Out, about and back

Although the morning was quiet, I had a busy afternoon and evening.  I met up with someone in Albany about a project (at the very cosy Daily Grind Cafe, on bohemian Lark Street).  Rushed home to find the Girl fresh in off the bus, and whisked her out to look for a skating dress to wear in an upcoming competition.  (Success!  We found something!)

Rushed home again to stoke everyone full of early dinner before zipping out once more with the Girl to get her to a skating lesson.  And after that I had to hustle along to the library for a meeting with another group I seem to be a member of (and that was a successful outing, too, because an event I'd proposed got the thumbs up and, all being well, should happen).

I'd arrived at the library at 7:20pm, the air a little chilly.  When I came out an hour later the roads were all covered in snow!  So I rushed home - slowly and carefully - to spend the rest of the evening with my family (and also with that Modern Family we've taken to seeing so much of these days...).

Warm, wet and windy

Another weathersome day.

It has been "unseasonably" (whatever that means, these days) warm, and on and off drizzly-rainy.  All the latest snow has melted.  Tonight the wind is starting to get up.  And an hour ago, when the Girl suddenly remembered her English assignment and announced, panic-style, that she had-to-get-a-novel-in-verse-from-the-library-TONIGHT!! we discovered that it's also pretty foggy out.  Well, there's always something going on with the weather.  We're expecting snow again tomorrow.

It has been a satisfying day.  A visit to my refugee friends in the morning, then tea-and-talk consecutively with two other good friends.  Also, a moment of pride in my daughter who has instigated a school supplies drive at her school to collect pencils and paper etc for the school we're involved with in the Dominican Republic.  It starts tomorrow. Yay, that's my Girl!

Drumming

I don't know if I mentioned that although the Boy started learning the flute this school year, he didn't last very long with it.  Wrong embouchement, or something.  Anyway, he opted for percussion instead and now has a nice set of bells (xylophone) and a drum pad (for practice, in lieu of a snare drum).  He has been getting on much better with these, thanks to absence of mouthpiece / running-out-of-puff woes.

Tonight was his first concert with the Fifth Grade Band.  Unfortunately the band is so large that the entire percussion section (all three of them) was elbowed off into the wings and rendered completely invisible.  However, their bells rang loud and clear (and mostly to tune) and the Boy rocked on snare, setting the pace for March of the Romans.  In fact he did so well that when it came time to step forward and take a bow, the conductor not only shook the Boy's hand but also gave him a high five and fist bump.  Good job, that Boy!

He was rewarded in traditional style at the local ice-cream place, which, as expected on this rainy (isn't it always?) concert night, was packed out with abnormally smartly-dressed kids (waistcoats, neckties, bow-ties - you name it.  There was even one kid in a wing collar).  OK, so the Boy didn't manage to tuck in his new button-down shirt - but, hey, at least he was wearing it, and he'd washed and combed his hair, too. Not bad at all for a fellow who most often looks like he slept under a hedge.

Taking a snowcheck

The weather forecast looked iffy today, so I decided to "take a raincheck" with someone I was meant to meet up with early this afternoon.  I'm glad that I did, because although only an inch or two of snow fell it left the roads in a mess.  The Girl's dance class was also cancelled.

The snow won't hang around for long - temperatures are set to rise and we'll probably be in shorts and t-shirts by the middle of the week.

While it's here, though, checking the snow in the front yard for prints each morning can be quite diverting.  We've had deer munching on our shrubs, evidently, and some foxy looking pawprints crossed the driveway in the night.

Views of Vermont

It was great on the ski slopes this afternoon.  Cold, but not as bad as I'd feared because the sun took the edge off (and I was wearing my new, warm snowpants).  The snow was good - consistent and quite zippy.

I took my lesson as usual, and our class took the opportunity to do a new (to us) run.  For the first time in two years the left-side of the mountain was open for skiing, so our instructor took us down the very pretty tree-lined Shady Lane, leading to the steep, icey and nerve-wracking Look Out and then the White River Run.  I was glad to be following someone down - it gave me confidence (the kids, meanwhile, merrily skied down this route several times all by themselves apparently without a qualm).

Halfway down Shady Lane our instructor stopped us and pointed off into the distance.  We could make out a sort of spike - which turned out to be the Bennington Battle Monument.

Home and away

A fairly uneventful day for us here, but pleasant enough - the Boy had his buddy round, the Girl is at her friend's house tonight.  I baked some banana bread.  And, oh yes, we've had some more doses of Modern Family fun.

But our's has not been as uneventful a day (I'm guessing) as the Man's - he's been having a long sit-down.  As I write he's about halfway through a fourteen-hour flight to the other side of the world. 

Although people do it every day, trans-continental air travel still seems unbelievable to me.  I will never get my head around it.

Family viewing

Today (cold again) we said goodbye to the Man for a little while.  He has taken the train down to NYC, first leg of a much longer journey - I'm sure he'll be sending in updates from time to time.

So that leaves just three of us.  Tonight we've been huddled together on the sofa having a Modern Family fest.  This is a show the Man and I have been watching for a year or so, and the kids have recently discovered.  We've borrowed the first series (24 episodes) as a boxed set of DVDs from the library.  At the rate we're going, we'll be needing to reserve the second series by the end of the weekend...

The Man adds...this are views of the icy Hudson on the way down and out of my NYC hotel window tonight.

Deep freeze

Our Arctic snap continues.  We were down into minus degrees F overnight.  Today it got up to about 14F, but the windchill made it feel like zero.  I happened to pick the kids up from their schools this afternoon, and even just a brief exposure to the breezy, freezy elements left me needing a hot shower when we got home, to thaw out.  Mind you, we've got it easy - up in the Adirondacks it will go below -25F tonight, and that's before factoring in windchill. 

I don't mean to go on and on about the weather, but as you can imagine it's near the top of everyone's thoughts right now.  The roads are quiet - people aren't going out if they can avoid it.  Oh well, according to the forecast it will be warming up again before long.  It can't happen soon enough - she types, blowing on her fingertips (which feel a little numb even indoors with the heating on).

Waaaay below freezing

It was 4 degrees out when I walked to school with the Boy this morning.  That's 4F of course, which is minus lots of degrees C (about -15). I insisted on my scrap of a son wearing a coat for once, but as soon as he was within sight of the school building he unzipped it and went in with it flapping open - evidently he has a certain image to maintain, frostbite be damned.

I had a few things to do today but mostly tried to stay in the warm.  I didn't really relish going out to a meeting tonight about set design for the school musical, but that's the committee I've signed up for this time around.  But I think it'll be fun.  We have to create a map of America as a backdrop, plus representations of a covered wagon, a steamboat and a railroad (as they call it over here). 

Tonight the temperature is set to drop several degrees below 0F - I've never been gladder not to be living in a covered wagon.

Oil be waiting

So, driving home late last night the Man noticed a light flickering on the dashboard, prompting him to check the oil, whereupon he realised there wasn't any. 

Oo-er.

Luckily, out neighbour (who is very handy with machines of all kinds) was able to help us out with the wherewithall for a top up.  And since the car was due for a service anyway I took it in today for a thorough looking-over.

Well.  No sign of an oil leak, but the water pump was leaking anti-freeze, causing the engine to overheat and burn through the oil.  I got it fixed.  The whole process of service and repair took six hours, and best not even to think about how much it all cost.

The Boy also had a long day - band rehearsal for an hour before school (the concert's next week), and musical show rehearsal for 40 minutes at the end of the day.  He has just one line, but, he tells me (promise or threat?) "I'm going to make it memorable!"

An everyday story of country folk?

The kids were off school today.  Not because it was a snow day (as it was for many in the UK, I gather - five inches in Linton??), and not in honour of Barack Obama's second inauguration (I liked his speech - what did you think?), but because it was Martin Luther King Day, which is a holiday here.

The Boy has been on at me for weeks (make that months) to book him an archery lesson, so I'd arranged one for this afternoon.  We went to Flying Arrow Sports, not too far away in East Greenbush. 

The guy who gave the instruction was very good and explained things clearly, and we didn't hold it against him that he mistook the nearly eleven-year-old Boy for an eight-year-old girl (he's a small, long haired kid - whatcha gonna do?).  The half hour lesson went well - he even hit a bullseye!  I suspect we'll be investing in some gear. 

While archery in this country is predominantly a hunting sport, our local deer shouldn't feel too concerned - the Boy will stick to shooting paper targets and tin cans.  He's the strictest vegetarian of the lot of us, and (as far as I know) he has no plans to mount an antlered head on his bedroom wall.

Cold mountain

St. Agnes' Eve - Ah bitter chill it was!

It really is the Eve of St. Agnes (I studied that Keats' poem for English A Level - thirty years ago, yikes - and always think of it around this time of year).  And it has been pretty much bitter chill.  Not according to the thermometer - this afternoon it crept down slowly from the mid-40s to the low 30sF, which compared to recent temperatures is not that cold - but skiing down a mountain into a brisk wind and with the sun behind threatening clouds, it felt as cold as it ever has.

Nevertheless, between us we skied hard.  My instructor tells me I did well today, and apart from losing all sensation in my fingers and toes I did quite enjoy myself.  The kids were up and down, up and down the mountain I don't know how many times.  The Girl was wearing a new bright orange jacket, so she was easy to spot as I scanned the slopes from the chair-lift.  And the Boy, as ever, could also always be spotted a mile off, doggedly snow-ploughing along.

Remains of the day

The Man and I had another little spending spree at Troy Farmers' Market today - I suspect pasta is going to be on the menu a few times in the next week or two.  The Placid Baker croissant disappeared in no time flat and we've also already demolished the baguette - excellent as ever.

Man, Girl and Boy headed down to the Y in the afternoon, the Girl to skate and the other two to run around the track.  I took gentler exercise later - a stroll at Five Rivers with the Man, which we timed perfectly to see a beautiful sunset.

Going for cold

 Our kids seem to be impervious to the weather. Even today, when the starting temperature was 11F (about -11C) the Girl would not deign to wear a coat as she strolled up the street to catch her bus, and the Boy's only concession to the cold was to put a sweater on under his lightweight hoodie before he cycled to school. Me, I went with the full works - snowpants, thick socks, lined boots, down jacket, woolly hat - and still felt chilled.

Beasts and buses

It turned into another day of to-ing and fro-ing, what with the Girl having a dental appointment and other such errands.  At one point I was stuck on the road outside her school just as the school buses started to leave the grounds.  Perfectly bad timing.  A policeman stands holding up the traffic as a fleet of forty buses streams out, bus after bus after bus, heading all over the district to take all the kids home.  It's impressive, like a herd of big yellow wildebeest suddenly crossing your path.

We are still waiting to catch the last, super-light mouse.  Meanwhile this morning the Man spotted some interesting tracks outside leading under our three-season room.  Something bigger than a mouse (but smaller than a wildebeest).  By the fingery pawprints I'm guessing a racoon or a skunk...

Snow time for any of that

Yay - we got our snow back!  A couple of inches had accumulated by the time we woke up, and it was still snowing, so the schools had a two hour delayed start.  Another couple of inches-worth fell throughout the day.  The trees, white against a white sky, took on a ghostly beauty.

Normally I'd have hunkered down and stayed at home while the snow fell, but I'd promised to take some Karen friends to an appointment in Albany, so I took the Man to work, and once the kids were finally off to school I set out to town in the weather...and all was fine.  From downtown I had to dash back and collect the Girl from school to take her for a long overdue haircut (she looks lovely now).  Then there wasn't much turnaround time (just enough to half-shovel the drive) before I had to pick up the Man from work, drop him at home and buzz straight along to a couple of meetings at Five Rivers. 

So all in all it turned into a busy let's-ignore-the-snow day for me - but maybe tomorrow I'll have more time to get out and enjoy a walk in it.

Mouse guests

The weather gets cold, the mice move in. 

Everyone here seems to have had mice in residence at some time or another - it doesn't matter how old or new the house is. 

Anyway, the other day we caught a biggish mouse and moved him out.  The next day the babies appeared.  The Man found two of them in the sink, curled up together in the plughole. 

So cute.  Vermin, but...so cute.

I got them out - they were scared and shivery - and put them in a box.  As soon as the Boy saw them, he named them (he's a dodgy speller, maybe he mistook pests for pets?).  So then in the box we had Nibbles and Crunch.

Well, once you know your guests' names it seems rather inhospitable not to give them a bite to eat - so I gave them a bit of cookie.  And a bottletop filled with water, because the cookie was rather dry.  And a dollop of peanut butter, and some tissue-paper to build a nest in until I could remove them to a new home...

There they were in the lap of luxury, and bloomin' Crunch just says, "Thanks for the cookie!" and hightails it out of the box and under the cooker.

Hmph.  So much for hospitality.  When I then noticed another mouse in the sink (it had been hiding out, daringly, in the waste disposal) I caught it in a humane trap.  And even though the Man (this time) named that one, too, (Cranberry Juice, aka C.J.), I didn't get so soft on it. 

C.J. and Nibbles took a trip in the car and live elsewhere now.  Crunch plus one other were caught the next day and have also been evicted.  There seems to be one very lightweight mouse left (it has somehow managed to take the peanut butter bait without tripping the balance-activated trap) but it can only be a matter of time before he tips the scales and we've got him...

A spoonful of sugar

It must have rained in the night - our snow has melted away.  There's just a bit left alongside the driveway where we'd shovelled it, and a soggy white heap that was once a fort.  Sigh.  Still, the forecast is for colder weather as the week progresses, so fingers crossed we might get some more.

I came across a set of videos lately promoting the idea that people are more likely to do willingly what they should be doing anyway if (in true Mary Poppins fashion) an element of fun is added to the task.  For example, properly disposing of rubbish.  Or taking the stairs instead of the escalator.  There are more ideas along these lines at www.thefuntheory.com.

Can you think of a dull task you'd be more willing to do if it was "funned up"?  If so what, and how?  Or, do you ever reward yourself or others for doing the right thing, and if so how small or silly a reward can you get away with?  The Girl's Music teacher this year acknowledges good work by handing out little strips of decorative duct tape.  The twelve and thirteen year olds are all mad for it. What a teacher!

And all because...

As expected, conditions on the slopes were not ideal today - the snow was slushy and wet, then dusk and the temperature fell and it became crusty and slick - but still good enough for a great afternoon of skiing.  We stayed out until 5:30pm, feeling quite adventurous skiing in mist and semi-darkness on areas of the mountain without floodlights (and in parts without snow).

My gently-does-it lessons are gradually building my confidence, so after an hour and half on the Bunny I ventured onto Joe's Special, and survived even though it was bumpy. I wasn't so happy on my one go down the half Colonel - too fast by the time I got on it - but I managed to stay upright all the way.

The kids have no confidence problems and go bombing down every slope that's open.  The Boy still favours the snow-plough for his descents - we don't know how he does it at such speed.  The Girl has a more graceful style, and looked very cool today swooshing down dressed all in black.

The Man was also a vision in black today - I half hoped I'd find a box of Milk Tray in my locker when I got back to the lodge, but no such luck.

Sat a day

It's been quite a busy day for the rest of the family.  The Girl survived another mass sleepover at a distant friend's house last night, and had skating this afternoon.  The Boy spent a couple of hours at a laser-tag birthday party, then had a friend over for the rest of the afternoon.  The Man did all the taxi-driving, delivering and collecting children as necessary, and also managed to run a few miles in between times.  (When the Man tried to show off about this at dinner, the Boy patted him on the shoulder and said in his most patronizing voice: "Very impressive. Especially on those bones.")

I hung out at home and the busiest I got was in the kitchen, cooking up an (if I say so myself) excellent Indian dinner.  And otherwise I mostly had my nose stuck in a library book (Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie's memoir of his years living under Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa). 

Tomorrow I guess I'll be getting up off the couch for more skiing - in what might turn out to be slush.  The temperature has been rising.  In our backyard we can see patches of lawn again, and the poor (unfinished) snow fort is rapidly turning into a sagging snow ruin.

A tribute to "Weird Al"

While still wanting to be an inventor when he grows up, the Boy is also thinking of a second career - as a song parodist.

He is inspired by a master of the art, Weird Al Yankovic, whose songs he has been downloading like mad onto his iPod Nano.  I knew some of the songs already, without knowing who they were by - like the ebay Song, which has been popular in this house for a few years. And I feel like Eat It must have been doing the rounds for a couple of decades.  But I'll Sue Ya is new to me (great commentary on a certain regrettable aspect of US culture; especially enjoyed by the Girl, who is learning in Social Studies about what you can and can't get sued for - well, you need to know that kind of thing over here).

Another new (to us) Weird Al favourite is Hardware Store - which isn't a parody of anything but just a song about shopping for DIY equipment.  If the Rockfish family are still reading this - check it out, I think you'll like it too.

Note to readers over 70 - you're probably better off skipping the links in this post, I'm not sure you'll like any of them much.  Well, maybe the ebay one.

UK Entertainment USA

The Boy auditioned today for a part in his school's 5th Grade Musical.  He was practising for it last night (reading out a few lines from the musical in question, Go West!) and had us in stitches, hamming it up with a cod wild West accent.  From the little I could overhear through the closed door of the audition room, he had a similar effect on his music teacher. Now we wait with baited breath to find out which role he'll be assigned to...

There'll be a video of the show, but I daresay no-one will be nominated for an Oscar.  Same's true of the film the Man and I went to see at the Spectrum 8 cinema last Saturday.  Hyde Park on Hudson, about FDR's meeting with the British King and Queen before the outbreak of World War II at his estate beside the Hudson river, has not been widely heralded by critics here. 

But we liked it - there are convincing performances by all the lead players, and it nicely portrays the way in which dramatic world events can often hinge on whether or not influential individuals manage to get along with each other at a personal level.  It's also an easy-on-the-eye period drama (though we heard members of the audience complaining that the scenery didn't look much like the Hudson Valley - we found out later that it was all filmed in Britain).

Sleep easy

So, nearly a week after learning the counting breaths relaxation technique, how much sleep have my friend and I been getting?

For myself, I've been doing ok, though I still find myself waking up in the night, or too early in the morning.  But sometimes I forget to do the breathing exercise. I shall practise some more.

For my friend - amazing results!  She has gone from often getting only 2-5 hours sleep a night (leaving her in a horrible state much like jetlag) to sleeping ten hours straight through.  Even our instructor was taken aback at this dramatic turnaround. 

My friend was certainly on great form today, very happy to be feeling properly rested.  So I have to conclude, there really are demonstrable benefits to this breath-counting thing, ridiculously simple though it is.

Right on track

It has been a beautiful day here - bright and sunny, crisp but not unbearably cold, and still with snow everywhere, looking pretty.  It was the perfect morning for the annual winter training session at Five Rivers.  We had a lot of fun out on the trails, spotting tracks made by deer, squirrels, rabbits and (we think) an otter, and vole holes, which are framed in ice crystals caused by the little creatures' frozen breath.

Ours was the first instructors' class to start out of the new Guided School Program building.  Although it was formally opened back in September, the building required some finishing work and that took a few months.  But now it is fully stocked with teaching equipment and properly available for use.

In addition to a good old wander round the trails, I hiked from home to Five Rivers and back again today, so I feel like I've had a fair share of fresh air and exercise.

A vacuum abhors Nature

Though in fact our vacuum cleaner coped surprisingly well with the tsunami of pine needles I asked it to deal with after we finally dragged the Christmas tree out. 

I got the worst of them up with a dustpan and brush, but I was still about an hour hoovering up the rest - and even after all that, I fear it will be many months before we stop tracking odd needles from room to room via our socks.

I don't know why each year I'm so hell-bent on bringing a real tree indoors to die in my sitting room.

Regaining our ski-legs

Back to the slopes for us all today, on the first day of our ski season at Willard Mountain. 

I've signed up for another series of lessons.  I'm in with two other women who have skied before but, like me, feel the need for more instruction.  We're being taught by the same guy as last year.  He's possibly the oldest ski instructor in the world, but we like him.

While we took some gentle turns down the Bunny, the Man and kids (who are not taking lessons this time) did their derring-do stuff on the trickier slopes.  The Boy fell a couple of times, but got up and carried on undeterred.

We had a lot of fun, including at half time when we all tucked into our now traditional mini-festival of sugar, salt and fat (except the Man, who was enjoying being able to fit again into his twenty year old ski salopettes).

My legs feel like they've had a good stretch.  I expect to sleep well tonight with or without restful breathing exercises.

Trojan market

Among other things today, the Man and I made a visit for the first time to Troy Farmers' Market.  We're missing our own local one, which closed for the season just before Christmas.

In winter the Troy market is held indoors in a large upstairs, downstairs space called the Uncle Sam Atrium (many things in Troy seem to be named after Uncle Sam).  There's a great variety of stalls and it's well attended.  It was very enjoyable just wandering around, chatting with friendly stallholders.  I ran into someone I knew, and also met a friend of friends, a guy who sells fair trade coffee from Guatemala.

We could have brought sackloads of goodies home, but in the end opted for some interesting home-made pastas, spinach-flavoured hummus, a few veggies and of course a bag of Guatemalan coffee.  We will, I'm sure, be making another visit before too long.

Goodbye to some of that

I had a good night's sleep, implementing yesterday's breath-counting technique.  Getting off to sleep at bedtime is usually fine for me anyway, it's when I wake up in the middle of the night that I have problems getting back to sleep again.  When this happened last night I did the counting exercise and drifted right off.  It really does seem to work.  I called my friend this morning, and she also reported having slept well, which is quite unusual for her.

So, well-rested,  I was in a good mood to take the long walk home from school after accompanying the Boy there this morning.  The last two days it has been too lung-freezingly cold for long walks, but today the temperature was more comfortable.  So I had a good two-miles-plus constitutional, with added exercise value because I was wearing snow boots, which weigh down your feet like deep-sea diving gear.

I spent the day at home, working through a mountain of winter-break laundry, and making a small beginning on what may turn out to be a year-long assault on all the drawers, cupboards, closets and bookcases in the house.   We don't have horrendous amounts of stuff, just more than I can be bothered to offer a home to anymore.  A gradual weeding-out process has begun...

Breathe easy

I have a friend who suffers from insomnia.  It's something I experience myself, but she has it much worse than me.

I have another friend, from India, who likes to share a breathing technique that helps people overcome anxiety, depression and...insomnia (among other conditions). Today I got my two friends together, and joined in myself with a "counting breaths" class.

It's incredibly simple.  Bend each of your fingers in turn into your palm.  Breath in and out three times per finger, counting each breath.  Carry on until you fall asleep.

That's it.

Basically it's just a means of blocking out all those thoughts and/or worries that tend to crowd in and whirl around when you can't sleep.  Apparently it's extraordinarily successful.

My insomniac friend and I are going to try it, and we'll report back to our instructor next week.  Of course, I'll report back here, too.  Meanwhile, if you're having trouble sleeping, or you're worrying about something, or you just would like to try this very basic form of meditation for yourself,  there are more details here.

Needle work

So, back to school for the kids, back to work for the Man, and back to various sorts of busy-ness for me.

Driving around today on my errands I've seen many a Christmas tree lying by the edge of the road, awaiting collection.  We'll probably stick with keeping ours up until Twelfth Night, but even the Boy has noted that it's looking rather sad already - ornaments on the bottom branches have sagged so low they are sitting on the carpet, along with half the needles.  I'm not looking forward to the mess when we finally drag the thing outside.  The Boy suggests we keep it an extra long time, until all the needles have fallen off - "so at least they'll all be in one place, not spread all over the house."  There could be something in that...

Beginnings and endings

The Boy and a friend took in a bit more sledding at the golf course today to start the New Year, but our main outing of the day was to Willard Mountain to get measured for rental gear and pick up ski passes ahead of our skiing season, which starts this weekend.

The mountainside looked promisingly snowy - a very different sight from this time last year (in fact anytime during the whole of last winter) when there was only ever homemade snow to ski on.

So, now we can look forward to Ski Sundays again...but before that, back-to-school (*groan*).  Yep, the winter break is over. We're none of us too excited about getting up in time for the Girl's bus tomorrow morning, especially as the temperature is predicted to be -8C.