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

Finding the path

I found myself lost in the southern wilds of Vermont yesterday afternoon. To make matters more desperate, my cell phone had died after several hours of snaking around dirt roads and seasonal mountain passes.

My desired destination lay at the end of a little-known mountainside drive named Woodland Path. At the top of that path, my dear friend has a family camp at which she and hers were gathered to celebrate her 28th birthday. 

When she told me to use GPS to find Woodland Path, I had no idea how remote the camp actually was. The area has a verdant ridgy landscape dotted with small towns where business signs tell of wholesome work—Vermont Weaving School, Artisan Pottery and PYO (pick your own) blueberries. I was enchanted and didn't worry much about missing my estimated arrival time by one hour. 

But my worry rose as the sun began to sink. I worried about never being able to find my way out of these uninhabited roads. I worried about keeping my friend and her family waiting for me on her birthday dinner. 

Just before true panic set in, I saw a man walking along the road. He was outfitted like a wholesome Vermonter in Carhart cargoes, Keen sandals and a ponytail threaded through the back of his baseball cap.

I pulled up and asked directions, which he happened to know. A miracle in itself, he told me, because most locals aren't even aware of the subdivision. It just so happened that this man's drum repair guy lived on Woodland Path too. The man patiently gave me directions twice, once with me repeating and the second time while I took notes having realized that it was far too complicated to remember. 

As it turned out, I was about twelve miles from where I needed to be. I arrived shortly before sunset, just as my friend and her father headed down their long driveway to search for me. We almost hit each other.

I had missed the appetizer course, but was in time for the artisanal cheeses, a big glass of wine and the lobster and clam boil.

After dinner, my friend and I soaked in the hot-tub, made from a animal trough outfitted with a wood stove. The stars twinkled and the crescent moon hung high in the dark blue sky. It's a strange thing to go so quickly from being utterly lost to feeling like there is nowhere else you could possibly wish to be.

Oh yes, and I took my job back. That feels right too.

Thrown off, and getting back up

I lost my job in a round of company-wide layoffs two weeks ago.

It happened on the one month anniversary of starting the job as a story editor. On that day, I arrived at work with coffee in one hand and lunch in the other, ready to dig into the news flow. But something was amiss. People were visibly upset.

As I fired up my computer, my boss approached me and ushered me down the hallway to a conference room where woman from the company's human resources department informed me that she was there to speak with me about my unemployment benefits. 

As she talked me through a packet of instructions for laid off employees, I started silently crying. I felt shocked, but strangely calm. 

I asked the woman if all the information she was telling me could be found in the packet, and she said that it could. I then told her that at that moment I couldn't absorb what she was saying, and I would read the packet on my own time. 

I left the room with my boss, and he stopped in the hallway to apologize, adding that he never would have brought me out to Vermont had he known that layoffs were coming. I said that I believed him and asked him to get my purse. I needed to go for a walk.

He got it, and I left the building. I bumped into one of the reporters who had not lost her job but looked totally deflated and stunned. As we chatted for a minute, two other editors came outside to find me. We gave each other teary hugs, and I left to walk in the park and call my family.

The rest of the day was difficult, the kind of experience that allows you to prove that you are gracious, strong and resilient. A test of sorts. I returned to the newsroom said some more teary goodbyes, packed up my things and headed across Lake Champlain where I met with a dear friend for a few glasses of wine at the Essex Inn. Then I headed to my Uncle Louis and Aunt Jani's home for dinner and another glass of wine.

As the tipsiness wore off, exhaustion took over. I went to bed, but couldn't sleep due to a splitting stress headache. I was up most of the night sobbing my despair into the pillow. 

The next day, I rose early and set about my usual morning routines of stretching and checking my email. I still couldn't bring myself write in my journal, but I was moving forward nonetheless and continued to do so. Louis and I went for coffee at the nearby bakery and I spent the afternoon setting up my unemployment and going for a long walk.

Each day, I felt a bit stronger. I got back hopeful responses to some jobs I'd applied for. I went back to Vermont for a few days and got together for drinks with some of my former coworkers. I embraced the unknown.

Exactly one week after the layoff, I was contacted by my old boss. The other editor had stepped down and he wanted to offer me my job back (with a few different responsibilities).  I've taken the weekend to think about it. I've tried to relax and let the answer come to me. I know that I like living in Vermont. I know that I still want to be in the news business. I know that the salary I made will allow me to save so that I can feel comfortable and safe. 

I'm supposed to tell my decision to my boss tomorrow morning. I haven't made up my mind yet, but, in the meantime, I'm baking a blackberry-peach crisp to take to dinner a party this evening. 

The crisp

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.

Girl's weekend in Montpelier

This post is a day late a line or two shorter than I'd like; I'm in a rush as I'm expected at work fully dressed and caffeinated in less than an hour.

It's been a silly, giddy, boozy weekend in Montpelier. I spent Saturday with my good friend and some of her good friends (who I'd like to think are my friends now too). We drank small batch local gin; ate at a trendy, highly-recommended restaurant called Salt; and stayed up late talking like junior-high girls. I got back to Burlington just in time to start cooking for my previously planned dinner party with a co-worker and her boyfriend.

I've had more than my share of delicious food, alcohol and conversation; and go to work happily.

Vermont's State Capitol taken on a morning walk
to clear our heads after the night of fun.

Computer kaput

My hard drive crashed and now I'm without a computing device for the next week. In its absence, I'm posting via my iPhone, which makes me feel like I have sausages for fingers.

In the interest of keeping typing to a minimum, I'm going to post two photos from the weekend--one of Maddie, Louis and Jani's very senior poodle mutt ( I to Essex, N.Y. for an overnight), and another of the sunny Burlington waterfront I returned to this morning.

Residing, reading in Vermont

I've traded my Iowa license for one from Vermont. Despite living in Boston, New York and Missouri, I'd never registered to drive or vote anywhere but Iowa until now.

Joan Didion once spoke of retaining her California license even after living most of her life in New York City. The license became an important tie to the place where she was born and where her parents and grandparents lived. I feel similarly.

So what made me drive to the Department of Motor Vehicles before work one morning last week? It was a the desire to be fully involved in the community where I live (and in small part the fact that if an Iowa license holder leaves the state they have 30 days to register in their new state of residence, as I learned while renewing my license this May). But this change goes deeper than following the law and does not indicate a weakening connection with the state where I've spent the majority of my life and my parents, sister and grandmother still live.

Instead, it represents my desire to pay attention to community issues and have a vote in decisions. It also demonstrates my readiness to put down roots in a single place after shuffling around to different states and countries for a few months here and a few years there.

While attending Bread Loaf in Vermont last summer a teacher asked me and my classmates to describe where home is. I said that I wasn't quite sure where mine was, but it would be a place with a big bookshelf that I could fill. Up to now, I've been reluctant to acquire too many books for fear of eventually having to lug them to my next temporary home.

Since arriving in Vermont, I've been searching the Internet for a bookshelf to order when my paychecks start coming and dreaming of the books I'll collect.