Thankgiving at the neighbors

For the past six or seven years, Brad has carried out his own Thanksgiving tradition, crafting a unique, formal, multi-course, fully vegetarian meal (which is, sorry, better than whatever traditional Thanksgiving meal you ate.  But don’t feel bad.  Not everyone can be a food service professional.  I’m certainly not.)  Every T. holiday I’ve spent with Brad has also been shared with my brother.  This year my bro is in Idaho, and I was all sad that the tradition would have to be changed.  It was really, really changed!

We were kindly invited to Thanksgiving at the neighbors’, where several other community members were also in attendance.  It was an education.  One member of the party has metal plates in his head (I didn’t catch why), and the hostess enjoyed sticking refrigerator magnets to his noggin (successfully!)  Another visitor was hatching her Black Friday plans, while her brother remarked on how he wanted a new gun for Christmas but no one on earth could possibly know which one, so could he please have a gift certificate to Cabela’s?  I’m pretty certain the answer was no on that, since she is so not a gift certificate kind of gal.  I was told the story of the recent re-opening of the local paper mill and invited a little forcefully to join the area’s economic development council.  I discovered that snowmobiling is essentially a religion here — the town’s one church is only open 4 months a year, but the snow is around longer than that, you know.  Tattoo stories were shared, and related stories about chaperoning annual senior trips (to such mysteriously educational places as Disney World and West Virginia.  I’m still lost on the WV one).  My kids played with the grown children of our neighbor, who were visiting from their homes-in-other-places.  As we left, H said, “I really liked playing with that 20-year-old guy.  Is he a kid?”

Next year maybe we’ll be stocked and settled enough to return to something like the other tradition, or we’ll travel to see family.  Or maybe this will be the new Thanksgiving.

Wrestling mom?

A month or so ago, I called the school here to let them know a new student would be arriving.  The person I spoke with was very chipper and chatty, and in the course of the chipper, chatty conversation, she mentioned that there was wrestling and hockey at all grade levels, so H could participate in that.

I assumed that she had either misspoken or I had misunderstood, because it is simply beyond the pale of reason to imagine kindergarteners wrestling or playing hockey.

I am here to announce, tonight, that we have now moved firmly beyond the pale of reason.  H begged to go to wrestling tonight — the first practice for the wrestling club (intended to feed into the high school wrestling team, according to the welcome speech).  Last year they included pre-kindergarteners too, but apparently that was just too much even for this wrestling-crazed area, and this year the tinier tots had to watch the slightly-less-tiny tots from the sides.  H wrestled in a giggly manner, I noticed, which is better than wrestling in a tearful manner.  I suppose if he continues he will sober up about it.

I’m waffling between hockey and figure skating classes on the ice skating thing.  I do think that being involved in one of them is important for (a) social interaction, (b) north country skill-building (I could use some — or a lot — of that, too), and (c) working out some of that stuck-inside-because-it’s-winter-and-it’s-thirty-below-and-my-parents-and-teachers-are-getting-that-homocidal-glint-in-their-eyes energy.  I think most small children start with figure skating; there’s a strong club here for that.  The stronger hockey programs are in other towns, I hear.  I’m not down with driving H all over the county at the age of five for sports.  Please, let’s wait a couple of years for that kind of schedule.

Here.

What a beautiful November!  The house is fine, and it even has a sweet little pantry under the stairs in the basement.  It has great hardwood floors that were recently refinished.  It doesn’t seem to be haunted, but there is a spooky drip on the pantry wall…

The only hint that maybe someone was once murdered in this house…

 

 

Zoned out in the ADK

We’ve arrived in NY.  None of our stuff has arrived yet, and I can only say it should be here by Thanksgiving.  We’re camping out in our new place.  (I’m blogging from the library at the school).

I am pretty wigged out by all this.  Iowa and Indiana are way prettier than I expected.  And Wyoming is pretty windy; I’m glad we didn’t decide to move to Laramie.  Here in the Adirondacks (ADK) there are more trees and fewer people than I pictured.

It was snowing as we drove in.  It snowed all the next day, too, but it all melted yesterday and it was sweater weather today.  I hear it’s supposed to be about 60 degrees tomorrow — no sweater required, even!  Baby C has been busy eating leaves and sand, and H built a really Blair-Witch-Project style “sandbox” out of bits of wood he found outside.  It bears no resemblance to a sandbox, just in case you’re wondering.

Sputnik has a superhuman (supercat?) resistance to all tranquilizers.   Valium was like kitty cocaine for her, so we switched to something else — don’t remember the name — that was a cream I rubbed in her ear once or twice a day.  It seemed to have no effect whatsoever, so she arrived in her new home drug-free.  She has been staring at the large, chittery squirrels outside the dining room window.  And she seems to be frightened of the basement, where Brad put her litter box.  Now, why would a cat be afraid of a basement?

I have no cord to transfer pictures from my camera, so you’ll just have to imagine all this.