Life in New England— yes, we know!

Here we are in VT in the Dead of winter. There are moments of sun through clouds here and there but mostly?  Really not.

There are hopeful moments and even hours. Of hope.

There are always plans being made, soups being stewed, bread being baked. We have lived this way for EVER and we know that the groundhog can come out or not on February 2nd. Those weeks inevitably turns into sixteen weeks. We know because we KNOW. We are New Englanders living East of the Great Lakes with an Easterly breeze that passes those Great Lakes and hits us like a slap on the face. We know that three or four times a winter a Nor’easter will inevitably hit us and last 48 hours. 

We stock up. 

We hunker down.

And we wait out the storms.

We dig out from under and we go back to work.Ask any New Englander— what if the power goes out? We will laugh and say that we are all stocked up. We got it covered.

We have flashlights, candles, lanterns.We know how to melt snow. We know how to pour  stored up water into toilet tanks. Hell, we’ll pee outside if we have to, dig a hole, bury the poop.

New Englanders are tough because this climate makes us tough. We don’t suffer fools because we wouldn’t survive BEING fools..              

Life here isn’t about enjoyment or living any kind of luxury,  It’s about one simple thing and do not let anyone tell you anything different. It’s about survival. People can die here of exposure, even in 50 degree weather in June in the mountains in rain storms. Folks perish of dehydration in the summers or getting lost in the thick and luscious forests during deer or hiking season. They die of exposure skiing off trail (and alone) in winter.They ride snow machines across frozen lakes, hit thin ice and go away with the fishes.

We not only understand the weather, we expect it. We count on it. Being a New Englander doesn’t even beg the question of “ what if?”—we have that covered. We live every single day as if the next
disaster is about to happen. Not one of us doesn’t have Plans B and C burned into our consciousness.

We all know that Hell in the form of a high wind storm, a flood, a nor’easter or high crazy humidity with afternoon electrical storms are imminent! You can’t fool us. Nothing surprises us. Fifty degrees on New Years Eve? We’ve seen it. Freak snowstorm in June? We’ve been there shoveling our steps,
knowing our phones aren’t going to work for days. Knowing we have enough provisions to last us months.


I recall one summer in the late 1980s when it rained every single day for like 4 weeks! I remember because I was an outdoor educator at a nearby college and hiked, camped, rock climbed and canoed in that shit.

So why do we love Vermont so much? Why do we call it home, even if we weren’t born here and maybe only spent summers here or better yet A summer? Maybe it’s the mountains, river valleys, lakes,  upland highlands and winters.  There is nothing in the world like sitting on the dock on a quiet lake early in the morning. Nothing  more beautiful than heavy snow blanketing evergreen trees weighing down the branches.  Late summer electrical storms lighting up the sky. Walking through a pine forest and hearing a crystal clear babbling brook just off to the left. The autumn leaves are arguably the best thing you will see in New England.  We are famous for covered bridges, cheddar cheese, maple syrup, smart wool socks, turtle fur hats,  ski resorts, as many greens as there are in Ireland. Lovely mountains that remind Austrians of their homeland.

And we are famous for our politics and policies— the rights of all people, legalizing pot, same gender marriage, physician assisted suicide. We are small yet mighty. We are a brave little state, and who wouldn’t want to call such a place home? And our winters are long and harsh. And we are strong and mighty. This is one brave little state! 

Ruminating Again...Countdown to Retirement

Ok, its been like six weeks but  I'm still not actually unemployed or retired. I'm in the middle, sort of. On vacation. Still. But it is now coming to an end and on or near Valentine's Day, I will receive my last paycheck from the city and begin receiving retirement benefits a month later. I have done many things and none of them well over these weeks and I have come to some conclusions and have set some goals. Mostly I watched a LOT of Netflix, YouTube videos, got together with friends I hadn't seen in a while and left the state. Twice.

I need something to do with my time. Something that is fun, is creative and brings me joy.
I don't want to "serve others" in the way I have been professionally doing for my entire life.
I want to be closer to nature. To live in it. Simply.
I don't want unnecessary stress in my life==even thinking about it makes my blood pressure rise up.
I like being entertained; mostly I like to learn from podcasts, TED talks, YouTube videos about Rving and living a minimalist lifestyle.

There is a lot going on. Lots of it is free or comes at a low cost. Lots of events and rallies and community stuff. All I have to do is look at FB, the papers, stay in contact w/ close friends who enjoy getting out and doing stuff.

I want to get back into MOTH story telling. 
I have some great, encouraging friends.
My boyfriend is supportive, as are my friends and family.
I am hopeful that Spring comes early.
I need someone to help me start boxing back up my life and getting rid of stuff to lighten my load. It's all just STUFF.
I don't want to replace new stuff with old stuff. But I do want to get camp gear and travel safely and efficiently for awhile.


I sold my house and got rid of 80% of my stuff. 
It is time to get rid of 10% more.

I have lived on the Long Trail. I have been my own boss, my own friend and my own enemy since I left my parents' house at 17. I can live with very little stuff, I can not live without people who I care about and who care about me.

At the end of my life I want to actually have lived the life I imagined when I was 14 and reading Walden Pond essays.
So far? So good.

All I ever wanted was to live a simple life. One with just books, a bed, a chair, a table, candlelight, an outdoor fire pit. Oddly, the way to have that in my near future was to have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house and SELL it. Strange how that went. 

Life goes on. And the beauty is all around me. New England weather is rough. Just really ever-changing and never perfect. Ok, there are those 6 or 7 days (never in a row) where we do stand outside in the breeze of a Spring of Fall day and say, "Yes, this is why we live here." Winters are long and Summer heat, bugs, moths, bats are even longer. The humidity is always at 80% or higher in July and August. Sometimes September, as well. You have to love it here to live here. For me, it's the people. The mountains. The rivers and streams. Ponds. The lakes. And if that isn't enough, I can always jump in my car and head out for awhile. 

I'm not sure why I love it here, if I am being absolutely honest but it has always seemed like home to me. Especially my childhood home, which may or may not seem obvious. I know many people who dread going "home." I also know people who are at home anywhere, due to travel or the fact that they can "bloom where they're planted." As long as they have clothes on their backs and a song in their hearts...

We will see...

Ruminating about Retirement--Seeking a New Purpose

DAY ONE OF RETIREMENT


December 12, 2018

IT has been not even an entire DAY of retirement and although I planned and promised myself that I wouldn't DO anything, I did make a list of things that would make me feel better and did exactly thirteen of them before 3:15 PM.

It's after 4 now and although blogging is NOT on my list, here I go.

I had lost my laptop in the move a few months ago after having sold my three bedroom one bath and now live in a one bedroom one bath apartment. The view here is spectacular--one cannot hope for a better view of the mountains and rolling hills...

End of day note: Today was DAY ONE, well, still is. And it wasn't bad at all. People warned me about what to do and not to do:

• make sure you get up when you normally do
• sleep in
• take it easy the first few days
• get into a routine
• treat it like any Saturday
• don't get into a rut
• RELAX
• dance
• enjoy your freedom
• whatever you do? Do NOT drive into the city! (that piece of advice? I took)

My boyfriend told me not to make any lists, since we live and die by them and they drive him nuts. So what did I do? I made a list. Did almost all of the things on it, but they were all good things, like dealing with the mountain of recycling in my kitchen and taking a long walk in the sunshine. And breathing. And stretching. Things I forget to do on a daily basis and those things have made me into one of the youngest retirees around. I'm just barely 60 and according to absolutely everyone I know I am either "too young to retire" or they are jealous or envious (a nicer word for jealous) and regret some of the choices they made or they, too, would be retiring now.

So, I did some things and talked w/ three people on the phone. I made my bed. Washed my face. Ate a healthy breakfast. Found my laptop. Lots of first-day-of-retirement things.

And now I'm sitting  here....
______________________________________________________
OK that was literally over a month ago, and now that I have had 40 days of actual retirement, I can tell you what it is like.

B O R I N G, at least now that the holidays are over and everyone -except me- is back at work.

What I did over the past month of "vacation"--because I still am on vacation.

• um... nothing much from 12/12/18 until 12/17/18
• Went to Boston, then Virginia over Christmas and New Years
• Came home to VT and started researching RV living, tents, yurts, etc.
• Watched a lot of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video movies
• REwatched the movie Julie and Julia a number of times, to get an idea of how a running blog would actually work
• Downloaded Tasty app and made a few vegetarian meals I had previously never made (the stuffed portabella mushroom recipe is divine, by the way)

Now we are at the near-end of vacation and I have set myself an appointment to go and see Tricia, our town community coordinator, to see what kind of heck I can get into with her. She's a fun, smart and very talented artist and has great ideas when it comes to how to get the citizens here to "mingle and mix and be"- as Tom Hanks says in some movie or other.

January 22, 2019

Today is Day One after the big storm that not only dumped FEET of snow on the entire Eastern America, it brought with it sub-zero temps and kind of made a lot of people miserable in the process, mostly those of us who had visions of snowshoeing and cross country skiing last weekend with our partners.

So Dr Martin Luther King, Jr has had another birthday and folks are back at work. Well, everyone except us retirees (or pensioners, as I like to call us). It's a strange time of year to retire and I won't go into details as to when I chose December to do it, but I did. So here I am...

Well, I did actually take a few walks here and there over the past month and had a very nice time snowshoeing across the Stowe Quiet Path (other than the moment a strange dog tried to come face to face with me whilst feeling me up!)

I've been outside, I've met with friends I never see anymore except at grocery stores and gas stations (two Melissas and Minghui) tidied up, done some laundry, shopping, etc. I haven't stared at any walls, or had more than one crying jig. So that's good.

The other night I was in tears and my "man friend" was here. I told him I feel lost and don't feel as if I have a purpose. After all, I'm an American, dammit. I have worked since I was a toddler, bringing in the wood, putting away clothes, helping with laundry, sweeping the floor. I graduated to babysitting at about age 12 and really, since then have never even taken more than a few weeks off. Ever. Even though I was was a teacher and worked in schools for 19 years, all told. I had plenty of summers where I could have taken literally two months off per year. You know, had I been able to afford it!

You ask why I didn't? Yes, money was one reason. Now that I am at this point and age in my life I can say that TWO WEEKS' VACATION IS ABOUT ALL I CAN TAKE!

Well, I've learned another thing about myself, like it or not. I don't do well without a list or a reason to go onto the next thing. So here comes the list. Shield your eyes, folks, this ain't gonna be pretty. But if you do enjoy figuring out what to do with your life, follow me in my journey and you will at least learn how I did it.

I will start off with a list of positives. I will list what I enjoy doing.

I enjoy:

1. being outside
2. writing
3. taking nature photos
4. being around smart people
5. helping out by physically doing stuff that isn't back breaking
6. being creative and having beauty around me
7. producing things like plays 
8. planning things like activities and events where people can learn and enjoy 
9. palm reading, painting, teaching about safety and how to do things
10. giving credit where credit is due, encouraging coworkers and teammates to do their best
11. having enough time to take breaths and small breaks, enjoy nature, take a walk, etc.
12. working for the greater good

I do not enjoy:

1) being on a team that does not appreciate, listen to or respect me

2) sitting in an office--or office settings, in general

3) working every single day, 40 hours a week and commuting over 10 hours a week

4)  other folks taking credit for ideas and successes that are not their own

5) stress in the workplace (or anywhere else)

6) being distrusted or disliked in the workplace, and distrusting and disliking others

7) people who can't let bygones go; people who hold grudges and retaliate tit for tat

--generally speaking stress, distrust and bad feelings in the workplace.  I could have just said that, but chose to make a list because I know what I do NOT WANT and will not put up with those things ever again. God willing.

Ideally I would be able to work three days a week Tues, Wed, Thurs and do that to be around people, make a little money and have a reason to get up and out of the house. I do not think the work has to be meaningful the way my work has been (working with migrant folks, homeless people, seniors...) but it has to serve a purpose.

One of my all-time favorite jobs was doing dishes at what was called Mt Mansfield Company. I did that after quitting my first teaching job. I romanticize it in my mind when really it was after a big boyfriend breakup (ok, I was dumped) and a summer living with my brother with nothing to do except sleep and eat. Bad times call for action, so I got a job as a dishwasher with low stress and specific hours and obvious duties and it was exactly what I needed at  time. And because I had quit a private school job, I started the dishwashing job in May and didn't stop that until I got another teaching job in October of that year. Five months and it was great! Hey, maybe my next job with me as a dish washer. Its a resort town. Who knows?

So with that written, I will now go on to do what I will today in this frigid deadly yet extremely beautiful day. Thanks for reading this.

I will try to write again tomorrow... 

RETIREMENT COUNTDOWN!

The Countdown is on. I have 21 more days of commuting to the city.

Some things I’ve already done:

• Sold house
• Moved out
• Put money in bank
• Gone to eye doctor, regular doctor and dentist
• Looked into insurance post-retirement
• Scanned p t jobs, way too early
• Talked about retirement to everyone I meet to get tips

Now it’s time to do a daily blog about it. So here goes:

Today is Sat 11/11 and I am retiring on Wed, 12/12. 

It’s a lovely sunny 20* day in VT and I am plunked down on my sofa with a pillow in my lap acting as a desktop. I began watching Julie and Julia—the movie about a gal//writer named Julie and her blog about Julia Child. She spent a year cooking one or more recipes from Julia’s cookbook—The Art of French Cooking. Mostly out of boredom and because she felt if she didn’t she would go crazy.

Unfortunately I cannot blog and watch a movie about a blog at the same time. Or can I? I forgot
about my PHONE! Maybe I’ll call mine Evie is Leavie or something. (Okay , maybe not)


Okay  daily blog isn’t gonna happen seeing’s how this is the 16th, as my southern Kentucky land lady  says.

I Used to Be....Now I'm....

I used to be....now I'm...

I used to be afraid of having fun. Now I'm not (as much.)

There were four of us riding down the smooth, newly honned dirt road, one behind the other in a dark blue baby buggy with white stitching and white wall tires. All chrome. Very sweet. Riding down the road. Squealing with delight. "Faster! Faster!" we hollered to our 9 year old sister, our pilot. Ticona held fast onto to the shiny chrome handles. We perched inside, arms spilling out as we flew. Mariah was three and in front, I was four and a half, Jerri was almost six. Acey was eight.

Sunny afternoon, mid July. Blue sky. Puffy white clouds. Perfect.

Until we hit the rock, the soft sand on the side, veered off into the double barbed wire fence. Electric. And it was on. Mariah flew out and into the field, Acey over our heads after her. Jerri and I were trapped under the pram.

I must have grabbed the fence because I have always had scars  on my hands. I definitely struggled. I remember shouting NO! shaking my head back and forth, ripping open my face.

Ticona tried to make it right. The worst part was that because the buggy was mostly chrome, it was electrified. Every time Ticona touched it, she got another jolt.  OW OW!

GET IT OFF HER! GET IF OFF THE FENCE! someone cried.

Finally I must have crawled out of it or Acey may have snagged it off....I don't know because all I could see was red. Blood in my eyes, coming from the top of my head, my forehead, cheek. My face had essentially been ripped off.

Screaming and screaming and crying and terrified, Jerri grabbed my hand and ran me down the road to the house. Our feet barely hitting the ground. In blood and shock.

For some reason I remember that I was wearing a little girl white T shirt and blue shorts. By the time we got to the house, only 30 yards away, my T shirt was drenched in little girl blood. I remember blinking and seeing the blood running down my left arm and off my fingers.

We got to the farmhouse and to Mother and Dad. Later Daddy said he knew something was really wrong when he heard "you girls screaming like that." Mother washed me up and wrapped me in a white bed sheet fresh from the line, taped my face back on, rocked me back and forth. Stayed up all night to make sure my wounds didn't re-open. Let me sleep in my parents bed for nights thereafter. She never looked at me the same after that. Nobody did. When you're a little girl, about to start first grade and you have a scar across your face as big and red as that one was? Nobody looks at you the same as they look at other pretty little girls in your family.

I am fortunate, really, because a few inches lower and that fence would have gotten me in the neck---the corotid. Jugular. Blood would have squirted out with every beat of my little girl heart. A heart that earlier pounded with glee, replaced by adrenalin, kicked into survival mode....a heart that knew where home was. Even when she couldn't see.

It took years to get over the feeling that if I let myself go, really let go the way most people do on ferris wheels, even tree swings, on bicycles...something tragic would happen. Something horrible and bloody would come and spoil everything. Scar me for life. I used to be afriad to have fun. Now? Not as much...

Nothing But Lies

"How's your new engagement ring?" my niece Eliza asked me as she hopped into the passenger's seat of my car. She chuckled as I backed the car around and headed out of the driveway.

"Oh my God!" she laughed. "You won't believe what your sisters are saying!"  She was wrong there. I knew them and had for over 50 years. She had only had to put up with their shenanigans for like 30.

"What now?" I asked.

"Well, Jema (her mother) has been saying you're engaged to somebody but none of them can figure out who!"

"Oh, it must have been my joke on Facebook. I put a photo of this ring (I showed her the tastefully done cz ring I'd purchased at a local box store for 8$ on sale.) I had posted, "Sometimes a ring is just a ring."

"Hey, that's nice!" she said. "Looks real, too. That must have stirred the girls up. Hee hee hee."

"Must be they have someone stalking my pages again. Nothing else to do, I guess."

"Yup. They need to get a life!" she said, sucking down the contents of her plastic cup with ice cubes.

We laughed. She had been my friend ever since she was little and just walking around. She got me.

She filled me in on what her mother and my other sisters had been saying. That if I was being secretive, I must be hiding something...

"They have two theories. Get this: either you're seeing a married man or a woman."

"Wrong on both counts," I said. 

"Well that's what they're trying to prove...You're not gonna like this but at first they thought it was Mr. Bartlow, your old English teacher from high school."

"What?" I asked.

"Yeah, they say that's why you're trying to buy that condo! Apparently he lives in that area!"

"Well, this means war!" I said through my teeth. (As a certified English teacher, I was never so insulted!)

It was true that I  had posted a bunch of lovey dovey crap about true love and whatnot on FB. You know, quotes from George Bernard Shaw and Will Shakespeare. Then I downloaded and pinned a ton of bride and groom pics. I even posted a photo of a wall plaque I had taken at an Air B N B in Toronto--- Happily Ever After.

So I wasn't at all surprised when I'd gotten the call from my youngest sister, the leader of the Sister Gang.

"Hey! Heard you're getting hitched, Evie."

"What? Who told you that?"

"I have my ways," was her sly retort. "I know everything that goes on in this family."

"I don't know what you're talking about, " I said. And for emphasis, "I gotta go!" And hung up.

So I had laid down that foundation. No wonder they had it down to those two possibilities.

"We need to think up a lie, Eliza said. "We need to spread a rumor about you. Throw them off the scent."

"Yeah," I said. "Smoke them out of their fox hole!" (We high 5ed on that one.)

We decided that the best candidate was a "mildly famous celebrity" who was a) single b) a man and c) around my age.

"I've got it! Rusty Deweese!" she finally said, almost choking herself to death with her drink.

"The logger?" I asked  her. (For those of you who don't know, he is a stand up Vermont story teller from the Stowe area. Red headed and very pale skinned. Does a Vermont dialect that I don't recognize but I was only raised here and lived here all my life.) 

"Perfect," I said. "It's settled."  ANOTHER HIGH FIVE.

Eliza was to go see her mother the next day and tell her that she had tried to get Antie Eve to admit to who she was seeing, but she got nothing. She was to say she had seen me outside Black Cap Coffee in Stowe holding hands with some dude, who looked like the Logger but couldn't have been.

That I had gotten in my car and given him a smootch. She could have been wrong, but she THOUGHT it was him.  She was to tell her mother, "DO NOT TELL YOUR SISTERS," which would ensure her telling them the truth of the lies and adding on a few more juicy details.

Just for good measure I "friended" the Logger on Facebook, downloaded two of his photos and "liked" a bunch of his posts. Replied to some. I even shared an upcoming charity event he had planned in Enosburg Falls High School which was, coincidentally, where I used to teach.

In the end I was busy the night of the event and one of my older sisters, Ty, did go and said THE GIRLS didn't show. Eventually my sister Marina phoned from North Carolina saying the girls were all wound up about who I was going to marry! That they wouldn't stop obsessing about it.

So I had to tell her the truth---that the whole thing was nothing but lies.

"Good for you!" she said. "They deserve what they got. They need to learn to mind their own business."

They've left me alone ever since. :)

Supervision

Day One of my job at COTS (the Committee on Temporary Shelter) at the Day Station, One Main Street, Burlington, VT.We stood on the loading dock and my tall, handsome fast-paced ADHD supervisor says to me, "Grab your stuff! Sister Lucille needs to meet with us on North Street."

I had been interviewed by Tim and Lucille and I really only remembered one bit of advice from him, "Never again come to work looking so dressed up."  He had said, "You can wear anything you want here, but no dresses!"

I had come from a past of teaching at Sacred Heart Middle/High School where the priest/principal once chased me into the women's bath room and yelled at me for daring to wear leggings under my skirt on a 20 degrees below zero day. Then I'd taught at EFHS and jeans were never allowed. So hearing Tim say that the dress code was essentially NO dress code, was odd. I had asked Tim why I couldn't dress up and he said, "Too intimidating! These clients have trust issues. They'll think you're too high and mighty!"

"OK, I understand," I said. Tim and I got into his blue beat up Volvo filled w/ two large laundry baskets full of (I guessed) dirty laundry.  We must have been  running late because Tim swung the Volvo around in a circle almost careening into a group of pigeons and one of the clients who had the type of schizophrenia known as paranoid delusional. The guy rubbed his fingers together through woolen fingerless gloves as if to say, "Shame on you and Tim said, "Yeah, right, Roger! Like I'm gonna kill a pigeon in front of you!"

Tim dug into his jean pockets and frowned. "Oh, Jesus,"  he hollered. "Hey, grab those jeans back there! The ones on top!"  So I did and pulled them into the front seat. He fished the keys out of the jeans pocket and handed them to me and skidded to a stop. "These are yours. Don't lose them!"

And off we went to meet with Sister Lucille.

I didn't know it at the time but Tim Coleman was to supervise me once a week. Mostly it was him and me riding around in his car, hitting the ATM, eating gravy fries at Nectar's or going to his apartment in Queen City Park because he needed to check to see if he'd left his coffee pot on. Supervision with Tim Coleman was definitely something to look forward to. He gave me some of the best advice I have ever gotten. Mostly he said if people believe something it's true for them. Meet people where they are. You can't change the wind, adjust your sail. And if you can't believe how stupid or drunken or crazy or ridiculous people are, remember they are getting something out of it or they'd stop. People are who they are. Remember that and you will save your self a lifetime of aggravation.