(I’m right in the middle of a post about skiing, but on the spur of the moment I decided to take the boys away for the long weekend, and a new topic presented itself. A detour, if you will.)

I have always considered my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers to be more siblings than friends. You probably love your siblings; you may occasionally hate them; you may talk every day or not see them for years on end. Nonetheless, when one of them shows up at your door, you have to feed them. Right?

On that principle, I decided that I would stop to see a former Peace Corps volunteer who runs a bed and breakfast near the farm/inn where I took the boys this weekend. It’s been over twenty years (OH MY GOD, has it really?!) and, not having been best of friends during our sojourn in Tunisia, we haven’t written, e-mailed, phoned, or communed telepathically in the interim, but I thought, why the hell not?

The episode of “The Office” where Pam and Jim visit Dwight’s beet farm/B&B springs to mind as a potential reason.

Anyway, it was good if a bit awkward. We caught her just as she was returning home, and she was certainly surprised to see me. The two of us exchanged life stories while the boys tore up the house. Before any real damage was done, I hustled them out of there to the more boy-friendly confines of our destination.

The farm was so much fun. Aitch promptly declared himself an expert on the rural arts, and I smiled indulgently at him until he proved his worth, wrangling some rabbits, hunting down eggs in the chicken coop, and milking a cow.

milking_3

He also saw two pigs rutting, which is how we found ourselves in the indoor pool (”Let’s go.” “No, I want to stay and watch this.” “Hey! Who wants to go SWIMMING?”)

Minor was very popular with the goats.

brosie_goats_2010

I have a roll of artsy black-and-white medium-format film of similar scenes all ready to be processed, but I recently got a new Blackberry and have been seduced by the siren song of the instant snap.