Wait.... I actually have horizontal surfaces?

It weirds me out a little that people live inside boxes called houses, and those boxes are a reflection of who these people are. If that's so, then what does my house say about me?

Today it says that I must have gone a little insane, because it's CLEAN. For me, that's a huge deal. I like things very messy. But sometimes, and only sometimes, I need to purge and scrub and vacuum and find places to put things. Interior decorating, in the sense that a place can be pretty AND functional, is an odd concept for me. Horizontal places are only meant for collecting rubble, right?

However, Santa brought me a really nice Swiffer thingy for Christmas, and you can't just swiff and leave the rest of the place a mess.

So here's the hallway. Hmm. Will we come around the corner and see something out of "Hoarders"?


No, not today. Huh.


I do spy a cat, though.


Me: "I will put this plastic up to keep the cold out and the warm in." Julian: "Who put this forcefield here? How can I do my neighborhood spy patrols now? I'll have to take drastic measures and rip through this ridiculousness! Seriously!"


But back to the tour. A clean kitchen? This is UNTHINKABLE!!


And of course no living room is complete without a gigantic baby carriage. I love the thing, but what to do with it or where to put it is the question..... thus I just parked it in the dead middle of the room and hoped for the best.


Ooooh, there's Julian! I have an idea...

I can always put cats in it!


Hee hee.... Ahem. And over here's the monstrous jade plant...


...and the china cupboard...



...and those random pottery animals Ellen and Kate gave me...


...and my grandmother's antique writing desk.


And finally, here we have a clean bathroom. And since no one wants to see pictures of a toilet (even a clean one), I aimed the camera upwards so you can see my "conservatory". These spider plants are a little over a year old and they are already making lots of babies. And the aloe plant likes it in there too, as long as it doesn't get too cold for its liking.



Now the question is, how long will this clean state LAST??

And the roots grow deep...

So my Mum's been on a genealogy kick for a while now, and while I know a lot about the Nash side of the family (Mum's father's side) I know very little about the Meserve side (Mum's mom). Mum found a couple of cemeteries with long-lost relatives in them, which was cool.

This was the first cemetery we went to, where we met Richard and Mary...


... and John and Matilda and Fred and Harry.


But then I admit that my interest was lost, because I was far too busy laughing. Laughing?? In a cemetery??? Well, you would too, if you saw this magnificent example of "perpetual care":


Good grief. It just gets more hysterical the closer I look at it. Talk about jury-rigs!


After that, we went to visit Mum's mom's mom Pearl. Pearl died when Mum was pregnant with me, and the story is that Mum put a rose on her casket "from the baby". Awww.



We'll get to the other Pearl story in a minute, but first, here is where Mie-Mie (Pearl's daughter, my grandmother) will be buried.



...we hope that when she dies and they go to put in her death date, they will fix that spelling error.... because we all know there is nothing as reverent as a misspelled word on a grave... except for maybe duct tape!

Now, when Pearl died, she wasn't supposed to be buried HERE. She was supposed to be buried down the street in the other cemetery, where her mother is. Well, the day that they had the funeral, there was this HUGE mix-up and while people were waiting around trying to figure out where to bury her, someone (Pearl's sister?) threw a hissy fit that they grass was too long, and started clipping it with fingernail clippers. Meanwhile, the hearse backed up into a telephone pole (Dad LOVES to tell this part) the wobbles on the wire went wow-wow (like a suspended slinky) and then, when they came to the end of the line, they wow-wowed right back.

So anyway, here's Pearl's mother and father.




I don't know why Pearl wasn't buried here, and neither does Mum. She did say that they used that pole thing to poke into the ground to see if there was room, and they said that there wasn't any room at all-- which is weird, because there are no other stones anywhere around. I don't know that much about cemeteries, but how do they truly determine if there is room or not? Were there a lot of people buried without markers? If so, then who are they?

At still another cemetery, we met the first Edith Luella Meserve, who was Mie-Mie's namesake.

Burnt Island Trip Part 4: Good Morning, That Strange Prevalent Fishy Smell and Many Mysteries

Good Morning! After a breakfast of pancakes we got dressed and headed out for our morning activities. We were split into three groups, and rotated between Squid Dissection, Sea Fishing and Lobstering.

First off was squid dissection. Brave, Brave Miss Newell got to separate a whole box of half-solid half-gelatinous semi-frozen squid and put them on paper plates. The kids had just discovered that I was a vegetarian and thought this was hysterical. I kept insisting that I had no intention of eating these things! We then got to cut them up, but of course some of the girls were far too squeamish so Brave Brave Miss Newell sprung into action again.



The coolest part of the squid was pulling out the "pen"-- or rather the long bit of internal shell that kinda reminded me of the wet plastic wrapper that is left over when you eat a freezer pop. The beak was nifty, too. I wish I had gotten pictures of this but it's hard to take pictures when you are covered in squid guts!

Here's lookin' at you, squid!


Next we took the squid chunks and went down to the dock for some sea fishing. Our girls were pros at this! ...but we didn't catch anything. :(


And lastly we joined Dan Dan the Lobster Man in the Hunky Dory for lobstering. Or rather the kids and Mibee went with Dan and Elaine and I followed in the Resourceful just-in-case.



Here's the bucket with live lobsters, bait, rubber band and other accoutrements of lobstering.


The first thing Dan did was band all of the kids' claws (fingers).



Then they set about pulling up traps and seeing what was inside.



There were some females with berries; the kids watched as Dan notched them and chucked them back in. Dan also dumped out the old bait in the bags and replaced them with new.



Here's one of the girls helping to measure a lobster. Is it a keeper or a short?


In this next picture, I want you to look very closely at Dan's hand. Some of the kids noticed that Dan has a finger missing. They wanted to know what had happened but were too polite to ask. Instead they asked Mibee instead, who burst out laughing because she knew the story! Turns out that one day Dan was out lobstering with his dog. Dan tried to pull up a trap but he got his gloved hand caught in the pulley. He pulled his hand free and tore off the glove to see what damage had been done, and threw it down on the floor of the boat. There was lots of blood so he knew he had to get to the hospital. Once he was there the doctor said, "Well, that's not that bad. We can re-attach the finger right away." Dan shook his head and said, "Can't. My dog ate it."


Here's the kids with their catch: This little guy is not so sure about his lobster...


...but these crab molts are neato!


Then it was time for snack. This guy actually had to be told several times to be greedy! Get more! Take huge handfuls! He wasn't sure if Elaine was trying to trick him...


Next it was time for a navigation lesson. Here's the harbor:


Heeeeey! That's Burnt Island! I've heard of that place! :)


After our snack we were all signaled to meet up at the Lighthouse: Two blasts from an air horn and we came running from every direction from the island.


In this next activity the kids were given cards which had pictures of different things the fishermen could catch in Maine waters. Set out in front of the kids were different sorts of ways to catch or gather fish: A seine net, a clam hoe, a longline, etc. The kids had to put their fish in the type of equipment they thought were used to catch the fish (i.e., put the picture of the clam near the clam hoe).


However, I asked Elaine if I could sneak away and take more pictures of the inside of the keeper's house. She said that would be fine! So I went in and checked out the covered walkway, which I hadn't gotten a chance to explore the day before. Through the kitchen, up the stairs...


This is a sort of a mini-museum now, so I lingered for a long time near the photographs and exhibits.


I love architectural plans. This is where I got the whole living vs. dining room thing, and the bedroom vs. parlor. Of course the purpose of rooms change over time, but I crave accuracy.




It seems very romantic to want to live a lighthouse keeper's life, but then pictures like this make you change your mind:



Here is a photo montage of some of the 30 keepers that has been on Burnt Island, beginning with James McCobb and ending with the automation in 1988.


And here are the lenses that were once used in the lantern room. Note the door behind them: that's the door I was talking about earlier, that leads to the anteroom at the bottom of the tower. It's blocked off now, but you can still see it. You can imagine a keeper dashing through the kitchen, up the incline of the covered walkway, through the door into the anteroom and up the spiral staircase to the lantern room in the event of a smoke-out or other emergency.




The lens on the right is the original (note the typical fresnel shape), but the bull's eye one on the left fascinated me. This one was mounted on the weighted mechanism that needed to be cranked every six hours so that the lantern would spin around.


Self-portrait!


So how did they know what the inside of the keeper's house looked like in 1950? Well, thankfully, someone had taken pictures! The Muire family (who were living here at that time) still had much of the things in the photographs and donated them back to the island. They also provided first-hand accounts of what it was like to live here (like drinking that disgusting canned milk!).


So how accurate is the restoration? Well, let's see...

Looks familiar!

Yup, looks good!


Next, I wandered about in the rest of the house, because I couldn't resist! This little room is a little butler's pantry (I don't know what the official Burnt Island name for it was because of course they wouldn't have had a butler!) and I spied toys that were typical of that time period.




I was a very naughty girl and I touched what I wasn't supposed to: I opened the cupboards to find out what was inside them! However, what I found was very typical of the 1950's-- just some fancy dishes that were saved for special occasions (I'm pretty sure Elaine will forgive me for poking around).



Okay, so remember how I mentioned there was a secret up these stairs, and another one in the pantry?


Well, the bottom part of the keeper's house might be a living history museum, but the upstairs is a little apartment where Elaine stays. (Don't worry, Elaine-- I didn't go up there!) In the pantry, the cupboard door was ajar, and I spy with my little eye... a microwave?!?! That doesn't belong in 1950! (Click on the picture and see if you can spy it as well!)


Next up: A GPS treasure hunt and Survival!