Bettie Bookish

Who is this Nora Easter?

This morning.

Two hours later.

This morning.

Two hours later.

More snowy goodness.

Words for snow

Two hundred does not seem like nearly enough.

Yesterday, it wasn't snow at all, but ice. It encased the branches of lilac, maple and cherry. It hung like fringe from the electrical wires. It turned the grass and leaves into a crunchy, vibrantly colored version of themselves. A glass lawn.

Last night I sat in the chair by the den window watching a cold rain fall outside and thinking about how treacherous, how slippery the morning would be. Before my eyes, a quick wind blew against the window, and the rain turned to big, soft, feathery flakes of snow.

Today's snow is golden. The sun is shining through it, making the little flurries sparkle and dance. The icy ground is still crisp, but now with a soft dusting of white here and there.

Some mornings, my Hot Shot Husband takes Bee to school, and I stay here with our little Rosey Posey MM. We do each other's hair and nails, we talk about boys and we consume candy and soda hand over fist.

This morning, HSH went to work, and I was in charge of getting both girls dressed and out the door to take Bee to school. I also had to put on honest-to-goodness outdoor-worthy pants. It was a real drag.

But I am a real trooper, so we did it.

I even remembered to put some mittens on Bee's hands, because I'm a good mom.

When I got out to the car, I opened the driver's door so I could start the ignition and the heater. Then I went around to MM's door. It wouldn't open. I fidgeted with the locks. No dice. I climbed into the car - still holding the baby - and tried to open it from the inside. It wouldn't budge. And neither would the door on the other side.

I strapped MM into her seat and instructed Bee to climb in through the driver's door, too. Once everyone was firmly belted in place, I got out to brush the snow off the windshield.

You know how sometimes, when it's raining, you might turn off the car without turning off the wipers? And then the next time you start the car, probably on a sunny morning, the wipers spring to life and you just turn them off without a second thought?

Well, if that rain has turned to ice overnight and the wipers attempt to lurch across your windshield the next morning, don't be surprised if the soft rubber part completely detaches and you have to go find a replacement. Don't be surprised, in other words, the way I was surprised this morning.

No one warned me about frozen doors or double checking that your frozen wipers are in the Off position.

I have been warned about black ice - which sounds like an awesome name for one of those tail-magnet deodorants they market to teenagers. But I don't know what it looks like. I've asked and heard that it just looks like a wet road. "How can you tell?" I asked. "You just know, because it's cold enough."

Have I mentioned that I do not even have a pair of decent gloves for myself - and that is mostly because I just don't know quite what to buy. And I'm supposed to "just know" when water is really Black Ice?

So I'm making an appeal. Those of you with experience in frosty climes, pass along your best advice here. If not for me, then for my poor children.

What do you always do? What do you never do? Where did you get your gloves?

Tell me about ice dams and snow shovels and Smartwool and tires and the right shoes to wear for all those 200 types of snow.

I know that worldwide delurking week is history, but have a heart and chime in. Then ask all your smartest, coldest friends to chime in.

Don't make me spray myself with a can of Black Ice and beg.

Good country people

If I stand at my front door and look through the trees and over the field at my next door neighbor's house, I can see that they have a front door, but I cannot tell whether it's open. If someone were standing on the porch, I would be able to discern a figure, but unless the figure were cloaked in a sequined, red cocktail dress, I would not be able to tell whether it was the woman who lives there or her husband or sons.

"Next door" is relative Up The Valley, where we live.

A quick geography lesson:

The Village: The closest community with a recognizable name. In this case, the name is very recognizable, despite the fact that its year-round population is a scant 2,300.

The Hamlet: Three miles northwest of The Village, it's community in which we live. At the Four Corners - the Hamlet's central point - there is a blinking light, two restaurants, a general store and the volunteer fire station. That's two miles from our house.

Up The Valley: If you head north from the Four Corners, you pass about half a mile of closely spaced houses in The Hamlet, and then the trees become more dense, the terrain more hilly and the mailboxes farther apart.

The aforementioned neighbors are to my north.

My neighbors to the south live close enough that I can just make out the white-trimmed roof line of their cedar-shingled house and the woodshed behind it, but only in winter when all the trees are bare. The southern neighbors are a professional folk artist and his wife, who is a retired academic. They have a handful of grown children who all have impressive degrees and careers.

The northern neighbors - whose house is much closer - were described to us by the previous owners as very nice, "but country people." They own a good bit of land up here, and I've been told they sell it off as their cash flow demands.

The other day when I was shoveling snow and falling on my ass and crying and cursing, I kept hearing their front door open and close. Part of me hoped they couldn't see me struggling like an oaf. The other part of me hoped they would be so moved by my obvious ineptness that one of them would rush over and plow the drive or that a couple of the gargantuan sons would jump into his truck - the truck that roars out of the driveway amid hooting, honking and general engine revving every morning before 5 a.m. - and, I dunno, push my van up the hill.

Since they didn't come rushing to my aid, I assumed no one saw me.

Then the next day, Country Mom ran into my son and told him, "Hey, I saw your Mom out on the driveway yesterday. Looked like she couldn't get her car up the hill."

"Yes," he told her. "She was having some trouble."

"Yeah - it looked like she was having trouble. She shoulda come over for help."

Lesson learned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My HSH commented on my last post that I did not call him while I was struggling with the ice and snow. It's true; I didn't.

And I don't know why I didn't.

I can come up with a list of excuses. My phone was in the house. I thought I could handle it. He was at work and had plans to go to the gym afterward. It didn't seem like it was going to be that hard. I have a stubborn insistence on failing at things. Maybe I like having bruises the size of a place setting all over my hips, knees and arse - a dinner plate here, a cereal bowl there, a neat little saucer on the other side.

Next time I'll call.

Who do I have to feng shui?

I've decided to practice a version of the art of intentional placement in our home after seeing the amazing results it brought for others.

This isn't the first time I've thought about it or studied the basics. Somehow, it has always seemed like a lot more fun to clear clutter as part of a spiritual practice than to clear clutter just because I'm a grown-up and shouldn't act like such a flippin' slob all the time.

The problem - aside from the fact that I am a huge flippn' slob - has always been that once I get past the basics of keeping your house clean, repairing or discarding anything broken and mapping your house on a bagua, it just becomes too complicated for my feeble little chemobrain to integrate. Honestly, if I can't manage to pull it together enough to put all my trash into the garbage can every single time, how am I supposed to remember everyone's 5 ghost direction or figure out which family member's numbers should determine the placement of our front door?

And holy crap, I think I have a bathroom right in the center of my prosperity bagua. Help.

I get overwhelmed. Is there a cure for overwhelmed? What if I put a bag of marbles in my Helpful People bagua? What if I take the bag of marbles and hit myself over the head so I can get a good night's sleep?

Seriously, anyone out there with advice? Advice other than, "Clean your house, woman."

SNOW DAY

It's beautiful.

And here, Internet Strangers, is an example of very very bad feng shui.

I'm going to go clean my house now.

Boy, that guy likes velvet

Thanksgiving 2006 will forever go down in the Bookish family lore as the year J-- S----- tried to kill me.

It started cordially enough when I mentioned that, ever since undergoing chemotherapy, my alcohol tolerance is much higher, and my hangover rate is much lower.

J-- took this as some kind of challenge, and asked, "What are you saying? Are you issuing a challenge?"

I hadn't been. But suddenly it seemed like the thing to do.

He spent the next two and a half hours refilling our glasses. Sometime after dessert, I managed to find my way to the sofa, where I fell asleep (or something like that). I woke up and found Lila and her mom watching an interview with Mel Gibson about Mayans.

I hoped I was hallucinating, but an ad spotted on TV today tells me I wasn't.

And J-- thinks he won. That's OK - I'll give it to him.

Dear J--, you can officially outdrink a 120-pound cancer survivor.

PACKING MORE DAY IN YOUR DAY

Today was my brother Thor's 32nd birthday, so the whole family came over to our house, and we ate leftovers and soup and sandwiches. (J-- quietly recovered on the sofa most of the afternoon. Me? I've been fine all day.)

We had cake and presents, and then all the women ran giggling upstairs so we could put together our baby bed and make it up with the pretty, pink, ovulation-inducing crib set that Sunshine gave us.

No sooner was the bed together than we all had to pack up and head into the village for the big annual Christmas "parade."

Bee had two invitations to ride in the Santa entourage, so we bundled up and stretched our waving hands.

Santa and Mrs. Ms. Claus arrived, and took their seats on a sleigh that was sitting on a platform-type wagon being pulled by two Belgian draft horses. The sleigh sat in the center of the platform, and was surrounded by hay bales, upon which all the children were going to sit.

Bee didn't want to ride on the wagon, so she opted to ride on the fire engine.

She sat in my lap, and sighed. "I wish my sister was here."

Abot halfway down Main Street (which is all of 6 blocks long), she turned toward me and asked, "Can we do this again sometime?"

The village's mayor, who also was riding on the truck, told her that, yes, she can come back next year - WITH her sister.

SPEAKING OF WHICH

The travel agency called today to let us know that we are leaving one week from tomorrow.

Everyone we tell squeals in excitement. Our stomachs hurt. Oh - we are so unprepared.

We do have an assembled baby bed now, though. So our little one will have a place to sleep without disturbing my dresser drawer full of novelty socks.

Tomorrow we travel to the Big City to load up on supplies such as saline nose spray, baby prunes and glycerine suppositories. We might get some stuff for the trip, too.

And we will definitely partake of some restaurants.

Next time - a ladder

All the hoi polloi of the village turned out in the icy drizzle to deck the poles along Main Street.

There is a committee that oversees this process and assigns each family to a specific pole. At the foot of the street lamp, there is a bag with the family's name on it and ribbon, garland, lights, bows and intructions inside it.

The instructions begin with the directive to attach the wired ribbon at the top of the pole near the lamp.

I should mention here that, while we did not bring a ladder, we did bring an 18-year-old son.

Santa's pole

So, apparently my shiny new browser - the one that supports spellchek and font colors and all kinds of other fun variables - does NOT support cutting and pasting html from Flickr.

Computers HATE me ;>} Also - who loves chocolate?! Am I right? And men never ask for directions! I'm serious.

The rest of my family is off worshipping the Lord this morning, like the good, God-fearing Americans they are. I stayed home to rest and try to stave off the cold that has been afflicting the rest of them for two weeks now.

There was snow earlier - big silent flakes of the stuff drifting over the hill behind the house. But it has stopped now.

Later today we will all bundle up and head into the village for the annual tradition of decorating the holiday poles. All the participants will meet in the park on Main Street where a tiny replica of Santa's North Pole manse has been erected. We will be given bags of decorations and strict instructions to follow, and each family will be assigned to a specific lamp post for the purpose of decking it with boughs of holly and donning it with gay apparel.

Oh yes, I will be taking photos. And Safari and I will be posting them.

Like screwing up Hashfest in Amsterdam

Summer has spread a welcome carpet of goldenrod across the valleys of upstate New York, and Autumn - that seductive little pyromaniac - is setting the hillsides ablaze.

Every day, as I drive Buttercup to school, I tally the signs of fall. The leaves, of course, are turning. More of them turn every day. Each day, I think "OH, this is it. This is the full splendor of autumn." And then the next day, my drive is even more brilliant.

A farm that we pass on our way to the school has a hand-lettered sign at the roadside advertising for temporary help wanted during the harvest. One corn field has been stripped of everything but a stubble of dried stalks. The field on the other side of the road looks nervous.

And the leaves aren't just turning. They're falling. Great showers of them swirl to the ground every time someone in a 20-mile radius sneezes too hard. Suddenly, those leaf vacuums make perfect sense.

And would you like a pumpkin? Apparently, it is a law that every third person in the state shall bring a card table to the side of the road and sell pumpkins at least once during September or October. You cannot go 100 yards without bumping into a pumpkin stand. And they are ridiculously affordable.

In our Florida neighborhood, there was a Methodist church several blocks away that sold pumpkins on its lawn as a fundraiser (fund raiser? fund-raiser? I don't remember! Yipee! The stain of newspaper work is fading). A decent sized pumpkin at the church cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $368.72. Here every pumpkin is $4. We saw a pumpkin at the farmer's market that was so big my Hot Shot Husband could have put my ass in its shell and kept me very well. We also saw white pumpkins and nubbly green pumpkins and a broad, bumpy French pumpkin that made me want to eat soup out of its hollowed rind.

Four dollars, all.

Oh, and the apples. Dear sweet baby Jeebus, the apples. I don't even like apples, but don't try to tell my mouth that.

We have on our property something that is technically an apple orchard, insomuch as rows of apple trees stand shoulder to shoulder. But there are no apples in it. There is the skeleton of an unfortunate deer, but that is another story.

Outside of our land, however, apples are literally growing on trees! It's insanity. Crunchy, wholesome, sweet, sweater-snuggling, cider-mulling, slipper-shopping, wood-chopping, flannel-sheet-washing, leaf-turning insanity.

We live in upstate New York. New York is the second-most prolific apple producing state in the country. So you would think that an festival devoted to the fruit would be a sure thing - a quick win.

You would not think that you would drive to the festival site and find little more than a muddy parking lot with a couple of soggy jumping "rides," grating country music, and school-carnival-grade games that cost a dollar a play. You can buy a quarter pumpkin for that kind of money.

So it was a minor disappointment.

But we did get to feed some ducks. (Shhh - they think we can't tell they're all wearing toupees.)

But how long can you feel disappointed when this is what you see from your driveway?

Clockwork

September 1. Autumn.

Lovely.

AND NOW I CAN BREATHE AGAIN

Yes, the house belongs to someone else now. Another family is moving in, choosing rooms, positioning sofas in front of televisions, and building memories.

In the end, it was the compassionate offer of financial incentive and dead-serious threat of legal action that pushed the transaction over the closing table.

There was much dancing and general celebration when we got the call that all the papers had been signed.

AND NOW I CAN THINK OF BABYTHINGS

JC and I took a trip to look at baby-related merchandise, because it has begun to dawn on us that we may actually be called upon to accommodate the daughter we are expecting.

When you spend more than a year expecting, and then systematically quashing any and all small outbreaks of optimism in order to protect your tender psyche, it's hard to convince yourself that it's okay to get excited when the good news does actually arrive.

We're slowly getting used to it. We bought some bibs and some bottles. Buttercup picked out a blanket and fuzzy bunny to mail to her sister along with a soft little photo album, which we are going to stock with photos of ourselves.

And also photos of Tim Gunn.

Carry on.

Highs in the low 70s

Every frustration. Every anxiety about money and jobs and mortgage payments. Every complaint about summer with no air conditioning and winter without 4-wheel drive.

This week's weather makes it all worth it.

Miss Panda loves to dip her giant, clawed feet in the lake.