph her at work.

Lucky for you, however, Robbi took this shot of me failing miserably to make the thing work. Apparently the device is a reliable litmus of manliness. And we've already covered my deficiencies on that front.

Robbi was a natural, however.

And Craig got downright medieval on the thing.

That night we drove to Andover, MA, to visit my mom and her husband Dean, who happen to live there. We had a fine afternoon walking around town and visited the Andover Book Store, where it appears that we'll be doing a reading in the fall.

We had a thrilling brush with fame when we happened to walk past the Addision, Andover's art gallery, which just happened to be featuring a retrospective on William Wegman, the man who put Wiemaraners on the map.

Moments after this photo was taken, one of Wegman's dogs shot like a bolt out the front door of the museum and made a beeline toward Iggy. This very famous dog sniffed Iggy's butt, did a few laps around her, and returned to the museum, where Wegman himself loomed, beckoning. To the dog. Not to us. We were like chopped liver and moved on.

That night we had dinner with some old friends from college.

From left to right: Kay, Mike, and Josh. And us. But you already know us.

We had dinner at a very fine Cambridge establishment. I had a burger but forgot to take a picture of it. It was delicious.

Over dinner Mike told us a story: one night he was at a conference (Mike is a scholar, see) and was walking around in shorts and a t-shirt. It was about 30 degrees outside. Mike was cold. Mike ran into a group of people who were concerned about his attire in light of the cold. One of these concerned people gave Mike a t-shirt. A "Westy's" t-shirt. Westy's is the name of the bar from which the group of concerned persons had just come. It is the bar to which a less-cold Mike, donning a Westy's t-shirt, then proceeded to go. The Westy's crowd approved of Mike's choice of shirt, apparently.

The next morning we had breakfast with our friends Jen and Simon and their daughter Molly.

Molly, who is almost three, informed us that it was Mr. Penguin's birthday (hence, the party hat).

We ate all sorts of delicious smoked fish for breakfast. It was better than a cheeseburger.

For the bored stiff and yawning, here's where things get racy. That night we decided to grill a lavish meal for mom and Dean. For which I donned this apron. Enough said.

Here's where things get boring again.

This is swordfish. Not terribly interesting, perhaps, but awfully tasty, I tell you.

The meal was a fine one, all around.

The next morning we had breakfast with mom.

And then began our journey home. One stop remained. This fine home.

Roost of friends Brian and Stephanie and their son Leo.

We went to college with Brian and Stephanie. We were meeting Leo for the first time and were eager to make a good impression.

I got the sense that he liked me ok.

Another friend, Cyd, and her new arrival Rebekah, came over to say hello.

It was a day of babies. Good babies. The kind of babies that make a powerful argument for parenthood. My parents tell me with some frequency what a horrible baby I was. I am confident that if and when I have a baby, it will be a terrible one.

Brian and Leo enjoy cooking together.

And swinging together.

To and fro.

With Leo's assistance Brian cooked us a feast. Robbi helped stir.

Eventually it was time to go home. Though we had to travel through the two states least fun to drive through (Connecticut and New York), the journey back to Chestertown was smooth and uneventful, even more so for me as I slept most of the way.

What do I take away from the recent trip: my brother is yet unmarried, I lack manly swinging skills, Iggy has a famous boyfriend, and it's great fun to hang out with someone else's well-behaved baby.

It's good to be back in the barn.

Posted by bogenamp at May 1, 2007 10:51 PM

Comments

Posted by: Jessica at May 3, 2007 03:12 PM