White On White

So there was some snow.

I generally disregard warnings about snow. Usually there's a lot of noise about snow, people rush to the grocery store and get into fistfights over bread and milk. They clobber each other trying to get to gas pumps. And then it snows two inches and life continues.

So when the forecast called for lots and lots of snow and everyone started to talk about working from home, I spoke up and said I was coming in.

It snowed three feet.

Less than a week later, it snowed again.

And then again.

In fact, we've been averaging about two snowstorms a week.

The trouble is, it's also cold. This means the snow doesn't melt. It just piles on top of itself. People push it to the side to clear driveways and roads, making walls of snow on either side. Pulling out of a driveway is a game a chance because you can't see the street.

I'm done. It's halfway through the month and I'm done with winter. I'm ready for spring and sand and warm air and sun on my face.

The Dark

Maybe it's because it's been raining the last couple of days, but it's been dark.

Yes, overcast and rainy, but not just that.

When my alarm goes off in the morning, it looks like the middle of the night. It's still dark out.

When I leave work, before 5pm, the sky is already darker, the sun already going down.

Day are shorter.

Nights are longer.

I'm just commenting: It's hard to get out of bed. Harder. Than before.

Return Of Winter

The nights are coming earlier and earlier, and lasting longer and longer each morning.

The leaves are very gradually changing colors, blushing yellow and orange.

And the cold is creeping into the house at night, reminding me that the storm windows need pulling down.

To keep heating bills down, and myself warm, I spent last winter wearing my bathrobe to bed. It was an accident at first, but I was so cozy I just kept doing it.

Last night was the first night I did it this year. It's getting colder.

So Waspy

Our screened porch was getting to be overrun with wasps.

I couldn't figure it out. I looked all over the place for the nest, to see where they were coming from, but nothing. They were also outside the porch, buzzing all over the house. I figured they probably had a nest on the roof, between the shingles. Or maybe behind the shutters? There were just so many of them, and I couldn't really figure out how they were getting into the porch.

When Larry was here he tried to stopper up the entry point with a rang and some paper towels. It seemed to work for a couple of days, but then they were back. I bought wasp spray, but without a nest it was just like spreading poison into the air.

And it was kind of annoying because this was such a great time of year to spend on the porch! And we were missing it. Because who can relax when screened in with eleven frustrated wasps?

And then, one day, Andy came running up to me. "I found the nest!" he said. "Come with me!" and he led the way outside, down the porch steps, toward the swing... and pointed up.

Can you see it? No? How about this?

There. I zoomed in. Is that better? Still no? OK, I'll just...

There. I know you can see it now. But just in case, here's a different angle.

Yup. it was up in the tree.

So I waited until just before nightfall, just as the instructions on the wasp spray say, and then went out to the tree, pointed it at the nest, and hit the spray button.

Only to have a huge cloud of poison spray go halfway up before gravity set it and pulled it all back down on top of me. Think spitting into the wind... if one spat vast amounts of poison.

So then I changed tactics. I went to my bedroom and climbed out onto the porch roof. "Never, Never, Never do this!" I kept saying, as Andy watched me, wide-eyed from the safety of my bedroom.

I crept out to the almost-edge of the porch. It's a pretty flat roof, so I was stable, but suddenly the grass and the swing seemed very, very far away. I realize that I have a fear of heights which I usually keep in check by staying on the ground. But these were extraordinary circumstances. I just didn't want to hit it enough to anger the wasps, but then not disarm them enough to follow the invading poison back to me, attack me, and cause me to plummet to the hard earth.

I inched my way out as far as I dared, pointed the spray bottle at the next, and hit the button.

The spray was pretty direct. It went right toward the nest until it was about eighteen inches away, and then gravity did it's dirty work and the spray curved downward, again soaking the same spot I had hit before.

Meanwhile, the wasps circled their next making "nyah nyah" buzzing sounds.

I was so frustrated, and had now wasted four spray bottles (counting the ones I sprayed in the porch pre-next discovery) and hours of my time trying to get these suckers.

Well, a few days later we had a lot of wind and some rain. Go back to that photo of the tree. See all those lovely yellow leaves? Gone. The tree is now naked.

The thing about leaves is, they protect everything that lives IN the tree. Including the nests that wasps live in.  It took two days for half the next to get ripped off.

And then the following week we had the first frost.

I kind of regret the time I wasted hunting them down.

Season Change

What do you think of when you hear the phrase "change of season?"

No matter what time of year I hear it, I always picture leaves falling off trees. Fall always seems like the most clear-cut sign of season's changing. We're too busy enjoying the last days of summer to notice the gradual coloring of the leaves or the first few to hit the ground. And then suddenly we look up and...

Backyard October 2013

Winter just gets colder. Yes there's snow, but not always. And I'm so impatient for spring that I scan the ground daily for little specks of green from February on. It's more gradual than I care to think about right now, at the start of the long cold lonely winter.

The thing is, I often forget about the other changes that come with fall. Waking up in pitch dark, for instance. Even when one forgets to set the alarm and wakes up an hour later. It's still dark.

And the heat. Well, the lack of heat. Because this house, people, is COLD. In the afternoons I open windows to warm the place up. No joke. The other day I woke up the furnace and turned up the heat for the first time. Now I've got all thermostats planted at 60, figuring it will turn on when we really need it. We all end up huddling under blankets reaching out every few moments to place a hand on the heating unit. Is it warm? No? But it Must be under 60 in here, it's freezing! This will go on until February, when I will give up and turn everything up to 75, and that will last until June.

The boys sleep later in the fall, because of the dark, yes, but also because the windows are shut and they can't hear the early commuters. Also, it's warmer in the bed.

I can't speak for the boys, but this morning I had that first winter shower. In the summer one can take time removing one's clothing, pausing to turn on the water, pin up one's hair... Winter showers involve steam, the rush of tearing off whatever in on one's body and quickly immersing one's self in the hot water. Shoulder's relax and breathing eases as parts of the body heat up that you hadn't even realized were cold. You hadn't realized you couldn't feel your toes before now.

It's a little depressing, in the "seasonal depression" sense, because it's the very start. It's the beginning. After this there will be many days of waking up to darkness, taking rushed showers, feeling the heaters to see if they are really on. My advice? Tea, sweaters, and lots of fun music. Make a soup once a week. Whenever the sun is out, go for a walk. Sometimes, go for a walk even when it's cloudy.

Foliage

You wish you had this view, with the beautiful colored leaves.

Actually, I wish I had this view. Since then we had a lot of wind and then some rain, so now a lot of these colors are already gone.

It's kind of nice, though, for the two days we've got it.

Playing Possum

Have I mentioned the dead opossum that was across the street? I know I did, but you might not have caught is, as it was buried in a whole lot of complaining type words.

There was a dead opossum across the street. It wasn't right by our mailbox, it was closer to the neighbor across the street's mailbox. But still, we could see it from the end of the driveway, where the school bus comes to pick up the kids.

I'm not talking about a creature the size of a kitten. I'm talking about a creature about the size of a three month old baby. Still a small creature, but large enough to be not tiny. Bigger than your average cat. Not something a crow would find and carry off and you wouldn't have to think about.

And then on Thursday, the day I made like the government and shut down, the friendly mailman drove right over it as I was trying to convince the boys to go look at something else.

Well, the 'possum saga isn't over.

It isn't over because this morning I tried to catch a peek, just to see if it was still there, if the dead-animal fairy had come in the middle of the night and removed it.

Of course it hadn't been removed.

But it had been moved.

Some wonderful person decided it belonged across the street. In our yard. On the lawn in front of our house. Not too far down, mind you, but far enough in to officially NOT be on the road. No car will accidentally run this thing over and scatter it around for the crows and flies to eat. No. It's on LAWN.

I spent some time thinking maybe it was an animal? Maybe some dog or fox was trying to eat it, but dropped it instead? Across the street?

I'm trying really really hard to come up with a scenario that is NOT the people across the street scooping it up to get it away from their mailbox and dumping it on our property, when there is a perfectly good clump of trees RIGHT THERE they could have hidden it in, along with the downed electrical wire nobody ever seems to want to fix.

I had a hard time removing the dead mouse from my deck a couple of years ago. How will I ever get that decaying possum up? It's just... there's so much else to deal with right now. Why would you do that to another person? WHY? It simply isn't fair.

I'm Still Here!

I'm sorry I haven't written anything for ages. I DID warn everyone there might be a lull or two as I occupy myself with actual life experiences. Just because I haven't been blogging doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about blogging.

It's snowing here this morning. Again. I woke and looked out the window and thought I'd stay home from church. And that's saying a lot, because for this particular atheist / humanist, I'm pretty religious about my church.  Of course, it's pretty much tapered off NOW, and I'm feeling that I should head over to help sing the hymn we've been practicing. It's tricky, as it's in zulu.

Anyway, despite being irritating and stretching February beyond it's allocated time frame, the snow is actually quite pretty. I tried to capture it in a photograph, but it's the movement of the snow that's really amazing. So... I tried video.

These are rough. I didn't edit them at all.  But I still thought they were neat.

And Now, Photographs of Snow

So... um... It's snowing here?

In case you hadn't heard, it's snowing in the NorthEast. A lot. They knew it would. They predicted up to 2 feet of snow, and people started freaking out, and then the amount of possible snow kept rising. We could get over 36 inches of snow. There would be winds! Oh! The Winds! And it would be COLD!

I bumped my usual Friday shopping day to Thursday morning. The grocery store was already more crowded than usual. "Bread and Milk! It's going to snow! I need bread and milk! And five cases of bottled water!" And of course, people would bring up the blizzard of '78. "Our street wasn't plowed for a week! We went to the store on a sled!"

Anyway.

They cancelled all of Friday. They cancelled most of Saturday.

It snowed all day Friday, and we got....eh. Snow.

It is now Saturday morning.

I went to let the dog out. This is what I saw.

2013

In case you can't make it out, it's out back porch with about a foot of snow pressed against the door. I quickly realized that Gunther, once out, would have to pee on the porch because he would never make it down the porch steps. So I let him out the front door.

Gunther, Feb 2013

Gunther couldn't go more than two feet. He didn't know what to do when he got down into the snow. He just kept turning around and coming back. And, to be fair, there is a lot of snow out there. You can tell when you look at my car.

Feb. 2013

And the fron porch itself had a good deal of snow on it. Which is odd, because it's a covered porch. It doesn't usually get snow. Even the doorknob got snowed on. There were winds, I tell you.

Feb. 2013 

Feb. 2013

And it's still snowing. That's the thing. Snow will be falling until 4pm. Saturday is cancelled. I may declare today non-stop movie day, except when we go outside. Which I'm nervous about, quite honestly. I felt like Gunther couldn't make it around the corner. I'm afraid I might actually lose a child in the snow.

Backyard

Boat

Here are some photos of the boat that used to be ours, Post Storm.

Done Dreamin' is just that.

No Ticks On Me

After Trick-Or-Treating on the 31st, we still had to make the drive back home.

Both Nate and Andy fell asleep in the car, so when we got home, I had them skip baths so they could hop into bed, even though it wasn't even 8pm.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, there was a slight commotion. Then Nick and Nate were both shouting at me that there was a tick on Nate.

It was on his chest, high up enough so that he couldn't see it. It wasn't swollen, but it has sug itself in.

I called him over and got it out with a cotton ball, dish soap, and tweezers. (I've heard that if you cover it in soap or oil, it backs out, trying to breathe, and it makes it easier to pluck off. Don't know if it's true, but getting it off Nate was pretty easy.)

Nate sniffed a little, but the tick was off, and I figured it was forgotten.

That afternoon, however, he was poking at it during piano practice.

"I feel all funny about it," he said. And then he asked if it was true that you could catch a disease from ticks.

"Yes," I said, not really thinking about it. "You can, but you won't. We'll keep an eye on it just in case, but I'm sure you're fine. Now let's practice this."

Cut to Nate in Steve's Den, crying with worry about catching some illness from his tick bite.

By the way, he's fine. The area was red because he was poking it all day. Once we put a band-aid on the spot and he was able to see the reflection in the mirror, he was a lot calmer.

Storm Of The Century

They say things like this all the time. "Storm of the Century!" the headline will say. Or "Biggest snowfall of the decade!" or "Worst storm of the year." Usually Steve and I will glance at each other and then snort. "It's only January," we'll say. Or "it's 2010. The decade / century has just begun. HOW do they know?"

People seemed really hyped up about Sandy. There was a lot of giggling, a lot of eye rolling. People made jokes about not needing to stock up (I've still got all my stuff from Irene that I never used!) and people complained about the universe being out to ruin Halloween.

We braced for the storm. I expected a few downed branches. Maybe another fallen tree. We expected to lose power - I mean, let's face it, we lose power every few months. I got out all the flashlights. Steve bought gas for the generator. We charged up out electronic devices, our ipads, our computers, our phones.

I expected, in my self-centered, ego-centric world, that we would get the worst of the storm. We love in the country. There are trees. We always get the worst of the storm. At least compared to most of the people we knew.

It rained. The wind blew.

Facebook lit up with people updating the world on when they lost power.

And then the news sites started showing photographs of floating cars and waves hitting people.

A few daredevils I know posted pictures of an optimistic Atlantic Ocean. One picture was from a car that got soaked in salt water seconds later. One picture was of a plywood dam, taken from a second floor window which no longer exists.

Most of our town lost power. The kids were out of school for three days, and Halloween was postponed for the second year in a row. (The Universe Hates Halloween.)

We did not lose power.

Oh, there was a moment when the lights went out, and I called out "This is it, guys!" and then, twenty seconds later, the lights came back on. And they stayed on.

I wish I could say the same for my family.

My parents were evacuated out of their NYC apartment when a crane collapsed nearby. They don't know how to dismantle the crane (it was a tall one, building a lovely eyesore skyrise,) and everyone is afraid it will simply fall and crash into nearby buildings. The trouble is, in the hurry to get out, someone was left behind - a small, tail-less cat named Cinder.

The building is now padlocked. Jamie could not get in to retrieve the cat, and was told it would be 4-5 weeks before they'd be let back in. He led the  Save Cinder! movement until someone directed him to the back of the building, where they let people in small numbers (five) so that they might collect pets and other important items. Medication. Coats. Computers.

So my parents are refugees, as is my brother.

Areas have been flooded. Public transportation is broken, due to flood damage in the subway tunnels. Linda is without heat, running water, electricity. She says people are plugging cell phones into every outlet they can find - at banks, at the posts of some building (was it the library?)

Remember the boat? Steve's boat? Well, I don't think I ever posted about this, but Steve sold the boat, just a few weeks ago. Which turns out to be kind of lucky. Because the boat was totaled in the storm. Another boat broke from it's mooring and smashed into her. I feel bad, though, for the guy who bought her. He is from South Jersey, and although his insurance will more than cover the cost of the boat, he and his wife lost their home in the storm.

I'm getting all over the place, here. The thing is, there has been a major disruption. And so much damage. I feel horrible, and helpless, and wish I could do something.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things get back to normal soon. I'm hoping that damage is easily repaired. I'm thinking of my family and of the so many many people who has lost so much. And reminding myself that we never know what this storm will bring, or the next.

New England Color

Not all the colors, but some of the colors.

Playing With The Camera

Bring Back The Ladybugs

I've posted about the Ladybug invasions that take place in the fall. We had a couple of years that were really bad, with hundreds of ladybugs in our home, coming out when the sun hit the windows.

Well, we now have a different kind of bug invading the place.

Box elder bugs, or maple bugs, are much larger than ladybugs. We don't have as many of them, thank goodness, because unlike ladybugs, they don't hide when the sun isn't shining. At night, when I'm sitting in bed reading or at the computer, they dive-bomb me, land on my pillow or in my hair, and when I sleep they crawl on the bed. 

When you crush them, they smell like grass. I've smelled that smell in the middle of the night and realized I had just crushed one in my sleep.

They don't bite, they're just there. All the time. Bugging me. 

And they're creepy. And no mater how many I squish in tissues and flush down the toilet, more keep coming in. I swear they're chewing through the walls or something.

I think it's a kind of karmic retribution for making such a fuss over the ladybugs. After all, they're harmless. I'll take them back. Really. And I will not complain. Just get these icky ones away from me.

Camping

Every summer we tell the kids we're going to set up the tent and have a few sleepouts in the yard.

And every summer, in late August, we realize it's now or never.


Usually we pitch the tent close to the house, rather close to the swingset. But this year we decided to pitch it farther down. Way, way at the end of the property. Closer to the brook.

See? No? Too far away? Here. I'll zoom it for you.

There! Better?

You'll notice that there is a car next to the tent. This is because, after we pitched it, Steve realized he didn't want to carry all of the sleeping bags and pillows and books and flashlights down there all by himself. So he loaded everything into the car and drove.

They had a great night. The bigest issue was that we pitched the tent pretty close to the brook - not an issue in terms of flooding, as the brook is rather low, but we didn't want to leave the boys down there for even a second.So when a boy woke in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom and too frightened to walk the long way across the misty lawn alone, he was kind of out of luck.

We didn't take the tent down, and a couple of nights before the first day of school I took my turn. I had giggled at Steve for taking the car down to the tent, and instead I insisted that the boys carry their own sleeping bags and headlamps. We settled in.

It wasn't too bad. Even that far away fromt he house, the wireless works, so while the boys fell asleep at 8pm I was able to read and get on the internet with my ipad. I determined yet again that I prefer sleeping in a bed with indoor plumbing a short walk away, but the boys had a great time.

And then, at around 5am, it began to rain.

It was light at first, and I was sure it would stop before the boys woke up.

It didn't.

In fact, it got harder and harder. The boys woke up and started to panic. "We're fine," I said. "We'll just wait for it to slow down or stop."

Nate looked at me, deadpan. "It's never going to stop."

The rain got harder and harder, and I knew we were going to have to leave our stuff there and make a run for it. Even so, we' d get soaked to the bone. It takes the boys forever to walk across the lawn, especially Andy, and the rain was just too unforgiving...

And that's when we heard the car.

Steve had woken up, heard the rain, and decided to save us. He drove the minivan down across the lawn to pick us up. It was 6:30 AM.

And then we had coffee and it was good.

The Hike

After our day at StoryLand and our night at the Best Hotel Ever, I forced the family to to go to Franconia Notch State Park. 

The truth is, all I'd wanted to do was take the boys on this hike, and then Nate won the StoryLand tickets, so the trip turned into an overnight and got all amusement parkish. But this was the one thing I had wanted to do all summer, and I was going to do it, gosh darn it!

So we piled the boys into the car and began the drive across the mountains that sit in between StoryLand and the State Park. After ten minutes I told the boys I was taking away their DS things so they would look up and pay attention to the scenery. There was a little grumbling and some frowns, but they did it.

Then we went to Flume Gorge. We did a 2 mile hike to see some waterfalls (amazing!). Nate, Andy and I wedged ourselves through a narrow opening through some rocks, and we saw glacial boulders. We then drove up to Cannon Mountain and took a tram up to the top. There was a short hike up there to the observation deck - it was cold. I was glad I remembered sweatshirts. The views were amazing.

This was my favorite part of the summer. I was so, so happy to be walking in the clouds, and to be showing all of it to my kids.

Nature. It's all around me.

We have a Woodchuck in the backyard.

At least I think it's a woodchuck. It's definitely something that lives in the shed, and that I've only seen creeping through the grass from a distance. But I've seen it many times, so I know it lives with us.

The boys have named it. His name is Badoof Patrick Shia.


I don't actually have a photo of Badoof. He moves much too quickly and is too hard to focus on. So here are some photos of more wildlife from our backyard, all from this summer.

Boy On Rock