alls well that ends well

oh great- another post about the snow in vermont! just what you all were hoping for.

after a few potentially deadly runs down high meadow lane on the toboggan, julie and dad crafted a safer, shorter luge run for kids on saucers off the side of the leach field. aj couldn't get enough of this, despite some awkward endings. look at julie react to one of her son's near-disastrous sledding runs. better yet, look at aj's reaction to his crash.

perfect packing snow

not only was the snow in vermont good for sledding, it was also great snowball snow. evie helped me get started on the bottom ball for a giant snowpig, but it was soon bigger than she was. it also didn't help that i tried to get her to roll the snowball up a hill. she gave it the ole' college try, though, before finally brushing her hands of the whole affair.

one laptop per child

for matt's birthday, i got him a laptop through the "one laptop per child" program. although matt's hand's are not as beefcake-like as christian's (visible in photo), it is still quite obvious that these computers are designed for those with significantly smaller hands than any of us grown-ups possess. i suggested that matt let evie or aj have a go at it, but even though the keyboard is waterproof, sandproof, peanutbutterandjellyproof, etc..., he wasn't gung ho on the idea.

good sledding weather

we're up in vermont for a little christmassing. the conditions on sunday were just perfect for sledding.

the best of friends

the poem is actually a song from "the fox and the hound"


When you're the best of friends
Having so much fun together
You're not even aware, you're such a funny pair
You're the best of friends

Life's a happy game
You could clown around forever
Neither one of you sees, your natural boundaries
Life's one happy game

If only the world wouldn't get in the way
If only people would just let you play
They say you're both being fools
You're breaking all the rules
They can't understand, the magic of your wonderland
Hu-hu-hu

When you're the best of friends
Sharing all that you discover
When that moment has past, will that friendship last?
Who can say? There's a way!
Oh I hope... I hope it never ends
'Cause you're the best of friends

wasting time for a good cause

if you have a good vocabulary and you want to feed hungry people, you should go to the free rice website.

in the past four minutes, i have donated 1500 grains of rice to someone who needs some rice. i am both more of a hero and smarter than i was four minutes ago.

my new favorite thing

earlier this year, oak knoll was given a woodstove insert for our fireplace. it's made by a company called "quadra-fire," who donated the stove, stainless steel sleeve for the chimney, and installation of the whole thing. the company is generous and the stove is wonderful and heats the whole nature center and i love it and i wish we could get one at our house, but our landlady is afraid of fire.

as promised

when it is not much fun to be the little one:

the ice has been replaced by snow

it took me four hours to make a trip yesterday afternoon that had only taken me 90 minutes that morning. but i guess i had it easy- one of our neighbors is a teacher in boston and, even though school let out early because of the storm, her normal 40 minute drive turned in to a seven hour nightmare! we now have about 10-12 inches of lovely snow, but here's one last picture of the ice while i work on getting a video of the dogs romping about in it all loaded up on youtube.

ice ice baby

hearth

a few weeks ago, i went up to new hampshire with matt and helped him build this hearth for his mother's new woodstove. and by "helped" i mostly mean "sat on the couch and watched."

one worth checking

there are a few websites out there that i check every day. most of them aren't worth sharing with you, my beloved blog readers, because in most cases, knowing that i check these websites every day would only serve to lower your assessment of my character. sure, i'm willing to fess up about cute overload, but there are others. yes, there are others*. occasionally, i so enjoy something i read on one of these other websites that i share it with the few people who check this website every day. today, i want you all to read a post from leroy sievers' "my cancer" blog at npr.org. this is one of the website's i'm not embarrassed to admit that i like.

"After that day, your life is never the same. "That day" is the day the doctor tells you, "You have cancer." Every one of us knows someone who's had to face that news. It's scary, it's sad. But it's still life, and it's a life worth living. "My Cancer" is a daily account of my life and my fight with cancer."

Defying Expectations

Two years ago today, my life changed forever.

The day started out like any other. I had a job interview that afternoon for a position I really wanted. It was a phone interview, and the only thing that worried me was that I had started to slur my words. I couldn't figure out why. None of my friends said anything. I wrote it off to fatigue. I wasn't sleeping well. I was waking up with headaches, which was something new for me.

The interview went fine. But at dinner, it was clear that things weren't fine. One side of my face was drooping. We went to the emergency room and the doctor's first thought was Bell's Palsy, a temporary paralysis of the face. I remember thinking how awful it would be if that's what I had.

Then everything changed. I had a brain scan, and as I was wheeled back into the ER I caught the eye of my doctor. And I knew.

"We found a mass." I had a brain tumor and tumors in my lungs. I was told three to six months. I remember the room spinning, or was it my head?

Well, two years later, I'm still here. Thanks to the skills of my doctors, the strength of my friends and loved ones, and the generosity of all of you who have included me in your thoughts and prayers. And also a little stubbornness on my part.

I won't say I shouldn't be here, I don't think that's right. I wasn't expected to still be here, that's certainly true.

I'm a different person in many ways. Everything I've gone through, all the things I've learned, have changed me in ways large and small.

Who knows how this will play out?

Today I'm not going to think about that. Today there's really only one thing to say.

I'm still here.

*no, none of them are porn.

kenny g

every day, on my commute to and from work, i pass this whimsical celebration of the season:

which always gets me to thinking. no, not of jesus and the "reason for the season" but of norm macdonald, former host of saturday night live's "weekend update." one of my favorite quotes from norm:
"Kenny G released his Christmas album this week. Happy birthday, Jesus ... hope you like crap!"

with apologies to any kenny g fans out there, i have to say that i wholeheartedly agree.

making progress

i know any skeptic could say that these photos don't prove anything, but matt did successfully traverse the tire swing challenge last weekend. there were a couple of rough patches and i more than once thought he was going to rip every muscle in his groin, but he made it all the way down the row of five tires without touching the ground or rendering himself unable to walk home.

i want one too

sure sure, i've had my problems with the coyotes. and i imagine i would feel differently about them in general if one actually managed to catch and eat nina, but from the perspective of a not-making-my-living-off-my-livestock-whose-dog-has-never-been- eaten-by-coyotes kind of person, i think they are admirable creatures and wish them all the best in their travels and adventures. and after checking out this blog, i now desperately want one for a pet. matt, even more than the nina totin'-bag, i want a baby coyote for christmas.

when grandma's back is turned

grandpa steals his seventh piece of candy.

after an appropriate pause

so now that you all have had plenty of time to stare at that picture of a plastic-wrapped sausage, i guess i can do a new blog post.

we went to pennsylvania for the weekend to attend the 50-something-th annual myers family christmas party. this is matt's mother's mother's family and it's a big one. they were expecting over 80 people to attend, although threats of sleet and freezing rain kept the numbers down slightly. everyone was wonderfully nice and they loaded us down with so many tupperwares full of leftovers that nina didn't know which one to start chewing on when we stopped at a rest area to use the bathroom.

i really like this picture of matt and his grandpa, although grandpa had just stolen his sixth piece of candy from the table and is trying to hide it in the corner of his mouth.

when shopping for nina

as the holiday season fast approaches, nina would like you all to know that she is hoping for cowboy country sausage. i have made more than one reference to this ridiculously overdone dog treat that i give to my pups, so i thought it might be useful for you to peruse the tantalizing selection of sausages available at merrick's and decide for yourself which one to buy jake and nina for christmas. here is a brief description of the choices:
Cowboy Cookout Sausage - A chuckwagon of vittles (beef)
French Country Cafe Sausage - An explosion of flavor (duck)
Grammy's Pot Pie Sausage - A home-cooked memory (chicken)
New Zealand Summer Sausage - A diverse adventure (lamb)
Thanksgiving Day Dinner Sausage - A year-round feast (turkey)
Venison Holiday Stew Sausage - An expedition of flavor (venison)

chim chim cheree

Up where the smoke is
All billered and curled
'Tween pavement and stars
Is the chimney sweep world
No where is there
A more 'appier crew
Than them wot sings
"Chim chim cher-ee
Chim cher-oo!"
On the chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-ee
Chim cher-oo!

recycling day

i always forget- do cats go with paper or plastics?

happy thanksgiving

we had a smaller thanksgiving celebration this year than we have had in the past. only two generations were represented and neither of those generations were of an age to need careful monitoring at the dinner table or in the game room. the majority of us went for a pre-gorging stroll along the charles.

a surprise visit from the thanksgiving fairy

around noon today, i looked out my office window for the twenty-third time at the little pile of ice that had collected under the edge of the barn roof and finally realized it was way too warm for there to be a pile of ice collected under the barn roof. i went outside to investigate and i saw that the thanksgiving fairy had visited oak knoll, and man was she pissed at us! she went ahead and broke nine windows in the outbuildings and two windows in the main building at oak knoll last night. not content to just make a wee hole using a baseball or a pebble, she smashed the hell out of the windows using logs, boulders, and perhaps some sort of battering ram.

hoping for turducken

from wikipedia: A Turducken is a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat.

giddy-up.

half of nina

nina is 50% italian greyhound, so 50% the same as the dog in this video. cute overload titled this post "complete and total blitzkrieg".

caving under pressure

i didn't think it would be so challenging to do a blog post a day, but that's where i was wrong. this is too much for me. i'm throwing in the towel and going back to my normal system of doing a blog post almost every day.

and speaking of pressure, i have spent the last two weeks trying to hide the fact that i had invited many people over to the house to celebrate matt's birthday. i gave away much of that surprise after a botched conversation with mancini, of which matt could hear only one half. i was so bad at trying to convey the idea, "ok, we'll see you at 6:00 tonight and no, he still doesn't know about the party," in a deceptive-to-matt yet crystal-clear-to-mancini manner that matt figured out most of what was going on (mancini, on the other hand, couldn't quite grasp it and showed up two hours late for the party and for some reason, brought along a thanksgiving turkey, a jar of marbles, a life-sized cardboard cut-out of george h.w. bush, 2 dozen hotdogs, and his uncle charlie). matt also made the whole surprise party with his friends much more difficult to plan by breaking his cell phone into two pieces last weekend. the upper half (containing all the phone numbers) was completely severed from the lower half and ceased to function. operation "pilfer the digits" had to be put on hold until matt went out and purchased a new phone. so if you didn't receive an invite and would have enjoyed attending, blame verizon.

who cooks for you?

you might think that this is another story like the one where i encountered a hideously-ugly fox in the woods, but it turns out, i am not making this one up- this is a real barred owl. still living and breathing and everything, but also one that is part of mass audubon's "audubon ark" traveling animal program. both the owl and i were presenters at the grand opening of LL bean's newest store in mansfield, ma.

awaiting our departure

seriously, can we get going? i mean, this car will not drive itself, and i am ready to go.

empty bat box on a sugar maple

deconstruction

one of the outbuildings at oak knoll has been declared structurally unstable and needs to come down. just so there is no mistaking which building is intended for demolition, our property worker went ahead and labeled it.

inside this building, there are many sets of drawers that the former owner of this property built to hold all his various nuts and bolts and other assorted paraphernalia. the guy clearly had a lot of nuts and bolts and other assorted paraphernalia. i'm currently looking for a new home for approximately six storage units that look like this:

if you're interested in storing something in one of these, and you have the ability to transport it from attleboro to your own facility, please let me know asap. i can't tell you when exactly the building is going to come down, but it is going to come down soon.

a bump in the road

snuggling in the prius

capivated by a potential treat

what could it be? what could it be? bananas? cowboy country sausage? scrambled eggs with cheese? sweet holy moses, could it be cat food?


no such luck, i'm afraid. eric is holding starburst and doggies don't eat starburst (well, they WOULD eat starburst but they didn't get to).

a little scare

jake ate something that didn't agree with him on friday and we were nervous that it was a toxic amount of baking soda. matt spent most of the day cleaning up burrito-sized lumps of vomited-up grass and stuffing from funshine bear before bringing jake to the vet. by the time they got there, jake was feeling much better but the vet still kept him for x-rays and observations and other associated costly measures (including IV fluids) before releasing him later that night. jake now has a bald patch on his front leg to remind us all of this nerve-wracking time.

cruisin' the streets of montpelier in style

what's wrong with my office at 3:45 in the afternoon

the sunlight shines right in my eyes.

paperboy

i taught an afterschool program today for kids aged 6-11. i had been warned that this was a very high-energy group of kids- but honestly, who can blame them? it's a friday afternoon, for crying out loud. what kind of parent signs their kid up for a nature program on friday afternoons? and what kind of nature center leads programs for 6-11 year olds on friday afternoons? what were we thinking?

i took them on a seed scavenger hunt and they were pretty spastic, running around and screaming and yelling senseless stuff and not really focusing on the task at hand, which was supposed to be finding seeds. i saw this one boy named matt hanging on to a low limb of a white pine tree. the branch was probably three inches in diameter and matt probably weighed all of 40 some pounds, so i wasn't really at all worried about it, but suddenly the branch broke and fell on matt, pinning him to the ground. the little twigs formed a cage that kept him prostrate, even more so than the weight of the branch. i went over and lifted the branch off and checked out the small scratch along matt's nose (i guess we should all feel lucky that nothing poked him in the eye). we called an end to the search headed inside to further assess matt's injuries and a few minutes later he came up to me and said, "miss sarah, remember when that tree fell on me? well, when i was on the ground, i got this seed stuck in my hair." and i thought the kid wasn't focused.

when i got home and told matt the story, he recalled this scene from "while you were sleeping," one of my favorite moments in any movie ever.

the third dog that matt says we can't get

look at this beautiful great dane mix named dwight. he's at save-a-dog, if anyone is interested. apparently, three is an irrational number of dogs for two people to own.

also, matt is creeped out by dwight's ice blue eyes.

first attempt at a christmas photo

lucky thing we still have some time to get this right.

when we're gone

tomorrow night, i'm leading a discussion about the book, "the world without us" at the holliston public library. not having participated in a book discussion since college and never having led a book discussion, and not really having fully "read" the book, i'm trying to piece together some highlights from the text via google. turns out, the book's author was the guest on the daily show. perfect- if anyone knows how to lead a discussion of a book, it's john stewart.

that wasn't as helpful as i hoped it would be, especially since i then proceeded to waste another 38 minutes watching other john stewart clips, having not previously realized just how readily available they are. one thing i am definitely going to do is show a series of images of how new york city would change if all the people disappeared. you can check it out on the book's website. and then i'll show them the john stewart clip and call it a night.

pretty pennies

Old Shoes (and Picture Postcards) by Tom Waits

I'm singing this song, it's time it was sung
I've been putting it off for a
while,
But it's harder by now, 'cause the truth is so clear
That I cry
when I'm seeing you smile.
So goodbye, so long, the road calls me
dear
And your tears cannot bind me anymore,
And farewell to the girl with
the sun in her eyes
Can I kiss you, and then I'll be gone.

Every time
that I tried to tell
that we'd lost the magic we had at the start,
I
would weep my heart when I looked in your eyes
And I searched once again for
the spark.
So goodbye, so long, the road calls me dear
And your tears
cannot bind me anymore,
And farewell to the girl with the sun in her
eyes
Can I kiss you, and then I'll be gone.

I can see by your eyes,
it's time now to go
So I'll leave you to cry in the rain,
Though I held
in my hand, the key to all joy
Honey my heart was not born to be
tamed.
So goodbye, so long, the road calls me dear
And your tears cannot
bind me anymore,
And farewell to the girl with the sun in her eyes
Can I
kiss you, and then I'll be gone.
Can I kiss
you, and then I'll be gone,
can I kiss you, and then I'll be gone.

fetch

because there might not be time later tonight

i have big things planned for my next blog post, but it might not be ready until tomorrow. therefore, you will have to gaze upon "beech tree in the spotlight" and wait for better things to come.

how you like me now, nablopomo?

three seasons in three trees

waiting for our wonder-twin powers to activate

the trials of being earl

as the mess on my desk grows larger and more precarious, it becomes more challenging for earl to find a comfortable place to bed down for the afternoon. but somehow, he always manages to create a niche where he can both keep an eye on all proceedings and be at least slightly in the way.

"well, you shouldn't have put the manila folder in my bed if you were going to need something out of it. now you must wait until i am done with my chill-time. hit me back around 4:30pm."

testing their balance

the chief export of chuck norris is pain

it seems everyone has stepped up their blog performance for the month of november. perhaps instead of actually posting anything, i will just wait until the end of each day and say, "oh, hey, did you see the neat post from aaron and julie? or what about the one from jen?"

it turns out that moose belongs to my next-door neighbors at work. he was happily reunited with his family yesterday afternoon. the dog warden kindly suggested that moose be put on a diet. i had fun spending the afternoon with him, although he was a little gassy.

the most bloggable thing that has happened so far today

when i returned from my morning meeting at city hall, this was waiting for me in the parking lot at work:

i named him moose and gave him lots of water and all the dog treats i had in my pockets. i hope matt will let me keep him. but if i do, poor moose will have many months of strict dieting in his future. he's a bit on the portly side. but very friendly- kind of like a canine version of earl the cat.

national blog posting month starts today

an entire month of daily blog postings. hang on to your hats! i have realized already that there is going to be a lot of pressure associated with my commitment to update my blog every day this month. it is something i have done before but i never did it because i was working toward a specific goal or deadline. those of you who know me well know that i tend towards procrastination. i imagine you're going to be seeing a lot of postings submitted at 11:59pm. pacific time.

happy halloween

this is the pumpkin i carved for oak knoll's spooktacular celebration. it was based on a pattern that emma drew for me. together, we created quite a good-looking jack-o-lantern.