Into the Wild Wood and Home Again

UP and it's a little less chilly, and sunshine is in the forecast. I sure hope so. There are outdoor things I want to get done, and let's be honest, we are about to grow gills.  Holly's birthday was good; she got lots of presents, had a great day at school with her friends, and we had dinner out at the diner. Her choice, of course. It was okay, but what was especially fun was a friend of ours who also works there brought out her bowl of mac and cheese with a lit candle in it. Too cute. It's one of the myriad reasons why living in a relatively small town is a good thing for everyone.  Today, the chores abound for after work. Nothing much changes.  Well, not exactly true: the leaves are still changing, despite the wet weather. It's the season of gold, russet, bronze, and copper. It's lovely, really. And hanging in there later than usual. I'm thinking of making a list of related nouns/adjectives and then embedding them in a poem. Hm... I hope your day is wonder...

Rainy and chilly again. Yes, people need the wells filled up. But gee whiz. It's been a pretty wet stretch of time. Today, all students in grades 9-11 take PSATs. I will be working with seniors on college app essays. Or resumes. Or both. Either way, I'll have about two hours of time with a small crew of kids who likely would rather be sleeping. As would I, honestly. But I'll bring a boo bucket of Dunkins munchkins, and we'll see what we can do.  That all said, TODAY IS HOLLY'S FIFTH BIRTHDAY! What a hoot! She's amazing. Meg got her a boo bucket of munchkins to share with her class at snack time. We'll convene at the diner for dinner (her choice, this kid loves diners), and head back home for cake. Somewhere in there will be presents. I didn't go overboard, much. Well, a little. She's my favorite human.  I'm sure she'll be wound up tight today-- who isn't when it's their birthday and they are five?-- but I hope we'll also extend a ...

Chilly, rainy, and Tuesday.  Holly and I had a great day yesterday, and I got almost everything done that was on my house cleaning list. I still have folding of laundry to accomplish, and it looks like there's at least one load to put in. I also have to wrap some b'day gifts for an almost-five-year-old! I sure hope her cold is better for tomorrow-- what a bummer to be sick on your birthday.  But I have today. Meg is home with possible pink-eye (ew, and ouch), so I likely will not be picking up Holly from school. I'll have to find out for sure, though. If I'm not, then I have a stretch of time this afternoon to finish the laundry stuff and the wrapping stuff. And I want to make an applesauce bread.  Who has time to work? I have some other small things I want to attend to, as well, such as getting out the fall kitchen linens. Minor, but these things matter to me. Call it a last stand against the chaos out there.  And there is chaos. And havoc. Sixes and Sevens. O, the ...

Rainy, chilly Monday-- Indigenous Peoples Day (I won't go there, but it's not "Columbus Day" in my mind).  I know this post is a little later than usual, but I got up at the usual time, and then proceeded to get a turkey soup going (boiling the meat on the bone, then pulling it out to "pick" and adding veggies, then putting the meat back into the pot). I got the sourdough starter fed and going, too, so I can make bread later. And I have a metric ton of house work to accomplish, but first, I'm taking a minute to write a little to you.  So, how ya doin'?  How about those Patriots? Love them or not, it was a good game, especially since some first-string starters are still on the IL. Never count 'em out, eh? And the 49-ers won their game, too -- my second choice team since way back with Joe Montana. What's best is watching the football game with Meg-- she gets me. She's just as vocal. And I love spending time with her. Holly has little patien...

Sunday, and it's a lovely magenta start to the day. Yes, likely there will be unsettled weather, but it's pretty nonetheless. We have church, then breakfast (Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast--once a month). Then, I'll be coming home to process the last pears and apples from our trees. Well, maybe the last. You know how it is.  And yesterday ended up being a pretty good day. I was working on my full-length poetry manuscript, going down a really deep rabbit hole (when poems are about family, it's like exploring old wounds sometimes). I was, in short, getting both frustrated and depressed. Mainly because I had it all sorted in the summer, but when I went back to it, I didn't see what I thought I'd seen, the arc of the manuscript didn't hold up. It was facile, too easily organized and catalogued. I didn't like it. I didn't even like the title, and it clearly needed a new poem or two to work with the ones already in play. None of this is news to anyo...

It's been hard to ignore the horrors in the news. In fact, I haven't ignored them-- I'm just having a really hard time processing how evil people are. The story about the Cornell rape-fest is making my stomach turn, especially since the response given to a reporter's question was that the men involved would not get a "fair shake" and he "feels badly" for them. Agent shooting a man with a five year old child in the car. The proposed televised execution of a man who, admittedly, did a horrifying thing in 2009, but to put a man who is a paraplegic in front of a firing squad? And there is so much more to be horrified by.  Who the hell are we, as a nation? How and why are we "celebrating" this violence and evil? This is not, and should not be, merely an ontological question. It addresses the core of who we are, both individually and as a country. As human beings. It feels like our moral compass has been smashed to unrecognizable shards.  I...

Finally Friday. Not that it's been a bad week, just a long one. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow: I have the day sort of free to do some poem work. I also need to plan the reading/writing/reflection workshop series I'm going to be hosting at church that focuses on poems by Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and the book of psalms. I have a couple of people who have emailed me already that they are going to attend --and I don't know them!-- so I need to make sure to have all of my poems figured out. The series will run for four weeks, take a couple off for Thanksgiving, then have one final session with the goal of assembling a small booklet of poems to offer to the parish. We'll see how that goes.  And I'll have time to figure out my own book tomorrow. I hope. And I want to make herbed butter. That isn't time consuming, except for the prepping of the herbs, and it's good to have on hand all winter. I should think about submitting some poems to journals, to...

Thursday, cool and rainy-- but not as chilly as yesterday! Mother Nature is teasing us a bit. It was 46 when I got up- fully 20 degrees warmer than yesterday. Weird. And welcome. I made another pie yesterday-- the bags of apples are down to half a bag. I still have the pears to work through, though, but that's looking manageable. And the garden got frosted yesterday, so likely all I have to do is mourn the loss of the squash (though I have not checked...) and pull up the meager half-row of carrots. That can wait until tomorrow, or sometime this weekend. It's wet out.  School goes apace. We are working through Julius Caesar, working on rhetorical devices, and nothing much new coming up until next Wednesday when the kids 9-11 have PSAT stuff, and I'll be hanging out with a handful of seniors, working on college app stuff. It'll also be Holly's fifth birthday-- so that will be a grand thing! We still don't have definite plans for her big day-- unfortunately, most o...

Crisp (okay, cold) 26 degrees and a hard frost. I suspect that, even though we covered things, the frost has ended the short run for the butternut squash. I will try to get out there to check on it later today, but there's likely no rush. G covered a few plants on the deck, too, but who knows if they'll be okay. They were not a real priority, and inattention may have been their demise, too.  I try. There's only so many hours in a day, right?  That said, yesterday went well at school. The play went off without a hitch, it was really awesome actually, and it seems that most of the kids liked it a lot. Well, except for the dyed in the Carhartts-I hate everything except T. and motocross-why can't I wear my oil-stained hat in school sort. They are a harder case to solve. And frankly, I'm pretty sure I can't solve their issues. Frost said it best in "Mending Wall" when the speaker says, Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.’ I ...

Chilly and windy-- perfect fall weather. The wind knocked down most of the pears, so Holly and I went out yesterday and gathered as many as we could. Poor sweetie slipped in some mushy pears and came up covered in pear mush-- it was comical, though. The sunshine was lovely, the wind was brisk, and we were outside gathering fresh fruit. Not a bad way to spend a bit of time.  Today, Weathervane theatre is coming to my school to perform a shorter version of Much Ado About Nothing. I am hoping it all goes well. I always get so nervous about events that I have planned. At least this year there was no chasing permission slips, arranging chaperones, and figuring out busing. Amen. I just hope that the kids like it, and it goes well, and I'll be able to cross this one off my list of things to do.  My list is getting rather long again. Work things, home things, fall project things-- never enough time or enough me to go around. I do what I can, but I sure wish I had a free day or two to...

Well, then. Sunday turned out pretty good, which was just what I needed. Church was fine, G, Holly, and I got breakfast out, and I got some chores done before the football game. That said, what a game!  There was not one person (myself included, alas) who thought the Patriots would win, especially since they were playing the Bills in their new stadium. A road game? Yeah. And no doubt, the bookmakers were astonished, as was the whole rest of the universe, or so it seemed. They won. The kid who caught the game-clinching TD one-handed it, and he's not even all that tall. He seriously went airborne, snagged the long ball, and came down with it. Meg and I were losing our noodles, to be sure-- it seems one of the life lessons I imparted to my daughter was a masterful command of salty language. O jeez. Thankfully, Holly was at home with Tim, so we could yell all we wanted to. Poor G-- at one point, he dryly remarked, "You know they can't hear you, right?"  And yes, we know. ...

Yesterday was a lot of fun at homecoming-- the girls won a nailbiter in the last seconds, the boys won handily, and Holly was awesome. The weather was perfect; warm sun, chill breeze-- and the trees are in their glory, all the gold and red and orange. Lovely. Idyllic? Probably not, but close enough. Today, I have a pile of mini chores and a set of papers to grade. First, church, find breakfast somewhere (leaf peepers take over all the usual spots, sigh), and see what the day brings. Well, I know it'll bring football-- probably a heartbreaker of a game-- and I'm roasting a small turkey. I needed the freezer space, and it'll be nice to have leftovers for a few days. I made a pear and raspberry crumble pie last night after dinner-- it's an experiment, and let's hope it tastes good. Those pears are ours-- so many pears!!-- and I wanted to make something fallish. I mean, I've been overwhelmed by the apple harvest (there's still more to do), and apple pie and appl...

It's Saturday, it's crisply fallish out, and I'm being very lazy. Soon enough, I'll have to get going, because there's homecoming stuff to get to, but not just yet. I'll finish my coffee first. We had a lovely time at Weathervane Theatre again last night. Anything Goes was light, funny, and the music and dancing were spot-on. We're going to go to one more show in early December; they are doing a musical review for the holidays in the style of the old Bob Hope or Carol Burnett holiday specials-- the kind we grew up watching. I'll get tickets this morning. And Theatre UP is putting on Guys and Dolls in November-- more to look forward to. Escapism? Yup. No apologies coming from me. We need to fill our lives with moments that give us a reprieve from the abject horrors and nightmare scenarios. If local live theatre can do that, great. Whatever we can do to shore ourselves up, right?  I'm also signed up for a writing workshop in mid-October with former Ma...

So, it's a drizzly Friday. I hope it clears off (it's not predicted to do so, though), but at any rate, we have a half day at work. There's a fundraiser this afternoon: a big ol' golf tournament that raises money for our Education Foundation, the organization that funds things like field trips and so on. In this age of python-tight budgets, we depend heavily on things like today's tournament. It's part of the homecoming festivities, so it's pretty well attended. School's out early because many of the teachers either work it or play in it. Not me, I can't, but it's still a good cause. So, c'mon, Momma Nature. Be nice. The float building went okay yesterday, and from what I hear, the mini parade was fun and enjoyable. Again, I was home. I had Holly, and G had a tooth extracted, so my priorities were here. Maybe next year I'll go and take Holly, but she needs to be in bed by 7:30, and the event started at 6:30. Not gonna happen. And I didn...

Short post today, because I am running behind a bit. Not that I slept in or anything. I finished doing laundry before I even came downstairs. Ah, the life of a person who must work outside the home, do the house work, and take care of all the details. It's a crazy schedule, to be sure. I just want one day to catch up. It will not be this weekend, I'm pretty sure.  Saturday will be devoted to being at the high school homecoming games, supervising sophomores as they sell food from crockpots. I'll have Holly with me, so I hope she is patient. If the weather is good, it'll be fine. If it's cold/wet/windy, it'll be miserable. I've done this a lot of years, so I've had my share of all of those conditions. At least I only have to do a middle of the day shift; we have three class advisors (for a crew of about ten kids-- another story). I'm not setting up, and God willing, I won't be sticking around for the clean up. Both are usually fraught with minor ch...

Wednesday. It's supposed to be warm and sunny-- it'll have to clear a bit for that to happen. It's been a rainy week, to be sure.  We finished Macbeth , and finally --finally!-- the sophomores are warming up. Who knew it'd be reading Shakespeare aloud that would do it? I hope we can keep our momentum. The APLang kids are fine, and I'm glad. I just don't know what I'd do if I had to pull two classes along.  My colleague is a second year teacher, and she --and the other veteran teachers, new teachers, and apparently the world at large-- is having a difficult time with the freshmen. I suggested we talk about it today, and maybe I can dig up some ideas. But honestly, kids are not quite the same as they used to be. There is a real attitude among many of them (the ones whose parents "pay [our] salary" and who kvetch about everything they think is too "lib'rul") that they only have to do what they want, and if they don't like it, they ha...

Another rainy start to the day-- I hope that this rain, coupled with the not-very-cold temps and a little bonus sunshine might plump up the last of the squash. Or should I say almost first of it? The growing season is never quite long enough.  I made a big pan of applesauce yesterday. Ninety minutes of peeling and cutting apples-- it takes longer, since we don't spray our trees, and the bird and bug nips, bruises, etc. need to be pared off. That said, I have six pint containers cooled in the fridge. I still have four bags of apples to go, so I can reasonably assume another ten to twelve. Next up: figuring out how I'm going to get those all in the freezer. A good problem, to be sure, but it will take a little organizing. We have strawberries frozen. Blueberries frozen. And meat, of course-- but down in the bottom there are big things, like a turkey and a couple of hams. One of those will likely get taken out to thaw and cook up-- a festive meal, even without a holiday. I hate to...

I wasn't going to rant about the breaking news from Cornell U., with the nefarious and disgusting situation --the drugging and gang-raping of a young woman-- settling in my mind like a lead weight. The perps got an essay as punishment. Thank goodness for the doughty student paper and its reporters; someone has to have some backbone, some innate sense of righteous anger, about this horrifying mess.  What struck me most, though, and I'll probably rant on for a bit, is the term that has been "invented" to describe the situation, that young men --referred to as "boys"-- were given a light punishment, that the frat is still active and associated with the campus, that there are others --many others-- who knew about the situation and who did not one damned thing. The term? "White collar rape."   It's perfect in its connotations. For time immemorial, men --especially those of privilege and influence, or whose families have that kind of social and eco...

Oddly warmish (53 degrees), light rain, a bit of a breeze. We are lucky to live where we do; other areas just south of us are getting hit hard by this September storm. Other areas of the country are getting hit by other storms. Hawaii is getting particularly hard-hit. The oak trees are dropping a ton of acorns (mast year) which usually means a difficult winter. O yay. Though the Old Farmers Almanac says, for our area, mild and dry. Who knows? Certainly, we'd like to be able to depend on the information from NOAA and other official sources, but with their funding slashed so much and the official federal denial of all things weather and climate-related, we are left with our best guesses in a lot of ways. I will keep my eyes out for a woolly bear caterpillar.  We'll head out to church today, find breakfast somewhere (if the leaf peepers have left us any), and then come home. The plan for this morning is to do some of Holly's catechism homework. This having one class a month an...

Saturday. It's been a long week, and it's felt like pushing string most of the time. It could be because I've been functioning at a compromised level due to the stupid head cold. It could be that the national news and all the awful ads on TV and everywhere else has been a little more pervasive every day. It could be that I've taken on a little too much and have no extra time. It could be that, at the end of the week, I got to keep one dollar of my two-week paycheck (o those pesky bills). Whatever the reason, it's Saturday, and I'm still in my pjs at almost 8am, and I do not care.  I worked straight through, going from school to getting the windshield done, to getting the week's groceries, to doing laundry, making dinner, herding Holly, etc. yesterday, and I'm frankly tired. I have a weekend to-do list, as well, but for right now, I'm not doing. Just not doing. Just not. We have a humongous pile of apples for me to work through, but those will keep a ...