2022 Life Logs, Day 186: Summer and Dust
Date: Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High 72, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Tonight, I was having dinner with Sam and Ollie and at the start we held hands and I said, “Now it is officially summer.” Sam asked me what I meant by that, and I had to explain that I should have said “Now it is officially summer vacation for me.” Obviously, summer officially arrived on June 21. But because school didn’t end until June 29, because the boys headed to Maine for a few days immediately, and because we then had July 4th, Camp Oma didn’t begin until today. This is the tenth summer that I have been doing Camp Oma. It is going to be very different this year because the boys are older and have different needs. This afternoon, Heather and Jed took Jonah to the Mass Maritime campus for a ten-day Advanced Studies and Leadership Program, a residential college-like experience for 7th and 8th graders, and I took Ollie to his first of four 3-hour-long pottery classes. It still doesn’t feel like summer weatherwise, but today’s activities did make it feel like the first day of summer vacation to me. The updated Camp Oma has begun.
Somehow, I managed to skip spring cleaning this year and for some reason, I woke up this morning in a frenzy because this cottage needs to be dusted. There are cobwebs everywhere. Then tonight I was checking my Facebook feeds and I came across this quote, “You come from dust and you will return to dust. That’s why I don’t dust. It might be someone I know.” Perfect. Maybe those cobwebs can just stay here. Then I started asking myself, “Why are they called cobwebs, not spider webs?” Here’s the answer I found when I Googled my question. “Spider webs are called cobwebs because the old English word for spider was coppe. Turns out that cobwebs are only produced by Theridiidae (cobweb spiders) and Linyphiidae (money spiders) – all others should be just known as spider webs.” I kept searching and found that I might have a species of Linyphiidae called Neriene radiata. This is a filmy dome spider that is a sheet weaver. Whatever they are, we have learned to live together since I moved here. They are prolific, producing cobwebs faster than any spider I have ever encountered. Good excuse, but maybe tomorrow morning I will do a little cobweb removal.
