I'm in the midst of an ill-fated trip to Maine. The day started out sunny and crisp--a perfect November day in New York. Shane brought Mahalia to school and played his trumpet for a Group of three-year olds who sat and listened to his "beautiful instrument that sounds different than my instrument bongos I have at my house." We left City & Country excited for a trip into the fresh-air wildreness. Shane would play some jazz while Mahalia and I took in the Atlantic air and feasted on Lobster rolls and clam chowder. The day took a turn for the worse when Shane realized that he accidentally left our fully loaded dipaer bag on the street in Brooklyn. It contained items such as a brand new pair of leather booties (yes, mom, the ones you bought us,) a beloved giraffe, a new and extremely well working manual breast pump, and three bottles of expressed breast milk. As we were on an extremely tight schedule to get to a concert and for those of you who understand the unbearable and time consuming driving hell that is New York city and 100 miles in every direction outside of the city, we could not afford to go back to see if the bag was in fact still on the street. Well, this sort of put us in a tense mood which improved with every mile that we travelled outside of the grimy city we call home. I've done what I can in attempt to locate our bag––we called our trusty landlord, Tom, to have a look; I sent a pathetic email to the FLATBUSH FAMILY NETWORK where people in our neighborhood post emails that say things like, "LOST-pink barette. somewhere between Manhattan and Florida." and then the next day there will be another post "FOUND-PINK BARETTE!" So I'm hopeful that it'll turn up. Now we're hanging out in this quaint little hotel room in this lovely little village in Maine and everything would be perfect if only I didn't hear the sound of Shane throwing his guts up in the bathroom for the 5th time tonight. Now I'm praying to the good lord in heaven that Mahalia doesn't get sick and start spewing vomit all over the inside of the little yellow bug. Oh please GOD if you never give me anything else in life grant me this one wish...............mom and dad suggested that perhaps we should wear masks to prevent us from developing any similar illness. You'll remember from the beginning of this post that we spent 8 hours in traffic together today. Surely, the damage has already been done. um, will be sure to let you know of any new and fun things that happen on the rest of this trip.