Tikkabik

James: “If you’re having trouble beating a level in your game, you should just use the living cheat code. We call it Robert.”

James: “I wish cars could run on ham. That way if you got somewhere and there was some left over you could eat once you got there.”

Memorial Day weekend is upon us once again. The first (albeit unofficial) weekend of summer, this marks the time on any year-round Cape Codder’s calendar when we pull the blankets over our head and pray for autumn.

By now all of the seasonal businesses on Cape Cod are open and expecting an influx of visitors; Chambers of Commerce are greedily rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of hundreds of thousands of tourists buying t-shirts, lobster toys and expensive meals at area restaurants, and those of us who live here simply hope for the best as we plan to double our commute times to get anywhere, rely on our knowledge of back roads and understand that no matter what we do, we’re going to end up waiting.

Some people say that we should be grateful that the Cape economy is as robust as it is in the summertime. Me, I don’t give a shit. Nothing about my life is dependent at all on vacationers coming to the beach — it’s only a matter of circumstance that I live on the Cape to begin with.

So I’m not particularly thankful for their presence or grateful for how tourist incomes might affect the local economy, and I largely regard their presence here as an unwelcome reminder of why I don’t live in a more densely populated suburban or urban area.

In fact, I wish more Chambers of Commerce across the Cape would get their heads out of their asses and try to figure out ways to make this economy distinctly less dependent on tourism as a way to balance the budget.

At least the weather will be mild this weekend — it’s been an oddly mild spring, and this weekend calls for temperatures in the upper 60s, though pretty much unbroken sunshine until for the next several days. We’re going to be taking it easy for the next few days, though we plan to drive off-Cape on Monday to spend some time with friends who are having a cookout.

I’ve been banging on doors for the past few days as head of the Mashpee SEPAC to try to make some sense of the school committee and how they’re managing a decision to outsource special ed van transportation.

What I’ve learned, and what shocks me the most, is that the school committee is answerable to no one in town. The board of selectmen, outside of giving them a number to work with for their total budget, has absolutely no authority over how the school committee operates our how they use their budget whatsoever. The school committee is basically only answerable to the Department of Education.

It’s a bizarre system, and to my thinking, it’s undemocratic. It’s also unfortunate that despite repeated attempts, no one on the committee seems interested in talking with the SEPAC about this issue. It’s frustrating as hell.

Yesterday Bonnie and I had a rare treat: The ability to go over to a friends’ house and relax without the kids! Our friends Heather and John had an impromptu cookout at their house, and invited us to come over shortly before my mom took all three kids to an afternoon activity she had planned some weeks before. We rarely get time to ourselves and even more rarely get to spend that time in the company of other adults, so it was a treat.

The clouds rolled in, the temperature dropped, and while it threatened rain, it really didn’t do more than just spit a bit — enough to be offset by a fire that John set up in part of the yard. Eventually Mom brought the kids home and I recovered James — neither Emme nor Robert were feeling up to socializing — and he had a good time playing with their kids and with some of the other guests’ kids as well.

All told, it was a nice relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon.