"Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures."- Thoreau

We went to Walden Pond today and it surpassed all of my expectations. I can see why Thoreau felt so inspired there. We did a hike around the entire pond and found a private spot to jump in and swim. It was so refreshing after hiking. The water was a perfect temperature and was clear and deep. I would have loved to have gone out to the middle where it is supposedly 90 feet deep, but with two kiddos we had to get going. We saw chipmunks and all sorts of birds including a brilliantly colored blue jay and a duck that was hiding its blue feathers under its wing. The whole experience made me want to buy a little farmhouse somewhere in the woods where I could read, hike, and swim all day. Here is a bit from Walden where Thoreau explains why he went to live in the woods. It has inspired me in the past and is bouncing around in my brain throughout this trip: "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

After Walden, which by the way Che hiked the entire time--woohoo--, we drove to Brookline to check it out. It seemed Hobokenesque and livable, for a short period of time. Then I convinced Cesar that we had to go to a Friendly's while we are up this way and since we frequented them on my family road trips growing up, and boy was he shocked when we got there. I was wearing cut-off shorts and he said, "Is this what you are going to wear?" I told him, "I will fit in perfectly." And I did. We ate some awful food and horrible dessert, sat next to people that should be on doctor-prescribed diets, and were seated by a hostess who obviously just finished taking a meth hit, which she made in the sink of the restaurant. However, our kids were EXTREMELY loud and I did not feel bad about it at all.

Sabine news: This AM she woke up and looked over at the dark part of the hotel room and said "Dark. Scary, ghost." She also is now screaming "Ann" or "Annly" when I am in the bathroom, copying her father...argghhh. She also told Che, when it was her turn to play with Cesar's IPhone in the car, "Bine's turn, ha ha ha ha ha", with the correct intonation and rhythm.