Gotten dag meine Freunde:
“Without a rope, people bind themselves”………………………………………………………………………………………………Zen Saying
“Perfectionism is slow death” ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Hugh Prather
“If on earth there be a Paradise,
It is this, It is this, It is this.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Amir Khusrow
“amidst swollen moon
face of wicked witch smiling
bats fly in frenzy”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Haikus for Halloween
Been a busy week here in the mountains….leaves are beginning to sparkle and alternating between warm, sunny days and cold overcast or rainy, with nights sometimes down in the 30s….we had expected to do a two night getaway to peep at leaves this week, but it turned out to be rainy and cold…..and then there is the issue of going places that have no phone service (half of Vermont) while on the baby watch…..speaking of which …still on hold and waiting, though the oven is bursting as apparent in the prego selfie. We have now cancelled two of our ridiculously scheduled eight flights in a row (every four days or so, booked on points with Southwest and therefore easily cancelled)..…next scheduled flight is this Wednesday the 3rd.
Sunday last turned out to be day long adventure of mountain cleanup…mostly from the shit hole excavating…but no complaints…we are now flushing fools- often flushing the toilets just because we can….the Queen of the Mount was in her glory…digging and planting….your chronicler schlepped all day and is still bent over from the weight of it all…and little Lucy found at least five piles of assorted aromatic matter to role in….she is often spending her full days banished to the outdoors now, until she is provided the icy hose bath ….Jen has some pretty strict standards about what can come in the house, though I rather enjoy the varied aromas….she also managed to get into my book bag this week while we were away….and consumed the contents of a gallon size Ziploc bag of airline snacks (sha has mastered how to open the zipper of the ancient vessel)…..when I came home and found the little pretzel bags all over the living room floor and Lucy in a carb/sugar induced coma… I yelled at her “just wait until your mother gets home”…….
Since we did not do the planned getaway this week, we settled on a couple of day adventures…so on Tuesday, in a full day downpour, we spent the day in Rutland going to a movie (see my review,-better left unmentioned) and dinner at the Victorian Inn in Wallingford, where we had been meaning to go for six years and proved worth the wait. The owners are from Switzerland and have run the place for almost 30 years….so, of course, Schnitzel was the order of the day. We were the only people there and wound up getting a personal tour of the bowels of the 10,000 square foot Inn.
Thursday turned out to be a beauty….70 degrees, blue skies, sunshine….so we headed out early for a day of wandering… we had planned to hit a couple of art exhibits in Central Vermont, but had failed to read the fine print and none of them was open…nor was the legendary Worthy Burger in South Royalton….so the day did not go quite as planned. But, we did a nice circuit through South Strafford, Chelsea, Tunbridge and South Royalton (four of Vermont’s most quaint villages), sat on every lovely town green, had lunch on the ground, looked for the brightest red maples and took a dirt road stroll. Really…..not much happened but it was a good day away anyway….and Lucy managed no rolling in her first day of roll-recovery….. Mid-morning we stopped in the tiny hamlet of South Strafford as there was an assemblage on the town green of what looked like most of the town. Turned out they were all out to watch a 150 foot crane and the accompanying ascent of two men in a lift to replace the weathervane on the 250 year old town meeting house up on the hill (one of the prettiest in Vermont)…watched for an hour at a snail’s pace….so we gave up craning our head’s once they got the old weathervane off…but no one else was budging from this riveting spectacle. Late in the day , on our dirt road walk, we came across this massive gathering of off raid vehicles coming together for an annual off- road bird watching safari (their word not mine)..which I can only describe as surreal……quite a boost to the camouflage gear market…
Theft in the mountains…..turns out our local General store in Belmont (which has recently had a shift to its sixth owner in last 15 years)…..has been robbed twice in last year…which was relayed to us by one of the local yentas, our on-site hair stylist from England)….the first guy was caught selling the cigarettes he boosted the next day on E-bay…the second guy was caught when he interrupted his pilfering to make himself a fried egg sandwich on the grill…..these guys are not keeping up with modern crime techniques apparently…
I received a DVD in the mail this week from good friend in Ohio, The Naven, who had taken a collection of super eight films of mine- dating from 1966 through 1974 to Costco to have them modernized….wow…is all I can say….the short film vignettes are Chaplinesque, whirring around at lightning speed…..and classic little glimpses of the times…..am hoping to put them up on line the near future for those of you who have been around that long…those were the days, my friends…
We had two overnight Airbnb guests this weekend….each unusual in their own way…..the first was a woman who had stayed with us before, who is here to spend a parents’ weekend with her son who is a nearby recovery center…he is with all the meth heads and heroin addicts, but he, himself, is a computer addict (Tess wants to know if that means he cannot have a phone)…..our guests last night were here for a wedding nearby with some people we know…and told us the wedding was “complicated”, as it as the joining of two women who had both become men…..figure that one out……..only in Vermont…
Yesterday was a brisk fall day, as the colors continue to bloom around us….so after our weekly dump visit (the Dumpmaster was advising me to catch and grill a up a few trout from our pond, which will make the little lady more frisky….this, an example of the weekly advice the sage provides) we took an afternoon hike up a nearby hill and got some good images…..then went down to Rutland to a German mecca for an under the big tent Oktoberfest….full German buffet and schooners of beer…..they had a nice three piece acoustic band who played folksy music…to the chagrin of the celebrants who came in their Tyrolean hats and lederhosen….and were wondering where the hell the polkas were…….
And that, my friends, is all she wrote…may or may not be a Blog edition next week…depending on the potential arrival of baby what’s’- her-name….but we’ll be back sooner or later…..Eat well and enjoy the autumn shift…………………
Papi
