Absolute Tranquility (about to be shattered)

This weekend loads of summer folk will arrive on Nantucket. Our time of quiet is just about done. It has been fabulous to have Sconset and it's gorgeous scenery all to ourselves for the past couple weeks. Memorial Day weekend is a big one out here... there's The Figawi Race for one thing. This results in hundreds (perhaps thousands) of drunk sailors storming the island for two days. I'll be glad to be out here on the far end of the island away from that action.

Wine and Cheese (and Miracle Whip)

Today is the last day of the Nantucket Wine Festival which has kept us busy the past few days. I don't have pics because we were working as volunteers. Today we get to go as guests... so it's a day of sashaying about with the upper crusties for us.

This coming week is the opening of the cafe and market I am baking for. Thursday is the big day. I just have to survive memorial day weekend and then things should settle down for a few weeks til the busy season hits us like a ton of cobblestones and soft shell crab sandwiches on July 4th weekend. I'll have Billy come down and shoot some images of the kitchen and my giant mixing bowl this week. It's this bowl that is going to give me big guns like Popeye before the summer is over.

Until then... a few more random ACK shots. I have to get get fancied up for our day at The White Elephant.

Rudy and I loitering in the front yard of some mansion on the bluffs at dusk.... I am wearing my thrifted Narciso Rodriguez cashmere coat. It's probably my best thrift score of this past year.

And here is Billy getting his Nantucket groove on.

We had dinner with a dear friend who is visiting the island from right next door on Martha's Vineyard last night whom we have not seen in a long while. Jaime can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear as my Gram always says and we had a lovely little date with she and her boyfriend Paul at their wee little cottage which is about twenty paces from our own door here in Sconset. She had nothing to work with but a cutting board the size of an emery board in a thimble sized kitchen yet she dashed off a gorgeous meal. We had a great time and Jaime... I did not detect a trace of soap on those olives. ;) But maybe it was just the tang of The Miracle Whip coating my tongue? (inside joke y'all)

Secret Way

This way is actually not too much of a secret. It's a pretty well trodden path here in Sconset.... but this little section always feels like a wee bit of magic is workin' on ya.

Roughage

Lots of hour glass sand effects coming from Rudy's hind end again these days. His diet consists of 70% dog food/30% beach. Because to dig a hole like this apparently involves eating a few cups of sand each time.

A Pic a Day Kind of a Thang

I have so many photos. If I can't get a wordy post up I may as well slap up a pic. It's the least I can do after so many months of negligence.



Just us kids... my Mom snapped this one of us on Billy's recent birthday. He turned 35. What a whippersnapper.

Ridiculous

I bet if I were to look back I probably have one or two past posts titled "Ridiculous." It is a word that is quite often appropriate and relevant in our daily lives. In this case it is appropriate because it accurately described the amount of information I need to relay in this post to get you caught up with what we have been doing. In a nut shell (one the size of Texas) we packed up and peeled out from Santa Fe, drove across the middle west to Illinois, our truck and trailer were both loaded to the gills with stupid amounts of stuff, we stayed a week with my family, stored the trailer and left my parents house with windows bulging under the stress of cookbooks, canvases and dog toys to head east to Massachusetts. We drove in a storm the whole way across, landed on the coast to visit with Billy's family for three days then drove on to the ferry for the 2 hour ride out to the island. Which island? THIS one. Nantucket. The scene of the original crime. This is where Billy and I met almost ten years ago. We are here for the summer to bake, paint and burn our bums on the beach as much as possible. It's one of our favorite places in the whole wide world and I am so stoked to be here again.

But! I'm going to take a few steps back to slap up a couple of shots from the visit in Illinois....

Being that we would only be in town for a few days we decided to host a brunch at my Mom's and invited just a few close friends over. People we wanted to be sure to spend a day hanging out with because we luuuuuurve them so much. One of my best friend's (Beth) came over with her two kids Oscar and Sully. Oscar made buddies with Rudy and they tore it up out in my Mom's enormous back yard.




Beth's youngest is Sully. And people.... let me tell you something about this baby. He is no normal baby. He is a V.I.P. Just take a gander and I think it comes across quite obviously.



We were handing him around like an action figure so that everyone could get in on the chubby baby lovin'.


Don't worry.... contrary to what it looks like no injuries were incurred during these proceedings.

It was such a joy to get to see both of these kids. They are some of my favorite people in the whole world. Also in that category is our long time friend Gordon (aka Cappy.) He cruised down from Milwaukee on his motorbike. And then he cruised all over the mid west on it after he left our party. He's cool like dat. The man packs Teddy Grahams and Glenlivet in his saddle bags. Who else do you know that does it? No one. Just our Cappy.



Our friends Art and Andrea and their kids Max and Gianna came as well but somehow I spaced getting a photo of them. I worked with Andrea when I was about 20 years old at a little Victorian revival jewelry shop in Illinois. We laughed at all the customers behind their backs and sometimes maybe even right in their face. Good times.

We had some beautiful weather while we were in IL and a nice spring full moon filled the sky with light. Until I snatched it down and made off with it.



I spent a full day hanging out with my Gram at her apartment. We chewed the fat and laughed and looked at old photos. She tells us constantly that she is our biggest fan and well, I have to say that it goes both ways as we are her biggest fans too. She is the one that gave me my start as a baker.... so there is that too.



I don't have any other family pics... we got lazy with the camera this time I guess. We did have a great time cooking our asses off with my Mom (and my Dad when he was off work) and ate good food every single night. One night my Dad and Billy ate four pounds of mussels and a whole loaf of bread between them which was getting a little bit gross I thought... but they seemed to be having a blast. My Mom stayed home with Rudy so we could head out dog free a few times. It was a great visit and we came away feeling happy as heck that we got to hang out for the week.

Thanks to Patty for my hair spa day and to Ralph and Susie for taking us out for a grand dinner and a night of belly laughs.

I'll post some pics from our stay at Gail's (Billy's Mom) next time along with tons of island pics.
I am about to be fed a big plate of some sort of fabulous dinner so I am going to leave you here for now. Well, I'll post a couple of Nantucket pics just to get the ball rolling for next time. The town harbor and Brant Point Lighthouse and a shot of our beach where we live out in Sconset.