Sunday, November 29, 2009

Maira Kalman: Back to the Land


Maira Kalman, she who re-inflamed my ire for Benjamin Franklin earlier this year, has written a lovely little illustrated thing about local-ness and chickens and slowing down and future generations. It's on the New York Times website.

Our chickens laid four eggs today. Thanks for sharing, chickens.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Anniversaries

Tomorrow is the 5-year anniversary of Fergus' leukemia diagnosis. He's doing great now.

Insert contemplative commentary here.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Eclecticly Tabled


Eclecticly Tabled
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas
The eclectic table is ready, the bird brined overnight, and now she's
in the oven. It's hard to tell, but the centerpiece consists of a
photo of our actual turkey, taken tuesday morning (we didn't raise
her, one of the kids' teachers did, but she's ours now)....

T-Day Prep


T-Day Prep
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas
Fergus makes his first pumpkin pie....his favorite.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Thankfulness

Norah had a friend, Erin, over for a sleepover on Saturday; I think that was the first time Norah has had a friend over for the night. Fun was had by all (despite a certain level of girl-intensity) and a fair amount of sleep even happened. Norah has declared Erin her "BFF" (Best Friend Forever?), although Norah seems to enjoy a lot of people at school. Frankly, Erin probably has a lot of BFFs, but she and Norah do have a good time together.

KidsAdamant

The sleepover came a day after the annual "Harvest Supper" potluck at the kids' school. For that event, many of the kids had written statements and poems (many with illustrations) describing what they are thankful for.

Fergus, for example, was thankful for cats.

Other kids were thankful that they were driven to school each day, or for chinchillas, or for "fish and knives," or that Stevie Wonder is still alive.

One student said she was thankful for veterans, including her dad, and thankful that her dad was "not dead" (we patted him on the back and said we were glad too).

Some of the kids, Norah included, were feeling too shy to read their thanks out loud, so one of the teachers, Shawnee, read those.

As it turns out, Norah (that delight) is thankful for: "Oxygen, soil, water, fire, books, shelter and Erin--because life wouldn't be possible without six of these things...and Erin makes me laugh."

Sigh of pride. Sigh of thankfulness.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Final harvest


This afternoon Norah and I dug up the last of the potatoes--one of the funnest things about having a garden. It's particularly fun when you plant several varieties without any plan... Harvesting then becomes a kind of treasure hunt:

"I've got a red one!"
"Here's another white!"
"Oh! A purple!"

This harvest was almost an afterthought; I almost let it lie. Still, Norah and I came inside with fourteen pounds of potatoes.

Bring on thanksgiving.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Tonight In Montpelier: Rock Lottery 2

I'm still too run down to attend this event, but it sounds like fun. Several "False 45th Record Club" participants, including Mike Donofrio, are mentioned in this story. If only I could play my accordion worth a shit!

Source: Vermont Public Radio








The Lamb Abbey is located near Finkerman's/Ariel's, next to the Source (Subaru repair shop).

Sick Tale

I've been sick since November 2nd.

Fever, chills, aches, cough, exhaustion: those were the symptoms for the first several days. I realize this is kind of dorky, but here's a chart of the highs and lows of my body temperature during this time (lows often with the help of Tylenol):



After the first day or so it was pretty clear that this was H1N1 influenza. The individual symptoms (cough, sore throat, chills, fever, headache, body aches, etc) were not all that severe. I had had more persistent cough. I had had worse sore throat. But combined, this thing wiped me out, and I feel like I spent the first 4 days and nights in bed, weighed down by as many quilts and comforters as I could find in the house, drifting in and out of sleep. Lauren said she had never seen me so ill.

By the evening of November 6th, though, I was feeling much better. My fever had broken, and it seemed like the worst of it was over. This made sense, since most H1N1 cases reportedly last 3 to 4 days.

But the next day? Bam, more fever. In fact, my highest fever of the week: 102.7. WTF?

Anyway, several more days passed and eventually I found that my daytime temps were in the normal range for several days in a row. This seemed like a good thing, even though I still felt run down and had a persistent cough. The weird thing? I was still spiking a low fever every night: 99.9, 100.5, 100.2, 100.9.

I had called my doctor's office on November 11th to see if they thought I should be seen. The nurse basically said "take an expectorant and call in a couple days if you're not better." Finally, on Friday 11/13 (after spiking 100.9 the night before) I called the doc and said I needed to be seen.

The diagnosis? Pneumonia. Or, in the words of the doctor, I have "a touch of pneumonia."

If you ask me, this is kind of like being told you're a touch pregnant.

I wonder when the flu ended and the pneumonia started. November 7th? November 10th?

Anyway, hard core antibiotics should take care of the pneumonia within a couple of days. Let's hope so. Enough already. I've got a chicken coop to winterize.

Ps. Everyone at my office--which provides health care services directly to college students--had the opportunity to get the H1N1 vaccination on Wednesday, November 11th. I guess that's about 10 days too late for me.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Friday, November 6, 2009

Sunday, November 1, 2009