Seasonably cool

This morning I arose to a fifty-degree house, and by evening I had managed to forget what awaited me. Seasonably cool.

The furnace guy will be here tomorrow to find the problem, but meanwhile I am experiencing rapid re-entry into seasonable weather. We have had a warm fall, with plenty of sunny days to enjoy the foliage, but now only a few bright yellow leaves cling to the maples’ charcoal branches. It is stick season, the lesser known season that follows one of Vermont’s greatest tourism attractions.

Foliage, then stick season, winter, mud season, then summer. Three of the five are good for tourism, but we don’t talk much about stick season (depressing) or mud season (more depressing). And along with stick season comes the reminder of what cold feels like.

It’s not so bad when you have snow to look at, and winter sports to enjoy. It’s not so bad when you get used to it. It’s not so bad when you have been here long enough to be convinced that the cold won’t kill you, not if you are respectful. But when the furnace doesn’t kick on, when it is fifty degrees in the house, when you don’t remember where you put the long underwear last spring, then it is really, really cold.

At such a time, it is lovely to open a drawer and discover the pair of Icelandic wool socks that someone once knit for you. Fluffy fiber and kind consideration, what a nice gift to receive, even nicer to rediscover. And people wonder why I only want socks for Christmas.

Back at the keyboard

A new keyboard. My personal laptop developed intermittent disorders of the type that are difficult and expensive to diagnose last spring. Since then it has been in and out of the hospital, and now it is on almost complete bed rest. It works for about five minutes, then must nap.

I am writing to you from a new (to me)repurposed desktop provided by the generosity of my employer. It had its issues, too, but an extra shot of memory and a new wireless card have made it a terrific solution for my home requirements. And I have a big new monitor appropropriate for fifty-something eyes.

I am so very proud of myself. I installed memory, installed the wireless card, and got all the appropriate settings working again. Now I get mail in a place I may review more than once a week, and I can easily blog again. The blogging outlook is optimistic, since I find that my two hours driving time get populated with lots of thoughts, many bloggable.

For now, I concur with my sad laptop. It's time for a nap.

Continuity

Watching Matlock reruns last night, I think I spied a palm tree along a street that was supposed to be in Atlanta. I don't think there are palm trees in Atlanta, but maybe I have been away so long I have forgotten them. A continuity glitch?

I’ve been having some of those myself. My laptop failed in the spring, and I have only recently come to accept its death. A few more days, and maybe I will have the hand-me-down desktop (a nice gesture on my boss’s part) set up and operating. But it will probably take longer than that to rebuild e-mail address lists.

The work computer has a leviathan of a client relationship management system, so I am cautious about letting my friends and family drift into it. Correspondents who are accustomed to seeing me e-mail back in minutes now may not get a response for days. It’s all very different.

New jobs do this. So much of our social network is linked to where we work, even more to our electronic complex of phones and computer. Disconnect one strand, and big swatches of the fabric of daily life unravel. It’s almost as if our the electric impulses in our tiny brains merge with these other machines, at least for a time, till continuity breaks.

Mid-summer special

There are days in July, sometimes in August as well, when it is brought back to us clearly why we live here. The days are so soft and alluring, it seems impossible to be anywhere else.

I am back to painting. I primed about a third of the back of the house, once again astonished at what a difference even that simple step makes. My friend Tom is working on the peaks, priming and painting the very high parts where I cannot bear to climb. And I am re-priming the ends, priming the back, painting all the parts that I did not get to last summer.

Today was one of those perfect days. A few hours painting, a few hours editing (work, doncha know), a few hours reading Howard Frank Mosher and wallowing in nostalgia of northern Vermont, all capped by dinner on the grill. Last night I made Bobby Flay’s gazpacho, and tonight I added his suggested grilled scallops. Yum!

Did you know that some dogs (Toby) like gazpacho? We will wait to see if gazpacho likes Toby. Miss Cassie held out for the grilled scallops.

Yesterday, we had a visit from one of Cassie’s younger sisters, Nellie. Cassie’s breeder Carol brought her over for a little socialization, puppy and human. Carol is still reeling from the sudden death of Hannah, grandmother to Cassie and mother to her little Nellie. It was one of those things, a sad and rare occurrence, that Hannah died while she was being spayed. Forty-eight puppies—that’s Hannah’s legacy, that and a lot of happy days with Carol and Tom ( yes, the painter).

Carol and Nellie (the puppy) came over looking for another place to be. Did this ever happen to you? That you just want to be somewhere else?

Nellie is just 28 pounds, grave and self-possessed. Right now, she is very dark and she looks a lot like Cassie’s mother, but at this age it is probably just for now. Cassie was very dark, too, at this age, and now she is a golden girl. Her light face shades down to a black nose, and the black fur on her back is shot through by creamy guard hairs . I have baby pictures on my computer, and I am always startled by how such a dark, dark puppy could have turned into such a golden girl.

Swinging and blogging

Across the fields, the big haying machines have almost finished the first cut of the season. I love watching the waist-high grasses fall into long corduroy stripes. One morning this week we walked through a neighbor’s field just after hay had been cut. By evening, it had all been gathered up into gigantic cylinders. The next morning, the cylindrical bales were gone.

These magical machines appear a couple times a year on our hill, markers of the changing seasons. Every year that I am here, I learn more subtle signals of the seasons within seasons. Between first cut and second cut (August) is our true Vermont summer, if you ignore the standard wisecrack that there are really only two seasons here (winter and July, the month of darn poor sledding).

From May to June, for example, is the season of frenzied construction. Although the building season is soft this year, it is still impossible to get a carpenter, an electrician, or even a professional carpet cleaner if you call now. While consuming their stores of root vegetables over the winter, the locals also planned and plotted all their projects for the spring, then flung themselves into action as soon as snow and mud receded. Recent migrants compete for tradesmen by throwing money at the problem. The rest of us beg, plead, and vow to plan further ahead next time.

Having grown up down south where the change of seasons is more subtle, these crisp breaks from one micro-season to another intrigue me. I guess they interest my neighbors, too, since we seem to spend an amazing amount of time talking about the weather. And about microclimates. And about how various forms of human activity relate to the weather.

Today’s weather report is optimistic. This morning’s overcast skies are expected to give way to bright sunshine, with maybe an afternoon thunderstorm to follow. Right now the weather is perfect to sit on my porch swing in my flannel pajamas, a dog at my feet and my happy little fountain gurgling, watching the big machines get the hay in before the rain comes.

Fighting fire with fire

This phrase has become so common in our day to day speech that we often forget the real and startling phenomenon—setting a line of fire to stop a fire. It’s a miraculous thing, and who would ever have thought it would work?

In this crazy world, I sometimes double dip my challenges and find to my surprise that both become easier to manage. For example, I used to read The Economist while riding the recumbent bike at the gym. I find The Economist rather obscure and dry, but it was a time when I needed to be well informed, so I read it. As for exercise of any time, well, I can get into a zone and I find its effects highly desirable, but it is not something I would choose as a daily activity if I were designing the world. Oddly enough, taken together, both weekly economic briefing and aerobic activity became more bearable.

The commute—the dreaded commute, so deeply dreaded because the last time I had a significant commute my whole world came unraveled—has had an unanticipated benefit. My house is more organized and cleaner than it has been in years. A friend looked at me in awe the other day, “How did you accomplish that?”

Because I was so worried about driving an hour to work and an hour back, and because I so very much want to create the best chances of success for this new work venture, I set about reorganizing my life a few months ago, really as soon as I knew I was making this change. I was ruthless. I must have exercise in the morning, so I bought a treadmill. I did test runs of morning routine, cutting out anything that slowed me down. I weeded my wardrobe and set up rigorous laundry routines. I bought a new coffeepot. I got rid of all manner of clutter, any little thing that might get in the way of success.

Then one day I looked up, and my house was orderly and clean, almost without effort.

There was a song I used to like that had a line “Funny how those moments come, it hits you, your life has changed…” We concentrate so hard on small steps that the new life we planned so carefully and worked so hard to achieve sometimes catches us by surprise in a moment of unanticipated grace.

Living with Helen Keller

We went to see the puppies today. Hannah’s puppies, which would make them my Cassie’s full brothers and sisters, although in a different generation altogether. Genealogy is so challenging when you dwell in the world of dogs.

Then later today, someone said to me that living with adolescent puppies reminds her of what it must have been like to live with Helen Keller. You always feel that you are the verge of some communications break-through, that any minute the figurative light-bulb will go on over their all too literal fuzzy heads.

I laughed out loud, thinking back to a moment not so long ago, when I felt like I was Helen Keller. My beautiful puppy came to me, desperate to convey to me a concept, which I suddenly realized was a single word, her word, meant to say Mom-I-am-dying-to-go-outside-for-I-really-must-pee. A simple concept, surely, and how frustrating for her that I was so slow to learn it.

This, in a nutshell, is the difference between living with a German Shepherd or any other dog smarter than its nominal owner and living with retrievers. Retrievers are needy; German Shepherds are in charge. Seriously.

Oh, wow

Oh, wow, but it is …well, interesting to be in the path of the worst nor’easter in decades.

There is a wind so strong that I can barely close the doors. The dogs are puzzled at a howling from somewhere far away. The front door—nobody ever uses the front door—is firmly shut by a wood bar across it, with barricade chair under the door knob to boot.

The door to the wood chute has blown free. There is a distinct airway from one end of the cellar to the other. And there is a stream in my cellar that I have not seen in my four years in the house. Although the drain system installed in the floor posits a need for same.

In the utility room, the vinyl floor has taken up residence in horror movie land. The whole floor billows and buckles, vinyl straining for the ceiling, but why? I am in awe, I have never seen a vinyl floor behave in such a way. Oh, wow.

Oh, wow. I have put to rest old commitments, made good on old promises, and moved on to a new chapter of my own life. I have changed jobs, and it only took me….well, something like twelve months in all. Last May, I was hoping for a new life; this April, late April, I have it.

As much as I enjoyed my four years in public service, I’m not really cut out for it. Maybe nobody is, not forever.

Weather worlds

The commuting challenge continues. Here’s a new wrinkle: microclimates. I drive one hour to work. It takes 20 minutes from my home to Stowe, another 20 minutes to the interstate, and 20 minutes along the interstate and to the office.

The big surprise is that weather can be dramatically different from home to office. The day before yesterday I left a bit early to avoid the blinding snow squalls which were not only to hamper visibility but also to cause dangerous road conditions. For the first forty minutes there was almost no snow, but then at the edge of Stowe Village, it was as if I had dropped over the edge of the world into an arctic village. Snow, lots of it, blinding drivers and bringing traffic to a crawl. Twenty minutes expanded, I don’t even know by how much, so focused I was on the taillights ahead of me. At last, I could creep up my icy hill to welcoming dogs. Ahhhhh, home.

Yesterday, the reverse. The icy hill, always the first challenge, is plowed by two different towns, so conditions can be different between here and the dump half a mile away. Then messy roads in Morrisville, not so bad on the road to Stowe, and a terrible slick patch right in the middle of Stowe Village. I saw the car in front of me slide sideways, so I was prepared with a correction when my car did the same. Steady improvement in driving conditions eased my tense shoulders for the second leg of the journey, then the third was as if no snow storm had ever occurred.

In fact, there was only a dusting over there in the “banana belt,” warmed by Lake Champlain, as compared to another (yes, another!) six inches at my house. I suppose I must be more tolerant of the failure of area network news stations to accurately report what is going on at my house. It is not uncommon to see a storm with 2 inches of snow in Burlington, 6 inches at my house, and a foot in the Northeast Kingdom. They have area spotters who report on local accumulations, but it is not nearly so interesting to know after the fact how much snow came as it would be to know what was expected. Microclimates.

Still, I think I prefer living in the “snow belt” and commuting to the “banana belt,” rather then the reverse. If I am going to be stuck somewhere, I want it to be at home with dogs, food, and a big pile of wood. And it is comfort to know that if I make it off the icy hill, conditions will be better and better all the way to the office, with the exception of Stowe Village. For such a wealthy little town it is hard to understand how Village roads can be so much worse than the rest of my route, but I don’t spend a lot of energy trying to figure it out. Instead, I slow down, focus on the car in front of me, and try to breathe through Stowe.

At least a little, I can see now why people keep asking me if I will move closer to Burlington. Not yet, for sure, not until I have a better sense of what this new life will be like, and I really do love where I live. But I can see how the commute could wear. In a way, though, it is a lovely thing to have the world of work and the world of home be physically separated, whether by migration from microclimate to microclimate or—as I have had in past situations—by crossing water. The ability to draw that sharp line is, I believe, restorative to the spirit.

Plow guy says "Enough!"

We officially have no more room for snow. My plow guy says so. And he has had enough of plowing, never mind the financial windfall. I am grateful for his good cheer and heavy equipment, even baked him loaf of bread in thanks.

For reference, note the cross bar on the gate is four feet off the long unseen ground. And no, that's not the pile from the roof--that's base.

How whiny we have become in three short weeks since we had way too little snow!

So much to see

I have long held a theory that tolerance of commuting is carried on a chromosome. I can’t cite scientific evidence, but have observed that people who say that you can get used to long travel to work in fact can get used to it. Others, myself included, launch into new travel patterns with enthusiasm, but sputter and fail.

The last time I was faced with any significant travel to work was the fall of 1983. My husband and I lived in Princeton, and we each traveled long distances to work. I took the train north to Manhattan, and he took the train south to Philadelphia. Lots of people did it.

But the ninety minutes I traveled in the morning stretched to more like two hours in the evening, worse if I missed my usual train during budget season. On those occasions I spent an hour watching the rats run up and down the tracks, waiting for the next train. I was spending far too much of my day cooped up with stressed-out polyester-clad men and women, who streamed like cattle through the PATH train turnstiles then scrambled for seats on an overcrowded train. My husband fared no better. He hated his job, hated the commute even more that I did, if that were possible.

I tried to read, tried to sleep, tried to focus on the positive—that at least I wasn’t driving—but when I fell down the stairs of Penn Station that Christmas, I knew that commuting was not for me. By New Year’s, my marriage was over, and I was living in one room in Brooklyn, convinced that I was constitutionally incapable of commuting. For the next several years, I traveled one subway stop to work and back, then moved to Staten Island.

From my tumbledown Victorian on the north shore, I traveled almost exactly an hour, most of it on the Staten Island ferry. Now that was a great commute! Drink the coffee, read the paper, watch activity in New York harbor, nod to Lady Liberty, or just stare into the dawn—highly restorative. Come 1998, my job disappeared, and I had an offer in mid-town. An hour and a half away. I wasn’t sure I could take the commute, so I moved away.

Until now, I have avoided any commute longer than half an hour, especially driving. It’s not that I mind driving; often I enjoy it. What I mind is the enforced timetable gridlock, and I mind other drivers. Many people are at their worst when driving, although Vermont’s ration of road rage is smaller than more traveled places. Still, it’s a matter of probabilities. The more you are on the road, the more the probabilities are against you—probabilities that someone will make a dangerous, even fatal error. Since I have never held the illusion that I am any better than an average driver, and since my reaction times have deteriorated with age, I figure the probabilities are stacked against me.

All this weighs in against driving to work an hour each way, and yet I am now doing it. Opportunities in Vermont are not so rich as elsewhere, and I know myself well enough that once a job feels like a trap, it is time to do something different. So I am taking the calculated risk to commute, trading off the downside of much more time on the road against the certainty of new interests, new people, new horizons.

Having made that tradeoff, I find pleasant surprises in the drive. It offers quiet time to enjoy my own company. Gnarled thoughts disentangle themselves, as the Vermont landscape rolls by. Barns and fields, mountains and meadows. I haven’t seen a moose yet, although there are signs of moose crossing areas even on the interstate. I have even found some alternate routes to work, a startling achievement in a state with so few roads that there is generally only one route from A to B, if that. There is a lot to look at.

In another reminder that more time on the road brings new dangers, I was also—for the very first time in my life—stopped for speeding. Those of you who know me personally will not be surprised at this perfect record; I am the original Goody Two Shoes when it comes to authority. But yes, I was doing 37 mph in a 25 mph zone. Something I said must have struck a chord with the young Waterbury policeman—he let me go with only a verbal warning. Since then I have heard from others that Waterbury seems to have a revenue program, so perhaps I will trade that village for more scenic alternatives.

Were we expecting six inches more?

Friday there was a storm, dropping six inches of wet snow, sleet and freezing rain on top of what was left of the Valentine’s Day blizzard. And there was plenty left of the three feet of snow from that storm, even though it seemed lighter than air, that Valentine fluff.

When Saturday dawned, the storm had passed, and all around looked like a Christmas card. Wet snow clung to trees and bushes. A sky of blue, gray, gold and peach reminded me that Vermont always shocks with color.

We had a peaceful Saturday, errands and dog romps in the snow, pausing to consider the enormous pile of snow that whomped down onto the path so carefully shoveled for fuel deliveries. The path that is now a mound of wet, packed ice and snow. Well. That will need attention on Sunday.

It’s a funny thing about snowstorms. You don’t hear them. Unlike rain or sleet, snow comes in silence. And yet, you come to awareness that something is going on. There’s a brightness that intrudes on sleep. And an absence of sound, a hint that even the usual sparse traffic up and down the hill is not there.

Open the back door, and the puppy bounds up onto the mound. It probably isn’t a good idea to have to walk uphill on the snow from the back door…what happens when it starts to melt? Will water flood direct into the house? And why is the puppy sinking into what looks like six inches of fresh powder?

Were we expecting this?

Another ping to the consciousness. Perhaps I will need to start listening to news on the weekend. It might have been a good idea to be aware that we were expecting more snow. Not an issue on a quiet Sunday morning with plenty of food and wood in the house, but as I start to plan for long morning commutes, perhaps I should be more prepared.

I check the weather on the computer. Snow showers, with a dusting to two inches. I crave the Weather Channel. How is it that a place as obsessed with weather as Vermont, a place where the morning news has the same forecast six times over, how can it be that there is not Weather Channel? I try the local television stations—no hint of another winter storm. And yet, outside my window is white, white, white. The kind of white that says accumulation is occurring.

Weather forecasters have gotten so proficient, and they warn us so often that we come to discount their dire predictions. In an information rich world, unexpected weather seems a betrayal. I see my neighbor out for her morning walk, and I shout out, “Were we expecting this?”

“Two or three inches,” she calls back. “Isn’t it grand?” The puppy concurs--it is a grand surprise.

Adaptation 2: Wormholes

A growing German Shepherd brain is a wondrous thing. Cassandra loves figuring things out, and I love watching her figure things out.

Here's a picture of Miss Cassie, diving for snowchunks. For perspective, note that the cross bar on the gate is four feet off the ground.

Almost every day, the two dogs and I make a short trip down the hill to visit Acer and his family. Acer and Cassie are well matched in energy level, and twenty minutes of running and romping makes both puppies more pleasant indoor company.

We haven’t been able to visit Acer since the big snow last Wednesday. We simply cannot get there. We have tried a couple of times, but the snow is too deep. The snow is also too deep for our usual games; we have had to adapt, hence the puppy racetrack laid out in the herb garden.

Yesterday we drove out on some errands then stopped at Acer’s house on the way back up the hill. Such happy puppies! But they couldn’t navigate the large field where they usually run in circles—just too much snow. We tried throwing chunks of snow over the side of a steep drop from the driveway for the dogs to chase and chomp, a favorite game.

Both young dogs leapt over the edge in joy, then were surprised at how difficult it was to swim up the bank through deep snow. They made it, but it was a tough job. Another snow chunk, and they were off again, but this time Cassie turned after a few steps and came back up her first track. Smart girl!

Soon both dogs were diving off the bank, but returning up the same couple of wormholes through the snow that they had first created. Look Ma! We invented a new game! Play with us!

In the background, Toby wandered back and forth, looking for the perfect chunk of snow. Not for this old dog the wild games of puppies. Not too long for puppies either. They played hard, but we went home before anyone got tired enough to risk injury.

Puppy life is back in order. Now if I could just find my mailbox.

Adaptation

Well, that didn’t work! It really is not possible to snowshoe in three foot deep powder snow. After fifty feet of sinking in as far as my knees, then trying to pull snowshoes out of the hole…well, I turned back toward the house.

Instead of backtracking, I made a big loop, which has now become the puppy’s racetrack. Old Toby was ready to come right back in, but Cassie had not had enough exercise for an eighteen-month-old German Shepherd girl. She romped around the racetrack while I watched from the door, then steadfastly sat at the highest point on her snowbank for several minutes, sniffing the breeze and keeping watch.

As for me, I switched from snowshoes to shovel and started on a path from the driveway to the back door, just in case the oil company needs to make a delivery. The snow is lovely, light powder, as easy to shovel as it is hard to walk through. Cassie likes the shovel almost as much as the vacuum cleaner. I stopped every few minutes to throw a lump of snow into a bank for her to chase—it is as funny as you might imagine to see a large dog swim in snow as high as she is tall.

Predictably, I took a lot of grief for closing our office for two days. Even in a blizzard that now ranks as the second worst in recorded history, Vermonters think one should keep on keeping on. I’m not from here, and I still stand in awe of the vagaries of weather. I still believe cold weather and snow and ice can kill me. So when the authorities declare a travel advisory and ask that Vermonters stay off the roads unless travel is absolutely necessary, I think they are speaking to me. It is not a good idea to acclimate to dangerous behavior, I say. If I take two days off every single time there is a storm that is the worst in decades, I don't think the Vermont economy will suffer unduly.

It is surprising to me how little we have heard of people’s experiences in the storm. Maybe people aren’t completely dug out yet. I am fortunate that my plow guy lives half a mile away and is in the excavating business. He spent all night out plowing driveways, then in the morning brought over the heavy equipment to dig me out. No rush, I wasn’t going anywhere until it was all over.

Tim's Wood

Trombley Hill Road is my address, but few Trombleys live here now. Tim sold me the family farmhouse and two acres, then moved down the hill to a new house. But as time moved one, heating bills and healthcare for his wife took their toll, and Tim sold that house, too. Tim’s sister was the realtor, but she lives somewhere else, so now there is only the other sister who lives across the fields. It is sad to see families leave Vermont home places, but younger generations can’t handle the ongoing investment in dairy cows and maple groves.

Tim left me a stack of wood in the basement. The furnace burns either oil or wood, but for the first couple of years I lived here I was intimidated by the wood burning furnace. Then one cold weekend, I built a fire and I was warm for the first time that winter. Now I build fires every weekend, as much to save on the cost of heating oil as to be really, toasty warm. When you run on oil, you see, you set the thermostat at a barely tolerable level, but when you burn wood, you don’t have such fine control, and the house is filled with jagged, blessed warmth.

When Tim sold me the house, he left me a stack of wood in the cellar. He left me a living room with fourteen-inch maple floorboards, harvested and shaped from the maples on the family farm. I feel a connection to those trees that I, personally, have never known. I feel responsible to them.

It is cold this week. A record-breaking blizzard has dumped two and a half to three feet of snow on us, followed by howling winds and single digit temparatures. A good time to build a fire in the wood furnace. I started yesterday morning, feeding the fire every hour all day. This morning I was thrilled to see that the coals had lasted through the night, and all I had to do was add one more log to the coals.

Tim’s logs are big logs, far bigger than the ones that were delivered as firewood this fall. I have to believe that they came from the maple grove up the hill. These logs are rough cut, hunky, and well aged. Someone cut them years ago, thinking that they would keep someone warm. Probably someone named Trombley, but certainly someone who lived nearby, watching the maples through the seasons.

I am fortunate to be that someone.

Snow Day

There are so many things I could be doing. Working, cleaning, laundry, baking, mending. I could be learning all about cascading style sheets. I could do my taxes and review my retirement plan. I could get on the treadmill for an extra mile or two.

But how often do we get a snow day in Vermont? Oh, we get days when it snows, even days when it snows a lot. But not days like this.

There is really a lot of snow out there. Television weatherpeople say it is around twenty-three inches. I say it is one German Shepherd puppy deep, about shoulder height.

The surprise on her face as she attempts to bound through the drifts is my treat for the day. She dives, coming up completely white, only her eyes dark and liquid with excitement. She still seeks out the usual spot to pee, but squatting completely swathed in powder is a new experience in her short life.

We try a short walk around the back yard, but the snow is thigh deep for me, so we don’t get far. I throw huge armfuls of snow at her, and she leaps and tries to bite it, then bounds in joyful, wide circles.

A day like this is a gift. It’s a day to watch as the snow covers the swing, the wheelbarrow, and the woodpile. It’s a day to call friends and hear stories of how it really is out there on the roads. It is a day to sit and knit, to play with puppies, to heat up soup from the freezer for lunch, to wave at the snow plow guy, and to do as little as possible. How often do we get a snow day?

Tomorrow we will start working our way back to daily routine. But today is a snow day.

Unseasonable spring

I am changing jobs and attempting to achieve an orderly transition for myself and for both employers. It is toughest on the old employer, or at least I would like to think so, but I know that nobody is irreplaceable. Life will go on in my old office, sooner than anyone thinks possible, and my new life will blossom at the new place.

Spring is a good time for planting, as one friend said to me, so let us make use of this strange unseasonable season and plant the seeds of something new.

The rhythm of my day will change. Since I am a creature sensitive to daily and seasonal pattern, I must prepare for an earlier wake time, an hour’s drive, exposure to Vermont’s relatively mild version of road rage, urban energy replacing bucolic rural pastimes. Will I leave my dogs home alone for more hours at a stretch? Will my elderly Honda tolerate greater demands? For how long? Will I be able to find a carpool? Maybe not one that can handle the residue of muddy paws.

Will I take my lunch? What if I forget it? Do I have enough professional clothes? Can I find a dentist, a dry cleaner, a bank that is more convenient?

Will they like me? Will I make new friends? Will my old friends forget me? Will people I thought were my friends disappear? Almost certainly, they will like me. They already do, since I am working at each job part-time, and I can already tell that it is no just a honeymoon that makes me feel at home in the new place. And I know from past changes that some people will move out of my life, even some that I will be sorry to lose. That’s change for you.

But here’s another thing I know about change. Some people will turn out to have been better friends that I ever knew. Some people will pop up again in my new life, surprising me with connections stronger than I ever dreamed. This whimsy in the way the world reorders itself never fails to amuse.

That’s the part I can’t control, nor would I wish to. So for now I will put gas in my car on Sundays, do the laundry every weekend, put lunches in the freezer, renew my pedometer pledge, buy another suit or two, and go to bed by ten without fail. If I can start with a healthy and centered routine, I have the greatest chance to blossom in this new garden.

Playtime

Yesterday I saw taciturn Vermonters crack and admit that it was kind of nice to have a day of sunshine and temperatures in the fifties right smack in the middle of what is supposed to be winter. Up till now it had been all gloom and despair. No winter sports, no tourists to prop up our local economy. We still feel these losses, but just for a day it was nice to kick back and enjoy a taste of spring.

Cassie had four playdates yesterday. We went to check on Lola and Amiga who had spent two nights with us while their mom was away in Boston, then stayed for a few minutes play. Driving back home, we looked in on Miss Elly, who is Cassie’s aunt and half-sister in one of those convoluted relationships that dogs can have. Acer’s dad called around lunchtime, looking for some playtime, and it was so much fun that we went back for another romp in late afternoon. In Cassie’s opinion, this is how all days should be.

I am conscious of needing to carve out playtime for myself. I am changing jobs, which for now means I have two sets of expectations and demands. The old world is still very much with me, and the new one asks for more attention every day. It’s a good kind of stress, and it is nice to be valued, but still. I need to find that part of each day that belongs only to me and the dogs. I need playtime.

Practically Perfect

At last we have a little snow, maybe four inches here. More on the ski slopes, less in the warm valleys. I drove to Burlington this morning. Slippy roads close to home got better and better, giving the lie to dire traffic reports on the interstate.

The snow is the fluffy, shiny type flocking the trees at the Christmas farm. When I take the puppy out to the pen in the backyard, I glide over seqinned velvet. The puppy is wild. She can’t find her tennis balls, covered up by snow, so she digs until she finds a rock, a bowl, something, anything to toss into the air. What fun!

Life is back to what passes for normal here on the hilltop. That is, if magic be normal.

May you all have shining memories of 2006 and hopes of a spectacularly beautiful New Year.

Brown Christmas

Today’s hopes for a major storm dissolved in rain. Less than half an inch of slush covers our brown Vermont hills, but we remain steadfast in our hopes for snow.

We really like the stuff. It is good for sliding and skiing and snowshoeing. Handy for insulation once it builds up above the level of interior floors. It covers up all things unsightly, indeed it covers everything and makes everything beautiful. We miss it.

Watch old reruns of White Christmas and think of us, wishing we had white stuff with which to entertain the few tourists who have come despite internet searches. Think of the hotels and the restaurants. Think of the grocery stores and the auto shops. If the tourists don’t come, they don’t eat, and their cars don’t run off the road. Think, too, of the snowmobile shops. If the snow stays away too long, it’s hardly worth buying the annual license.

Vermont’s economy needs snow. Our aesthetic sense of what makes winter right…that needs snow, too. We choose to be cold, believe it or not. In choosing four seasons, snow is not just part of the deal, it is a blessing.

Think of us and think snow.