Come bearing bagels

Vermont's cold and ice has kept me in self-imposed isolation that's proved hard to shake. Outside of yoga and work, little can lure me outdoors. I'm content to spend the day in bed, which I did on Saturday.

Today, however, I had no excuses. The temperature was predicted to register in the upper 40s, and I'd promised my Aunt Jani and Uncle Louis that I would cross the lake for a visit. Louis made it clear he would prefer I arrive with an offering from my neighborhood's Montreal-style bagel maker.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I'd reserved less than a half hour to get dressed, make the bagel pickup and drive to the ferry. The Essex-Charlotte ferry, which is the fastest way to get to Essex from Burlington, has cut back its runs to once an hour for the winter season. Missing the ferry by a few minutes means the hourlong trip suddenly turns to two.

I threw on a dress over the legging and tank top that I wore to bed and managed to brush my teeth before rushing out the door and across the street where I bought a baker's dozen of still-warm bagels. With the bag in arm, I skidded across the icy parking lot to my car and drove (faster than the law allows) to the ferry launch.

At five past ten, I rounded the last corner relieved to see the ferry was still at the dock, but not for long. The dock was chained off, a sign that they would lift the plank at any moment.

I jolted into the parking lot and jumped out of the car to wave at the crew before plucking the bag of bagels from the seat. The two men took pity on me and pulled back the chain as I scissor stepped my way across the ice (careful to keep both feet on the ground lest I lose balance). They waved me on board and replaced the chain.

No sooner had the motor kicked on than three more cars pulled up to the dock. The men looked back as the ferry chugged forward.

"Guess they'll be drinking puddle water," one said.

Grateful they hadn't left me to drink puddle water, I broke my baker's dozen and offered the two a bagel. They accepted.

Once I upstairs in the heated passenger cabin,  I called my Aunt Jani. "Put on the coffee," I told her. "I've got the bagels."

Incoming view of  Essex

Baker's dozen of Myer's Montreal-style bagels

Coming down

The holiday is truly over.

I dispatched the last of my Christmas gifts yesterday when my friend Christine came across Lake Champlain to share a fancy brunch at a well-trafficked French Bistro. We ordered eggs Benedict on rice cakes and salmon tartare.

She dropped me off at my empty apartment; I had brought my friend Harum, who had been with me for a week, to the train station the previous morning.

It was time to face the list of phone calls and emails that I had put off. Time to go to the grocery store so I'd have healthy meals and snacks on hand, rather than filling in the gaps with cookies.

In the late afternoon, I slipped into a candlelight yoga class with my favorite teacher and caught up for tea with a friend. I returned home with a bag of fresh fruits and veggies.

Breakfast this morning: fruit and granola.

Snuggling in

Hibernation is the only way I can explain it.

I feel fine but have been sleeping an alarming number of hours. Once the sun sets, I yearn for bed. And once dinner is done, I go there straight away. Perhaps it's the ever earlier darkness or the warm cocoon of my apartment that lulls me.

I don't sleep immediately — I've gotten in the habit of watching an Australian mystery show on Netflix — but I drift off before the crime is solved. 

"Shouldn't I be going out? Making friends? Meeting people? Working on my personal writing?" These questions surface in my dreamy state. I snuggle deeper under the covers, turn up my electric blanket and feel content to let them pass.

I've given myself until the new year to occupy this sleepy state. Then I'll kick off the covers and get back to life. 

Just before dusk/bedtime

Fast-fading summer

Autumn officially starts in mid-September, but my hallmarks of summer's end are fast approaching. School resumes this week in Burlington. A windfall of deep red skin-split tomatoes bestowed upon me by a friend whose husband grew "more than he knows what do with" fill my fridge. Warm middays. Cool nights. Corduroy.

Summer has discovered she can toddle away. She wriggles in my arms. I hold on just a bit longer.

I pack too much into one weekend. I sit in the sun longer than I had planned. I miss the  ferry from New York to Vermont (and have to wait for the next). I'm playing catch up. I write this blogpost on Monday rather than Sunday.

My weekend in photographs:

A trip to Middlebury

with Christine

where we had a picnic and looked at art

followed by an orange sunset back in Burlington

and a visit with family across the lake the next morning

Self imposed silent read

St. Pat's grade school had weekly half-hour session of "silent reading" — something I didn't know how to do until I started at the school in fourth grade. That time of the week served as a welcome break from my teachers' lectures and navigating the complicated interactions between girls on the edge of adolescence.

Instead of reading though, I retreated into the silence, my own head. I daydreamed. I simulated reading with page turns but made no attempt to register words. The half hour always ended too soon. 

After a busy week at my editors desk and anticipating another weekend away, I felt like lazing in the silence of my apartment. I went for my usual morning walks and picked up groceries for the week but spent most of my time at home. I played in the kitchen whipping up a batch of egg salad for lunches and wild rice and beans for dinners.

I also spent a good bit of time attempting to read silently. But snuggled onto my sheepskin covered sofa, drowsiness quickly overwhelmed me. Twice I woke up warm and relaxed with the golden late-afternoon light filling the room.

I didn't finish my book but feel complete anyway.

Too much fun?

I hope not. But I am taking my pursuit of fun seriously this semester, and it's off to a good start. I've been out more nights than I've stayed home this week. Last night, I went to a friend's concert. The beer soaked floor and my orthopedic boot didn't stop me from getting my groove on. Like I said, I'm out for serious fun and taking my cues from Cyndi Lauper.

Note to my parents: Fun has not kept me from getting my thesis underway.

Final week of rest

On the 22nd, school resumes. That means I have one more week of sloth.

I woke up this morning to find Tina curled into the crook of my knees. We've shared many hours of bed rest over the past month. So many hours, in fact, that my brother Vinnie suggested I might have a future working for Lebeda — the mattress company.

Something to keep in mind if journalism doesn't pan out.

On editing

I've finished day two of a six-day editing stint at the newspaper. I don't feel much like writing, or doing anything other than lying in bed and watching a movie. It's been a strange two days with lots of sad news—the Connecticut school shooting, car accidents and assaults—coming across my desk.

I am longing for simpler times and songs from my childhood.

The sun shines on me

There's a week of classes left in the semester and I just wrapped up some final edits on a story I've been writing for the past four months. It's December 2. The sun is shining and it's 66 degrees. Life couldn't feel better.

Keeping up

"Let 'er roll."

Lucy and Ethel diligently wrap chocolates. The belt speeds up and they move a little faster. Lucy misses a chocolate and so does Ethel. Suddenly, there's panic in their eyes. They abandon their wrapping efforts in favor of hiding evidence of failure in their bras, hats and mouths. 

I thought of this scene several times during the first week of school. I've joined Lucy and Ethel at the conveyor belt.

 

Escape Story

I finished Bread Loaf two weeks ago and have been back in Essex for one.  Strange to go from being fully occupied to having all the time in the world.  For the past week I have been working at finding work and taking time to read anything that I could not during the summer.  Sometimes reading is an escape from dealing with the messiness of life.

A perfect example of this involves me, a mouse, and a semi-effective mousetrap.  The background to this story is: my house has a mouse, or rather several mice.  We had some last winter and thought they were gone but not so.  I cooked a large dinner last week and put off doing the dishes ‘til the morning only to find the plates cleaned off and the counter covered with tiny droppings.  Tim set the traps and we were in extermination mode. 

The inhabiting mice are smart(er than we thought) and quickly figured out how to snag the bit of ground sausage and peanut butter without tripping the spring.  Ingenuity on their part led to Tim’s greater ingenuity—BACON.  So the trap was set again, this time with a piece of fatty bacon hooked to the platform, and presto, the very next night the trap was sprung killing a tiny field mouse.  Tim disposed of our intruder in the woods and reset the trap.  I was sure that was the end of our mouse trapping.

Not so…the next morning, shortly after Tim left for the farm at 3:45 am, I went into the kitchen to get a bowl of homemade pasta (the pasta hell that I went through the day before merits its own story) and made a conscious decision to not look in the direction of the trap and ruin my snack.  I ate, read, and went back to sleep. 

Waking up, I returned the bowl to the kitchen and was starting to run the dishwater when I stopped to look over at the trap.  It was sprung, but no mouse.  I looked closer and saw a small trail of blood leading to the corner where a tiny mouse with a black tail the length of it’s entire body was hunched.  I looked closer.  It quivered a little and then seemed to move. 

It took no more than that to send me running out of the kitchen and to keep me out for the rest of the day.  When Tim got home I was in the bedroom, escaping the messy kitchen scene, reading.  He said, “There’s a mouse in the kitchen.  Did it just fall out of the bag I brought home?”

“Where is it?” I asked.

“On the floor by the door.”

“Oh,” I said.  “Look near the trap.  Is there a mouse cowering in the corner?”

“No.”

This Hercules of a mouse had managed to deliver it’s crushed frontal lobe (with a smashed nose and eyes) from the death grip of the trap and then pull it’s bleeding body from the counter across the kitchen to the door.  He was not lively, but certainly not dead.
I sat up high on my pillow with my feet tucked under me and asked Tim not to bring the mouse near the bedroom.  He took it outside and left it near the woods where it could die, or, maybe through some valiant effort, live and become a legend in the mouse world.  For my part, I promised to do the dishes the next morning.  I meant it too.  But I heard the mouse trap snap and now it seems easier to stay in bed writing this silly story.