I'm Moving to Owl's Head. Don't Try to Stop Me.

God, I love Maine. I mean, I really love Maine. And this past week only enhanced my love for the state. The Boy From Work was here for a spring vacation, and we used our day to go up and down the coast, seeing and eating the best things along the way. We ate lobster in Cape Elizabeth and fried clams in Freeport. We ate chowder in Rockland and Boothbay Harbor. We saw three lighthouses and explored some of the sweetest, quaintest towns in the whole state.

But none were as sweet and as quaint as Owl's Head. It's a tiny town near Rockland, and one I probably would've never realized I needed to go to if it wasn't for the Food Network's 50 States, 50 Burgers project that named the best burger in each state. Maine's burger--the 7 Napkin Burger--sounded fabulous. Juicy. Drippy. Cheesy. Everything good in the world. And the fact that you could get those burgers to go and take them down the road to tiny Owl's Head Lighthouse for a picnic sounded even better.

And the BFW, who is always ready to go on a trip just to eat something delicious, was up for it. So we headed off for a day trip to Owl's Head and Rockland. We were going to eat lunch in Owl's Head, tour the lighthouse, then head back to Rockland for a trip out to the breakwater lighthouse and shopping in the sweet galleries and stores that line Main Street.

The 7 Napkin Burger is the brainchild of the owners of the Owl's Head General store--a place where you can get homemade burgers and chowders, cookies and whoopie pies. In the warm summer months, there are ice cream novelties to be scooped up. And if you just ran out of ketchup or toilet paper and don't want to travel back to Rockland to grocery shop, you can pop into the General Store for the necessities, which are arranged in the back of the shop, right behind the small eating area.

And that eating area was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Big and small tables were covered with patterned vinyl table cloths and stocked with plenty of napkins--which you definitely need when eating the burgers. There were a few friends gathered at two of the tables next to ours, and it was clear that this was routine. This was what they did. They came to the store every day for coffee and a snack or a full lunch. When someone came through the door, they were greeted by name. The girls behind the grill--two nineteen year-olds in gym shorts--knew what to serve up for them. They settled in at their table to talk about the weather, to local school, their neighbors. It was so friendly and charming it made me want to lock my legs around my chair and stay there forever, even through the coldest months, when the town's residents would no doubt come through the door stomping off boots and rubbing feeling back into their hands before settling into their chairs for hot chocolate and a slice of crumb cake. I wanted to be one of those regulars worse than anything. Especially after the girls delivered our burgers, which oozed with ketchup and mustard and pickles and cheese. If someone had come into the store at that moment and announced they had a charming apartment for rent--one with a seaside view--I would've been on the phone with the movers, telling them to go on over to my apartment and pack everything up and move it on up the coast.

Of course, Owl's Head wasn't the only amazing place we visited while the BFW was in state. Here are some of the highlights:

This picture was taken at Owl's Head light, which is right up the stairs behind us. As you can see, it was a windy, windy day. When you are planning on going anywhere near the ocean, you have to dress expecting it to be substantially colder than it is inland, especially in the spring. The wind comes in off the Atlantic and rips right through you. We chose a ridiculous day to tour lighthouses--especially one that is a mile into the ocean. Yeah, that's right. We traipsed along the Rockland Breakwater Light in those winds and almost had our ears torn off.

When preparing for a visit to Maine, it's best to fast for a week before your arrival. After all, you're going to eat a lot of seafood. A lot. Here's Ross with one of the chowders we ate over the week. It was good, but it wasn't nearly as good as the best chowder I ever had, which was served up at a tiny cafe in Damariscotta.

This shot was taken at Southport, which is a small island in the waters outside Boothbay Harbor. There is a tiny beach on the island, and we took off our shoes and walked across it, pausing to examine the millions of shells that were scattered across it. The BFW was very impressed with the purple mussel shells. (I'm pretty impressed with them, too. The insides are pearlescent and beautiful. I've got a bunch of them on my desk at school.) In fact, the BFW was so impressed that he took a closed one away from the beach with us. He wanted to see what it would look like it it opened. We both got a littl squirmy about that, though, when the mussel, which cracked open a bit while we were strolling through Boothbay, sucked back shut when the BFW tried to open it further to investigate. We left that thing in the parking lot. I didn't want anything oozing out of its shell on my car floor.

This right here is me in my moment of glory. On our way from Boothbay Harbor to Damariscotta, where we were going to eat dinner at the place with the best crab cakes in the world, the BFW and I made a pitstop to play mini-golf. I got a hole-in-one on a really hard hole. Because I am awesome.

If you look in the background, you can see Hendrick's Head Light, which is in Southport. The gray areas in the photo? All shells. Beautiful, tiny little spiral shells I scooped into my hand and brought back with me. (Mine didn't have anything ooze-y living in them.)

I could write poetry about The Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth. The poem would start by describing the beauty of the shack's location--on a granite cliff just above the waves of the Atlantic--and then move into the beauty of the shack's food, where lobster rules the menu. The Lobster Shack's lobster roll is my favorite in the state. But that's not the only thing that's good there. Clams, crab, mussels, whoopie pies--all delicious. But their strawberry-rhubarb pie? It's perfection.

Vacation!

Vacationland is going on vacation for a little bit. The Boy From Work, who is continuing his process of woo, is coming into town to spend a week running up and down the coast with me. While I'm gone, here are some slideshows to keep you busy. These are all the places we're planning on being in the next few days.

Ogunquit:




Portland, specifically the Old Port:




Cape Elizabeth, for the first lobster roll of the season:




Popham Beach:




Owl's Head:




See you soon! I'm off to eat my weight in lobster and crab!

Things on the Side of the Road

When it gets warm out, I go for an awful lot of walks. It's always been that way. When I was in Minnesota, I had a route for whatever mood I was in, but my favorite was on a road that eventually turned to dust and dirt, which cut through fields of soybeans. That was all you could see for miles: dirt road and soybeans. One day while I was walking that road and kicking up dust, a busted-up farm truck passed me and the boy sitting in the passenger seat leaned out the window. I thought he was going to whistle or swear or say something sly, but he put a duck call to his mouth and quacked at me instead.

Today I went on a walk to explore my new neighborhood. It was the middle of November when I moved to the new apartment, and I wasn't much in the mood for walking then. Snow was just around the corner, and I was in a bad mood because of a boy. I spent weeks under the covers in my bed, drinking blackberry vodka mixed with ginger ale. Anything that required I be away from that bed or the TV just beyond it was not a priority.

But now it's spring, and everything is green, and I am in a much better mood. Last night I put on my new satin high heels--the ones with the rosettes--and chose a cute outfit for underneath my gown, hood, and hat. I watched three hundred seventy-five students walk across the stage to get their diplomas and, afterward, cookies and punch.

This morning when I woke up--in a fantastic mood--I decided it was time to see what was what in the new neighborhood, and so I took off. This area of town is interesting. I live near the municipal airport, so there's always lots of coming and going. From my office window, I can see tiny planes scaling the trees, building momentum to fly up the coast. And today on my walk, I got to watch a few planes land on the long green stretch of airport lawn, which made me miss Mankato and those times Dan took me up in the plane to float over the flatness of Minnesota. But I didn't dwell on the old days for too long--mostly because there was an awful lot to see. It's junk week here, and everyone has dragged their weird what-do-I-do-with-this trash items to the curb, so there was plenty to admire. Still, some of the most interesting stuff wasn't even in the junk piles; some of the most interesting stuff had just been tossed into the ditch.

My two favorite things were these:

(1.)

A sign on someone's garage that identified it as Asshole's Garage. The beefed-up SUV that sat in front of it had a Yankee Candle car freshener--pink--hanging off its rear view mirror. It was a great image, and I figured the man and woman who lived there were inside, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbons and listening to Winger. He was probably talking about the bike he bought--without her permission--and was trying to fix up. She was probably busy adjusting the ribbed tank top she'd cut to short to expose her stomach and thinking about that guy who works the cart return at the grocery store, the one she always winks at when she was on her way inside to buy cigarettes.


(2.)

A unicycle--short, gold, glitzy, the type you'd expect to see in a circus. It was in the ditch. Seriously. It had just been abandoned in the ditch. Parts of it were rusting, and a section of it had sunken into the mud. I kept walking, hoping I'd find something that went along with it--a top hat, a sequined outfit, an organ grinder--but no such luck. Still, you can bet I'm saving that, that I'll use it someday--along with other small details I'm picking up from this side of town (the corner variety that sells pickled eggs and toilet paper and mustards and ketchups that expired in 1999; the shrine to Mary that is missing the ceramic Mary and is now a giant empty halo; the huge plane that's parked next to the airport tower--it seems too big to have ever, ever, ever made a safe landing on the short, grassy runway, which of course makes you wonder just how the hell it got there anway.)

I Might Not Have Won the Skull Trophy, But It Was Still a Good Day

I am exhausted.

I have no reason to be exhausted. I spent the day doing nothing strenuous at all, unless you count mini-golfing as a strenuous activity, and I'm betting you don't.

My whole day was low key, light, pretty not-exhaustion-inducing. It went something like this:

10:00 AM: I arrive at school. I check my e-mail.


10:15 AM: I think about dusting my desk. I decide against it.


10:17 AM: I watch as a plant with human legs walks through the door into the office. It is my office-mate and his plant. "This," he says, "is Quagmire." I'd agreed to water his plant while he is away on his post-semester vacation, and since he lives an hour and a half from where I live--yes, his is a monster commute--he brought the plant to me. "Don't kill it, okay?" he says. "We've bonded. We watch sports together."


10:25 AM: My office-mate tests the new camera he bought for his trip. He tries a video. He films me reading about Miss California's racy photos. When he downloads it to his computer, I complain. "Look at my back!" I say. "I am a hunchback! I have a hump! I look like I have scoliosis!"


10:27 AM: My office-mate tries for another video. "And there's Jess," he narrates as he tapes, "and her VERY STRAIGHT BACK."

"That's right!" I say. "This right here is a scoliosis-free zone!"


10:30 AM: It is time to do what we've all come to campus to do. We are off to the official Appreciation Brunch. The people in charge of dining had e-mailed us earlier to tell us what was on the menu for the morning. The list included things like french toast and ham and asparagus and chicken and omelets and hash browns and sausage and fruit and salad and scones and cheesecakes.

Because this food is free and because the faculty and staff is allowed to have as much of it as we want, there is a very, very long line to get to the food.


11:15 AM: We watch the president hand out the yearly awards. Someone is retiring, and that means that person is getting a lamp which is done up in the school's colors.

There is a running joke going on--the powers that be cancelled hand-shaking at graduation tomorrow because of the Swine Flu (sigh), so everyone is giving everyone else a hard time about it. The president gets fist bumps, hugs, high fives, salutes, and bows as he hands out the awards.


11:45 AM: It is determined that the weather, which looked spotty and sketchy earlier, is going to hold, thus making it possible for our department to wage the Second Annual Humanities Department Mini-Golf Smack-Down. We start gearing up for the two o'clock tee-time. This means I am off to change into my golf attire--my I Love Jordan Catalano T-shirt--and it also means I am off to buy a trophy.


12:30 PM: I am standing in the local dollar store. I am looking at ceramic cow statues, glass religious figures, packages of leis. I try to channel Diana Joseph. I think, If Diana was throwing a Baby in the Cupcake party, what would she get for prizes?

I walk out with a squishy gray skull whose eyes pulse out of its head, sloshing blood, goo, and worms when you squeeze it. I drop that into a plastic tiki stein left over from what seems to be the dollar store's Cinco de Mayo stockpile. I think DJ would be pretty proud.


2:00 PM: The Humanities Department Mini-Golf Smack-Down begins. We separate into two teams. It's the Humanities Gang vs. the Assorted Math and Science-y People Gang.


2:25 PM: On hole three, one of the members of the other group comes over and says, "Does this place serve beer?"

We say ha, fat chance, we wish.

"You mean you haven't been drinking?" she asks.

No, no, we haven't. This is just what we act like on a normal basis. Some of us are wearing sombreros. Some of us are insisting--loudly--that the ball is more likely to go into the hole if you dirty-talk it. Some of us are using our new cameras to videotape the whole thing and threatening to put it on YouTube.


3:25 PM: We are done and awaiting final scores. There is some confusion. The Math gang is saying things about averages and square roots and integers.

They win. Their average score beats our average score. In the individual scores, though, I am third. I am a mini-golf champ.


3:35 PM: We hand out the squishy skull and tiki goblet to the official winner. We are off to for martinis and food.


4:15 PM: We drink two-for-one martinis. We eat. I talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. My office-mate pours half of his second martini into my second martini glass, and I talk and talk and talk some more.

One of my former students is working at the place we love to haunt for our two-for-ones. At one point he sneaks up behind me and says, "Hey. That B- you gave me last year? It was my favorite grade of the whole semester. Everything else I didn't care about, but I worked hard for that B-."


6:30 PM: I go home. I lie down on the bed, on a pile of clothes I have been sorting out of my closet for Goodwill. I feel suddenly unable to move. I am exhausted. All I want to do is close my eyes and fall asleep while Scrubs plays in the background.

Katy calls. "Hey!" she says. "Great news! When I come to visit, you and I can now get married! Well, maybe. I know how Maine feels about gay marriage, but how does it feel about polygamy and gay marriage?"

"Oh, they don't need to know that you have a husband, too," I say. "We just won't tell them."


6:45 PM: The Wily Republican calls. "So, I've been watching Castle," he says.

"Yes?" I say. I, too, have been watching--and loving--Castle. In fact, I am the one who suggested he might like the show.

"And, okay, I'll give you this: it's kind of like our situation."

"Isn't it?!" I said. "You're the grumpy one going around telling me to stop being stupid, and I'm the one running after you and saying, 'Oooh! Ooh! Interesting! Let me see! I'm SO going to write about this!'"


7:00-rest of the night: I position myself on the couch and don't move through episodes of America's Next Top Model, Lost, and American Idol. At 10:30, I want to go to bed.

It's funny how everything suddenly just ticks to a stop after the semester ends. It's only then that the true weight of everything that happened over those fifteen weeks rolls over you. Everything you were thinking-feeling-hoping kind of just leaks out your ears, hisses out of those tight places in your shoulders and legs and toes. It's then that you realize Jesus, I am tired. And it's a serious kind of tired.

But luckily that serious kind of tired is about to remedied for three months. All that's standing between me and my summer is tomorrow's graduation, which is sure to be filled with fist-bumps aplenty. Now I'm just wondering if the post-graduation cookie and punch social is cancelled due to the Swine Flu, too...

You Can Tell It's Spring Because I Keep Playing This Song Wherever I Go

You can also tell it's spring--and that I'm this close to a three and a half month break from teaching--based on the number of days I get out of the shower and just put gel in my hair and let it dry to its messy-curly-beach look. I'm getting ready for the long, warm days ahead.

And this song always helps:

We're Getting There

Overnight, this state turned beautiful again.

Harpswell, ME, originally uploaded by thewoodenshoes (van Kampen).

As I write this, I have every window in the apartment open, and the peepers are singing. Abbey is sitting on the ledge, tormenting herself about the various birds and squirrels that are playing at the edge of the woods.

Suddenly everything smells good, feels good, looks good. Or is getting there. This place is greening. Trees are budding. People are out in their gardens.

Here at our complex, a pack of landscapers swarmed the tiny cluster of buildings set back in the trees and cleaned everything up. They closed the parking lot for an afternoon and swept the dirt and sand off the pavement. They mulched. They planted. The trimmed and clipped and tidied.

I've started wearing sandals. Strappy, sexy sandals.

This weekend at our writers' group meeting we sat out on a patio and sipped Lemon Drops until the sun went down and the owners came around to start the miniature fireplaces next to our circle of chairs.

Right now, right this very second, our department is hatching a plan to challenge everyone else on campus to a Miniature Golf-Off, where we will prove--once again--our superiority in athleticism and cunning.

I'm trying to decide what dress I'll wear under my robe at graduation.

I want a glass of lemonade.

Everything, everything, everything is getting good. Our end-of-the-semester paper chain countdown has us in the single digits, and tomorrow morning when I go in, my creative writing class and I are going to be making chapbooks to showcase the work we did over the semester. I am going to walk into the class and heap the following things on the front table: four different colors of glitter, puff paint, ribbon, construction paper, stamps, crayons, markers, paint, and paintbrushes. I am going to let them loose and see what they create, see how they represent their creative work.

Can you think of a better way to spend an afternoon?

And then Ben Affleck Asked Me If I Wanted to Take This Outside

Yesterday morning a few members of my department hopped a bus and rode the short trip down to Boston for a celebratory day trip--after all, there are only sixteen more days in the semester!--that had us eating dim sum in Chinatown for lunch, wandering the harbor walk, seeing the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the contemporary art museum, and then, finally, strolling through the North End on our way to Maurizio's, the department's favorite dinner place in all of Boston, and Lulu's for cupcakes.

Everything was exciting, but dinner was the best. Mostly because after I finished my wine and veal and homemade ravioli, I turned around to find the purse I'd set behind my chair, and when I turned around, I accidentally threw an elbow into a guy sitting at the table behind me.

When I turned around fully to apologize for what I'd done, I realized had thrown my elbow into Ben Affleck. There he was behind me, wearing a Bruins jersey and drinking a beer. I blinked. I blinked again. Then I realized it wasn't Ben Affleck but a boy who looked like he could be Ben Affleck's identical cousin --you know, if Ben Affleck's mother had a twin sister and his father had a twin brother and they all got married and had babies at the exact same time, which made the babies--who had simmered in the same genetic stew--look exactly alike, which is the plot of one of my favorite novels from childhood, but, I am sure it's possible.

So there I was staring at Ben Affleck's identical cousin, and he cracked a grin at me and opened his mouth. And when he spoke, he sounded EXACTLY LIKE THIS.

"Hey there," he said, which sounded more like Haay thaah. "You gotta rough me up? You tryin' to throw an elbow my way? I see how it is. You wanna take this outside?"

I wanted to say, "YOU ARE SO FREAKING AWESOME, AND I DON'T EVEN CARE IF YOU AREN'T RELATED TO BEN AFFLECK--EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE TO BE--AND WOULD YOU LIKE TO KEEP TALKING TO ME BECAUSE YOUR VOICE IS FANTASTIC."

But I did not say that. Instead, I giggled. And giggled some more.

"I see! I see!" the guy said. "I switched sides on the table because I'm tall--" And here he raised himself halfway up from his chair to demonstrate just how tall he was. "--and you don't like that, you think I'm in your way, so you gotta try to start somethin'. That's tough!"

I giggled some more. "Is my purse in your way?" I asked. I pointed to my giant purse that had been too bulky to rest on the back my chair. I'd put it on the floor, and it was closer to his table than mine. If he had chosen that exact moment to reach into my purse, pluck out my credit cards, and tuck them into is own pockets, I would've been completely okay with that because then I'd have a story about how a famous person's identical cousin robbed me.

"Nah, nah," he said. He grinned.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I'll move it."

Ben Affleck's identical cousin reached over and put a hand on my arm. "It's okay," he said. "It's definitely not in my way."

That's about the time everyone else at my table got involved.

"Who won the game tonight?" someone asked. It was a big day for Boston sports. The Sox and Celtics and Bruins were all playing.

"Not the Celtics," the guy said and frowned into his beer.

"Are you going to the hockey game tonight?" someone else asked.

The guy beamed. He lifted his beer into the air. "Yeah," he said. "Me and my girlfriend and my little brother!" He slung an around around the guy sitting next to him. "Let me ask you a question," he said to us. "I want you to be honest. Very important question here."

"Okay," we said.

"Which of us is more attractive?" Ben Affleck's identical cousin gestured to himself and to his brother.

Everyone at our table was laughing.

"You're equally attractive," I said. Ben Affleck's identical cousin was cute, but his brother was way cuter. Still, the brother was grinning and blushing and keeping his mouth shut. There was a charm factor to add in, and Ben Affleck's identical cousin with his cartoony Boston accent oozed the type of charm that sweet, chatty, too-loud boys often do.

"Weak!" he said. He threw a light punch into his brother's side. "But I know you're just saying that because you don't want to hurt his feelings.

We talked a little bit more after that--we compared favorite hockey players (and, yes, I had enough sense to keep my eternal love for Ryan Miller and the Buffalo Sabres hidden while I was surrounded by drinking Bruins fans)--and then we were on our way out the door on the search for cupcakes for the bus ride back up the coast. And that--Ben Affleck's identical cousin--and the four cupcakes (vanilla with orange buttercream, vanilla with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with marshmallow buttercream, and chocolate with raspberry buttercream) the girl behind the counter at LuLu's had tucked into a box for me were pretty much the best way to kick off the countdown to the end of this spring semester.