Tidbits

It helps to understand I am not alone in my Global Warming depression. Oops, the link is gone. It was about British kids being depressed about the environment. You can look around for it on that site.

Yesterday we made up the houses of our house: Dave is in Arborpuff, I am in Edidor, and Lily is in Lilypad. We get points when we do something clever or helpful--make a good joke, clean the bathroom, get to the bus on time. No one is keeping track. It's just a nice way to appreciate each other: "Twenty points to Edidor for cleaning the soaking tub!" (That was hard!)

Newsflash: Dumbledore is gay, and was in love with Grindelwald. Gotta love that Jo; she really understands the British public school environment, doesn't she.

We stood in our first long lines Saturday night. We drove with some friends up to Goshen to go to their annual haunted village/fundraiser for town recreation. It's a big deal, like 1,000 go through, I think. It was only open Friday and Saturday only from 7 to 10 and it rained Friday. We got there around 7:30 on Saturday and finally got on the tour at 9. Not a pretty sight, with several exhausted, cold, bored 8 and 9 year olds. Set in a summer camp, the haunted house is eight haunted cabins. You could go on a scary tour or not so scary. The actors knew by the color of the guide's glowing necklace. Not so scary was red. Lily lasted one house and called it quits; her friend Leandre lasted two. It was fine by me. I don't do scary, or even not so scary. It was all really well done, though. My favorite part was the roaring fire that Lily and I stood near until we met up with Dave and Leandre.

Yesterday, while Lily had a playdate in Deerfield, Dave and I drove over to nearby Mt. Toby and hiked up and back. Those last 500 vertical meters were hard--I am very out of shape--but the trees and ferns and the light were all amazing. I love the different microclimates as we pass out of one kind of forest into another. And at the top was a fire tower. I don't do heights well but got almost to the top and had a 360 of the horizon, ringed with mountains. We could see the Holyokes to the south, of course; they are nearby. But also Monadnock in New Hampshire and I guess the lower Greens in Vermont.

I had no appreciation for how much I walked in Brooklyn. It's very hard to find time to exercise here. We are thinking about joining the Y but haven't, yet. I have ridden my bike to work a few times, but that's not a lot of fun for me. Really, I like walking. I am bucking for a dog so I will be forced to walk it (I know I will live to regret those words on rainy cold mornings). And I will feel safer in the woods if I have a dog. Otherwise, I don't particularly want to walk alone, especially at 6 am. I like bears from my kitchen window, not up close.

Speaking of windows, we are having ours replaced in the next couple of weeks. The big projects are a more interesting kitchen window with a shelf and three larger windows in our bedroom, not two smaller ones. We've turned our bed to look out and soon we will be able to see the trees even better.

We are also hiring a guy to finish the laundry room and build us a coat closet. He''ll start Wednesday. Once that's up we'll buy some heavy duty shelves to store old files and Lily clothes and whatever else needs to come out of the den and garage. And if there's still room, maybe we can set up a table of sorts that I can use to fold laundry and Lily can use for art projects, making paper, etc. We'll see.

Finally, we are probably having an open house/holiday party the first or second weekend in December. Watch your email for an invite.

Oh, PS -- Dave just told me the Red Sox won and are off to another World Series. I'm very happy for all you Boston fans. I could care less, as you know, although we did watch for about five minutes last night. If I root for any team, it's the Sox, of course, so this is good news.