a deep breath...

It's November. Never my favorite month (except for Thanksgiving). Short days, bare trees, cold but without the snow.

And yet, I wake up to a pretty day. The winds blew the kids through their Halloween door knocking, then settled down. It's calm. I like calm. It's a new month. I like beginnings. So... maybe I can like November?

(morning walk)

(morning meal)

I have a quiet weekend before me, but today is rather full. It goes like this: lunch with friends, pick up kids, drop off one at violin, sit down with the other and my daughter for a cup of something, then home. It'll be dark by the time I get back to the couch, which, according to the wise medics, should not be a default place for anyone anyway. I read in the paper what I already know: sitting too much is not good for you. (My watch reminds me to stand up all the time, but who on this planet lives under the fear of a bossy watch?) This will not be a day of sitting too much.

As we approach winter, I think about the treat of having more time indoors (it doesn't have to be sitting down!). In warmer weather, the pull to fix something outside is strong. In winter months, that pull fizzles to nothing. We shovel the paths, feed the animals and then stay inside and that is just such a fine thing! The quiet of a winter room -- I have that to look forward to.

But today, I'm up and running. With my camera, of course.

The lunch is splendid. And beautiful. And I think how a year ago, the two women who are my compatriots today, were part of a long-ago life. I hadn't seen either in several decades. And now here we are, scheduling meals together on a regular basis. 

I do need to break off to pick up the kids. 

Oh, are they ever spirited and happy. Post-Halloween delight!

The afternoon isn't without bumps. Ed has health issues (kidney stones!) acting up, leading him to cancel the sail that he so wanted this month. And the young families too have had their stresses this week -- some fell sick, some simply had too much on their plate, some simply felt the weight of a chaotic set of days.

And yet...

Ed and I end the day, that first day of November, very well. I bake some pieces of fish, we turn on a show we like (Grand Designs) and it all feels rather fine. A good start to the month! We are grateful.

Hello...windy!

My little secret: Halloween is not my favorite holiday. These days, of course, big business has wrapped its possessive claws around the day and you can get any costume in any size for your kids. No need to panic when your girl says she wants to be Princess Red (Snowdrop and Primrose), your boy a black cat (Sparrow), or a pilot (Sandpiper). No problem in getting candies in small sizes. And plastic jack-o-lanterns for your front yard. All there for you with a click. Just give the kids a shove and send them running door to door, collecting candy that they mostly will never eat from strangers who have no idea what kids covet. (Snowdrop: tootsie rolls, Sparrow: kit-kats... and so on.)

What's there not to like???

Oh, there is, too, the intermittent ringing of the door bell if you're in a neighborhood with kids. You open the door and you want to give them more than just a piece of candy. I mean, they are so cute after all! A compliment maybe, a kind word, except all they really want is that candy, given quickly so that they can go on to the next door, and by the way, why does your front door have all those steps to climb? Parents shouting from the curb "dont forget to say thank you!" while their child and her pack of wild friends (were they always so wild?) are already climbing the steps to the next door.

What's there not to like?

And of course, the best part (for them, not for you) is the exhausted squabble among sibs afterwards -- who got more candy and will you trade two of those for three of the other? No? Come on! I gave you your favorite! I didn't get that one! And -- mom, dad, can we have just one more? Go to bed! You have school tomorrow!

Kids, gorging on sugar. Fun!

What's there not to like?

Here, at the farmette, all is quiet on Halloween. No ghosts, not even a black cat. No trick-or-treaters. But the wind! Oh, the wind!

I'm up to feed the animals and I note with great satisfaction that we have nearly two inches of water in the bucket. If we get more rain next week, the drought may well be a thing of the past. I am relieved.

(the robins are going hog wild over the crab apples)

(birds of a different feather)

It is still mild outside, but by evening the temps will tumble. Precipitously. Which is a shame. The kids will be out in their light costumes and within an hour they're all going to be cold. I suppose the one consolation is that it wont rain. To the litany of grievances I have against this "holiday" please add being a parent of an enthusiastic trick-or-treater on a blustery and wet October 31st. 

 

Breakfast? Back to the kitchen. Here now until... I'm guessing May.

I've become a reluctant mover and shaker. Meaning I'll choose couch over a nice walk in our county park. But, I believe in calendar beginnings. Tomorrow we leave October behind and start in on November. I will resume a more active lifestyle. I hope.

In the afternoon I pick up the kids. They are on a Halloween high for sure. All they can think about is the trick-or-treating that's ahead for them. Why, I want to ask, why?? You get candy, and candy that you actually like on most days of the year. What is so special about begging for it on a cold October night? But I say nothing. I'm excited for them. Just a little.

(Inside, Ed shows the girl how to read wind charts when you're sailing...)

I pack lots of fruit into them. And protein. For the night ahead. After that, it's up to them, their parents, their friends. And strangers, pushing candy into their outstretched bags.

(I drop them off at home, where the two older kids and the two older parents get ready...)

They split up then. Parents and Sparrow go to pick up Sandpiper, Snowdrop is off with friends. 

I'm hoping every trick-or-treater has a wonderful time tonight. And that the candy loot brings joy. The craziness of it all is reason enough to smile. Harmless and ridiculous as this day has become, it still does bring happy moments for the little ones. And sometimes their parents. Reason enough to feel good about Halloween.

the heat and then the crash

Isn't it an apt way to describe thunderous events in our lives? They simmer, then reach a boiling point, then spill over, soaking us in the raging waters of the morning after. Forget about the elections (how can one forget about the elections?!) -- I'm thinking of the weather right now. It's warm. Hot even. Pleasant for a very early walk to the barn...

...but you know that it will all come to a crashing end soon. And we feel that crescendo coming at us right now, as the winds pick up and the clouds roll in.

I have an early morning coffee date with an old colleague-friend. A sweet moment for me, for her as well...

And I have a screening type appointment right after. This I can analogize as well to a boiling caldron, where you don't know how things will turn out. Either you walk away with a clean slate (for another period of time), or it'll spill over to a year of medical issues. Each time I hold my breath. And thankfully today I can exhale. Boiling waters contained, I can walk away unscathed. For now. How can one not feel grateful for the gift of a good morning?!

Straight from there, I drive to Madison Sourdough, where they have the most awesome looking loaf of an October bread...

And I come back to a late morning post-breakfast with Ed. On the porch! Just incredible. On the porch! But, the winds are swirling and we know a change is in the air.

 I pick up the big two. There's a bit of wildness in the air. Leaves swirling, dark clouds forming. But, there are still flowers for Sparrow, and a hose ready to be turned on by Snowdrop.

Toward evening, we, the three of us,meet up with their mom at Barrique's. It's a complicated scheduling decision, but one that gives us a little time to spend together. (I haven't caught up with my older girl in a while!).

 

I drive home in the shadows of swirling dark clouds. And before I pull into our rural road, the rains come down. And lightening lashes out at the scorched earth.

At long last, there is rain.

We settle in for an evening on the couch. I'm so happy to have a chunk of the week behind me. To have peace before the next storm (elections!) erupts.

with love...

... and it stays warm

Up to feed the animals. My, it's pleasant outside!

So pleasant that we can again have breakfast on the porch. October 29th, breakfast on the porch. Unbelievable!

I'm just assuming it's the last of the extra unusual, beyond the pale, weird in the extreme warm days. A high of 79f (26c). Short sleeves for sure.

 

 

 

Most Wisconsinites have two thoughts going strong right now: the weather, which is weird (see above), and the election which is one week away and weirder still. No, you don't have to worry. I'm not about to run the millionth political ad for you right now. You've seen them all. And you've watched all four candidates come to our state, again and again and again. The big one may well be tomorrow's arrival of Harris on our campus. It's not to sway minds, it's to get out the vote. The weirdness is in the fact that both sides deliver an apocalyptic message. True, I absolutely believe one and not the other, and you can say the same thing about most Wisconsinites -- they believe in one cataclysmic scenario -- one that will bring us all to ruin if our preferred candidate loses.

Sometimes, in moments of great frustration (those happen when I go down that rabbit hole and read what the undecideds are thinking right now), I think -- wow, let that other side win and 48% of you will find out how wrong you were! But I really dont mean it. I have grandkids. I want a safe and beautiful planet for them. My bag of worries centers on them, not me, not Ed. 

So, one week before the election is over. Everyone is thinking this -- one week. One bizarro week where at least one candidate is spewing weird hateful stuff left and right, one week where it's painful to read the headlines, the polls, the pundits, the predictions, the counter-predictions... Ocean readers outside the United States, know that it is very tough to be an American right now! Choose your word -- helpless, hopeless, hapless. That's us!

Ed and I go for a walk. You have to keep moving. One step at a time.

 

In the afternoon I bring both big kids home with me. Fine moods, happy faces, hungry tummies. We stop at Hubbard Avenue Diner on the way. For the ice cream. If ever a day deserved ice cream it's this hot October 29th.

And in the evening I drop them at the pick up point and slowly I drive home, half listening to the stories on the news, half wondering if maybe I should take a break from listening to the stories on the news. 

I cook soup, we exhale together, on the couch, Ed and I, happy to find distractions, happy to be done with news reading and weather worries for the day.

with love...

farmette drought

No rain. At all. Our county is experiencing a moderate to severe drought and those are not words chosen by me. I just have to wonder -- how will this affect my garden? How many of the perennials will I lose? 

It is, of course, cooler here -- though this is relative: cooler as compared with Florida. Positively toasty as compared with a typical late October day. A high of 68f (20c) today, and climbing! And of course, we have such mixed feelings about it: yes, nice, so nice to have a very long "early fall." But so weird, too. 

(Pretty colors)

Breakfast with Ed. Nasturtiums from the garden. They survived the light frost last week.

We talk about machining. You might wonder -- what do you, Nina, know about machining! And the answer is -- very little. Ed, on the other hand, sees the demise if not total disappearance of higher status machining jobs as the culprit behind the rage that has percolated and finally boiled over in states such as ours. He's a guy who understands machines and has worked in machine design (and therefore with machinists, nearly all of them men) all his adult years. But he tells me he never fully understood their frustration, because he's not one to compare his own level of success to that of others (he always measures his accomplishments against his own past efforts). Status means little to him. Not so to the rest of the world, especially to those who feel its loss. Where nearly everyone seems to be doing better. Where the wife earns more as a health care worker, or a young tech neighbor, who sits by a computer screen all day brings home a larger paycheck. Hence the rage.

But is it productive? He shrugs. People will cut off their nose to spite their face -- one of those sayings my father liked...  Trip up others, "blow up the system," because they feel they've been tripped up and knocked down themselves. And it's playing out before us right now. So we talk about this human trait of wanting revenge against the perceived villain, even if that revenge will destroy us all. (For a very good piece describing these trends, and for very good comments to it, you might want to look here.)

And continuing in this merry vein, we talk about grizzly bears. It happens that on the long flight from Florida to Minneapolis, I watched a movie about Grizzly Bear 399 up in Grand Teton National Park. I picked that movie because I'm running out of stuff to watch on longer flights. Too, Grand Teton is the next park on the list of parks I want to visit and so it seemed appropriate. I had no idea that the papers on this very day were flashing the headline that Bear 399 had just been run down by a car. Died the day I watched the movie about her life. So bears were very much on my mind and here, too, you can tie yourself up in knots trying to figure out what to do given the frustrations of those who view grizzlies as a threat (to their livestock, to tourism, for instance), and those who worry about the grizzlies' near extinction.

I write about both these topics because in so many ways Ed and I are removed from the rest of the world, at the farmette here, in south central Wisconsin. We can lose ourselves for days, indeed, months in a very simple pattern of life, with chickens, kids, flowers, trees, where the looming conflict is whether to cut down a limb on a tree that's shading too much of my garden. I step out to travel, he steps out to sail, but we know the essence of our lives lies right here, in the yellow farmhouse, amidst crab apples and maples and the horrible (according to me) honey locust trees. Ocean posts are born here, in this calm world of growing things (plants, children, animals). But we are not blind to the fact that in many ways, this is not the real world. Even without the global conflicts, plagues, famines, there are plenty of threats facing so many. It's good to pause and talk about all that and to feel grateful that we can eventually shut it off and go on with our quiet, beautiful day.

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. 

 

 

Monday is the day I pick her up, feed her, read with her, drop her off at ballet. A bit complicated today because it turns out they are to show up to dance in their own Halloween costumes. Okay....

 

Monday is also the day I then go grocery shopping, late into the evening, because this is when I have the time for it. And so dinner is late of course. We don't mind. Eventually Ed and I come together on the couch and exhale. A moment, a long moment of total tranquility.

It feels really good to be back.

leaving Florida

It's our last morning in Florida. The hotel is letting us keep the room until lunch time. That's wonderfully convenient. Outside, it's no longer 100% sunny, but it will be warm. We can have a final swim splurge.

Breakfast here is great (and expensive!). Outside, with a buffet for those who want to put together their own selection. The girl, who normally is happy to skip the morning meal, loads up her plate and eats it all. (Too, kids start to open up their palates to new tastes with greater enthusiasm at her age. It makes for smoother travel!)

Yesterday, the pool in the sister hotel (the one with the water slides) got pretty crowded. Sort of like our community pool at the peak of summer. This hotel, on the other hand, offering fewer kid attractions, was more sedate. So it's a trade off. 

 

 

 

 

 

But we know to get to the slides early today -- before the families come out of the woodwork.

Traveling with me as she does, I always wonder if Snowdrop misses her friends. She's getting to that age when they're all important. But right now (or is it that this is her personality?) she's content to have this break with ancient me. Not in a hurry (yet) to return to her friend pack back home.

Still, I don't go into the pool nearly often enough. She mostly finds ways to amuse herself. In California, the kids her age banded together. Here, they're both younger and older and no one looks beyond their own family. This isn't a Florida factor. It just happens to have brought together a different group of people. Too, I have to believe most everyone at the hotel has some plan to go to one of the theme parks. They don't just do the pool in Orlando. They're here to cavort with Disney characters and go down rapid rides. The interlude by the pool is just that -- an interlude. And it is for us as well. A very wonderful interlude.

 

Eventually I have to get her out of the water. We pack up, shower, and get going. Back to the airport. Return the car -- so much easier than picking it up! -- catch our flight, this time to Minneapolis, where we pause so that Snowdrop can have supper. Pizza. We liked it a year ago when we were passing through the airport on our October return from California. 

I ask Snowdrop -- isn't that the same waitress we had here last year? She nods. I ask -- might have you been working here then? Indeed! A very coincidental and very sweet encounter!

 

 

 

And finally home, to Madison. Where her dad comes for her at the airport.

 

I drive home. Hi Ed! Hi gorgeous. Have a good time? Yes, we did...

with so much love...

Florida

I completely reworked this day. We're done with the beach. We're done with the hotel. Nice people, but we feel we've exhausted the possibilities. After breakfast, we're going adventuring!

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt, by Executive order, designated Pelican Island (just to the north of us, over in Sebastian) as the nation's first Wildlife Refuge. For the protection of nesting birds. Congress sealed its fate in 1970 by establishing the whole island as a Wilderness Area. 100 years ago, it was the last nesting place for the Brown Pelican. These days, over 130 species of birds feed and nest here.

Wouldn't you want to visit? To walk its Floridian trails? To listen to birdsong?

It's cloudy here this morning, which is a good thing. A less intense sun will keep us cooler.

Breakfast -- outside, because again, the weather is lovely for it. She gets the pancake (please, only one), I get the granola and yogurt.

(with a view onto the ocean...)

Our server is known to us from the other day. She engages. They all do. Super friendly bunch. She asks where we're heading, I mention Pelican Island. Ever been there?

No, I just moved here two years ago. Came down, liked it, stayed.

From where? 

Massachussetts. Too cold there. And the people here? So happy.

Are they? She should know. Lives here now. Or is it that she is "so happy" and thus assumes the best about everyone?

And then we are off.

The drive up the barrier islands is a little, well, I guess strange to a northerner. We very quickly leave an older Florida neighborhood...

... and hit endless gated communities. One after the next, and then thirty more. I try to explain to Snowdrop why they're so common here, but to tell you the truth -- I don't fully understand it myself. Is it because people often leave these units for the summer? Do they feel more threatened? Endless enclaves. 

And then -- we get to the Wilderness area.

There isn't anyone around. There are no visitors and there's not a soul working here to tell you about the place and though I read a little on the Internet, still, I wasn't sure which trail to take and for what reason. And so when a pickup truck rambled over to the small parking lot -- I ask. The couple seemed to visit this place every now and then. You're here for the birds? Go on the Birds Impoundment Trail. Once you get to the water, you'll see plenty of birds -- they tell me.

Okay, we find the trail. Jungle like! With swampy waters on both sides. She asks if there are snakes or alligators. Honestly, I dont know. They wont eat you, that I promise -- I say this with light confidence. Emphasis "light."

Predictably it's a little buggy. A few mosquitoes. Other less familiar insects that if amplified, would make great Halloween costumes. Creepy. Snowdrop goes along, but it's just not a pretty walk. We do get to more open waters. With what looks to me to be red mangroves...

And my bird detector tells me we're hearing an osprey somewhere out there. Looking up, we see one bird swooping past. Possibly a brown pelican, but I can't be sure.

She says -- you've seen a bird... maybe we should turn back?

She is correct. We can't get lost, but nor do we really believe that there is that much more to observe. We have bird nesting areas in Horicon Wisconsin. There is a ton of information on what to do, where to go, what to see. I'm missing that here, on Pelican Island, Florida.

 

 

We turn back.

And now it's an easy (if boring) 1.75 hour drive back to Orlando.

For reasons completely unknown to me, we get a room upgrade. Possibly because we're returning guests? Who knows.  Totally unnecessary and just a little too exquisite. We don't need so much space. And, too, I'd like to believe that we are happy as clams in modest places. Big American hotels with big rooms are great for large families, but for the two of us -- it makes me feel like I do not belong here. Amplified by my ride down in the elevator where a very friendly guest explains to me how his daughter is getting married here today, and how they've been coming for thirty years (thirty years! all we could think of thirty years ago was how to pay for the kids' college, which, in itself, is a very privileged worry), and how they avoid Disney World because of, you know, the politics. All in the space of a seven floor elevator ride.

That is not why I avoid Disney World.

Still, it's lovely to be back in the land of the exquisite swimming pools.

Down we go. Right away.

We eat lunch once again by the water. Grilled cheese for her. Happy little girl.

And of course, she goes back to the slides which have been on her mind all the while. Without raft, with raft.

(Ha! We spot a lovely bird. By the "fake" lagoon.)

We're upstairs, the sun is setting over the Disney World park grounds (to the right), over Florida's singular landscape. Funny to have seen the sunrise out the window back in Vero Beach, and now to witness the last colors of a setting sun in Orlando.

And when it is already dark, we go back to the same informal eatery and she has the same kids' salmon and fries, and I have the same shrimp and grits...

And we think this to be such a fine ending to our Florida adventure! Tomorrow, a morning of play, an afternoon of flights.

with so much love...