Structured networking

A tool for all kinds of situations. Just as when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, when you master this tool, it seems to apply everywhere. Here are the basic steps:

Figure out what you want and write a script.
Call ten people a day and ask for their help.
People will be helpful. When their advice works for you, circle back and thank them.
Offer to respond in kind.
Keep notes, keep expanding your list, keep calling.

That’s pretty much the outline. I learned to do this in the context of job hunting, under the general heading of “Looking for a job is a job.” My counselor reviewed my script, then insisted that I make those ten calls a day, which really doesn’t take very long once you have the script and a list of people to call. A shy person, I went in kicking and screaming, but I didn’t have a lot of alternatives.

I was blown away by how helpful people were, how much more helpful they wanted to be. My script wasn’t even particularly focused. It went something like this:

“Hi, I don’t know if you remember working with me on ___ project. I have been working in credit analysis—both for bond deals and bank lending for the last several years—and I am thinking that I would like to do something a little different. I like the analytical part of my job and the human interaction. I wonder if you have heard of anything that you think sounds creative and interesting, something that would use my kind of skills?”

And later in the conversation, “Can you think of anyone else that I should talk to?”

Depending on the person, I might disclose that I had just been caught in one of the waves of layoffs that battered Wall Street in the nineties, but I would note that the most important thing right now was finding the right opportunity—that I was fortunate to have a little time now to look for what I would like to do for the next few years. When I started writing the script, I was furious at the counselor. After all, the truth was that I was desperate for a new job. But by the time we polished every word of the script, I believed it. And I was able to approach the people I called without pressuring them, to assure them that I was delighted to have this opportunity to catch up with them, and that I valued their suggestions.

The hardest part of structured networking is getting your head straight in the first place. You don’t have to believe the story all day long, but you do have to believe it for the hour or so it takes to make ten calls a day. You don’t want to pressure the person in any way. You don’t want to ask for a job or an interview or even an informational interview. You just want them to apply their creative intelligence to help you expand the number and quality of opportunities available to you. You don’t, after all, want to have to rely on the dreary postings in the newspaper, and you don’t have to.

When you wrte the script—and even more when you review it with someone who can help you polish it—you will see all your secret insecurities come out.

“But people won’t want to help me.” Actually, people love to help.

“No, I mean, they won’t think my skills and talents are adequate.” Maybe, maybe not. Start with the ones you have confidence will want to help you and work up to the cold calls. You will be needing to make cold calls, and it will not kill you. It’s only ten a day.

“Ten sounds like a lot.” Okay, start with five. But the more calls you make in a day, the faster you will get to a wide variety of opportunities to change your life in a positive way. Some days you will hate to pick up the phone, just as some days are tough on any job. But now you are working for yourself and for your future. So pick a minimum number you can live with, and get moving.

“I don’t think there are any jobs out there.” Oh please. Get real. There are always jobs. If you are willing to do some networking, there are more jobs. If you are flexible enough to consider consulting and short term opportunities, worlds open up. The downside is that it may seem you are always looking for a job; the upside is that you don’t mind so much because you are always expanding your opportunities.

“I don’t know enough people to call.” Talk to everyone. The other members of the nonprofit board you serve on, the other mothers in the carpool, the soccer coach, the guy you run into at the dry cleaner, everyone you ever worked with, old school friends. You don’t know who they know until you ask them. Many, many conversations take a turn at “Well, actually, I do know this one guy who said something about….”

“I just don’t think I can do it.” Okay, so your shyness is more important to you than finding a job that makes you happy. Your choice. But do you think you could write the script? And once you do, ask yourself whether you think you can make a few calls. Make a list of who you would call if you felt strong one day. Say your spiel out loud until it doesn’t sound stupid to you any more. Then one day, you will pick up the phone and ask for help from friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and strangers. And you will be amazed that you ever let shyness get in your way.

There are a few important guidelines. Don’t whine. Don’t pressure. Do say thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your ideas. And when something pays off, call back the person who gave you the lead and say thank you again. And don’t be surprised when in a few months, your phone rings, and you hear, “Hi, I don’t know if you remember calling me…but now I am looking for some new opportunities….”

That is structured networking. I grant you that learning it is painful, but it is a skill that can be applied to all kinds of needs. Now, whenever I need anything (where to find a good puppy kindergarten, who should I ask to paint my house, what innovative programs in workforce development can we develop, what seminars would be interesting to the business community, how do other single women manage large household tasks, what can be done about an obstreperous board member, why can’t I keep staff….and so on), I just ask everyone I know until I generate a robust range of alternatives. What a difference from relying on my puny brain!

Structured networking is good, I think, for a shy person, because it gives us a controlled way to tap into the riches of the outside world. At the same time, I think it would help an extrovert to focus on the goals of interchange. By marking progress against an objective, an extrovert would be able to take that social interchange that is so easy and focus it on a desired outcome. I’m just guessing that for an extrovert, the organizational parts of the process might be harder and the calling easier.

In any case, according to my outplacement counselor, this is a technique that works for a broad range of people in all kinds of situations. After kicking, screaming, and trying it, I know it works for me. I came out of my first, supervised experience with structured networking with two exciting job offers, numerous interviews, a lot of very interesting conversations with people I didn’t know, a lot of wonderful reconnections with people I had not seen in years, and a new confidence in myself and humankind. Not bad for ten calls a day.

Who’s teaching who?

An old friend and I have started back up an e-mail correspondence just recently, and she writes happily, “

OK, bed time. We have way too much going on, and still not enough hours in the day. I hate that! I WILL write more, I promise. It's just WONDERFUL to be back in touch with you!!!!

This is a woman with the gift of being happy, married to a man with the gift of taking on the world on his own terms. Job transitions have her thinking about making some life changes, and she imagines that I have some wisdom to share. I do, but some of it gets handed back, since it came from the two of them. Since I make a habit of keeping my friends anonymous in this blog, let’s call my friend Doreen and her husband Douglas.

I met Doreen at an arts camp in Maine, a spectacularly beautiful place where I had retreated to make pots for three weeks, while she made baskets. We had a bond immediately. Neither of us, for the life of us, could fathom the intensity with which our classmates viewed the search for the perfect “vessel.” It took only a hint of the v-word to send us into giggles.

It was a period of weird and wacky life connections, too. Doreen had gone to high school in Cincinnati with a guy I was seeing at the time, and also with Sarah Jessica Parker (not that that matters to any of us but I wonder what including a celebrity name will do to my blog stats). I was taking pottery lessons from a potter who was having a feud with my pig farmer cousin in Georgia. Doreen and I took a day trip one day, and we visited a fort in Maine that is built on the identical plan of one near Savannah, where my mother grew up. Maybe that fort is a metaphor for our lives, two identical plans executed in worlds far apart. Me Southern and shy, her Jewish and bubbly.

We remarked that day on the poignancy of fortifications of such exquisite design, but both outdated by advances in armaments. The invention of spiral bores in rifles made their walls vulnerable in unforeseen ways, and they had to be abandoned. It was not, thank goodness, necessary to abandon our lives as we went back to the real world of difficult jobs.

Doreen also went back to Douglas. She had told me stories of his rather unusual approach to life, and also his zest for life. While we were potting, weaving and giggling in the woods, Douglas was on a bike tour to China. Listening Doreen talk about Douglas, it was one of the times that I recognized that when people are really in love, they see the other person as absolutely unique, as if he or she exists with an extra dimension. They even speak the name differently, with a kind of hushed expectance. It’s a dead giveaway, just as one of the ways you know that someone is checking you out is if they ask your age.

The one that really got my attention, though, was the description of Douglas recruiting a new secretary for his office. It was a tough market, it seems, and the usual routes of advertising and interviewing had not worked well. So Douglas wrote up a resume for the office and went out into the crowds at rush hour to try to get more applicants, maybe ones that were happy at their jobs and hadn’t even considered a new opportunity. What an idea! If something is not working, change the approach. Don’t settle for what you can get, change the rules. When I went back to my difficult job and difficult boss, I changed my approach. And I have remembered that lesson.

One of my favorite true stories of how people really manage life transitions—as opposed to how we all think we do it—is the story of how they decided to get married. “It was a slip of the subjunctive,” says Doreen. “One day he said to me something about when we get married and I almost dropped my teeth.” But it was too late to take it back, or he really didn’t want to, and neither did she. They were married in a garden, as Doreen put it, “of late blooming flowers.” And they were happy. She has a gift for happy, and he has the sense to organize her into his life.

A couple of years later, I saw Doreen briefly at the airport. She was on her way to Russia. She was so excited about the trip, but it was the first time she was leaving her baby son. I think it took a lot of courage to make that trip. Not long after that, Douglas and Doreen moved from the northeast to the South, a dramatic cultural change on so many levels.

And this is the woman who wants to know how I have gone about making big changes in life? I have watched her and learned from her, among others of my dear good friends. There are some specific skills I learned, too, like the value of structured networking, a lifesaver for the shy person. It gives you a tool for being outgoing when you really would rather not. And I am told that for the outgoing, it can offer a way to organize all the information that you gather without even thinking about it. Maybe I will blog about that tomorrow.

Oddly enough, Douglas’s parents live in the same retirement community near Burlington as one of my best friends. So perhaps I will have visits from Doreen and Douglas and their children to look forward to, as I also enjoy J’s visits to Vermont with his daughter and his girlfriend. I could end up with more friends in Vermont than I had in other places I lived. Ain’t life weird and grand?

Because we can

A friend of mine, lets call her Jay, asked me a question at a Christmas party, and I have been chewing on it in the background of my mind ever since. At least I guess I must have been, because I woke up yesterday, or maybe it was today, with an answer.

This question is pretty intense for a woman that I only know slightly, and with whom I don’t always feel I have much in common. I struggle not to be too casual in dress; she loves shoes and gets manicures. She is social; I’m an introvert. She has a grown son; I love my dogs. But we are both of an age, and we like each other. More than once, casual conversation has abruptly shifted, and we find we are talking about things that matter to us deeply, things that usually take a lot more care to introduce into polite conversation. Things like mental health and what it is really like to be a woman in the predominantly male world of finance and our shared love of hands on home improvement and our bemused appreciation of men.

“Why is it so hard for me?” she wants to know. This is not an insecure person, and I understand that she is not asking “Why doesn’t anyone want me?” She is bright and beautiful and funny and good company and financially secure. She is asking a different question, and I am flattered that she considers that I might know any part of an answer. The fact is I have the same question: “What is wrong with me that I think it is okay to live alone? Shouldn’t I want someone in my life? Shouldn’t I want people closer to me? Am I being too hard on the people who love me? Am I shutting out relationships that might bring joy into my life? Have I failed to grasp the tradeoff between working on a relationship and avoiding loneliness?” She is asking the question in the context of an insistent potential lover, while I am not--at least not at the moment--but I can see that my question is what has kept me in bad relationships.

Even at Christmas, I knew part of the answer. If there is no magic, if there never has been that spark of connection in the attraction to the other person, it’s not worth it. Relationships that start with magic are hard enough to navigate, and we are long past the age of arranged marriages. I am grateful that it is not now as rare for women to live alone. When I was first divorced twenty years ago, I had to work hard to accept my new state. As a good southern girl, there was very, very few single women in my extended family who weren’t perceived as having a little something wrong with them. It took a long time for me to decide I would rather have something wrong with me than stay in a bad relationship, and I have repeated that wrenching decision a few times now.

Eventually, I may get it right. It seems that the challenge of my lifetime is to learn to let go once the magic has receded. Despite my deep fears that I give up too quickly, the truth is that I give up far too slowly. Too little self respect or over-responsibility for the other person keeps me stuck until I wake up one bright morning and realize that I can just walk away. That’s what I am trying to learn. Again and again. Still.

Why do I live alone? Because I can, at least right now. I can afford my own house and I can pay my bills As life goes on, things change and I may not always have this luxurious option. I may need to have a roommate.or move to lower cost housing, maybe even give up my well loved dogs. For now, I am happy.

There are downsides to living alone. Aside from the expense, there isn’t anyone to share chores, and it often takes me a long time to figure out how to accomplish some household projects. At the end of the day, as we would say on Wall Street, it is a business decision. Do I give up what I have for a risky prospect? These kinds of decisions take analysis of pros and cons, then a leap of intuition and faith and love.

When I married at nineteen, I made that leap. It paid off big time. I had several years of joy before things changed, then a few years of struggle to accept that my world had changed. Would I make the leap again? In a heartbeat. But only if the magic is there.

I am pleased to say that one of the things I love about Vermont is that I see hints and whispers of magic everywhere. Almost everywhere I go, I meet interesting men that show real promise. Nobody yet for whom I would give up my current life….well maybe one. Or two. The riches of possibility enliven my life. And if nobody comes along, the downside is that I live alone in the luxury of my own home until old age or illness requires otherwise. The long term future I imagine is an apartment or one-room house, but as age advances, I may have to live closer to services and dogs will become increasingly problematic.

To answer Jay’s question. Why do we live alone? Because we can. Because we are financially and emotionally secure enough that we have that option.

Love thy neighbor

I love my neighbors. I really do.

Right now I particularly love the guy up the road who plows my driveway. Only last month I learned that he plows only for me and the guy on the other side of me. Still, for a guy with his own excavating business and a couple of small side jobs, you could not ask for a more committed and responsible service provider.

I am a happy customer, whose response yesterday tipped over into sheer joy and exhilaration. I have been struggling with a big pile of ice in front of my garage, and after days of shoveling and chipping, I gave up, leaving a barrier the size of three stacked speed bumps—or sleeping policemen, as they would say in Jamaica—still blocking the entrance to my garage. When I came home for the puppy’s lunchtime break from her kennel, it occurred to me that if I left the garage door open then the plow guy might be able to whack the icy barrier. Or shove it. Or something. I even thought about placing a phone call, but, as usual I got distracted.

When I came home last night—oh, joy!—it worked. There was a clean, flat surface where three policemen used to sleep. I drove my car into the garage, closed the door and called to leave a message that I am sure my neighbor and his family will giggle over. Why shouldn’t they giggle? And why shouldn’t they share my delight that I have figured out one more little thing that—with my neighbors’ help--makes winter in Vermont a little easier?

I am also pretty fond of the couple down the road who brought me the most spectacular platter of Christmas cookies that I have ever seen. Something of a cookie snob, I was impressed with the variety of shapes, the amount of detail work, and the use of real butter. We cookie snobs can tell. These are people I have met once, but in Vermont proximity can be enough to make neighbors, and thoughtful care and simple kindness are often offered without thought of return.

Yankee ingenuity

I’m trying something new. Not, you understand, because it is the New Year. I am an innovation junkie. I just love trying something new.

My friend Mary just returned from a scary surgery in which a golfball size tumor was removed from her brain, just behind the bridge of her nose. Death and blindness averted, she is enjoying the fact that her exceptional fitness has enabled her to bounce back. And to what does she attribute this exceptional fitness? Walking.

Mary walks several miles a day. I wish I could remember exactly how many, because you would be impressed. She walks in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening. If you are in Montpelier at midday, you may see Mary logging miles. But in the morning she walks at home.

In casual conversation at some Rotary event or another, I asked Mary how she manages to fit in so much walking. I really like to walk, but when I wake up it is dark and by the time I feed dogs, sit under the therapy light, do Pilates, answer e-mail, read horoscopes, blog, make breakfast, wash and get dressed...well, not all of those even get done every morning.

“I walk at home,” says Mary.

Still not getting it, I ask another way, “But isn’t it dark?”

“No, I walk in my house,” she says. “We have TVs in the kitchen and in the living room, so I turn them on and open all the doors and I walk in a circle around and around my house. Then I turn around and walk the other way.”

“Doesn’t it wear out your floors?”

“Silly, I wear sneakers!”

Worth a try, I say. So this morning, after doing Pilates under the therapy lamp (another experiment!) I set the timer for twenty minutes and tried it. If I open the doors to the bathroom and the study (normally shut off for dog control and heat retention), then I can walk in a circle around and around my house, although I suspect that my house is somewhat smaller than Mary’s—one TV covers the territory. I have taken to recording the morning news so that I can fast forward through ads and seemingly incessant coverage of high school hockey, and now I actually feel informed about Vermont events, or as informed as Channel 3 can make me.

But back to the walking. It works great. I go around in one direction five or six times, then when I start to feel it in my hips, I go the other way. I switch the remote from hand to hand. The doggy barriers just add variety. Either I jump them or I shout “Excuse me! Excuse me!” and they comply. I add in a little bending and stretching to pick up yesterday’s dog-shredded items for more variety. Toward the end, I bend to get a pan out of the cabinet, eggs from the fridge, and lifting my knees high, keep walking back and forth, back and forth. By the time breakfast is ready, the timer goes off. Twenty minutes walking, finished!

Minor adjustments are required. I am a little worried about my living room rug, a good Oriental that is a relic of the days when I had more money, so I will put down some runners. Somewhere along the way, the puppy snagged the goats milk soap in the bathroom, from which she is normally shut out. The total schedule needs to be tightened up a bit—it is almost time to walk out the door and I still am in my jammies—but there is promise for this indoor walking.

Thanks, Mary!

Sing a song of Christmas socks

It was a good Christmas. I got a lot of socks.

We are a family of people who teach and people who make rules, all perfectly fine until you get us into a room together and we each try to bend others to our own sets of rules. Several years ago, some family members jumped onto the Christmas list bandwagon, the concept being that specifying some items as interesting would prevent horrible gifts, those well or not-so-well intentioned items that someone spends hard earned money to acquire and that subsequently clutter our houses. It is a good concept and one that sometimes even works.

Still, I don’t really approve, because I consider Christmas more than the season of stuff and more stuff. I think the heart of Christmas is considering how we can touch each other, and the Christmas list gets in the way as much as it bridges gaps.

In the end, I had no alternative but to offer up a few suggestions just to cut down the yammering. So I confessed that I like socks. I like warm socks and silly socks, slipper socks and all kinds of socks. It is hard to have too many socks or too many mittens or too many hats, because these items all disappear, even when rigorously protected from dogs who love them as chew toys.

Socks can make a fashion statement, but even people (like me) who are picky about clothes cannot be picky about socks.

The iPod was a delightful gift, all the more so because I didn’t even know I wanted one. Probably the best gift I got was my nine-year-old niece stopping in mid-unwrapping to curl up beside me and read me the book she picked out for me all on her own, and a surprisingly appropriate book at that. These were wonderful, unexpected gifts.

But I would really have been happy with socks.

There is little that I want these days, and the things I need are unromantic and unsuited to gift-giving occasions. But anyone who knows me even a little knows how little it takes to please me. Cookbooks or cooking gear—the simpler the better. Dishtowels trump the latest gadget to carve vegetables. Luxurious towels and sheets in white. And socks.

One of the best gifts I ever received was a four-pack of luxurious gray socks with blue snowflakes on them. Multiple pairs of good socks are wonderful, because when one sock gets lost or eaten, there are other matches. I loved these socks so much that I have protected them from dog mouths and I think I still have seven of the original eight socks. They are still my very favorite socks.

Home for Christmas

It was a wonderful Christmas. But then I can’t recall a bad one. Christmas always has a message for those of us who listen for it.

This year I had the quintessential holiday experience complete with small children tearing through paper in the company of lots of extended family and longtime friends. It was the kind of warm and cozy holiday experience that you see in the movies.

I love Christmas gifts, and I enjoy thinking about them and shopping through the year, but this year, for the first time in many years, I actually got a gift that far exceeded any expectations—an ipod! I would never have even thought to request such a thing, but it was exactly what I wanted. Exactly. I think the last time I got such a perfect gift was when a long departed boyfriend gave me a router so that I could dream of replicating moldings in the house I was renovating. As I recall, I burst into tears then, as I almost did again, but mostly I was just delighted. Like a kid at Christmas.

There were shadow moments, of course, including remembered and new trials of traveling by air. I have not traveled much since security measures ramped up, nor since airlines have been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and I have mislaid some of my skills for dealing with expected travel challenges, not to mention a few new ones.

And it always makes me cock my head in confusion when the people who claim to know me well don’t understand what I do with my time if I don’t go to movies or out to eat. Readers of Vermont Diary know what I do. It is a Christmas miracle that we manage to rub along as well as we do, given that we have so little contact throughout the year and—really—so little in common. The warmth of the holiday leaves everyone saying, “Let’s keep in touch more!” Let’s hold on a little longer to the thought that it might happen.

But, gosh! It is great to be home. The South is not home to me, not any more. It is a lovely place to visit, and I particularly enjoyed morning walks in the sunshine. But I feel as strangled by expectation and unwritten rules as ever, and I am glad to be back home where life is a little slower and more deliberate, where people ask for what they need and respect your right to give or withhold according to your resources.

As someone pointed out to me when I took my puppy to work a few weeks ago, I am in danger of going native and of becoming a Vermont booster, blind to her faults. I was obscurely proud this morning to hear that there were only seven murders in the state this year, and I was absolutely delighted to arrive at the parking lot yesterday to find my car ready and running, waiting just for me. In this tourism state where I have frequently complained that service providers don’t understand the demands of travelers from New York and Boston, I was overwhelmed at this welcoming touch.

The puppy has grown. She looks about 30% bigger in just a week. So far her sitters have said she was good, but we have not yet had the full debriefing. The old boys are happy to see me, but did not panic at my absence as they sometimes have. We are all happy to be back in our morning routine of coffee and kibble, looking out at snowcapped mountains, sitting under the artificial light, and blogging.

Cooking and cleaning and catching the puppy in the act

Despite having left behind the rat race of Manhattan, I still rush through weekdays and catch up at weekend time. Saturdays are the time allotted for picking up the shreds and tatters of whatever the puppy found, and perhaps even vacuuming the living room rug. Sundays, assuming the Saturday cleaning catchup has been successful, I cook.

Today I went looking for a recipe for sweet potatoes. Last night’s frugal cooking led me to bake two large sweet potatoes along with dinner, my little nod at energy conservation. If you throw all kinds of things into the oven together (but separate), my gleeful spirit feels I have gotten the cooking of some of them for free. So in they go, potatoes and sweet potatoes, eggplant and garlic, peppers and popovers. Nobody seems to mind sharing.

But then I am indentured to vegetables, and I have to figure out what to do with them. I had just unearthed a nifty sounding recipe for sweet potato soup with lime and cilantro, when I noticed that where once there were two large tubers, now there was only one. With yesterday’s breakfast roll experience still smarting, I went looking for the puppy. Sure enough, there was half a sweet potato on the living room rug, which as all dog lovers know is the only place that messy food really tastes good.

Damn. In case you, gentle reader have not encountered this part of my personality, let me enlighten you that my language goes shockingly to hell whenever I am stressed, not that a sweet potato theft generally takes me over the edge. It is one relic of having worked with bond traders, who, no matter what anyone tells you, are not nice people, not wholesome, and not pleasant to be around. It is something of a departure that I have made such a judgment, determined as I am to see the good in everyone, even bond traders. That world is a long way from my world now, except for the occasional inappropriate expletive. Never mind.

While I was thumbing through cookbooks, a recipe card floated to the floor. Anti-chew spray, composed of equal parts of lemon juice and rubbing alcohol, with a dash of Tabasco for flavor. Now there’s a recipe with promise.

I wonder if Toby would like it sprayed on his back legs?

Meanwhile, I am continuing to clean today, having frittered away not only yesterday but also a snow day on Friday, and I want to say a word about cleaning. I don’t like it. For a variety of good reasons, I never really learned how, and I never really learned the discipline of a cleaning routine. My mother always said that a hundred years from now nobody would know if you vacuumed, but they might know what kinds of kids you raised. While I accept that she is absolutely, one hundred percent correct about that, I still bask in a clean, tastefully and sparely decorated room. My soul craves cleanliness as godliness, but my wayward being does not know how to get there as a matter of daily life.

I wish I did have the talent for creating comfort and light around me. At various times in my life, I have tried to learn the skills. Jeff Campbell of The Clean Team is one of my inspirations, at least as important to me as many skilled writers and thinkers. It was from The Clean Team I learned that even if my mother had taught me how to clean, I would have needed to learn all over again. So now, when I am moved to clean, I use Red Juice and Blue Juice. I clean sinks and bathroom fixtures with spray and cleaning cloths rather than sluicing them with water. I wash many, many things in the dishwasher—the glass parts of light fixtures, as my mother taught me, but also dustpans and the plastic head off my brooms, resting in the conviction that the dishwasher sanitizes everything.

In my own personal variation of the Clean Team’s Shmop, I clean floors with wet towels right out of the washer. Never an athletic person, I many years ago passed the milestone at which a bend to the floor is an occasion to ask oneself, “What else might I do while I am down here?” You can imagine how pleased I was to learn that one can clean floors by putting down wet towels then dancing on them, slipping around a little, then throwing them right back into the washer for another round. This kind of effort-conserving innovation makes it all much easier to have a puppy, but she does cock her head bemused when she sees me cavort across the utility room floor which she has worked so hard to make her own.

Why I got a puppy

The old boys are old, it is true, but even at age nine dogyears, Toby is strong and energetic. He has slowed down a little, but he still enjoys a run and a romp as much as anyone. Max cannot keep up, but Max is smart and self-reliant. Either he stays close to me when we are out, or he lies down in a spot where he can keep watch over his little flock of Toby and me and—most recently—the baby Cassandra. We like to go out together, at least we do when the four-legged ones can coax the two-legged one off the couch and out into the cold.

One of my personal goals is to get outdoors more and enjoy this magical place where I live. It is an irony of rural life that tied as we are to automobile transport, unless we plan for foot travel, it does not naturally happen as daily life grinds relentlessly forward. And it is a reality of life in Vermont that we must have different schedules, adapt to different rhythms as the seasons change. Walking is a delight in summer and fall, but the cold and snow of winter bring a halt to that activity.

Snowshoeing is a wonderful replacement for walking, but some adaptations are required. Compared to even the most brisk autumn hike, walking on snowshoes is hard work, although far easier than slogging through the snow would be without this inventive footgear. People from around here recommend ramping up on snowshoes, starting with the first snowfall of two or three inches so that when the snow is really deep, leg muscles are accustomed to the work and feet no longer cramp in protest at peculiar angles. Well, I forgot to do that.

Still, this morning was the right time to head out on snowshoes. The puppy has gone into a bratty phase that clearly calls for a couple of good runs a day to flatten her out. I am reminded of a year-old German Shepherd pup named Xena that Max and Toby used to play with in Prospect Park. It took Xena’s owners a good hour of hard running twice a day to turn her into a well-behaved dog appropriate for apartment life. I thought a lot about Xena when I was thinking about bringing Miss Cassandra home. A lot.

So after this morning’s antics, which I will spare you, but they involved two pairs of shoes, both old dogs’ breakfasts, my breakfast, the garbage, the clothes I wore yesterday, and the garbage again, not to mention an unauthorized flat out run all the way around the house and across the road, we went up the hill, me with my snowshoes and my dogs.

The snow is beautiful. There is no adjective that conveys what it is like. This particular storm left us with six inches of grainy, but fluffy, pure white stuff on top of another three or so inches, so the dogs are sinking in to elbow and chest. They don’t care, they just love it. Even with snowshoes, the snow is so fluffy that I sink in about six inches, so it is a serious cardio workout to get up the hill into the sugarbush.

Cassie covers four or five times the distance that Max and I do, and she is in heaven. She is covered in snow. She jumps and runs and dives, skidding along like a sea otter. She chases Toby, and he chases her, but old-dog-canny, he mostly lets her run circles around him. The two of them break trail for me, and Max follows, taking the easiest route for weary old legs. Later, he sticks close behind, sometimes walking on the backs of my snowshoes, his breath warming the backs of my knees.

Just up to the top of the hill and back, then across to the garden to throw a few snowballs, and baby Cassandra is ready for a nap. It is a great workout, with incomparable beauty and the simple joy of dogs enjoying snow. To get me out more to experience this kind of thing—that’s why I got a puppy.

Choosing the right story

As humans we are driven to connect the dots, to try to make a story from the stuff of event and experience. We choose the story that pleases us, whether one that involves a higher being directing our lives, one that puts the individual firmly in control of his or her own life, or one that takes direction only from other people. Even the view that all events are independent, random blips, that there is no story is a kind of story, just as random splashes of paint on canvas can be a kind of art.

Some of us spend much of life blissfully unaware that we are living in our own dramatic creation until something happens to jolt us out of it, perhaps an illness or a spouse who suddenly rewrites their own story line and shoves us onto a different path as well. And some of us are uncomfortably aware of how easy it is to make different stories of the same raw material.

Sometimes we change our stories at different times of life. I lived through periods when I could not see past depression, and that is a kind of sick, weary, misdirected story. It is a sad thing to believe the world is random, or worse, to believe the deck is stacked against you. I lived through periods unsure of a belief in God, then as if I had walked through a revolving door, that changed for me, although I am uncomfortably aware that for more serious and faithful souls, that gift is sometimes withdrawn. Still, faith is a gift for which I am grateful today and for as long as I have it.

It is important to have respect for our stories. We cannot force the world to live according to what we wish to see. Denial is a short term fix, although one that can appear to be a powerful cloak against truth. To those who counsel making lemonade of lemons, I say instead learn to appreciate the lemon and its meaning in your life.

I come from a line of story-telling people. Not much gets written down, at least not as far as I know, but there are many, many stories of funny, sad, hopeful, and triumphant events, all of which seem to have happened to relatives. There are a few disgraceful ones, too, but very few, because it is the way in my family to keep darkness away by pretending it is not there. And because we embrace and celebrate hope and light. I still want to write a novel called Story Wars, which would be about big battles of dark and light, alongside siblings’ battle to top each others tales.

Recently I finished reading a lovely book called Sight Hound by Pam Houston, a book I wish I had written. She does a good job of writing the same events from different perspectives, showing the stories of different people interact in specific times and places, and also how sometimes the story changes, and it is time to move on. But the real passion and brilliance of her book is in capturing what it is like to love a dog.

Each dog, she says, has something different to teach us. It is our joyful task to discern what that is. In the book, old wolfhound Dante taught his human Rae how to be loved, and young Rose is to teach her how to play, both important lessons that Rae can only learn at the appointed time in her life.

I can see the same truth in my dogs. Max has taught me dignity and self-respect, how to growl when necessary, how to flirt and how to be a little goofy. Toby has taught me what it is like to be loved completely and unconditionally. Those lessons will be with me all my life and likely long past the ends of their lives. Thinking of how much they have taught me—and at exactly the right time in my life—makes it a little easier to think of losing these old, beloved friends.

Is this view of them, this story a construct that creates meaning out of thousands of walks to the park, squabbles over kibble, and cuddles on the sofa? Yes. But it is a story in which I perceive truth, at least for now. Will I ever come to accept different story in which they are only dogs, only pets, weak substitutes for having more people in my life? I hope not. I like this version, sappy as it may appear to those who have not had the blessing of dogs in their life.

As for Miss Cassandra, I wonder what she will teach me. For now, I am enjoying watching her learn to be part of the pack and learn from the old boys what they think I will need from her in years to come.

Shepherd for a shepherd

A shoe. One of my good work shoes, actually. The edge of another shoe, the ones I wear out in the snow when it isn’t too deep.

One Christmas sock, the kind you wear, not the kind you hang.

A dishtowel. A plastic milk jug.

A bottle of Murphy’s oil soap, still with cap intact, thank goodness.

A shepherd from the nativity scene. I wonder why she picked….oh, I get it. Perhaps a little glue will save him.

This is yesterday’s list of the puppy victims. At my feet, I hear happy crunching sounds as another soda bottle gets pre-recycled.

My kind of day

A snowy Sunday. About three inches of sparkly, fluffy stuff. Dogs out to romp in the fenced yard. Clean the floors, a task best tackled without dog help.

Bake the gingersnaps I made yesterday. How will they turn out, gently hot with candied ginger, dry ginger, and black pepper, molasses mellowed? It is Maida Heatter’s favorite Christmas cookie. I cut them smaller—just over two inches—and get seven dozen from the recipe that makes three dozen of her larger rounds. Enough for my cookie swap on Tuesday. Ah, the satisfaction of an obligation met early.

Dogs in sometime during the baking. Evil puppy Cassandra helps out by stealing the wax paper that wrapped the cookie dough, the foil on which the cookies baked, and the remains of a pound cake—each shredded in its turn on the living room rug.

Dogs out for a romp. We take the “bait” from the freezer—leftover roast beef a tad too rare for me, cut into tiny cubes—and go across the road to the big field for recall work. Three dogs on leashes to get across the road, one of whom does not know how to walk on a leash. The old boys are patient, me too, and we get there. Now, sit to have your leashes released, and they are off!

The puppy still forgets sometimes to put down her front feet, so she skids in the snow, but she doesn’t care. She is as happy as happy gets. She has her favorite Toby to chase, her favorite Mom with roast beef to hand out, and she is learning to work. Working dogs really do love to work. We have a productive session, and even Toby, whose recall skills have been slipping, does well. Even with rare roast beef in my pocket, and even as deeply as Toby love me, it is hard for me to compete with frozen manure, rabbit holes and deer tracks. What a world of doggy delight!

Old dog Max keeps up and gets a little treat from time to time, just because. His medication is getting adjusted again, but he sticks close to me. We probably cover less than a quarter of the distance that the other two skim across. Another inch of snow, and this would be snowshoe depth. It’s the kind of snow that swirls around and piles up in valleys, leaving the hills all but bare.

Home again, and no, nobody wants to go back in the fenced yard. The living room stove is in all our thoughts, and we curl up for a cup of tea and to figure out how you put binding on a quilt. I even find the cool technique by which you make bias binding from a square of fabric cut, sewn, folded, cut, sewn and cut again to the perfect width and length. Math and sewing and an old movie (Adam’s Rib) all in one afternoon, how cool!

I have four more kissing balls to make for the Rotary auction. Our three-person team (one for greenery collection, one for oversight, and myself for labor) will produce eighteen hanging confections of greenery, ribbon and baubles for next week’s big fundraiser. I don’t quite have the will to pull out the greenery again today, not with my newly clean floors. The dogs are joyous when it comes to tree branches in the house, and they help spread sticks and needles all over. Instead we take a nap.

Back for Christmas!

One of my favorite Advent traditions from last year is back. It's Susan's advent calendar http://www.q-creative.com/christmas

So far, I like Rudolf best. Be sure to click on his nose. (Not sure how this will work unless you have broadband.)

Making room for Christmas

The rush and bustle to create the ultimate Christmas experience is on. Some of it is fun, particularly if we can savor the tree-cutting, decoration-hanging, cookie-baking, present-wrapping and all the layered elements that comprise our individual and family experiences of Christmas. Savoring takes time and mindfulness, and it is ever so human to layer on more and more until our overburdened spirits cry, “Stop! I need rest.”

That rest is the moment of Christmas. In that moment we give up the need to be all things to all people. We recognize our frailty as animal beings that require food and sleep. We learn that adrenaline can be a high, but it carries us to the edge of self-control, only to leave us gasping. We see that our friends and family are human, too, and that each of us does for each other what we can do, no more but also no less.

I go into the holiday season with trepidation. I love my family, but I don’t think they know me. How could they? It has been years since they spent much time with me.

I’m the weird aunt, the one who lives far away where it is cold (why would you do that?), the one who has a family of dogs rather than people, the one who used to have a high-paying job but chose a simpler life. (Do you really think it will change what kind of presents we get? Yes, it will.) A card-carrying introvert, I don’t even seem to make an effort to explain myself, not nearly enough, and I end up feeling like a wayward zoo animal taken in by a family of cartoon bears. They are charming and lovely people, and they know each other’s quirks and habits with a degree of intimacy and a level of judgment that make me shudder.

I drop literally from the sky—thanks to Jet Blue—into a swirl of human relationships that have nothing—or almost nothing—to do with me. Not having any recent data about this wayward zoo animal, my family reverts to roles, expectations and memories from many years ago. I become—whether I like it or not—the big sister away at college. I relive all the mistakes I made from ages ten to twenty, the time when my siblings were in high school or middle school, when they were first aware enough of other people to form impressions. There are some isolated memories from other periods of life, but it was those years that shaped the way we relate to each other. With limited contact in later life, we have not had much opportunity to change roles, although we are all now very different people than we were thirty years ago.

Changing roles is tough. I spoke today with a colleague who works closely with a bright, sensitive young man who has recently started living as a woman. The kind of pain that a person must experience before taking a step as dramatic as changing gender I cannot even imagine. My colleague is struggling to get his mind to accept the change, but he cares about his colleague so he will make the effort. This change is a big, outwardly visible, even shocking change in role, so it gets attention. The smaller changes in roles, in how we wish to be perceived, that we ask of our families and friends are much easier for them to overlook in the bustle of Christmas preparation.

Enforced joyousness also brings with it a heaping portion of guilt. We think of friends and family at this one time, but the rest of the year passes in a blur of work, school and other obligations. At one level, it makes me sad that of my entire extended family—brothers, sister, in-laws, nieces and nephews—only my mother and sometimes one brother make an effort to stay in touch with me. Only my mother reads my blog, although I used to send it out to everyone until I recognized this sad truth. At another level, I understand that people are busy and after they tend to relationships that are most important to them, there is not much left over.

I believe in love, and I believe that love is action, not feeling. At Christmas, I believe it is important to make an effort to keep connections alive So even though I am sorely tempted to stay at home with friends, with the comfort of old dogs and with my bright and beautiful new puppy, I will spend money I can’t afford and brave the horrors of holiday travel to visit my extended family. I will drop into a family dynamic that does not involve me, since I am only a shadow from the past, but where I am expected to play roles I no longer fit. I will experience conflict and likely tears, possibly my own, possibly tears I cause. It’s what we do at Christmas.

I made an off-hand, flippant comment to a friend that I try to make Christmas simpler every year. Reeling from a new job and a multitude of other life changes, she fired back by e-mail, “How do you do that?” It’s not easy to beat back the urge to bustle. But it is possible to give yourself permission to stop.

This year I won’t have a Christmas tree. Christmas trees and puppies and dog-sitters are not a good combination. I used to make dozens and dozens of cookies. This year I will do a cookie swap and find somewhere to give them away. I like to do my Christmas shopping during summer vacation, but this year I surprised myself by finishing my shopping and mailing all presents before December. A breakthrough! I feel so free!

I used to try to preserve traditions by doing the same things every year, but I ran out of steam. Now I save up energy for the things that matter, and I pick a different one each year. Last year it was important to me to have a Christmas tree and spend Christmas in my own home; this year I will travel, so I will cut back on other things.

Why fuss with the juggling? Why bother with any of it? Because this act of mindfully choosing to spend time together keeps alive a connection to people who are important to me and creates a channel for future connection that may become important one day in ways I cannot foresee. Choosing to spend time together for these few special days is an act of faith in family and in love. The fact that we—like millions of other families—don’t necessarily get along every minute doesn’t change anything. If we pay attention to what we are trying to do, and if we are a little lucky, we may experience a few really special moments of connection, of recognition of each other as unique and special, of mutual support. Then it is really Christmas.

The real work of Christmas is making room for the magic to happen. Even so, we can’t force it. We can only create a little stillness and wait.

Wait a minute

In New England, they say, if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute. With snow forecast for last night, I was surprised to wake to late autumn browns and grays, not a flake in sight. Hearing that the anticipated storm had dumped its load to the east, I ventured to drive to Montpelier along the pretty route, the route I dare not drive in winter weather.

Black ice and moose occur on Route 12 too often to trust to good luck, and an unfortunate encounter with one or the other could be deadly. And so I was a little daunted when a quarter of the way on my journey the morning rain turned to snow. Grateful for my new snow tires and a little wary of other drivers, I carried on, and three quarters of the way, the snow turned back to rain.

Returning home after a day of weary bureaucracy, I was sure it was warm enough to go back the same way. It really is a very beautiful drive, winding past farms, pastures, and every variation of the Gothic Revival farmhouse, all with mountain backdrop. A quarter of the way home, the rain turned to snow. I could almost swear that the same red pickup was behind me, lights on high beam to encourage me to go faster than what was quite fast enough in my view. Still, it was pretty. Three quarters of the way home, the road dropped into the valley, and there was rain again.

Most entertaining of all, as I climbed to my house on the hill, I crossed yet again—for the fifth time today—the snow line, climbing, climbing into a frosty wonderland. The dogs were joyous, jumping and romping in the snow, winding up for weekend play.

Recovery

For the longest time, Max has not been able to sit, not even for a cookie, and Max prizes cookies above all things on earth. After months of failing capacity, well, what can we expect of an eleven-year-old German Shepherd, particularly one of uncertain parentage, indeed a foundling from the Staten Island Ferry, and a foundling who now has a titanium-and-plastic replacement hip? Well.

It turns out that we may have made the ultimate mistake in geriatric care, the error of thinking that the patient was dying, when in fact he just needed a little well-placed medication. And after the prednisone has kicked in, well, surprise and a little tear from just the over-compassionate left eye….Max sat for his cookie this evening. Oh, my.

Meanwhile across town, my best friend is preparing for another round of surgery. I say she is my best friend, although I may not be hers, but it doesn’t even matter. What matters is this: tomorrow she goes in for another attempt to clean out that burst appendix and maybe to disentangle some other organs and stuff. Oh my.

I spoke to her yesterday, and she was calm. I’m sure it is not unheard of to prepare a variety of arrangements just in case. I’m absolutely positive that I would do the same in her position. But I do hope that all these preparations are unnecessary, and that I will have my friend back, smiling and laughing and playing with a new puppy in months to come. Without her, we will all be less joyous, less expansive, less….just less.

We laughed and joked yesterday about human frailties, about how most of us at heart believe we will never die. Can’t you imagine each spirit gasping at last, “Oh, gosh! I guess I wasn’t the exception!” But some of us, my friend and I among them, accept the inevitability of death and hope for a rich, full life and a timely, dignified death.

I have sent her off to the hospital with a giggle, a new book (Helen Husher’s View from Vermont, which I wish I had written), and tales of my puppy with hopes to hear of her new puppy in January. It’s all I can do.

It would annoy the dickens out of my friend, but I hope you will keep her and all of us who love her in your prayers tomorrow. Sometimes we have to trust in medical expertise and also in something more. We just have to.

Over the river and through the woods

Farm duty is hard duty, never harder than on cold winter mornings when stiff fingers struggle to strip ice off fence latches. I get glimmers of that experience when I take my herd out to the dog pen for a morning pee. First time out this morning, not too bad. It was as if the cold had startled the dog into obeying our new command, “Fence!”

The after breakfast run was another matter. To the firm command, “Fence!” Toby headed directly toward the fence, then veered left and took off through the sugarbush, followed by the puppy and the old dog who is, perhaps literally, on his last legs.

Only a week ago, the puppy was not brave enough for this venture, but time moves on, and now she follows Toby anywhere, even over to Labrador Jake’s house, which is—thank heaven—on the same side of the road. I know where they go, or at least I think I do, but this habit of bolting into the woods is not one I want Baby Cassandra to take up.

In a few minutes, Toby and Cassie were back. But old Max moves more slowly, and as he medication has been tapered over the last few days, he is losing function in his back legs. I stood shivering in the northeast wind for a few bone-chilling minutes, then decided I needed to go find him, just in case he got into trouble, but first I had to get dressed. Trailing around my neighbor’s sugarbush in deer season wearing only long underwear and a purple velvet robe with my boots—just not advisable. Not warm enough for one thing.

I need to take a lesson from all those farmers who roll out of bed and into boots and heavy clothing without even thinking. And I need to figure out how to build a chute from door to fence. It’s not as easy as you might think. When the standing seam roof looses its load, small mountains of snow accumulate. There is shoveling to consider, as well as how to maintain a pathway for the gas man. There is a reason, you know, that the fence is fifteen feet from the house.

Today I am thankful I am not a farmer. I am thankful that I work with my brain and not my hands. I am thankful for my brain. And I am oh so thankful that Toby and the puppy and old Max came back. They think it is great fun to visit Jake, as he visits them. They feel compelled to follow his scent and to overlay it. I think of how easily they could stray the other way into the road.

Life is risky. Sir Francis Bacon wrote, "He who has a wife and children has given hostages to fortune." The same is true of she who has dogs. I am thankful to have them home safe. And, Toby, I will be just as grateful--really I will--if you don't take off on heart-stopping jaunts to explore the sugarbush and visit Jake.

Sad news up hill and down

For the last three years, a local garage has taken care of my car. Referred there by a friend, I quickly got to know the owners who took me under their wing and taught me about how Vermonters interact. As time passed, I got to know more people in the shop, including the wiry man with the scraggly white Vermont beard and sweet smile who often worked on my car.

He called me sweetheart—and got away with it—and he knew a lot about a lot of things, including everything that happened on my hill. He lived further up the hill, so from time to time, Ken would give me a ride home if my car was still ailing. He told me about his beagles, and we swapped dog stories. He spoke of his wife with respect and love, even while he flirted with me in a way that said it was only in fun.

Last week, I took my car in to see what it might need and the shop owner handed it to Ken with instructions: “Do whatever you would do if it were your wife or your daughter.” My car came back with four new snow tires, an oil change, and the worrisome banging in the defroster has gone away. I felt very well cared for.

Last night, Ken died. He fell while trying to cut a branch, and died of injuries in the fall. As a young friend who had known him all her life pointed out, “It’s the way he would have wanted to go—quick and with little pain.” We all miss him very much.

The Real World

Come the day after Thanksgiving, I will have been in Vermont for three years, having arrived lumbered with too many possessions, unpropitiously in an early, wet misery of a snowstorm. In the early morning hours, as the movers pulled the van away to head back to civizilation, they made it clear that they thought I was misguided at best. And looking around three small rooms packed with stuff, thinking neither for the first time nor the last that I could die in the Vermont cold, I wasn’t sure they were wrong.

Still I am a good decision-maker, which mostly means that I know when it is time to go to sleep and think about it in the morning. When morning came, it was all white wonder, and I was in love with Vermont on sight.

Please note that I do not like being cold, not at all, so what am I doing in this place that requires a minimum of a sweater all year round? I don’t know. But here I am, and I do love Vermont in all its quirkiness.

Along with the cold, another of Vermont’s less appealing characteristics is its business climate and its economy. Wages are low, and despite the prevailing wisdom that our cost of living is low, we feel the pinch when we pay for housing, gasoline, electricity, and—most of all—heat. It is a pretty place, a safe place, and a haven for recreation (particularly for those who don’t mind falling down in cold, wet snow), but it is not an easy place to make a living.

In my job, I have had several occasions to talk to people who want to move to Vermont, people whose expectations have been formed “away” from here, people who have the perception that there are lots of companies here offering lots of well-structured, good-paying, benefits-laden jobs. “I don’t need a lot,” they say, hoping to jog my memory of several networking options to put on the table, “I only need to make about $60,000 and have healthcare, maybe a little contribution to my retirement.”

Don’t we all?

At any given time in greater New York, in Connecticut, in Boston, in Atlanta that job is readily available. It may take a little time to find the congenial workplace, the requirements that match one’s skill set, but the person looking to simplify life can find opportunities that fit with a new life agenda. In Vermont, it takes longer and requires more luck, more networking, and fitting in to the local community. Vermonters can sniff a phony from miles away, and by the time you walk up to “network” with them, they have vanished into the woods. You have to learn the local language—not so much dialect as rules of engagement—and we outsiders mostly learn by getting it wrong.

I am enjoying living here (beauty trumps cold) and working here (integrity and commitment of my colleagues means a lot), and I have adjusted my lifestyle to fit social norm and reduced income stream. I am fortunate that I am able to do that; honestly I don’t know how some of my friends and neighbors manage. Even so, there are times when the budget pinches, and I remember how much fun it was to have more play money even if I would not return to the associated jobs or cities.

It has been a long time since I made a trip south to visit family, not since I moved here have I done that. Chatting with a Vermont friend who visited Denver recently, I could see in her face a mixture of horror and fascination as she recalled its sprawling roads and malls. That explosion of development is more the norm in America, but is startling to people accustomed to two lane state highways, some of them unpaved, a few that close for the winter.

Television ads already remind me that I will be visiting the real world during the most crazed part of the retail season. I’m hoping I won’t be overwhelmed by this jaunt to America, this excursion into four and six and eight lanes of traffic, this dousing in commercialism. I am hoping my small town self will remember my big city self, when I knew that having money to play with was not a moral failure, nor does my self-selected simple life represent the high ground. I’m hoping I remember that however much fun it is to visit the free-spending commercial world out there in America, it is my ability to stick to my real world budget that allows me to keep choosing this peaceful home in Vermont.

Disaster

In the aftermath of 9/11, a tasteless colleague asked me, “So how many victims did you know?”

Was this some ghoulish contest? If I knew ten people who perished, did I score more points than someone who knew only three? There were people who lost husbands, lovers, children, brothers and sisters. Did my experience approach theirs. I don’t think so.

I don’t have a body count as to how many people I knew who died there, but it was only a few. That guy pictured on the New York Post front page, falling headlong….I worked with him on a project or two at the bank that employed us both. What pain must that photo have inflicted on his family as they recalled the last cell phone call as he returned to his desk?

And there was a woman with whom I chatted at a conference. I saw her name on the list of victims and wondered how many mourned her. Were there others? Probably. Sadly. Yes.

But the legacy of 9/11 was not just the black waves of death that day. It cut deeper. For the thousands of us who worked in lower Manhattan, it changed light and landscape. It changed air flow and fundamentals of neighborhood. Just imagine how a neighborhood changes if someone puts up two buildings of a hundred six stories each. There are wind tunnels where there were none before, shadows, and changes in traffic patterns.

Now imagine that those buildings are gone.

They weren’t pretty buildings. The chases for wiring were clogged, and the elevators were slow, so they weren’t all that efficient or comfortable. But nobody expected them to be gone like that, in a matter of hours.

When it was over, there was a memorial concert, a good one. My blessed intuitive dogs huddled close to me, one on either side, while I listened to the music and cried. To this day, I will not attend a 9/11 memorial, not trusting my own response when misguided patriotism kicks in. That’s not what it was about for me. It was only sadness.

Personal stories that stand out for me from that day. Nigel, whose daughter was in daycare on the first floor of World Trade Center One and whose wife was working across the street. All three made it home after a long, long day. Carol, an economist who was evacuated to Jersey City and eventually made it home to Brooklyn. Lou Dobbs, who was the speaker at a conference where I was working….I still cannot see his evening business news without a flashback of memory to that day. And for myself, walking to the corner of Fifth and Fifty-Ninth and seeing two buildings in the distance, then only one, then a gap in the landscape, ghastly mundane.

The tales that came out afterward, even after correcting for sensationalism, were unspeakable. Literally unspeakable. The media could not tell many of them because they were unacceptable in polite discourse. Waves of white ash and death. Falling building parts and body parts. Unspeakable horror.

Bracing myself, tonight I watched the episode of ER with the plane crash, which takes me back to that bright September day when thousands died. I never thought of it until today, but I was blessed by never hearing the sounds of planes slamming into buildings or buildings collapsing into themselves. The stink was bad enough, a mixture of burning electrical equipment, cement and plaster dust, and burning flesh. We all lived with that for days, never sure what the proportions were.

Did I leave New York because of 9/11? No. Not even close. I would have stayed in solidarity with the city if I had not already set my sights elsewhere. But it did change my life. I have one of those personalities that snaps into action in a disaster, dividing emotion from the need for action, then falling apart later. I am still falling apart, still working to try to wrap my small brain and heart around such a horrific event. Sometimes I think it cannot be done, but my dogs are good at picking up the pieces.

Tonight, as I watched a fictional plane crash kill fictional people, I would wager that I cried more than most people who watched the fictional flames and heard the fictional sirens. And my very real puppy who is usually aloof and goofy unaccountably curled up in my lap and licked my face from time to time to comfort me. I think she will be a good dog. As for the big dogs, crying over a TV show doesn’t even move them, not after all that we have been through together. They know what a real disaster looks like, and they know what to do.

I Always Liked That Bowl

I only have a few bowls that I really treasure, and this one wasn’t one of those. Mostly I cherish the ones I made in the few years I was a not so very good potter, but this was one that was a gift from the mother of a sometime boyfriend, well, actually a man who broke my heart once.

But I still liked the bowl quite a lot.

It was an old stoneware bowl, creamy white with an unglazed rim where it rested in the kiln. It had a thick rim and a molded design of arrows and spikes. It wasn’t big enough for bread, but it had that old-kitchen happy-baker appeal.

There was an amaryllis in a molded paper pot resting inside. I never even heard the crash. I was on the phone with my mother in the next room, prattling happily about how puppy timeouts actually work, when it occurred to me to wonder what the puppy was doing. I cracked the door and peered around its edge to spy Miss Cassandra. Prancing, one foot after another in four by four time. Tossing the molded paper pot up and down, potting soil and pottery shards all around.

“Ain’t it great, Mom?”

Puppy timeout. Broom. Find the amaryllis (are they poisonous to puppies?). Repot it. Let the puppy out of timeout.

And now we see the real lesson. My puppy, who has many talents—fortunate and unfortunate—just learned to jump up on the sofa. All by herself. Okay, so maybe it is not a joy I would have wished her to learn, maybe I don’t have the same view as she does, but she is jubilant..

"Look, Mom! Look at me!"

Good girl, Cassie, good girl.

We will talk about behavior later, but tonight I have a happy puppy. It was only a bowl.

Beautiful day

I have had my head down in winter preparation for so long that I was startled yesterday to look up and see what a glorious day it was. Stuck in a bunch of perennials, last of the season relics from a friend with a gardening business. Played and ran with the dogs in an attempt to run down Miss Cassie’s energy level. This every so daily activity needs to become part of our routine, just as I used to take Max and Toby to the park every day in Brooklyn. It was important to their physical finess and socialization, not to mention mine.

Most weekends at my house involve culinary adventure, and I attempted Belly-Timber’s homemade Thai red chili paste http://www.belly-timber.com/mt/archives/2005/10/curry_paste_for.html May I just comment that these people are insane? Although I do greatly admire the photo of Chairman Kitty-Kaga.

And I am grateful for two new techniques. I like the spice toasting method, just until you notice the aroma, starting with the toughest spices and adding one at a time: black pepper, coriander, cumin, fenugreek. The mortar and pestle work amazingly well. I was prepared to work hard to grind my toasted spices, but it was almost easier than using the blender, and much much more satisfying to the senses.

Somewhere in the midst of soaking my chiles, I realized that I was using the wrong type—Anaheims instead of the blistering hot little ones. And peel them? You have got to be kidding me! With lemongrass already bruised and minced, spices toasted and ground, I forged ahead anyway but without attempting the peeling. Just threw the whole thing into the food processor. The flavors are truly wonderful, but I am not sure I would try this again, certainly not with the dangerously incendiary chiles that I was supposed to be using.

More to the point, somewhere in the process, I remembered that I don’t actually like the classic Thai red curry heavy on coconut milk. Or at least my arteries don’t like it. I have a nice long log of Not-Quite-Thai Red Curry Paste in the freezer, and I think I will try for some alternate uses. Vermont fusion cooking?

I also determined that I really will require help from someone with a chainsaw to deal with the branch that fell off the crabapple tree in the October wetsnow storm. I’ve been single now more adult years than I was married, but still find it satisfying when I figure out how to take care of something myself, even if it is only recognizing that I need to make a few phone calls to line up capable assistance. I have owned various houses (three) with various maintenance requirements, and still I am pleased when I start to feel I know the house, that I understand what will happen from season to season and even what may break next.

My next challenge is to learn to build a wood fire in my combination wood/oil furnace. There is an economic driver this year, and my chimney specialist opines that the chimney is up to it as long as I am careful not to build too big a fire. My new carbon monoxide detector is installed, and come the first really cold snap, I am ready to try for another step in mastery of my little world.

That’s not today, however. Today looks like a glorious repeat of yesterday’s sunshine and warmth. Time to run the puppy.

Things I learned today

How to jump the baby gate

How to fling a plastic bowl of water over the left shoulder

How to bite mom so hard she screams and hits back

How to shred newspaper

How to pull folded cardboard boxes around the office

How to avoid children

Where Denise used to keep her bottle of hand lotion and how to take the lid off

How to operate the water cooler spigot when I’m thirsty

How to chase my tail

How to bark hysterically at my reflection in the door



Signed, Cassie



PS It was a very busy day.

A break for freedom

Accepting that I will not likely make that last batch of tomato sauce for the freezer, I put the Romas on the compost pile. My kitchen table is my own again. Also finished up a couple of small projects—installing the smoke detector/carbon monoxide monitor, sewing two sheets together for a duvet cover, and finding all the pieces to put together a pillow cover pieced and quilted years ago. It is good to get these things done.

I try not to let inanimate objects bully me. I try to keep around only the projects that I will really finish one day, but the projects go and multiply on me, and either stamina or interest fails on me. It must be a good sign somehow that lately I have been finishing up old, old projects. Quilted the last few stitches on my first quilt. Figured out how to use two types of frames—the lap version made of PVC pipe and the big cherry floor model.

The living room’s winter furniture arrangement can accommodate the big quilt frame, which is now set up with a queen size quilt made of flannel squares. The piecing and part of the quilting date back at least two houses—this is how I think of my personal history—or is it three? No, I think it was while I was living in Brooklyn that I put together simple four-square blocks of flannel, set them on an angle with single squares, and started quilting with big stitch.

The same light that gives me morning light therapy is perfect for lighting this big project. I work on it at least a few stitches a day. Oddly, I do not feel intimidated or bullied by this very large project, not nearly as much as I do by my mending basket or the floors that need vacuuming.

Simplify. I have enough projects to hold me for years, maybe decades. Unless I am absolutely overcome, I don’t buy new ones these days, and I count this one of the benefits of having less free cash than I once did. From time to time I find treasures among my stash, and I have as much fun doing old projects as I once had acquiring them. If I lived a place where it was easier to shop, I might give in more readily, but I am enjoying the freedom of this simpler life.

Today I think I will make a batch of dog toys. Even at the Dollar Store, they cost something, and the squeakers are dangers to growing puppies. I can take a batch of scraps, some leftover stuffing, an hour or two with scissors and sewing machine, and I will get the same result a week from now: a layer of stuffing an inch deep on my living room rug and happy, boisterous puppies. Free and priceless.

Deer in the headlights

It’s true. They really do stop and stare. Driving home last night, weary of work and world lat night, there she was. I didn’t see her walk onto the blacktop. She was just there, frozen in the headlights, eyes gleaming.

I switched off the high beams, slowed the car and stopped. Over the hill, I could see approaching headlights, so I knew I would have to do something else soon to get her to move out of danger. She stared at my car, and we stared back for a long several seconds, then she collected her wits, shook her head, turned and went back into the woods from whence she had come.

In the last couple of days, I am conscious of being very overtired and wrung out. I am aware that this is the state of being when accidents are more likely, and I try to compensate by being extra careful. So I had the high beams on and I wasn’t driving fast, with the result that my friend the deer and I both have lived a little longer and had our respective opportunities to head back into the overarching comfort of our woodsy homes to rebuild our reserves.

Boring blog entry

Never a fan of the "I had cheerios for breakfast" blogtype, I am nevertheless delighted to report that Max is doing much, much better. We pretty much said our goodbyes on Monday, but the vet produced oral steroids that are doing a lot for him. For the first time in several weeks, he is walking easily, getting up with less effort, and sleeping through the night without crying.

The moral to this story: go to the doctor. And if you have been going to the doctor all along, and mentioning the problem all along...mention it more forecefully.

I may make that appoinment for my own physical exam, come to think of it.

Three years

Come Thanksgiving, I will have been in Vermont for three years. As you will recall, I decided to make a change in my life to choose health and wellbeing over the cultural and economic riches of New York City. Although I loved the city with the passion of an addict, living there was beginning to damage my health. So I packed up my belongings, my good big dogs, and my negotiated severance check and moved to Vermont.

Many people hate to move; more are afraid to try it, often because of losing friends or even of the effort required—and the risk—in making new ones. Having moved several times, I think moving or not moving is pretty much a matter of taste. There are downsides, sure, like the risk of ending up in a rigid, insular backwater like Chattanooga, but mostly it has been a lot of fun to move around and try new places, new projects, and even new people. The rule of thumb—I don’t think I made it up—is that it takes three years to feel at home in a new place.

Do you lose friends? Sure. People lose track when they don’t fall over each other every day, and some have the skills to forge new ties when the old ones fail, some care enough to do it, and some don’t. After years of living among judgmental people, I have come to believe it is mostly a matter first of skill and second of negotiated expectations.

Skill. If we are lucky, we learn the skills and techniques of friendship early before we even recognize them as such. We learn to treat each other with respect, to anticipate that another person may see the world differently, to communicate with words instead of fists and teeth, to reach out with a smile, a word, a note, even an e-mail or a blog. We learn that others cannot read our minds and that it is only the overt action that strengthens ties. The thought may count, but the act counts ten times over.

Communications theorists remind us that for a message to penetrate the bony human consciousness, it needs to be repeated several times, but somehow in dealing with our loved ones, we expect them to take our unexpressed care as a given. What’s up with that? Disinterested love is a great thing, but it is a rare experience here on earth. Not impossible, but rare. Active, committed love based on tangible interaction is a gift we can all give each other, and the key is improving our connecting skills.

Negotiated expectations. Between friends, boundaries are as important as connection mechanisms. If I don’t have space and time to myself (inside the boundaries) I don’t know who I am and what I bring to the friendship. But the drive to connect is the countervailing vector—we all want our friends to know us, to appreciate us, and to be there to share our experience. It’s our old enemies time and space that create the problem—I want to talk when you don’t, you have a problem you want to share at the same time I have my own pressing concerns.

So we build rules for our interaction, some personal guidelines (“Please don’t talk to me on Tuesdays, because I have a lot of commitments that day”), some which rise to the level of social norms, and some in the spectrum in between (“Our family doesn’t take phone calls after ten o’clock” or “Vermonters only dance with their spouses.”). We each of us get it wrong sometimes. We forget that we have to explain our personal sets of rule to new people. Blinded by our own private concerns, we blunder over the sore spots of those we love, then shake our heads as we realize we have offended.

Remember that old line, “But enough about you. Let’s talk more about me.” We all have friends who pull that nonsense from time to time, and if they are real friends we can call them on it. Sometimes. I have a friend who offended me yesterday, but the specifics don't really matter.

I try to think of what my friend N would do, N who has the greatest gift for friendship of anyone that I know. She has mastered the skills of keeping a large number of friends from childhood forward informed and connected. She has, as near as I can see, no expectations of her friends but that they talk to her from time to time, have lunch with her, spend time with her, introduce their kids to her, and make her part of their life, as time and circumstances permit. And I don’t know anyone who isn’t willing to spend time with such an interesting, well-rounded, thoughtful person. She throws the occasional dinner party, but the real effort she expends in maintaining connections is on the phone. She calls several friends a week, just to catch up. She has a deep, rich understanding of human nature, and she knows when to leave something alone.

I think N would advise me to leave yesterday's incident alone. My hurt feelings, well, those will have to be my problem. In a separete incident yesterday, I know I needed my friends. After a terrible, terrible weekend, we went to the vet who advised cortisone or a much more dramatic series of neurological evaluations and procedures. We will try the cortisone for a week, then reassess, but I have taken the extreme measures off the table. Max seems a little more cheerful this morning, possibly only from the delight of yesterday’s outing to the vet where everyone admired him and cried over him.

Forced to rely on other people yesterday—I am a very, very private person and only rely on others when circumstances force me to—I found that I have a much more robust network of friends than I had realized.

Three years. Right on schedule and just in time.

Not around much

I haven’t been blogging much. Partly it is suffering through the dark mornings and relying too much on adrenaline to get me through the busy fall meeting schedule. Partly though, it is convergence colliding with discretion.

My private life and my public life have come together to a degree that I can’t count on the anonymity I once took for granted in blogdom. Not that it was ever very hard to figure out who I am, if anyone cared to try. But now I am working on a blog for the organization where I work, and my opinions in that sphere cross over and back to and from my so-called private life.

I do want parts of my life to be private. Although I have little to hide, maybe nothing at all, I cherish a core that is all mine. These days I am working on some issues that are not for sharing, for example my old dog’s failing health. It is heart-wrenching to watch his decline, but this is one instance when writing about it does not help. Talking does help, and I try to spread it around so that I don’t unduly burden people with daily reports of woe. Nor do I even want to think about it every day; I just want to enjoy this wonderful friend as long as I can.

This is not a criticism of other approaches. We all deal with the world in the ways we can Right now I am taking time for Max.

I think I will try another crack at NaNoWriMo as well. Although I wrote myself into an inextricable plot corner last year, maybe I will do better with a different plot, something with less of my life in it. Although I think my life has been interesting, it made for a tortuous, dull novel. Better luck next time.

First snow

The quiet in the night woke me. The moon seemed extra bright. Without my glasses, I stumbled downstairs to let the dogs out. Oh, wow.

Big, sloppy clumps of snow falling from the sky, sloshing on the ground, which was already three inches deep in the stuff. Not flakes but handfuls of snow drifting silently down. We marveled for a few minutes, especially the puppy who has never experienced such a thing in her short life. “You expect me to squat in this! It’s cold.” Mystified, she jumped back on the step, then simply had to try it out again.

After sunup, the trees cracked warnings, and sure enough—as soon as the coffee was made—the power went off. It may be the first time that I have been in the house during daylight hours without power. I learned that I need to do a little more emergency planning—more candles, some way to heat a cup of water.

And I learned that although the furnace runs on oil, the blower is electric. More and more, I am glad to have my little propane stove in the living room. With the encouragement of the chimney cleaner, I am even considering burning wood in my combination furnace. After all, there is a lot of dry wood in the basement. When I learned that the This Old House plumber’s brother who burned down his house had the same furnace as mine, I thought twice about burning wood, but perhaps if I am careful not to overload it as he did…perhaps it will be an option. Certainly this is a year when we want to have a well hedged fuel portfolio.

It is funny now to look out and see the snow’s white carpet overlaid with yellow leaves. Late fall, early snow. Good thing I cleaned the garden yesterday.

Being without power was more challenging than I expected. Everywhere I turned there was something I couldn’t do. I felt like a deprived energy pig. Couldn’t cook—the stove is electric. Couldn’t do laundry, a standard weekend chore. Didn’t think it wise to clean out the refrigerator as I had planned. Couldn’t vacuum---yay!!!! (I hate vacuuming out of all proportion to the amount of time it takes.)

My big achievement for today was getting my big quilt frame reassembled for the first time since I left Brooklyn, two moves ago. Daunting undertaking though it was, it came together and now graces the living room. In many ways upstairs would have been more practical for such a bulky contraption, but Max can’t make it upstairs at all any more. We want all the time with Max we can have.

The puppy, incidentally, is enormous. Second and third time out, snow kinda grew on her. Soon she was romping and chasing the big boys, skidding down the walkway and chomping on snow.

Flat dogs

So flat. Today the sun was out, and we cleared all the stakes and plastic out of the garden. It was taxing for dogs, all that watching and stealing cucumbers and burying things and digging them up and burying them again and what is she doing with those sticks? I could not interest anyone in evening dogfood, so committed are the three to their naps.

I had a very nice nap myself, then got up and finished the broccoli surprise soup. Surprise because there it was yesterday, after the first frost and all. And again today the surprise of a previously unsuspected acorn squash. And a couple of overgrown cucumbers, but those have now been buried.

One of the reasons that I started writing Vermont Diary was to record garden events, so here is the season wrap-up.

No more yellow tomatoes, or at least not many. They are very pretty, but they don’t have enough acid for home canning. Romas are nice and the green ones keep well into the fall. The recipe of the year may well be oven dried grape tomatoes. Just cut them in half and spread them on a lightly oiled baking sheet and put into the over overnight at the lowest possible temperature, then store in the freezer They are wonderful, but I really must investigate what the energy cost adds up to.

Corn is not a good crop for my plot—too much shade and too many turkeys eating it before it has a chance to sprout.

Sunflowers are a good thing.

Pole beans did not do well. Bush beans were a triumph, and my freezer is full of them. Black eyed peas did not have enough days in the growing season. Summer savory in the bean patch definitely worth repeating.

And what’s up with the eggplant? And the peppers. I had one eggplant and one pepper all season, even though the plants were robust and healthy.

Broccoli was consistently wonderful. The plants from the local garden center were excellent, and the De Cicco ones I grew from seed were even better.

Beets were okay. I like beets but they failed to inspire. Ditto carrots and radishes. I forgot to plant parsnips.

Onions and garlic complete and dismal failure. Couldn’t even find the plants. I blame the turkeys. If you find one up here, consider it pre-seasoned.

Chard: excellent. Collards: very nice. Kale: would be nice with fewer beetles chowing down. Mustard: forgot to eat it. I always think I will eat more greens than I actually do.

The champion crop for this year, as for many years was squash. Pretty round zucchinis that went well on the grill, yellow crookneck, lovely Delicata (several still in my dining room table still life), a funky round red one, some underdeveloped Hubbards, and a few really nice acorns. And of course the seventeen pumpkins. I have made pumpkin pickles and there is pumpkin pie to come. Hooray for the pumpkin pie!

Other thoughts for next year. Mulch and mulch and more mulch. Not quite so many beans. Not quite so many tomatoes. A garden is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t do to be completely in thrall to it and its ogre-partner the freezer. Only today have I escaped the grasp of green tomatoes. Only today am I free.

The movies

The Movies

I am watching a movie called Sullivan’s Travels with Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. I am embarrassed that my only association with Veronica Lake is that my mother always accused me of imitating her when my hair was in my face.

“You have such a pretty face.”

The prelude to you oughtta get a better haircut. You oughta lose some weight. You oughtta oughtta oughtta. Who cares? Not me. Not any more.

Yes, I would prefer to be thirty pounds lighter, because I am now at the stage of life to fuss over health issues. Am I pre-diabetic? Well, given the genetic situation, probably. What other ills await me? Who knows?

But I digress. Veronica Lake is quite fetching in her boy’s cap. And I really enjoyed the scene in which first Joel McCrea, then Veronica Lake (oh my!) then the butler all ended up in the swimming pool.

It reminded me of a friend of mine, with whom I reveled in divorce, not that either of us was happy about our respective situations. His wife had a grim affair with her professor, my husband simply opted out, yet somehow we never were on each other’s radar screen. My beloved friend as a lover? We are far too different.

But we shared a memorable and well-remembered dinner. Four hours, or more, in the course of which we explored my unremarkable sexual and romantic history, his slightly more remarkable memories, and…yes, I mark it well…the sexual history of the waiter, more notable than any memories of us two, and isn’t that just the way of the world? Those hours in a Philadelphia restaurant, one of the Restaurant Renaissance locales, remain among my most treasures. Laughter, love and longing, all with a man never meant to be mine, but a friend forever. Nothing can take that evening from us. Nothing can take from us the lightness of love and laughter.

When it comes to real life, and it always does, you know, I rest in moments like those. I don’t mistake them for real life. No, wrong again, they are real life, but they are the truffles of life. I am grateful for these moments of grace. Every single moment.

Where do you suppose that waiter is now? Do you think he played that role more than once? Do you think his conscious mind embraces the number of sad couples--not even couples, just friends who happened to get divorced at the same time, but couples in his eyes—to whom he delivered wine and food and coffee? What a blessing to be able to serve that role! Do you think he knows? Do you think he knew then?

Perhaps it is a condition of grace that it doesn't matter at all whether it is conscious. It was a wonderful evening, even coming as it did in a sad and dreary period in my life, and I cling to that evening still.

Grace.

If a movie could capture that, well then. That would be a work of art indeed.

Play with me!

The puppy wants to play. The big dogs played hard yesterday, and Max is enjoying a snooze, while Toby rips apart one of the baby’s toys. Oh, the moans, the wails!

Yesterday, we saw one of Cassie’s littermates. I had stepped into a new quilt store looking for a rotary cutter replacement blade. I mentioned the topic currently most dear to me, and the store’s owner asked if she was as nice as the puppy in the fuel service store next door. Why yes, she is. In fact, she is little Harley’s sister.

On the sidewalk, after a few preliminaries, they rekindled the rough-and-tumble puppy play of a few weeks ago—bites and snarls that alarmed Harley’s mom. We retreated before there were too many comments about Cassie’s vicious temperament. How quickly these little dogs will have completely different lives! Cassie is not getting weekly baths, either, although we do attempt to cut toe-nails every two weeks—a battleground in itself, all wiggles and screams.

In my living room, moans and wails have given way to noisy snarls—on Toby’s part—which would be alarming if he meant them. Ah, there’s the problem. He is defending not only the plastic chew toy but also a well-aged, buried-and-dug up bone.

And now it is too quiet—a danger sign with puppies as with small children. Yesterday, I found a well shredded electrical cord dangling from a heavy lamp perched on the very edge of a table. I think I watch her every minute, and yet she managed to squeeze in enough time to do this damage, which—if the cord had been plugged in at the time—would have endangered her life as well. I don’t care about the lamp, but I do care about the puppy.

All three dogs had a big day yesterday. We did a road trip out to the building I manage, so there was a good, long car ride and a romp at the building site. Today the old boys are moving slowly, and won’t they be happy to see the girl put into her crate when it is time for me to go to work?

The photo I wish I could send you: two black dogs, viewed from the back, one large and one small, both squatting for a companionable morning pee.

Yes, Toby squats. Not sure why, but he never learned to lift his leg. Under the heading of why-are-we-having-this-conversation? file this flash of memory of a guy in Prospect Park who aggressively argued with me that Toby must be pooping unattended because he was squatting. Since I had just dropped the morning poop in the trash, I had nothing to show in our defense. And since rationality was not going to work, I could only walk away. Sometimes, there is nothing to be done in the face of mistaken belligerence.

Threats in the form of licking yet another electrical cord—this one plugged into my reading lamp—get my attention at last. Somebody is going to have to play with Cassie. It looks like I am nominated. Well, okay.

Rocks, hard places and the paths between them

Old dog Max can’t go for long walks any more. And baby Cassandra can’t go far. When October days burst forth in glorious Vermont color, we just have to be outside. We did a walk to the top of the maple grove behind the house—I was dying for a walk myself.

Damn these short days, shorter and shorter until the solstice. Understanding the solar rhythm doesn’t make it any easier to tolerate. Mornings now, the time I would most love to be afoot…those mornings are spent under that high intensity light bulb. I can do anything I want as long as I stay under there for an hour.

Today was just too spectacularly beautiful. We had to—absolutely had to—go for a walk.

As any owner of multiple dogs will tell you, getting a picture of the dogs together is one of those anthropomorphic daydreams. Dogs may love each other dearly, may romp in pairs or trios or more, but they will not be photographed in such dear aggregations.


Ta dah! The playful pair.

Ta dah! Let’s all be shepherds together.













And the ultimate troika. My three loves, captured in a single digital image. Amazing how the tiniest one is the center of the party, even as she trails the big boys. Toby already loves her as plush toy, playmate and partner in cuddles. Max is coming to recognize her qualities, or at least he has stopped snarling.




***
Postscript. Oh my goodness. She is the worst. She just peed in Max’s bed. The brat.

Things I learn from my puppy

Wear your ears a different way every day.

Jump on the big dogs every chance you get. If they bite your head, don't let it worry you.

Play like you mean it. Ditto sleep.

Sleep a lot. Cell division is serious business.

Find toys and joy in every little thing.

Simplify

My horoscope for today: You have taken on a lot of new responsibilities in recent weeks and now the planets are warning that you must not take on any more. Even a Leo has limits and you have reached yours and maybe even gone a little bit beyond them. At the moment you are just about holding things together - but don't push your luck.

Amen to that.

Sounds like a day for cleaning house, sprucing up garden, playing with dogs and not much more. I had to abandon a failed pickle project last night. It may be time to compost the rest of the tomatoes. It is certainly time to bring in hammock and outdoor chairs.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

It’s one of those spectacular Vermont autumn days. Thick mist in the valleys, a serious nip in the air, and a forecast for foliage turning so fast you can almost watch it. I have a new puppy whose ears hourly take a different turn. And an old Toby-puppy who thinks the new one is a toy. And a very old Max-dog who needs a lot of attention.

Simplify, simplify.

I’m thinking of writing this one word above the front door of my house in a spot where I would see it every time I come downstairs.

Simplify.