My morning commute: roofers on the roof

 The trees are still amazing this time of year, but what has me even more in awe is this house of many angles, with people tucked into the nooks and crannies of the roof.

The ladders and the fire escapes add even more angles.  I love seeing this as I walk by, with the rising sun illuminating the tips of the roof and (I'm guessing) warming the roofers on these chilly mornings!

Cow cookie cutter Pumpkins

Kids and mallets, mallets and kids. What a combo!  I still remember well the time I walked into the backyard to find Jason with a pile of metal and wood at his feet; he explained he'd been "fixing" his bike with the mallet.  Neither the bike nor the mallet survived that fix, as you might have expected.  Still, no children were harmed in that particular mallet adventure.

And that's kind of one of the nice things about mallets, that they "whack" things softly.  When my latest eight-year-old friend told me that he and his mom would using mallets and cookie cutters to carve pumpkins, I immediately saw the appeal.

In fact, I stopped at a market to get a pumpkin for myself, and pulled out some of my fave cookie cutter shapes (indeed, some of my only cookie cutter shapes) and did some whacking.

The verdict?  I have to say, it was highly satisfying -- it's a fun way to carve.  I do think it's something I'd trust to children or other human beings who might not be ready for sharp knives.  Aesthetically, it came out much more clean and decipherable than my usual attempts; I'm an enthusiastic, but not particularly elegant, pumpkin carver.

Those are the plusses.  A minus is that my particular pumpkin seems to be rather thick skinned (perhaps many pumpkins are fleshy that way).  So the cookie cutter couldn't make it all the way through the pumpkin into the hollow middle, and I ended up using a knife anyway to cut things within the cookie cutter, releasing a bit of pumpkin pressure.  Also, my star cookie cutter apparently was designed for pressing gently into soft cookie dough and not for pounding gleefully into hard gourds, and it required some post-pumpkin bending and clamping with my pliers.  (It survived the mallet more successfully than Jason's poor bike derailleur did). 

But back to the plusses: did I mention that the carving came out well?  It did!  I have a pumpkin with star eyes and a cow smile.

It goes well on my porch with all of my cows, some of which are currently dressed as ghosts or witches.

The chalkboard on the left asks,
"Do cows say 'boo' or 'moo'?"

I'm looking forward to the trick-or-treaters coming by; I'm giving out themed pencils, as I usually do, and having a jar of dog kibble that the kids can feed to Prewash.  

And, I'll be on the lookout for mallet-bearing bike fixers.  Happy halloween! 

Tall tales update

Life continues to be rich and tall -- er, I mean rich and full -- here in Enoughsville.  The weather did a winter peekaboo thing this week, with the wind biting into me and numbing all my skin as I rode to the soup kitchen on Tuesday morning, but then warming up so much we opened up the house to let in balmy breezes by the end of the week.  Like, winter peekaboo!  Now it's spring!  Wait, Sunday brought winter back!  

My offspring have done a bunch of traveling, some of them sending the kind of photos that will explain why I could make the tall/full substitution above.

Gosling and Sizzling:  Hi from CN tower yesterday.

Lindsey and mike's Wedding yesterday!

On this trip, Gosling and Colin observed the new family tradition of getting visits from the traveling Covid Fairy, alas.

Went to Canada and all we got was a fun wedding and COVID jkjkjk but we wanted to have a little fun with it.

And where did you go, Inkling?

Inkling:  Sheep and wool festival!!

Sign says: "We are rams. 
If I am letting you pet me, my name is Mr. Silly. 
If I am not, my name is Lucifer. "

I ask:  " Hey, rumors have it you finished your Rhinebeck sweater on time. Photos?"

I finished it around 11pm Friday night,. . .

. . .  then wore it on Saturday

And Kindering and fam, where did you all go, and did it happen to have a tall building you could show me?

Kinderling:  We went to Michigan. Attached is a photo of a lighthouse in lake Michigan :) It's so pretty here!

We are coming back from MI!

Thankful for airports that have play areas!

My guy, without photos to show it, went to our Capitol Building (with nearby tall Washington monument).  He went with a group that was seeking support for Ukraine.  Our Congresspeople sincerely and emphatically reassured the group that they were very much devoted to such support, but then wandered through the underground tunnels to the chambers where they voted for a speaker of the house who opposes such support.  So, alas.

Nelson didn't send photos, but he's happy with how things are working out with his new home.  His good friend Brandon (whose picture I'm going to get soon, right? right?) might help him get a job shoveling snow.  I've heard that snow is a thing that piles up into tall piles and towers a bunch in Minneapolis, so that would be a job with a lot of possibilities!

Me?  I didn't do towers or travel.  I did do a bunch of really fun math research.

The math research I'm doing with my students
is going really well.
I love these chalkboards, which were installed here by my friend.

And also, because sabbatical life is truly amazing, I did a bunch of other cool things:

making a cow smiley pumpkin,
math careers conference,
collecting chestnuts and playing in the grass with the dog,
canning applesauce,
dressing as cows for "dynamic duo day",
reconnecting with former students and adorable kiddos,

and more.  Life is good.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous. 

Dynamic Cow Duo

Two years ago, Gina [not her real name] emailed me, saying she knew this was an odd question to ask out of the blue, but that she'd heard rumors . . . might I own a cow costume that she could borrow?  I was the Associate Dean of the Faculty at the time, dealing with many weighty and fraught questions, so you can appreciate how very much I loved getting an email with this kind of a light-hearted question.   I was even more delighted to be able to respond, "No: I have two cow costumes!!"

Fast forward to this year; my college has a "Spirit Week" (that is largely ignored/unobserved, even by me, I admit).  One of the week's events, however, is to buddy up with a friend and dress as your favorite dynamic duo.  

So I emailed Gina:  

Next Thursday, would you like to be a dynamic cow duo with me?  Maybe not all day, but at least long enough for a photo we could post to instagram . . . ?

And hence:

Dynamic Cow Duo.  Voila.

And to continue the love, Gina's son is dressing as an animal for Halloween; she's keeping the costume I loaned her for another week so that they can go animaling together on the big day.  Udderly fantastic.

What the trees near me are doing now

I don't think I'd ever noticed before how the leaves on a tree turn from green to some other color, but a tree we walk by every day kinda got all in my face with it.  It's a very show-off-y tree, not that I mind.

This tree, as we walked past it, seemed to have gilt leaves,
like old books whose pages are gold-gilt around their edges.

A closer inspection made it even easier to see the 
gold-gilt edges of these beautiful leaves.

A week later, the gold is creeping inward.
But slowly.

I'm very much enjoying this slow-moving movie, with its cinematic fade from one state to the next.  We haven't gotten to the cliff hanger yet!

mid-October update

Well, life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  Somehow, Saturdays have gotten filled up, too, these days.  In the past, Saturday evening was my favorite "Alone Time"; I listened to Prairie Home Companion, paid bills, and caught up on my mending.  It was such an entrenched part of my week that once, when my parents invited me to see the show live, I almost declined, saying "I can't; that's when my radio show is on."  Oh, yeah.  These days, I seem to be party hopping on Saturdays -- I just got a last-minute invitation from a student group to attend their formal dinner (which always comes with a really interesting talk by a professor), so I'm dashing this update off and ignoring bags of apples that need to be made into applesauce, so I'll free myself up enough to head out. 

Angela Duckworth walking past a slide that shows
a painting her mom did some 60 years ago. 

Last week, the reason I didn't get around to an update was because of other Saturday fun: I spent the weekend at the EDGE (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education) celebration.  It was a fab, fab weekend.  I got to attend a talk by Angela Duckworth, whose book Grit keeps inspiring me and re-inspiring me to take on all sorts of new "stretch goals".  I was even more impressed with her talk, which was actually not at all about Grit; she told a story about her mom that had us all in awe.  A key sentence I wrote down, when I remembered to pull myself out of my trance:  "It's easy to underestimate the power of circumstance".  The whole weekend made me want to lift up the people all around me.

The podium was not designed for people of short stature.  

The cofounders of "Mathematically Gifted and Black" 
gave one of many kick-butt, inspirational talks. 

Health update:  I got yet another covid vaccination. Also, I got a cute red bandaid with a white heart. My arm was sore for about 18 hours, and then seemed to be fine.

We got three new cows in our "Take a Cow/Leave a Cow" box.
I strongly suspect this cute family is the creation of a student 
from our local art college.  They walk by my house a lot,
and they love engaging with the cow-lection.

Social update:  A few weeks ago, I started a book group around a book that my sister recommended to me called "Breaking the Age Code". We've got a good crowd; we've met twice so far and have been having really good discussions. The people who are coming say that the little glimpse we've had so far of this book already changes the way that they look at the world and the way they react to it. One of my friends said that she notices deprecating comments about age more frequently, and is more likely to challenge them. 

Unrelated picture of a newspaper bag,
annotated by my newspaper delivery person:
"Plastic only when it rains"
(rain drops and smiley face)

Another person at the book group talked about going camping in the rain, and how she nearly said to herself "we're getting too old to do this", but then thought about the book and decided instead to think about how her age and experience made her better prepared for such an undertaking. She said that when she looked around at all the other campers in the area, all of whom were younger than she was, she realized that it was, in fact, the case that she and her husband fared better than the others, exactly because of that experience. It was raining and 40° outside, but her tent was so toasty and comfortable that she had to get out of the sleeping bag because she was getting too warm. Reading this book gave her the chance to look at what it was actually happening, and to acknowledge the fact that if you looked at all the different campers, the actual truth was that the older ones, the more experienced ones, were better off, in contradiction to both the stereotype and even to her own implicit suppositions.

Nelson update: He's still having lots of fun coaching basketball.  He's looking into cool programs that are available to people in his group home.  (I personally really, really hope he can get involved in drumming again!)

Gosling Update:  She got to go to a cool concert.  

"Cyril Neville played last night at Richmond folk fest
and had a little Louis Armstrong Mack the knife tribute"

Inkling update:  It's raining at Rhinebeck, where the sheep and wool festival is happening.  Nonetheless, a good time is being had by all, and "all" just happens to include someone I normally see before the sun comes up.

"It's June, your running buddy!"

OfSnough update:  He's learning to fold flags properly for the Red Rose Honor Guard.  Apparently, people who learn to fold flags have to practice a lot.  

Y update:  She rolled into town this weekend, and we were glad that we merited a visit on her whirlwind tour of all her old friends here.   She's got some big career decisions ahead of her, and we're praying that she finds the kind of situation she's been training for and working toward.

Xavier update:  He seems to be healing up still, albeit slowly, from his bad motorcycle accident.  He lost (or broke?) his phone, so communication is a bit more intermittent, but when I do get to hear from him, it's encouraging.  With all the horrendous news coming in from elsewhere in the world, I continue to fret for Haiti, so I'm very glad for the small pieces of hopeful news I get from that direction.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

. . . and the morning lights come on | A rundown

Now that the sunlight is becoming scarcer, I'm waking up in the dark to meet up with my running buddy several times a week.  I don't like turning on bright lights in the morning if I'm just going to go outside into darkness again, so a series of small nightlights (which, in this case, ought rather to be called "morning lights") illuminate my way.

Let me introduce my little lights to you!  First, in my running-clothes closet:

A quirky lantern given to me by my dad one Christmas. 
It turns on when you pat it on the head.
He gave one to each of me and my sisters, and my sister surreptitiously
passed me hers when I told her I actually like it, so I have two of these.

Next, in the bathroom.

A plug-in LED light, motion sensing, a gift from my sister.
She also gave one to Nelson, who doesn't need it, so I snagged his
and put the second one in the living room. 
(I'm sensing a snagging theme here).

I like the bathroom light so much, that I tried to figure out how to get a similar one for our stair landing.  Here's what I've come up with so far:

Our stairs don't have an outlet, or I'd install a plug-in
like the one my sister gave me (above).
Instead, this is a battery operated, motion-sensing, LED light.
It seems to be quite a battery hog, though, and keeps burning
out, so I don't really recommend this type.

In my husband's closet, there's a motion-sensing light that I gave him (I guess as an antidote to snagging other people's gifts).  I don't actually go into his closet as part of my own morning routine, but we both like this light enough that I thought I'd include it in this run-down [heh; run down]. 

It hangs by an attached hook (so no tape or screws), 
and it recharges by using an USB port, so no batteries.

There are more and more things in my life that recharge (like this little closet light) from a USB port, and the more of these I find, the more I hope I can move away from those batteries with their letters and numbers.  AA, AAA, 9V, I'm ready for a future without you!