14

At 12:31am on August 26th, 1998, my baby, my little monster, the funniest kid in the world came into the world. He had a mug like Edward G. Robinson. He got better looking.

Now he’s bigger than me.

Here are 14 things Captain Comic would like you to know about him:

1. I have a huge collection of Godzilla DVDs and figures.

2. I use the figures to make stop motion movies.

3. I am currently working on an action comedy animatic.

4. I tend to wander, a lot.

5. Mom tells me not to hold the cat, but she’s  SO FLUFFAY!

6. When mom tells me to do something, something else always pops in my head to go do first.

7. Sometimes when Toots bugs me, I want to crush her like one.

8. But I don’t. Mom would kill me.

9. Mr. Cynic is the antihero in my life. He sometimes is a jerk, but also has my back.

10. I love slapstick and campy stuff. The picture above is an example of my humor.

11. I am compulsive about hugs.

12. I wrestle a giant big polar bear plush in the backyard.

13. I feel sympathy for the dog. Well, any dog. People, not so much.

14. THERE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A FOURTEEN! Scratch that. My favorite thing to do is draw comics and make movies on the computer.

~~~~~

Happy birthday, kiddo. I love you and have got your back, too.

connecticut

After picking up our old stuff in MA, we headed a little south to Connecticut, the state where both Honey and I grew up, though we met in Massachusetts many many many moons later. He was a city boy in New Haven. I grew up south of there in more suburban bucolia. We both grew up on Long Island Sound.

We visited his brother, sister, niece and the rest of their family, including the two adorable little boy cousins who are closest to Toots’s age, but are the next generation. Funny how these things work out, huh? Toots is definitely a second stage of life baby. Her oldest cousins of her generation on both sides are in their twenties. My brothers’ and my kids are spread out pretty evenly from 23 down to 4. But I’m getting lost in my thoughts here, so pictures! Alas, I only seemed to get shots of her little cousins at Honey’s niece’s place.

Again with the two camera loads into the gallery, one of these days I will figure out how to reorder. From the cell camera, we have the little New Haven cousins and Honey’s sister, who is about to have a third grandson!  We had a nice afternoon visit on their father’s birthday, and then we scooted down to my parents’ house where that pic of my brothers and me from 1975 sits out for everyone to view that incredible wardrobe. 🙂

In the mid-80s, my dad, a big tennis player, built a soft court in the backyard. It’s a little hard to keep it up now that he hasn’t played regularly  since his knees and serving shoulder have given up the game, and the berry brambles are taking over from the borders of the yard. Toots loved picking berries with Papa and me and on her own. Mostly the groundhog, deer and birds have eaten the easiest berries to reach.

We retrieved the boys, and visited with my brothers and their families. The younger cousins picked berries together and roamed the yard, and the older cousins talked bands and such. We ate and laughed and shared old misadventures from when we were growing up. Then we got back on the road home and Toots crossed her eyes, and the boys huddled in the back and we crossed the Delaware then Bertha crossed the 100K mark, and eventually we arrived home.

But the day before we got the boys back, my old friend, also named Cathy -we’ve known each other since second grade when one of us was drawing the other’s name in the back baseball field dirt of the school I had just moved to and the other said, hey how did you know my name, and we can’t remember who was which Cathy in that fateful meeting – took Honey, Toots and I and her son to the beach where we grew up.

It was high tide, and that beach has always been popular, but holy cow, not as crowded as that day. But the boats and the swings and the sand and the Sound were the same, though the pavillion has grown and they’ve put weird breakers up in front of it so it seems the pavillion has eaten up half the beach, but I still loved it.We still had a beautiful day, catching little fish in buckets and playing in the sand and chasing sea foam and shooing gulls from our snacks, and just hanging out.

While things change, some things never do, and my daughter played on my beach the same way I did, and some things, like the wind and the sea and the sand rolling into each other are constant, and can always be counted on, even as I move away and grow up and become two families and then one, always one, because these are the things that matter, which is why I didn’t really get pictures of when my family was all together, and I am grateful they are still where I grew up, even if I am too far for many visits.

And that is the end of our epic Summer 2012 East Coast journey north that was only five days, but was just packed. I have the boys back, and we’re revving up to school already, making preparations.

I hope your summer has been full of wide open spaces and adventures and long hazy days, beaches, blue sky, berries, big rains, lightning bugs and night peepers.

surprise in my pic file

Captain Comic created another.

He has been storyboarding in pencil like crazy for a short film to make in stop motion, but he seems to have moved into computer graphics a bit.

 

I just love his expressions.

western mass

Hello, I say sheepishly. Things have been gearing up toward the start of school, and so I am belatedly continuing to post pics from our trip a couple of weeks back or so.

After Philly, we headed north to Western, MA and made it close to Albany, NY when we realized, it’s 2am, we better stop before this gets dangerous. We ended up stopping overnight somewhere in a motel by the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Across the the street in the morning, we got our breakfast from a convenience store gas station. We thought we were going to be picking up bad coffee and stale sticky buns, but it turned out to be one of the best roadside breakfasts we’ve ever encountered. If you’re ever in upstate NY, hit a Stewart’s, best breakfast sandwiches ever. Their milk and eggs are all local dairy fresh. The coffee was a joy with that farm fresh milk!

Our first stop once we crossed the border was to pick up a trailer so we could get the last of our belongings out of storage in my friends’ barn. We moved from MA to VA six years ago, and left behind a few antiques and a sundries. So glad that is not hanging over our heads anymore. Anyway, little miss wildflower loved the wildflower fields and growing in the cracks in the parking lot while we waited for the man at the trailer place and Honey hitched up the trailer to Bertha. Then it was off to the barn and my friends’ kid and Toots had a blast while we loaded the stuff, and then we had the late afternoon to spend at Mass MOCA with the girls just crazy about each other. The art inside was all very interesting and unusual, very contemporary. While chasing 4 year olds, not very easy to appreciate. We enjoyed the outdoor elements of the old mill factory location of the museum best. Swings under Route 2, an outdoor stage area and the workings of the old boiler room that had a music installation ‘inside’ and an airstream alien landing art installation on its ramparts. I definitely felt like we became part of the airstream installation, it was very intricate, and again, hard to get pics while trying to keep 4yos from falling from precarious old steel footbridges 3 stories up.

After the museum adventure, we were all ready for dinner, and our friends led us across the center of North Adams on foot, to a great restaurant called PUBLIC. Good basic food done gourmet. Good drinks, too. 🙂

The next morning, as we passed through Lee, MA, we hit an institution, Joe’s Diner. One waitress was quite colorful in her interactions and the others, especially ours, who honestly may have been an original waitress, rolled her eyes and grinned at the angry waitress’s antics. If you find yourself at Joe’s, the food is good, the prices are great, but be sure to bring cash.

The gallery is a little out of order, some of the outdoor Mass MOCA pics are at the end, because I loaded the cell pics then the regular camera. Chasing Toots became priority to taking photos in unfamiliar territory. Enjoy. I wish I had taken more pics of the ride through the Berkshire Hills, I love those hills, and I think I got caught up in just looking and strolling through memory lane from my college days spent among them.

 

philly a deux

Some more shots of Philly from the other camera!

Every shot is SOOC, except  I cropped the last one.

Miss Independent was getting a little too rangy in her urban explorations, and too close to the street. She didn’t want me to take a shot of her at the Liberty Bell. I love the shot of the people taking pictures across the garden of her (the Liberty Bell).