Windows

Here's a link to that puzzle.

Our windows are being installed as I type! Where we had two smallish windows on our bedroom wall across from our bed, we now have three much bigger and longer windows, essentially a wall of glass but in three frames so we can open them. It looks out into our woodsy backyard, and will be so nice all year round.

Dave has pictures of the pumpkins on his blog -- see address to the right -- and I will ask if he can also put up the window installation shots. Our man Alex is also finishing our laundry room in the basement, the room off Lily's playroom, and that's going to be awesome. He's Sheetrocked it all in and also had an electrician in to put in some more outlets and change some of the circuits. This room will also get a drop ceiling and some sort of floor, either a roll-out linoleum that can be relatively easily removed in case the floor gets wet, and some strong lights overhead.

He's also constructed the laundry chute (!) and cut some holes in the floors to install it; he needs to move some heating vents, unfortunately, but we are all hoping that's not a big deal. The chute will run from our bathroom upstairs through the pantry in the bathroom off the kitchen down into the basement next to the washer. Fabulous!

One of the first things we did was install a double work sink in that room, and Dave built a shelf above it for the dehumidifier and ran a tube right into the sink. The basement seems dry, in that it doesn't flood, but it does get too damp when you don't have a dehumidifier going constantly. And who wants to empty that all the time? When it runs continuously the basement stays dry. It's excellent having a sink right next to the laundry, too: I leave towels soaking in Oxyclean to get the mildew smell out, for instance, and then move them directly into the wash. This kind of thing feels small but huge, you know? A luxury worth paying for. The laundry chute is more of an extravagance, but it's fun, so what the hey. Nothing wrong with fun.

Also in that room, I think I've noted, will be storage shelves, so we can move the boxes out of the so-called den into there. Once the den is cleared we can put in a futon or something, along with another TV and DVD. It has its own pellet stove and gets very snug, and is also cool in the summer, so it might be another good place to put overnight guests.

Finally, Alex has ideas about building a shelf that hangs from the wall in the laundry room and opens into the room, as needed. I'd like that for a place to fold laundry, as well as for Lily to do any kind of messy arts and crafts. We have an old blender, for instance, that we want to use to make paper.

Finally, we are building a coat closet off that room. The idea will be that when you come in from outside you head downstairs first, where there will be more open space, and a bench to sit on and take off your boots. Not exactly sure what it will all look like, but I'm thinking the hallway will also have some empty pegs for guests to hang their jackets. We will also have some shoe and boot racks. This way we can keep mud and snow in a concentrated area. We'll see how it all works, I guess.

Sometimes I think, oh, my, we are really putting a lot of money into all these home improvements! It really can be endless, can't it. But we really want to be here for the long haul. It's a bit far for Lily's school, and getting her up at 6:30 in the dark is a chore; living in Deerfield would be a lot easier for her, at least. But it's 8:30 now, I have to be at work at 9, and I won't be late. My office is two miles away. We are on these lovely woods, but we have supermarkets and a soon-to-be food coop within spitting distance. We can hear the distant roar of I-91, but it's easy to tune out, and I love that we are a mile from the exit.

The more I think about living in the wonderful Hilltowns, say, north and west of here -- and they really are in the country, those towns, they don't get cable and they don't get DSL and we could have gotten quite a lot of land and a great house with the money we spent on this place -- the more I am glad we are here. It's the best of both worlds, to be on these wonderful woods at the same time as being so close to town. And I'm not sure it would have been a good idea for someone like me, who'd lived in New York City for 18 years, to be so isolated in the country, or for Lily, a city girl and only child going to a private school 20 minutes away and so doesn't really know very many local kids.

Yes, our bedroom situation, with both bedrooms opening on the bathroom, and one wall of our bedroom open to the cathedral ceiling over the living room -- ie, not a lot of privacy -- is a little wonky. But I have an amazing studio, Dave has an office, Lily has a playroom, our kitchen-living area is great for entertaining, we have two other rooms to hang in (family room and den), and it's close to town. Couldn't really ask for more.

This was the right choice.

PS -- HAPPY 10TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, OCT. 31, TO MY MOM AND DON !! I'll write the story of how they met some time, it's great.

Puzzles

Lily and I gave Dave a 1,000 piece puzzle of birds of the backyard for his birthday. The next day I set up the card table next to the fireplace in the living room and the three of us have spent two lovely evenings putting this puzzle together. Lily has a knack for finding just the right piece! It feels very collaborative.

Dave said, Lily, the reason we moved to this house is because your mother wanted to do puzzles. It's pretty much true. My sister Bondi and my mom always have a puzzle going, well, I don't know if Bondi does still, but she used to like doing them. This one is hard enough but not impossible--and yes I have to refer to the picture on the box as I don't know my bird types, but this is helping me learn them, somewhat.

Last night I started humming something from Caroline, or Change, and Lily said, put that on (she's heard it a lot because I played it all the time a couple of years ago), and Dave said, I wouldn't mind hearing that--and I couldn't believe my luck! So I hooked up my iPod and we listened to the first act, and chatted, and worked the puzzle together, until Lily's bedtime. It was really really fun. We turned the music down after she went to bed and Dave and I worked another hour on the puzzle, and then I practiced my flute--did I mention I'm taking lessons again?--while the soaking tub filled with really hot water, and then I had a great soak and got really warm and slept solidly all night. He's right, this is why I moved here.

Next time, I told Lily, we'll listen to Wicked, and then The Producers.

"For there's no place else on earth I'd rather be..."

Halloween and the Red Sox and Dumbledore and...

So happy Halloween -- so not my holiday, but Lily had a great time. Work had party yesterday, the two parenting/family magazines getting together and and decorating and dressing up and all. It was so sweet to see how everyone, every single person who works there, is really into kids. They all love kids. I mean, sure, they should, but they really do! They walk to talk. Gotta love that.

Then tonight Dave and Lily went a party in Amherst, hosted by Peggy, Ren's mom, the Party Queen, and co-host of the weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. This was good old fashioned musical chairs, duck duck goose, and all that, and all the kids had a great time, I hear. Then they went trick or treating. I got home by about 6:30 and had one group of kids (more probably came by earlier but I gather the street usually just gets a few). Dave and Lily had made a couple of great jack o' lanterns and I lit them up. If his pics came out I'll post them.

It's struck me lately that Lily, who will be nine on Nov. 10 (!!!), is really growing up. She wants to be alone while she's in the bathroom brushing her teeth and all in the morning and night, and (while Dave and I are both suspicious that she might not be actually brushing her teeth, we are giving her the benefit of the doubt. So far her teeth aren't black) she just seems older.Like, I'm happy she still sits on my lap and hugs me and jumps into my arms when I come home, but I keep wondering when it will stop.

School is great, I hear from Lily, and we are very happy parents. Sunday night we went to the headmistress's house for a buffet supper for new parents. It's a great way to meet other parents (there are four new kids in Lily's grade, three of them in her class), as well as the powers that be. I told the head that it was very kind of her to host a party for Dave on his 45th birthday and later, when we went around the circle and introduced ourselves, he said, I'm Dave and she said, and it's your birthday! and we all sang a rousing round of Happy Birthday. It was a nice touch.

More and more it's clear that Mrs. Mullens is the greatest gift for Lily this year. I can see Lily struggling to stay loyal to Brooklyn, but it's increasingly hard, and Mrs. Mullens is a big reason for her comfort. Over the weekend Lily was very excited about the Red Sox, well, very excited is pushing it, but she talked a lot about it and was glad when they won the Series on Sunday. But yesterday she told me she wasn't a Red Sox fan, she's a Mets or a Yankees fan, whichever, she's not really a baseball fan.

So, I asked her, as I do every now and then, what she's thinking about Brooklyn these days, and she said she will always be a New Yorker and she would move back there now if she could. I said, Really? And what about Mrs. Mullens? And Bement? And all the kids who are coming to your birthday party (at Build-A-Bear in the Holyoke Mall! Kill me now!), what about them? You wouldn't see them. She paused. And didn't answer. And I shut up.

I am going to lay off, but I am desperate to hear her say she's glad we moved here. Of course, this is Lily we are talking about, so the more I want it the less likely it will happen. She is very headstrong, asserts her independence. I wonder where she gets that! And it doesn't really matter, because she is here, and she does like it, although she still does miss her hometown. It's hard to switch loyalties, especially because we all adored Brooklyn and cheered it frequently. "Brooklyn, rah!"

We had two nice visits last week, from our friend David, who introduced us, for a couple of days (hi, Dave!) and from Grandma Judy. We tried a restaurant, Butternuts, in Hadley, for the first time. It wasn't bad. David was here during the week so I didn't see him as much as Dave did, but the three of us did stay up late one night knocking around Harry Potter, and Dumbledore the poof, and Snape, and the ending, and all. I have reread parts of book seven many times and was able to expound on it gloriously. It was fun.

About Dumbledore, I think the reaction to Jo's announcement is hilarious. I love all the self-righteous comments, especially along the times of, "She can't do that! The books are over!" and endless discussions about why she would do this, and if she really wanted to support diversity and show a positive character she'd have made a major character gay (I think Neville, no?), and what were the clues, anyway (a good half dozen in book seven which one queer critic says he and his friends caught and debated all summer) (I picked up on a couple but decided I was reading into things and quickly dismissed it). Rebecca Traister on Salon had a great essay; read some of the comments following it.

My feeling is, she's J.K. Rowling, the most successful author ever, and she can do whatever the hell she likes. Thank god she let Harry defeat Voldemort; thank god she's all about love, and not hate. That must bode well for our world, no?

I find it extraordinary how we Harry fans seem to feel that these people are real, at least some part of us does. We feel a sense of ownership and a clear idea of what happens to them all post-Voldemort; I think it's Traister who says Jo's wrong, Harry would never go work at the Ministry, clearly he becomes a teacher at Hogwarts and eventually headmaster. I could see it, but I think he would prefer being an auror. He would never want to be stuck behind a desk--and an authority figure, to boot. But hey, I feel like she does know them best, and it's her book, she gets to say whatever she likes.

Grandma was our weekend guest, following David, and she helped me cook an Indian feast for Dave's birthday celebration on Saturday. His friends/college roommates Lonnie and Jay came, with their families. It was a lot of fun. Here's the list (I started at about 8 am): Curry chicken, potatoes and cauliflower, chickpeas, spicy rice, lemon rice, cilantro chutney, walnut chutney, raita, I feel like I'm missing something. Didn't have time to make the cabbage. Oh, and Lily and I made a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting, too. All from scratch. Oh, yeah, I made the batter for veggie pakoras and fried cauliflower and fried paneer, and Dave fried that up. And I heated up some breads, paratha and so forth, that I had purchased. It was great!

On Sunday we took Grandma up to Bement, and Lily's classroom was unexpectedly open, so Grandma got a tour. Cool beans! Later we walked around Northampton looking at all the little shops. There's great gifty stuff for the upcoming holidays, some great stores. Watch your stockings!

Grandma was snug in the family room with the pellet stove fired up all night, the glow of the flames and the soft ping of the drop of pellets lulling her to sleep. Trust me, it was cozy. No, don't trust me, come see for yourself!

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.

Coupla things

1) My bank's ATM gave me $150 today, an amount I withdrew because I was dying to see how it would appear. Turned out to be a bunch of twenties and then two fives. What ATM gives you FIVES? Gotta love this place.

2) This is the site I should have been looking for: an interview with JK Rowling after book seven came out. Lots of backstory and what happened in the missing 19 years.

3) A moment of apology. This blog is too redundant and too long. I owe you, my faithful reader, better than that. This is the first of my shorter entries.

Global Warming Grief

I want to know if the corporations and our foolish government who are fighting any significant--or even insignificant--changes to our basic lifestyle, even as simple as requiring higher fuel economy, are willing to pay for therapy for the millions of us who are depressed at the loss of our environment and life as we knew it.

I gather it's just a question, now, of how bad. Within 30 years we in the Pioneer Valley will either live in Washington DC, weatherwise, or North Carolina. The maple syrup industry is on its way out--the warm days and cool nights of late February typical in New England just won't be happening as much any more. This past spring they had half the sap they typically get. Skiing, cross-country and downhill, is taking a heavy hit. Berkshire East, where Lily took skiing last January, had to close the slopes on several occasions because there just wasn't enough snow and their snow machines couldn't make it, not in 70 degree weather.

I never understand when I hear people say they could never live in New England because it's too cold. I don't get it. I moved here for the cold. New York City was getting too hot. I moved here for the snow and the strikingly different seasons, the deep fall colors and the bleak winter landscapes, the excuses to layer and wear heavy sweaters, the newly-green spring and the lush and abundant summers. I moved here for snow storms and snow days and fires in the fireplace and swimming in the local rivers and chilly days picking apples. I really like the variety.

Those days are going fast. The summer was fine, mostly, as far as I can remember. The fall has been not so great for my morale. In a word, it's been hot. It was 73 when I came in tonight at 10pm and it's been like that for days. It's been very dry, which means the leaves are all falling prematurely; when it rains it downpours like a monsoon, like a tropical rainforest downpour. It's pretty sudden, quite intense, and it doesn't last long. Did I mention it was warm? When it was seasonably cold last week people in the office were relishing wearing sweaters. Now it's muggy and warm--did I mention warm?--and it just feels so wrong to wear shorts in early October (never mind January).

Dave is sick of me moping about this so I am dumping on you, my loyal readers. Hear this: I am suffering from weather orientation dissonance (it'll be in the DSM V) and I need a trained professional to help me work through my feelings and accept the reality--and my overwhelming sense of utter helplessness. Does anyone really think that if we all rode our bikes to work and chose paper over plastic it would help stop global warming?

Netflix sent Network with Peter Finch last week--remember the famous "corporate cosmology" speech by Ned Beatty as the head of the company that owns the network that airs Howard Beale's show?

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it, is that clear? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT and T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon--those are the nations of the world today!"

Change a few names and this is what I believe and I don't think there's anything I can do about it.

We need a complete about-face, internationally, a values-transplant, and I just don't believe that's going to happen in the big arena. I do believe in spreading love and acceptance person by person, and that's pretty much what I've devoted myself to these past few years. Trying to be a better person so I can help everyone I know, or interact with, or simply momentarily encounter, have a better day. We are all one, says Buddhism, so what hurts me hurts them, and vice versa.

Maybe I just need help getting unstuck from the grief stage. Maybe I gotta reread 1984. I'm sure George Orwell has some wisdom for me. Sorry to be so depressing. Now you need therapy, too! Can't we get all those corporations to pay for it?

Parents Day

Ed. note: The November issue of Wondertime is out and I encourage you to pick up a copy. There's some great stuff, as usual. If you still see September/October still on your newsstand, get that and then go back for November. It's a great magazine, no I'm not biased; one childless friend in her forties says she found it interesting and useful and she doesn't even have young nieces and nephews.

Last week we were closing an issue and Friday I was to be at Bement all morning for a parents open house thingy. Thursday night I was late at work, and I said to my editor, resignedly but with acceptance, I was supposed to come in late tomorrow because of this school thing, but I can skip that and come in to work on time, to get this story through. She said, of course not! Go to school! This is just work. That's your daughter. We can move this story without you.

This is the great thing about working for a parenting magazine that actually walks the parenting talk. And because many of us have young children, we all have the same sort of schedules--open houses, pre-school events, parent-teacher conferences--that all occur around the same time of the year, public or private. It helps that most folks are in the same boat.

So Friday Dave, Lily, and I went to Bement and hung out and met parents and sipped tea and talked to teachers and listened to the kids sing and watched them in class. It was a gorgeous blue-sky day and we all, parents and kids, spent most of the time outside. Bement has several buildings on its campus, so we went from one to the next, as needed. Lily's building was recently constructed but it's post and beam so it looks like fancy barn and it feels old, which is cool, given that she goes to school in Old Deerfield. It's kind of like going to school in a museum town, and in fact the fourth graders are studying the colonial era this year, touring seven of the original buildings and culminating in a colonial ball.

Lily really likes her teacher, who we agree reminds us of Nan O'Shea, her extraordinary second grade teacher at PS 261. In fact, Lily says the first time she heard Mrs. Mullens' voice she thought, "What's Nan doing here?" She's been at Bement for nearly 20 years and has taught before that, too, so she's got lots of experience. Many people have told us that she and maybe one other are the best teachers in the entire school. That says a lot, and yes, I can feel it when I hear Lily talk about her, and when I myself talk to her. I'm a sucker for elementary school teachers, anyway, having been raised by one. And Mrs. Mullens is smart and kind and in charge and confident and really understands and enjoys kids, and those are all lovely qualities to have in your kid's teacher.

It's been harder for Lily recently. The honeymoon is over. The homework is about 45 minutes a night. Last year in Amherst she had about 10 minutes a night, less than she had at PS 261 in the second grade, and that particular teacher, herAmherst third grade one, was known to give a lot of homework!. Now she gets more both because it's a private school and because of fourth grade, which is a pivotal year: two years before middle school so they have to start ratcheting up the expectations. That's true in every fourth grade, public and private, from what I understand.

Here, if Lily doesn't get it done at night she stays in at recess to finish it. That sucks and it happened a few times in the last couple of weeks. So now Dave has to focus on bringing her home right after school, giving her a snack, and sending her up to her room, or to the dining room table, to do her homework right away. We decided to skip starting up the individual flute lessons again for now, so that she can get her feet under her. She'll continue to take chess on Tuesdays after school--she took it at PS 261 but dropped out because she was the only girl; not an issue here, thankfully-- but we are keeping an eye on that, because it means she doesn't get started on homework until 5:30 or 6, rather than, say, 4:30.

She's also not eating, really, until she gets home at like 4:15. My kid. Sigh. I know 7 am is awfully early for breakfast (we have to leave to get her to the bus at 7:30) and she doesn't want to even try the morning snacks (usually graham crackers or fruit, etc) or lunch (typical but tasty school lunch). So so she often just has bread and butter for lunch and by the time she gets home she's ravenous.

We've been talking to Mrs. Mullens, who says she's perfectly capable of doing the work and suggested things like going straight home and getting started right away, and skipping flute for now, and seeing if she can handle homework on chess Tuesdays. She will make sure Lily's adult at her lunch table (the lower school eats together at long tables, family style, and mix up the tables every two weeks, so she could eat with, say, the first grade teacher, and a couple of third graders and kindergarteners, as well as fourth graders) gets her to try different things.

Mrs. Mullens said to me, you know, we are asking a lot of her, what with a new school, higher expectations (cursive is required; she finally has to memorize her times tables; they are learning grammar, and French, etc.), and a whole new environment, from the city to the country. Yes, she's been here for a few months, but now with this school and this house it's much more real and grounded. Now she can relax--maybe test and push!--but also relax, as she realizes that things are now stationary and not changing so much any more.

I do think this is best for our family and we all settling down into it. I was chatting with a friend yesterday and mentioned something I'd heard here, "oh, years ago" that was actually last winter. So, okay, we have not been here a year and I am already thinking in terms of having been here for years. I have certainly acclimated-- but hey, it's my home state, so it's not as big a jump. Dave has too--it's similar to the environment he lived in when he was at SUNY-Stony Brook, I think--and while he could probably use some regular work and more people around, he seems to enjoy his homemaker/primary caretaker/house-fixer-upper status right now. I know he'd been wanting a break from work for several years and we are fortunate enough to be able to afford it. Barely, but so far, okay.

I always say this transition is the hardest for Lily, who had never known anything other than Brooklyn. And it is the hardest. But she likes it here. She has seven friends, four boys, four girls--four kids from Bement, two from Amherst, and two from Northampton-- who she wants to invite to her birthday party next month. Not bad for being here less than a year. She likes school (the campus includes a brook, and woods! she builds fairy houses at recess!); she likes hiking in the woods, despite herself; she likes the space in this funny, open house; she likes how much room she has to be here.

And I think she likes being the displaced New Yorker, in a way, the kid from The City. (That sense of uniqueness may change once the boarders start coming from Singapore and Taiwan and Seoul.) I know part of me does, although I think I'm more doing the, "I'm cool because I lived in New York for so long and then moved out because I could tell the city wasn't doing it for me any more." Or some weird thing like that. But that's another blog entry.

Dogs and Holes

So Lily and I really want a dog. And Dave kinda doesn't. I mean, you move to the country, you get a station wagon, you buy a house that backs onto 650 acres, you get your wood delivery--isn't a dog the logical next step?

I want a black standard poodle so I can recreate my childhood. I'd be okay with a Moyen. (We had a fabulous Moyen at work called Cole, who had the run of the building and would come visit us from time to time, especially when they had ordered in bbq lunch for the staff. But his owner no longer works there so now he's not around any more.) Lily wants a cocker spaniel. We'd both settle for a mutt. But neither of us is home during the day, so it'd be Dave taking care of it, and as he's the least interested, that doesn't seem quite fair.

The hard part is knowing that really, Lily would like a little sister. We were thinking about adopting or foster parenting, but this house isn't quite set up right for another child. She'd settle for a pet, preferably a dog, but a cat would be okay. She's even willing to go with a snake or an iguana. But she's lonely. I know a dog is a great thing for a kid, especially an only kid. Maybe we can work something out.

On a different note, I know I'm behind, but has anyone out there read Holes by Louis Sacher? Dave was on Long Island this weekend and I picked up a copy at the Bement tag sale and couldn't put it down. Who knows if Lily will ever read it. But man, I finished it Saturday night and it was great. I recommend it, and I hear the movie is good, too. It's kind of Everything is Illuminated, but better; kind of Cool Hand Luke, and--well, not better, but still good. It's funny and understated and really smooth. I liked it a lot. No false notes.

Friday is Lily's school's open house and I am going to attend in the morning. It helps to work for a parenting magazine; they understand these things. Lily still likes school but has now hit a snag where the homework is lengthy and relentless and isn't going away. She's exhausted, I think emotionally as well as physically, and I suspect all the changes and increased expectations are taking their toll. It's kind of like she can finally relax, emotionally; she's landed. So lately she's been regressing a bit. At least that's my theory.

So we are cutting way back on stuff. No playdates after school--not like we had any, but still--just come home and have a snack and do homework. Practice the flute. We're all adjusting to this new school and new way of life. One day at a time.

typo

that should be TILTED track, not titled.

Hard to proofread this stuff. I get bleary-eyed. Kind of a busman's holiday.

In general, please forgive my typos.

Belchertown Fair PS

I forgot to mention the other big highlight of the fair yesterday: veggie races. Kids were sticking wooden wheels into veggies, either cucumber, zuccini, potato, and half a butternut squash, and putting them on a titled track and racing them.

Hilarious. Everyone took it very seriously, but were having fun, too.

I was speechless. All I can say is, this was yet another "Never in Brooklyn" moment. The cukes were the fastest, from what I could tell. Apologies for not having our camera with us.

Mt. Holyoke

Hiked up Mt. Holyoke today. We have a nifty little book called Hiking the Pioneer Valley, which we have dipped into quite a few times, always successfully. Nifty book, very clear, accurate directions.

This hike was mostly up, pretty steep, and amazing gorgeous views at the top of the whole valley. On a clear day you can see Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire and Hartford to the south. Mt. Holyoke is the tallest in the Holyoke Range, which is just south of Amherst and runs west from the Connecticut River. It was a perfect fall day, leaves starting to drop, the air moist and cool, mostly.

The river is extraordinary spread out before us, looking like something something out of my high school geology text book, with all its bends and turns. It goes on and on and when it overflows its banks, as it did massively in 1984, it spreads all that good silt on the fields and we reap the bounty.

On the top is the Summit House, a former hotel from the early 19th century. Some folks are restoring it and it was cool to walk around and imagine being a lady in all those skirts come to take the country air.

Then we hiked back down, stopping by Devil's Football, a huge basalt boulder just off the road, to see if indeed its iron content threw off our compass (not today) and went over to the Belchertown Fair. This is a wonderful community event, clearly a big fundraiser for school and community groups, and something the whole town not only looks forward to but participates in. The horse pulls were my favorite, these massive animals pulling 12,000 pounds of concrete a couple of feet. It was a lot of fun, the best local fair I've been to, I think, precisely because it was so homespun.

On another note (no pun intended) we've been sad here because we no longer hear our thrush, which Dave says was killed by the neighbor's cat. He says thrush nests are low to the ground and the birds are small, and he came upon Snowball right after he had pounced. I miss it. Lily asked me to post its song for your listening pleasure.

We don't hear nearly as many birds now, and it's not just because it's the first day of fall. I noticed the Hallelujah Chorus, as the previous owners called the morning song bird exaltation, fading out by, oh, July. Then for a while we heard tons of peepers. Then it was crickets and some other insects. We still hear the crickets, but lately I've heard a lot of crows and, most recently, Canada geese. I thought I'd hear song birds, sort of, all summer until they went south or wherever they go. But I guess not. Not so many song birds now. And I do miss our thrush.

Dave and I were commenting today on how alive and changing our woods are. We don't even get into them woods that often, so our observations are based on their presence right up to our door. Watching them through the kitchen and bedroom windows and listening to the changes. We haven't seen bears in some time, not since August when I saw three, including two destroy part of our neighbors' peach tree. Just walking out to get the paper I notice that the air smells fabulous, alive is the word, rich and meaty. I think we'll have to walk to the lake again tomorrow morning. Maybe we'll have to get that dog, a perfect excuse for a walk...

We've decided not to wait and to have our windows redone this fall, as our original, early '70s windows, that are really pretty crappy. It may be in the seventies in January again but you can't count on that, and I don't want to be cold in my home this winter.

Anyway, I mention it because, while we're at it, we're going to put a third window in our bedroom in between the two already there. We moved our bed this week so we now look out the windows when we are lying down. And the new ones will have to be up to code, so lower and larger. I can't wait. It'll be a lovely way to wake up in the morning (thank goodness I'm a morning person).

Lily update - another long one

Well, Mum, you were right. Lily is really happy at Bement, happier at a smaller school with lots of one-on-one; friendly, kind classmates; stimulating work; clear expectations; and lots of structure. She's meeting friendly, bright kids who like to do well in school and are interested in being active members of a community. Private school is not necessary or even good for everyone, but for this kid, it's going to make all the difference.

She had a palate expander put into the roof of her mouth last week and instead of making fun of her, her classmates all gathered round and peered inside. (The week before the installation I was getting very frustrated with her reluctance to try new foods and said, "Lily, you need to expand your palate!" And she shot right back, "Mama! I'm having a palate expander installed next week!" We laughed a long time over that one.)

She comes home every night and sits at her desk in her room and does her homework. All of it. She is a good kid, picking up when we ask her, setting the table and clearing her plate and helping me find kindling. She and Dave go grocery shopping or to the library after school. Tuesdays she's started chess, now, which she really likes.

She is meeting some nice kids--her new friend Michaela (I work with Michaela's mom, Rachel) says she really likes Lily because she's silly. They are going to take a pizza-making class together next weekend at Lamson & Goodnow, a kitchen store in Northampton, and Michaela has invited Lily to her birthday party in October.

Lily's also meeting nice kids at Bement, boys and girls, and Dave and I can both see her visibly relax as she settles in. Relaxing so much that she chose the Bement tag sale on Sept. 29 over a trip to Brooklyn. Now that says something! Tonight we were talking about PS 261 at bedtime and she said something about leaving Bement in a couple of years. And I said, Lily, by the time you graduate from the ninth grade, you'll have been at Bement longer than you were at PS 261, and she cheered and punched the air. I think she's had enough change for a while.

Dave and I went to the lower school open house tonight, where we all sit in those too-small chairs at those too-small desks and read the notes our kids have left for us and listen as the teacher tells us about how the start of the year has gone. We all met in the gym first, the teachers were introduced, and then we went off to our classrooms.

I knew we weren't in public school any more when the head of the lower school, in a pink sweater jacket and pearls, stood up in front of us, lined up all the classroom teachers behind her, and sang a song introducing them all to the tune of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? As in, "these are our wonderful teachers who all have wonderful features." Actually I don't remember the words and they were more clever than that, but you get the idea. It was all very good-natured -- she has a nice voice! -- and unselfconscious, and the teachers went along with it with smiles on their faces. Genuine smiles.

I kept flashing on PS 261, that old auditorium, the very mixed audience, ages, races, appearances; the mic that never worked well as the principal tried to talk over the low murmur of chitchat, the parents whispering to each other or their small children or trying to keep their babies quiet long enough to catch a few words. Each specialist teacher -- music, art, science, PE, etc -- would talk just a tad too long, although you didn't want to miss a word. And then we'd split off to our classrooms, same deal with the small desks and chairs and stuff all over the walls, but three times as many parents (Lily's classroom has 12 kids), much higher anxiety levels, much more concern about homework and test scores and how to cope with the various independent projects coming our way.

PS 261 had is own charms and excitement and I am going to blog an open letter to the school community, telling the parents they don't know how good they have it and thanking the teachers and administrators and encouraging them to persevere against all the Department of Education odds. The farther away I get from it the more I think it's a unique community, genuinely built on love, and if we had stayed there Lily would have been fine. But while I loved Lily's third grade teacher in Amherst, I don't miss that school one bit; I suspect few schools, public or private, are as extraordinary as PS 261.

For better or for worse, though, we have moved on, and tonight I felt it. It was wonderful to be in this quiet, very small classroom, the tons of work already, in just two weeks, on the walls for us to read. It was lovely to hear Lily stories from her teacher, who obviously gets her and enjoys her. (We've been so lucky, all these years; all of Lily's teachers, right from the first year at the Montessori Day School, have "gotten" her and loved her.)

The first thing Mrs. Mullens said was, "She's going to be an actress!" Apparently Lily had told her classmates the first day of school that she was not consulted about moving from Brooklyn to Bumbleville, or something like that. (She was very dramatic, apparently. Hard to believe, I know.) Now that's what I call relaxed.

The hardest part for me, aside from not being there for her after school any more because I am at work, is that she doesn't have nearly the playdates that she did in Brooklyn, where she had so many old close friends and it was so easy to get together with someone. Now she spends weekends with us picking peaches or whatever we are doing as a family. Or she reads or does art work or goes on the computer or watches TV. I'd love to get her one playdate a weekend, although now that the summer is over, Dungeons and Dragons has resumed with some Amherst buddies.

But I'm coming to think all that downtime's not necessarily a bad thing. She's had all these changes, as I say, and she and all her classmates are tuckered out from their intense school. Says us, says her teacher. Maybe just hanging around and being with Mom and Dad is enough, right now. The air is getting colder, the leaves are changing, we turn the heat on in the morning now. There's frost on the windows.

Moving is hard, isn't it, when you are young. We moved when I was four and that changed me for the rest of my life. I lost my dog and I lost my fireplace. One down...

Fire, Fire

Just a quick note to say, this is our first fire! We made it last week,and we've made several more, since. Today I wanted Lily to be outside longer so I sent her to get kindling. She a) knows what it is and b) knows where to get it. Now that's pretty cool.

Dave's blog has the backstory on our wood pile, including pics. It's fun. Check it out.

I'll write more about Lily and her new school in the next week or two once she's been there a bit more. But suffice to say it's a great match and if she doesn't love it yet, it's just a matter of time. She looks and acts at home there, seems to really fit in with the kids, likes the teacher. And they are working her hard, which is a good thing, but not too hard, which is also good. Big shout-out to my friend George for suggesting Bement. We're very happy as a family.

Apples, peaches, and raspberries

Dave said today, as he took some pictures of us picking raspberries, that everything that used to be a Kodak moment is now a blog moment. This was one of those weekends:

It's been a harvest weekend. Yesterday Dave's friend Ki-Yun came for lunch, up from the New Haven area--he's on his way to work for Google in L.A.--and we all went apple and peaching picking. Really nice farm in Whately, Quonquont Farm, owned by two friendly women who let Lily play with their Aussie-Border Collie mix while we three trudged up the hill to the peach trees.

Ki-Yun is a veteran fruit-picker and oriented us newbies to the sport. I realized, too late, that we actually live 15 minutes away from these farms and we don't have to pick like we live in Brooklyn still and won't get back to the country again for another year, at least. We got too much to deal with in two days, in other words. Read on...

Peaches are on their way out but we still got lots and they are small but really tasty. Dave and Ki-Yun were ooing and ahhhing about peaches they were tasting when I brought over a white peach for them to try. Dave was ecstatic, couldn't believe how delicious it was and how much better than the nasty old peach he was nibbling on. I have never really cared much for fruit and I think it's because supermarket fruit, or any fruit that's traveled a-ways, just isn't always very good. But this stuff! It's to die for.

We picked got apples, which are just starting to come in, at this farm. No macouns yet, but lots of macs and empires and jonagolds, which Mark Bittman says are pretty rare (at least in supermarkets), as well as some varieties of delicious. Ground fruit was half-price, so I picked that, especially for the applesauce, and let Lily have fun getting stuff off the trees.

Today the three of us picked Nourse Farm raspberries, which are just into their brief fall season. Both days were gorgeous, after the rain ended yesterday morning. I am a sick puppy: There were probably five acres of raspberries and at most 20 people picking, and I started panicking that there wouldn't be enough for us, that they were taking all our berries. Sick, I tell you. We filled up our buckets and hadn't even gotten half way down our row. Dave convinced me that what turned out to be 11 pints of berries was enough, and he was right, of course. And of course we can always go back next weekend.

We picked a lotta fruit. Here's what we did with it back home:

-- We made a dozen quarts of applesauce yesterday. Even Lily liked it. She said, "This is the best applesauce I ever had--it tastes just like store-bought!" Err, yeah. She asked for it for breakfast, though, so I guess we're onto something.

-- Today I froze a half dozen quart bags of peaches, including those luscious white peaches, and I just put two more trays of slices into the freezer, which will translate into another half dozen bags. (You are supposed to blanch the peaches very quickly, 10 seconds, and that makes the peeling, pitting, and slicing a lot easier. You put the slices on a tray lined with Saran Wrap or plastic because the peaches are very wet and juicy at this point and will stick. Once they are frozen you transfer them into plastic bags. When they are frozen they aren't mushy and won't stick to each other. I measured them out two cups at a time to use in future recipes.)

-- I froze three gallon bags of raspberries--you freeze them on a cookie sheet and then transfer them into the bags. How best to freeze all this fruit comes from my mother who, I believe, learned these techniques from one or both of my sisters. Credit where credit is due. I did not measure them into two-cup portions because the blueberries pour out so easily I figured the raspberries will, too. So I can just pour out two cups, or whatever, at a time.

And let me just digress here to give more credit here to Emily Noyes, who showed us how to suck the air out of a ziplock bag full of blueberries using a straw. Way cool. Emily has also taught me a lot about picking and freezing and cooking. She makes an extraordinary blueberry pie, and I am not a big fan of blueberry pie.

-- In addition to foodmilling all the applesauce and helping me with the peach blanching, Dave made eight jars of peach jam today. Don't you wish you were on our Christmas list!

All this is on top of many bags of whole tomatoes and cooked tomato sauce that Dave had already made, along with some gallon bags of corn from leftover corn on the cob. (We'd get a dozen, eat four or five, and then scrape off the rest. I love corn chowder, especially in the dead of winter.)

The kicker was that for some reason (I guess I'm in nesting mode and I'm eager to try out our new freezer), I had decided earlier in the week to defrost the chicken backs and necks that Dave had gotten for me at Whole Foods. I was thinking this would be a great weekend to make stock. Dave reminded me this morning that I had defrosted all this chicken, and that meant I had to cook it up. So I now have a half dozen quarts of rich chicken stock in our new freezer, as well.

I suppose all this food prep and making our own sounds really fussy and anal. Why not just buy chicken stock or frozen corn? Why not open a can or dial for take-out? Of course, we are not above doing all that when we have to.

But one of the first things Dave and I found we had in common was our love of food--he would say, "I want as much food in my food as possible." That's as opposed to preservatives and additives and artificial chemicals; did you know that "natural flavor" means "artificial flavor"? Celestial Seasonings has "natural flavors" in many of their teas. Dave would also say he didn't like to eat something he couldn't conceivably make at home, which lets out Twinkies and Coke, more or less.

I come from a family where what you ate and how it was cooked was important, and I have been on various food journeys of my own. Together we have found that the flavor of homecooked food simply tastes better. Homemade stock in soup is better, IMHO, than water, or a bullion cube, or even a box of pretty good stock. That's just me.

Besides, I decided tonight, as I was musing over all this, exhausted, bleary, my back and shoulders aching, my hands sliced up and dried out from all my chopping accidents and all the dishes I've washed for these two days: I enjoy it. Go figure.

Come visit us and taste the difference.

Kripalu vs. Omega

So I went to a retreat at Kripalu this weekend. It's a yoga-based retreat in Stockbridge, a few yards down the road from Tanglewood. I had a great time, met some nice folks, ate really good, really simple food, took 6:30 am yoga classes both mornings, slept on a top bunk by a window overlooking a lake in a room full of two dozen other women sleeping in similar beds, and really got away from it all.

I have been to a couple of weekends at Omega, in Rhinebeck, NY, and I find it impossible not to compare the two. I decided the difference is that Omega is much more geared toward the New York City crowd. Kripalu, which started as a yoga retreat, is just more laid back. Both are fine, but Kripalu did make me slightly insane at first. You can take the girl out of New York City...

Kripalu and Omega: Compare and contrast

Coffee Kripalu doesn't serve coffee in their cafeteria. You have to buy it at their cafe. Omega has a half dozen varieties.

Cafe/bookstore The Kripalu cafe is only open until 8 pm. Ditto the bookstore. I think that's insane. The Omega ones are open until 11 pm. They probably open earlier, too, but I didn't register that info.

Clocks None of Kripalu's were correct. Apparently they had had a power outage a day or two earlier. But no one had bothered to sync them. I can't imagine that at Omega, although I could be wrong.

Check-in This was the most infuriating part about Kripalu. It's Friday night, the start of the weekend conferences and retreats, I get there straight from work and have about 45 minutes to register, find my room, eat dinner, and get to my workshop. And there's 10 people in line and just two at the registration desk. I had to wait at least 20 minutes. (I have to say, however, that Omega doesn't serve dinner on Friday night to weekend retreatants, and Kripalu not only fed us, the cafeteria was open until 7:30.)

The first time I went to Omega, I got on the very long--15 people--registration line, sighed, and pulled out a book. But within five minutes I was checking in. I couldn't believe it. They must have had six people doing registration. I told them, "This is not the Brooklyn post office!" And they laughed and laughed. I wrote about it to Omega and Omega published my story in the catalogue and gave me a 20 percent discount for my next workshop.

So the next year at registration I told the guy checking me in that I had been so impressed with their efficiency the previous year, and I mentioned my line about the post office. And the guy got all excited and said, "You're the Brooklyn post office! You're the Brooklyn post office!" My reputation preceded me.

Environment They are both very similar in the feel, lots of mediation and yoga classes offered, lots of opportunities to have a variety of spa and holistic treatments and consultations, gorgeous settings--Omega on the campus of a former Jewish red-diaper baby sleepaway camp; Kripalu in a former Jesuit center on top of a small mountain overlooking the stunning Stockbridge Bowl, a large lake.

I like both but their settings are quite different. Omega has little camp buildings all over the place. Kripalu is all in one big building, which meant I could go barefoot everywhere except the dining room. Kripalu is also, therefore, year-round and Omega isn't open in the winter, although they do offer workshops elsewhere.

I was disappointed Kripalu didn't offer more in the way of mediation and tai chi classes. They only have one a day of the former and none of the latter. They did have a great Dancekinetics class that looked like a ton of fun but it hadn't occurred to me to take it and they only offered it once that I could do. Next time.

Of course, the best part about Kripalu is that it's just an hour away. I commute to workshops there--I bet lots of folks do. I'll be back, I'm sure. Look up a workshop on their website that you might like to go to, and let's do it!

Josh and Lily, 2001

Sad News

Josh Ruderman, RIP
1/4/58 - 9/2/07

Dave's brother died last night after battling HIV and AIDS for more than two decades. He had had full-blown AIDS for at least 15 years, and we are pretty sure he was infected in the early '80s. So it's something of a miracle he lived as long as he did.

I'm really glad he did, because he was able to watch his beloved nieces and nephew grow up, and to be there for his father when he was dying. And by living with her, he allowed his mother to remain in her home for several years after Dave's dad died.

Josh had been sick all summer. He was diagnosed with lymphoma and had been in great pain and in and out of hospitals. He was taken by ambulance this past week -- apparently Riley, one of his dogs, was very upset when they came to move him and had to be restrained. (Poor Riley, who was still grieving the still recent loss of his canine brother.) We had an inkling but you can never predict these things. So when they moved him into the ICU yesterday morning and put him on a respirator, I think Dave and Judy and I were all surprised. It felt so sudden!

When Dave and I heard that development we came down immediately. Thank god. We got here at 8:30 last night, just in time. The hospital called at nine to say Josh had had a cardiac arrest and they had revived him, but they suspected he was neurologically compromised. Dave and his mom went to the hospital immediately and were able to authorize a DNR order. Josh died peacefully at 11 pm, about an hour after the docs turned off most of the machines and the medications.

I have a photo of him with Lily that I'll post when I can find it. It was about six months before Dave's dad died, and they are clinging tightly to each other and laughing. It's great. Gay uncles are the greatest, Dave's cousin Rebecca said to me, and it was the truth. Lily loved to sit on his big leather sofa watching I Love Lucy reruns on his enormous projector TV. He's left her his Lucy DVD collection.

It's weird to be here, no dogs barking, no Josh telling them to shut up and Lily picking Riley up and carrying him around the house, no hanging in the kitchen gossiping about family and talking about the state of the world. No Lucy reruns on the TV, no more overblown Thanksgivings with two turkeys and a ham for a dozen people, in case anyone goes hungry.

I will miss him for these things, and more.

Donations in his memory may be made to the Long Island Association for AIDS Care.

Don't Push the River (it flows by itself)

Just came back from an evening at Bement, Lily's new school. She starts the Thursday after Labor Day. First there was a tea with new parents and teachers, and then the fourth grade parent reps threw a game night party for the kids with pizza and such.

The whole feel was so welcoming. To a man or woman, everyone said, I hope you like Bement as much as we do. I hope Bement will as good for your child as it has been for ours. I hope your family will be as happy as ours is.

We talked with Lily's new teacher, Mrs. Mullens, who was really nice and has been in the biz a long time. She's been at Bement for 18 years and taught before that, too. I gather she's the stricter teacher, which should be a good choice for Lily. She's originally from Nebraska (I could hear it in her voice) and that's a good sign. I like Midwesterners.

The Bement folks were very friendly and welcoming, as I say, and the best part was, there was Lily, laughing and running and shouting and playing with her new classmates. I love to see that, to see her comfortable and friendly after nearly a year of considerable stress. The whole Amherst time was so stressful, if only because it was all so new (and it wasn't just because of that).

Around the house front, yesterday we had a washer, dryer, and freezer delivered to the basement. Tomorrow the plumber will install them, along with a double sink. The current washer-dryer is going to someone on FreeCycle, and that little closet off the kitchen will turn into a pantry and a place for the broom, etc. Yahoo! We'll have to trek to the basement to do laundry, but that'll be good for me, and easier in the long run.

Also, eventually we'll have Sheetrock and a floor in the basement laundry room, and some storage shelves, and I hope a long table, so we can do some art work, batik, or tie-dye, or making paper. (Ha! Me doing arts and crafts--and enjoying it!) Dave got us a blender off FreeCycle this week and Lily can show us how to make paper. She learned at camp this summer. He also got the Klutz friendship bracelet book for half price and I am going to try making some more. Maybe Christmas presents? My hair wrap from Family Camp gets a variety of comments at work. I like it, though.

So this time last year I was wrestling with wanting to BE IN THE PIONEER VALLEY ALREADY but still needing to take the time to talk to Dave and process and slow down (!!) and check out all our options. We needed to sit with it, and see if it was the right fit -- well, you know the answer to that question...

Family Camp marks the anniversary of the thought of moving here truly being up front and present in my brain. The Sunday before we had a fabulous afternoon in Amherst, eating lunch at Judie's and swimming in the Fort River with a neighborhood beaver. I thought, I even said to Judie, I could live here. By the time we got to Vermont it was a more visible thought, and by the time we left I was telling others at camp that I was thinking about it.

Last week I told them the story about driving home in a driving rainstorm to NYC that Sunday after camp, down I-91 thinking, as we passed Amherst, "if you lived here we'd be home by now." And the terrible traffic, so bad that we pulled over and ate for an hour. And then past the airport on 684 and seeing the weird neon flashy light and thinking over and over, "We're being bombed. We're being bombed." I knew we weren't. But I also knew in my heart that I was done. It was time. Sept. 11 as an automatic reaction five years later erased any last doubts I had.

And now we are here, just three months short of a year. It's odd -- should I stop writing this blog? It was supposed to be about our move here, and we are here.

That was a rhetorical question, of course, and of course I am still moving in here, still transitioning.

But the last of the major transitions happens next Thursday when Lily starts school. The major tasks will have been accomplished -- house, job, school. Yes, there's always more to with the house, and Dave will probably get a job in the not so distant future (I hope it's part-time or consulting). Lily will need to BE at the school, make Bement her own. But she's already started to do that and if tonight is any indication it's going to take her about five minutes.

We spent a wonderful Friday evening in Coney Island last August, with Blair's sister, Barrie, and her partner and their kids. We ate that terrible fried food and rode on all the rides. We saw the weekly evening fireworks, what a show! And then we rode the Wonder Wheel into the night sky.

I'll never be able to listen to Wonder Wheel by Dan Zanes without tearing up:

now the sun is sinking low
lights of coney island glow
all the best friends that i know
are on the wonder wheel

going round and around,
it takes us up and it takes us down
i love the sights and i love the sounds
riding on the wonder wheel

As Barry Stevens says so well,

Thank you!
You were just what I needed!
I'll love you forever!
Good bye!

Brooklyn, my darling Brooklyn, good bye.

PS

I forget to mention how much I love the staff at Family Camp. Really a great group of folks who know so well how to guide our small group, maybe 100, into a tight community in just a few days. They and the entire F and W community show me how to live. I like living that way.

Family Camp

So we're back! We've been away since last Sunday, and I realized this is kind of my first official working vacation since Lily was born. I always felt a bit weird taking a vacation before, like I didn't quite deserve one because I wasn't really working. Au contraire! I was working hard.

At any rate, this was a great time away. I thought about my life back home, but I really got away from it all in my head. I was very present where I was and I felt very close to Dave and Lily, too.

We left Sunday morning early to visit my dear friend Blair and family at their 100+ year-old Adirondack camp for a couple of days. They are in the woods and they tell me there are no farms for 100 miles, so we brought Pioneer Valley bounty, including tomatoes and corn.

I also brought a blueberry buckle, just like Mom used to make... she really did, actually. The recipe linked here is the same and it also gives a little description of what a buckle is and why it's called that. Check it out. The blueberries were from the gallons we picked at Nick and Emily's the week before. It was so good we did not share any with the kids! The four of us ate it in two days.

We went for a hike up the mountain near them, and saw some great views. Unfortunately this week was not much of a camera vacation. You know, sometimes you take pictures and sometimes you go, eh? This was an eh. But if any of the ones we got are good I'll post 'em.

Oh, and the Adirondacks were freezing! We slept with like a million blankets the first night--it went down to the 40s. I was afraid for our week in Vermont, but there we were plenty warm enough.

On Tuesday we made the trek over to Farm and Wilderness for Family Camp. Again, it was great. It was kinda funny, actually, Google maps failed us for the first time, taking us there via an old fair-weather gravel CCC road, through the Coolidge state forest. One camp staffer who lives in the area says he takes that road twice a year because he doesn't like what it does to his car. Google's actual directions took us five miles down a dirt road that ended abruptly. On the way back we drove in the right direction to see the sign that said, "road closed to snowmobilers."

At any rate, we got there, got unpacked in our fabulous cabin, Mabel's, for you former IBers, the cook's cabin, which is named after the long-time Indian Brook cook. Mabel's has a sink and electricity, although the kybo (outhouse) (this is a pretty funny link that actually gives possible credit to F and W for the term) was at the bottom of a steep hill, and who wants to go all the way down there when nature calls at 3am? None of us.

I work hard at Family Camp, partly because we all have chores we need to do just about every day to keep the place going and the prices down. But also because there's always someone ducking out of their assigned task, or maybe forgetting, and there's always more to do, anyway, that isn't assigned. So Dave and I scrubbed a lot of pots, and cooked, and cleaned. The weather was a bit bleak on Thursday so I ran a tea party, making a triple recipe of peanut butter chocolate chip bars (from a cookbook called How to Cook for 50) and included ingredients like, 3 pounds of chocolate chips. They were delicious.

But I also got to make some friendship bracelets, and macrame, and play my flute (Lily and I did a couple of duets at the talent/no talent show last night). We swam and went out in a row boat. And I finished two books, including Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, about Paul Farmer.

[An aside here: I have read two other Tracy Kidder books, House and Hometown, because they are about my new neighborhood, but I don't like his writing. I really enjoyed Mountains, though, and not just because I knew Ophelia Dahl through Wellesley College, although that's why I picked it up in the first place. Ophelia is Farmer's longtime professional, and past romantic, partner, and she's about as fine a human being as I've known. I admire her and Farmer and the work their organization, Partners in Health, does, and this book illuminates their history and message very well.]

At a loss for a book yesterday I tried picking up The Hobbit but I just don't think it's going to happen. Someone said if I didn't read it at age 16 it was too late, and I have a hunch that's true. I was so bored I couldn't finish the first chapter. Forget it.

This week we also sang a ton, every chance we could. I learned some great new songs. The talent/no talent show was particularly fun, as usual, and so was the dance party on Friday night. Next year I want to be good enough--or have enough courage--to play in the house band. I danced the best Salty Dog Rag I ever have before, thanks to John, our co-director's, instructions. Great dance. We also danced Zodiac again. The lyrics are too long to put here; be sure to ask me--or better yet, Lily--about them. Another great dance.

The food was fabulous, as always, and the anchor of the program in a way is the very solid cooking staff. It must be that their primary quality, besides being able to cook, is to always be calm and to have a very dry sense of humor. We also start each day with a short Quaker meeting, and I was reminded again of how hard it is for me to sit quietly, and how important.

I could go on and on about My Summer Vacation, but suffice to say it was really fun, loads of fun, with interesting, kind families participating. I can't wait til next year.

Dave's jokes

What's big and black and lives in our woods?
A bear.

What's big and black and naked and lives in our woods?
A bare bear.

What do you call a naked cub?
Barely a bare bear.

What do you call an annoying naked cub?
An unbearable barely bare bear.

And if there are two?
A pair of unbearable barely bare bears.

And if they are eating fruit?
A pair of unbearable barely bare bears eating pears.

Now add yours.

Fall is imminent

Rearranged the house again today. Well, just the living room. When we moved into Warren Street all those years ago, Dave's mom said it could take a year or two to know how to arrange everything. I had no idea what she was talking about, but now I do. Boy, was she right! And how great to kinda know that, to say, okay, it'll take time, don't worry, it will fall into place.

Last weekend we moved that lovely but massive cabinet/shelf/piece that the kind owners left for us out of the living room where it blocked the stairs and the light from the front door and into the family room. Our friend Mike did it with Dave. It's great, looks like it was made for that spot. Today we moved the sofa away from the wall and into that spot, and also relocated the stereo cabinet they also left us. The living room looks more open and welcoming now, to my eye.

Dave straightened the garage this week, among other things, and today he and I discussed our plans for the laundry room/storage area and Lily's playroom. Where to put his tools. The basement in general. We will have the laundry, a freezer, and storage shelves in there, as well as a double sink so we can continuously run the dehumidifier. The plumber is coming after we get back to install it all. We're still hoping we can have a laundry chute!

I hoping hard that Dave will also get a door between the laundry room and Lily's playroom, or a wall, or something. And he has been thinking about building a coat closet, too. He put up a shoe rack at the bottom of the stairs already.

We're just going to need this stuff, boot racks and coat closets, once the cold weather comes. Even with global warming we still had cold and snow last year, just a bit later than usual. Still, the seventies in January was pretty disheartening... I've realized many people really look forward to the winter, and I am just one of them. The conservation land in our back yard makes for great cross country skiing, we're told, that's obvious, just looking at it.

Another reason for the cleared garage is to make room for the three tons of pellets that Dave's ordered us, along with a half a cord of firewood. I will enjoy every minute of watching and feeling all that fire heat, 75 percent, go up the chimney. We do expect to be heating a lot by the two pellet stoves this winter. I gather it's a lot easier than firewood. I do love a fire, though, and have not had lived with a fireplace since I was four. So I can't wait.

Won't be long, either. More often than not there's a chill in the air now, apples are coming in, and peaches, and tomatoes like there's no tomorrow. Leaves are starting to turn. Fall is coming.

Today we also packed for family camp and again, I think it's going to be cold. It's colder up there anyway, it's in Vermont and it's in the mountains, near Killington. I am packing lots of long-sleeved shirts and sweaters and things. Wool caps. For all of us. Warm sleeping bags. Polartec blankets. Also flutes, so we can do a duet for the talent show.

Tomorrow we go see dear Blair, and I am bringing her some favorite music. I made a mom songs mix, and a house mix, the one I gave to our realtors. And we are bringing piles of fresh veggies from our farm share. If I get inspired I may bake something tonight but it's getting late.

Another clothes item: Lily has to wear a collared shirt every day at school this fall, and no blue denim, not in pants, not in skirts, not in jackets. No sweatpants or sweatshirts. Nothing like that. I realize now I must have broken the rule when I wore a sweatshirt to the Spring Fling -- if the kids can't wear it, the parents must not be able to, either. No one was, no adults. Oh well.

Anyway, we've been searching out collared shirts. We got her school sweater, which she wears every Monday. It's enormous on her. We also need to arrange her desk a bit better so she has a place to do what I anticipate will be pretty serious homework this year. She's up for it but I know it's going to be a big adjustment for us all.

PS -- two notes from last weekends visitors: One was that Lily took Nicky and Sabrina to the door of her playroom and made them close their eyes. When she opened the door and told them they could look, they were in awe! Wow! they said. Awesome!

And the other was that Nicky couldn't sleep that night because it was too noisy, with crickets and frogs and such. Funny.

I feel like I've lived here forever.

ursus americani

Be sure to check out the new photos of the house that Dave has posted, in the links to the right. This is our house now, with our paint and furniture. We await you, our invited guests.

We had lots of company last weekend. Mike and Steph came for the night with Nicky and Sabrina. Other friends from Brooklyn stopped by for an hour on their way from picking up their older daughter at overnight camp -- we are on the camp circuit here -- and for awhile all five kids were frolicking all over the house. It seems to be a great house for kids to play in, although no matter how many playrooms, family rooms, and outdoor spaces there are, they all still want to play on Mom and Dad's bed. Pretty cute there, though.

The Rings stayed the night before heading to Boston for a night, and we grilled some chicken and had fresh corn. Later we went into Northampton to get an ice cream and walked around town. It reminds me of Park Slope in the evening, with all the bustle and variety. We ended up at Faces, one of those great stores that has dirty tee-shirts and many silly toys for kids and adults alike, as well as cheap furniture suitable for a dorm room. The kids were enthralled and it was hard to play the meanie and say no we're not buying anything.

But everyone missed the now routine bear sighting: On Sunday evening, at about 6:30, I was here at my computer and looked out the window to the deck. There was a large bear trying to decide if she should climb the deck stairs or not. I shouted bear, which may have scared her away, and while Dave and Lily scrambled from room to room try to follow her path around the house, I first heard then saw two bears through the bushes in our neighbors yard. They were fighting over peaches -- the neighbors have a peach tree, or I should say "had," after Sunday. They broke off one of the two main branches in their efforts to get peaches. Afterwards we walked over and found the ground torn up, half the tree destroyed, a few pits, and a half-eaten peach.

This is about the fifth time one of us has seen them, I think. We didn't have bears in Brooklyn! I also feel more confident in my unease at walking in these woods alone. We went to visit Nick and Emily in New Hampshire last Sunday. They are now just an hour away(!) and we went to raid their massive blueberry bushes. Acres of 'em. And perfect this year. We talked about picking -- Emily is a neat picker, Dave and I are sloppier. She doesn't have to pick them over after she gets them home, but we do, to clean out the green ones and the twigs, etc.

Anyway, Emily says she still gets nervous walking alone in her woods and she always takes a dog or two with her--she has Labs. And I don't think she has bears. I realized, if Emily is scared, then I should be at least apprehensive. I don't have a big dog to warn me or protect me about strange people or animals.

If you've been reading this blog you know our house is on conservation land, and one of the access paths is straight out our back door about 100 yards. But there was so much underbrush we didn't know quite how to get there. Now Dave has carved out a path, and Lily and I helped last Saturday, and it's much clearer.

Lily has finished up summer camp and we are all off to family camp next week. Sunday morning early we're going to visit Blair and David in the Adirondacks, first, though, and I can't wait. We are bringing all our farm share veggies, as they are really in the forest, with no farms within 100 miles. Just a gorgeous private lake. On Tuesday we'll drive over to Farm and Wilderness and go to Family Camp. It was a year ago that we went to Family Camp, the first time I had been back at F&W as more than an overnight guest in 27 years, and the first time I'd been there since I'd interviewed co-founder Susan Webb about her concept of God for LIFE in 1990.

My life changed at Family Camp last summer. It was there that I suddenly realized I didn't have to live the way I had been, not just in New York City, but also with my own self-imposed limitations. It sounds silly to say it but I have never been much on arts and crafts, always too judgmental of my work. And last summer I made a friendship bracelet for myself, and one for Dave. I tie-dyed a shirt for him and one for Lily. I learned to juggle two balls (and sort of three). I hosted a tea party for a dozen kids. I dressed up for the fashion show. I played Ultimate with the teenagers -- and made a spectacular flying catch. It was like I was a kid again, but the kid I never was.

And as we were driving home down I-91 in driving rain storm, we passed Amherst and Northampton and I thought, if you lived here you'd be home by now. When we got to 684 it was night, and still the rain, and as we passed by the airport we could see a very weird kind of flashing light. It was clearly for the planes but all I could think was, we're being bombed. We're being bombed.

We were not being bombed. But I knew then that I wanted to move. I didn't say anything at first. At first I sat with it, telling only Dave. But then around Labor Day I tried it out on Jenna. A couple of weeks later, Sylvia, who said, if it's meant to be it will happen easily, and the next week Dave's company closed. That was the end of September and as you know, by Thanksgiving we had sold our condo, rented a a house in Amherst, and enrolled Lily in school. So this is a big anniversary week.

I don't regret it one bit. I don't regret moving sooner, either. I think we left at just the right time, although it was hard for poor Lily. Transition is hard, these past eight or 10 months have been hard. But now that we have a house we love and I have a job I love and Dave is getting some needed free time and rest and Lily has made some friends -- the Bement camp was great for that, for meeting some of her future classmates and making friends with them; she's had a fabulous summer -- I am even more sure that this was the right move.

It hasn't always been easy, to be sure, but facility isn't the gage of anything. And in the big ways, it's been ridiculously easy. This is where we were meant to be. I have no regrets, and I don't think Dave does. Lily misses Brooklyn, but hey, they don't have bears in Brooklyn.

On the blog again

Dear friends,

So sorry for my long absence. I am back now. Yes, we moved, on June 22, but despite planning a month in advance Verizon dropped the ball and we didn't have internet for two weeks afterwards. We switched to Comcast. Our landline still doesn't work consistently so if you are trying to reach us be sure to try our cells, too. We do have an answering machine on the landline so if it just rings and rings it could be call waiting but it probably isn't. Email is good now, too.

Here's some of the highlights of the last month:

-- Lily has been to four weeks of horse camp and is into her second week of arts camp. Pics to follow. She came home exhausted every day and brown as the proverbial berry. She made some nice friends, she learned how to trot and post, she jumped no hands! and best of all, she's not afraid of horses. I am thrilled.

-- I still love my job, boy, do I love my job, and love working, and boy, is it wonderful to be back in magazines again! When you are at Barnes and Noble sometime in mid-August, look for the September/October issue of Wondertime and my name on the masthead. Subscriptions are still really cheap, too, and a great baby gift. It's just a fabulous magazine.

-- The house is just gorgeous. We like it so much and it's so peaceful and serene. While I go off to work every day, Dave has acted as the General Contractor, negotiating and overseeing the carpenter who ripped off a lot of rotten and ant-eaten siding (Homeowner lesson #1: never remove your gutters) and replaced it with good wood and Tyvek, as well two new lovely sliding doors. (But they didn't come with screens so we have to keep them closed, which is highly annoying.)

-- About this carpenter. The second day he came to work he said no one was in the office because they were all at the funeral of another carpenter's son. His only child, I believe. Killed in Iraq. The third day the carpenter said that his niece in Texas had been shot in the head by what sounds like was her boyfriend. She was a model, 21 years old. Also an only child. What a waste.

It occurs to me that the small-town aspects of living here means that we just simply know more varieties of people, and for the most part, the people who are fighting this war are not the children of the movers and shakers. Unlike living in New York, if we only hung out with professionals we'd be very lonely. I think that's a downside of living in New York, because the movers and shakers, business people, media, whatever, are isolated from the true effects of what life is like for most people in this country. This is not a fully developed thought yet but I'm working on it.

--Other house work. Besides our new paint (which I've decided I like the colors of) and repaired deck, we also finally got new carpets (delayed a bit because of the lousy retailer) and they are soft and luxurious. He's overseen the installation of said gutters (he then ran conduit from them into the woods and has buried a hundred feet of it) and also the adjustment of the garage doors.

Dave has gutted the ancient storage room in the basement as he readies it for new paneling, drop ceiling, and floor. It's going to be laundry/storage/and art space for Lily. He's repaired closets, adjusted doors, unpacked and sorted boxes, he's arranged the garage, he's looked into buying wood pellets in quantity (we have two pellet stoves and can buy three or four discounted tons now that will heat us through the winter). He's attacked the smelly closet in my three- season porch--cut a hole in the sheet rock and found a nest with dozens of mouse carcasses. (Lesson #2: never spread rodent poison, they just die in your walls.) The sheet rock is going to have to come out and be replaced. Oh, well.

When I've been home I've cleaned bookshelves and other furniture, and bathrooms. I unpacked our room and Lily's room and Lily's basement playroom. At last she has room for all her toys, and she gets up at 6:30 sometimes and goes down and just plays in there. She loves it. That's the room we three painted and it has a new carpet and some shelves and she has room to spread out.

-- Daily life is great. We all get up around 7 but even if we oversleep until 7:30 we've still got time. The birds start around 4 am but I don't seem to hear them any more. God I love them, though! I leave for work around 8:45 -- it takes 10 minutes -- which is when Dave takes Lily to art camp. I'm taking lunch most days, usually fabulous leftovers from Dave's dinners. He's been cooking up a storm with the veggies from our farm share. It's corn season at last! and we eat fresh corn on the cob almost every day. Lonnie and Erika bought a new grill and gave us theirs, so at last we can have bbq's. Yum. And Dave's making ice cream again. Double yum!

I get home around 6 and we eat one of those great dinners, and read. Maybe we have a bath. We are serenaded again in the evening and go to bed early, usually.

--We've all had several Japanese soaking baths. We have this lovely, deep, blue-tiled bathtub that we fill and take turns sitting in. If everyone showers first and scrubs off the dirt we can all share the water in turn. Dave put some tea candles in there and it's just lovely and peaceful.

-- We've had lots of company. Dave's family, my sister Cate and mother, plus I've had several dinners for various new friends. We hope to see Mike and Steph soon, plus others. We hope our friends think of this as a place to escape to and rest.

****If you are reading this, we miss you and want you to visit. Consider yourself a good enough friend to invite yourself. Call us up and find out when is a good time to stay. All our guests rave about this cool house and how it fits us, as a family. Come see why.

-- Lily is having more playdates, with some very nice kids she's met at various camps and school. Thank god for that, although she still really misses her Brooklyn buddies. I don't blame her, I miss them, too. She's having a sleepover tomorrow night, in fact, and they will go to camp together in the morning. She's excited about school and also a bit nervous. Natch.

-- Lily and I are playing the flute. The wife of one of my colleagues is a wonderful flute player and teacher and she's teaching both of us. I had my flute cleaned and gave it to Lily and bought myself a better second-hand one. I haven't played since I was 14 but my tone is getting better, thanks to some tips from my one lesson. Lily and I are playing a couple of short, lovely, duets. It's really nice.

-- Dave is the family bear-spotting champion. My sister Cate and kids were here Saturday morning and Dave suddenly shouted, "Baby bear!" We all ran from window to window as a mama bear and cub walked around the back of our house and down our neighbor's driveway and across the street. Dave had already seen one cross the road on his way out last week.

Best bear story so far: Our friends Lonnie and Erika have a daughter who has a friend who was sunbathing on the front lawn or driveway of her family's home in downtown Northampton. She is about 12, this girl. She had coated herself with coconut oil and fallen asleep. She was awaken by something licking her foot... yup. A bear. She screamed and ran into the house. Hilarious. Glad it wasn't my kid.

-- Of course I finished Harry Potter seven. I was done by Saturday night, along with many other people I know. And of course I will post no spoilers here. But I will say that in a way, I am relieved it's over. I don't think I could take another book. And I am grateful to some work colleagues who helped me resist reading the pre-release spoilers on Friday. One of them pointed out that even though I don't think it's literature and in fact think it's very clunky writing at times, what I really like is the experience of reading it and trying to figure out what's going to happen. I did just that on Saturday.

My friend Margaret's son Peter was reading his copy this weekend and after chapter one came one of the final chapters! Thank goodness he didn't read very far into it before stopping. Last I heard they were all fighting over the remaining copies.

When book four came out I was too snobby to actually order the book to be delivered that same day. Luckily I could read my neighbor Heidi's copy before she went on vacation. When book five came out I was determined not to repeat that experience so I ordered the book for Saturday delivery. It came about an hour after I left for a five-hour bus ride to a funeral in Boston. And five hours back. Lots of uninterrupted time to read the book, gone to waste.

When book six came out I volunteered at the Community Bookstore's Harry Potter party. I worked hard for several hours helping set up--Catherine does the best party around, including making hundreds of gold and green chocolate frogs in various sizes--and walked home about 11:45 p.m. with the book wrapped in tucked under my arm, smugly aware that I had gotten it a whole 15 minutes before all those suckers waiting in line.

Determined to recreate some of my Brooklyn traditions, I went to what I thought was the first showing of the HP5 movie that came out last week (turned out it was released a couple of days earlier), as I have done in Brooklyn for the last couple of movies. I took my mom for her birthday, and sprung for the popcorn. It was loads of fun.

More importantly, I volunteered at Northampton's Broadside bookstore, helping with their launch party. I left at midnight with two books, one I had already paid for, and one that was my gift for helping. It was a lot of fun and very jammed. They had pre-sold something like 325 copies. Yikes!

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There's probably more to say about the events of the weeks since June 16, but this is a good start and I'll be impressed if anyone besides my mother actually reads this far.

I'll try to stay more current in the future. We miss you, please come visit!