productionMaven part deux

I was reminded yesterday that our daycare will be closed the week of 21 April. What, exactly, our provider does for the three weeks a year of vacation that she takes (she was going to take a week in February, too, but she was guilted out of it because the school had been closed so much due to her kids being sick and the horrible winter weather), I'll never know, but the fact remains that she's not going to be open.

I can't take any vacation time because I have to bank it up for the glorious maternity leave that I'll need to take when the kid is hatched. And the company that I work for - I know they try - but their paltry 5 weeks off (including my 2 weeks of vacation) isn't going to be enough. I can't go back to work 2-3 days a week when the kid's only 5 weeks old. That is just irresponsible. I've told them I'll be working from home for 8 weeks, then back in the office 1 day a week until the kid is 12 weeks old.... and if my work starts to suffer, then we'll re-assess. I guess we'll see what happens. I have no plans on putting my newborn into daycare - even part time - when he's only 5 weeks old. Thanks, no. But I digress.

So, the week of the 21st. We live in a rural area, not a lot of babysitters around (and, really, do kids babysit any more?). My mom has agreed to come down for Wednesday & Thursday, and to take P to their house for a "sleepover" on Thursday night, and we'll meet up with them on Friday because we're going there anyway for the weekend. And, in the interest of diplomacy and "keeping things even", we asked G's mom to come and babysit on the 21st & 22nd... she left a typically-cryptic message saying that she'd love to, she's on vacation that week as well (she's a teacher in NH) but she was thinking about taking a vacation because she hadn't had one in over a year (and may I say - she's not the only one?). So I called her back to tell her never mind, we don't want to infringe on her vacation, farbeit! She said that coming here will "be like a vacation", so she's coming. I hope she's aware of what taking care of a 3-year-old for a couple of days entails. And I might just have to camp out at work for a couple of days. We'll see!

G and I are still getting over this cold, which is hanging on for dear life. We can't go and meet our nephew - who I'll call TT when I refer to him in this blog - until we're better, and I hope that will happen by this weekend. We go in a couple of weeks to see G's family. We'll probably end up staying at my sister-in-law's who has a real bed, as opposed to just a blow-up mattress, for us to sleep on. G's grandmother is being moved up to Maine today, from Florida, where she has lived for her entire adult life. Should be interesting to have her up north, where her entire family is - she's been a grumpy, malcontent woman for as long as I've known her, and she might as well be miserable up here where we can all at least see her periodically, instead of miserable 1,500 miles away.

We had a really nice weekend, even considering that we're still snorking around with disproportionate amounts of mucus in our heads. My parents came down and watched P while G and I went to a wine tasting dinner that we had won tickets to back in December. The food was amazing and so was the wine (I just had 1/2 serving of everything - all told probably about 1-1/2 glasses total. I wasn't drunk, and my OB has said that it's ok to have a drink, so long as I don't get drunk). We sat with some people who had just had a very interesting experience in Vegas.

The story was as follows. The couple - that we sat with - was at their hotel in Vegas, waiting for an elevator. There were 3 banks of elevators, with 8 elevators per bank. They pushed the button to call a car to go to their room on the 22nd floor, and when the doors opened on the next available elevator, there were two people, a man and a woman, in the car. The man was fully dressed; the woman had 2 lovely articles of clothing on, and nothing else. The articles were shoes. The man was furiously pumping away at the woman, and I'm told she just looked bored. Our table, after hearing this story, determined that she was probably not "with" this man as a part of his life, but had been hired out for entertainment such as elevator games. Going up! The woman that was recounting this story, who grew up in Vegas, said this woman in the elevator looked perfect, and then some. Definitely a pro.

Needless to say, the next time I go into an elevator I'll be pushing the buttons with a pencil and won't touch the walls. Can you imagine what the people who have to monitor the cameras in those elevators see? Can you imagine being some poor bastard saving up your money and vacation time to go to Vegas to live out your pimply-faced teenage fantasy of fucking some stranger in an elevator, half-hoping you'll be caught, and going home with a story to tell your buddies around the water cooler on Monday? Talk about a pathetic life. Can you imagine the life that woman, or any prostitute in Vegas, or New York, or London, or Bombay leads? Having a daughter adds a new horrifying angle to this vision.... I can't imagine my child doing that for a living. Either one of my kids, for that matter.

I do have pictures of the food from our dinner from Saturday night, and it was delicious. I hope to get around to posting them, and a description of the wines, this week. Bear with me.

I turned 35 last week. Thirty-five. As in, Five Years to Forty. As in, halfway to seventy. Yeesh. I was joking at work and told our editorial director that I was on the slippery slope to forty, meaning the wrong side of 35 and she thought I meant that I was going to be 40 so she got me flowers and a funny turning-forty card. She also said I looked too young to be 40. Uh, ok. Thanks? The flowers were a nice touch though.

I would have blogged about this last week but man, it's been nutty in my life lately. Just, off the hook crazy nuts. I don't know how to change it so that it's less nutty, either. In fact, I daresay it's going to continue to whirl out of control. I guess we'll just evolve to stay with it, but I'm hoping that G and I can sustain ourselves so that we don't come crashing down.

On my actual birthday G and P met me at work and we went to dinner with my parents, my brother, and my very-pregnant sister-in-law. We went to a place that had recently been featured on The Food Network - a place that we've been going to for as long as I can remember. It's a diner-style Italian restaurant, and it's common to have to wait in line for a table. As a child I remember waiting in line for what seemed like hours, although I'm sure that it was more like 20 minutes. There's a jukebox where the line starts, and I remember when the jukebox was a cigarette vending machine. I had some excellent lasagne, and my mom had brought some birthday cupcakes. It was a very special time for us all to be together, because most likely the next time we're all together like that, my sister-in-law and brother will have their new baby. We're all terribly excited for that little guy to get here, so it made our little party of 6-1/2 more memorable, because next time we'll be an even 7! Our family is growing and growing - that's a wonderful gift indeed.

My boss had taken me out to lunch on my birthday, too, so it was a nice 2-meals-out kinds of day. Those events don't happen all that often, and when they do I am most appreciative.

Friday I was to go to lunch with a friend of mine, but we had some ugly weather, and the kid's swim class - where we were to meet and then go from there - was cancelled, so P and I hit the grocery store early, got $165 worth of necessary (!) groceries, and headed home just as it started to snow. Saturday was quiet aside from a huge melt-down right before bedtime from P - this seems to be de rigeour lately with her and I'm hoping it's a phase that will soon pass. Of course, it will probably be replaced, hydra-like, with another, worse phase. Something to look forward to, I suppose. And Sunday we got some new sleds and tried them out on the hill in front of our house, then our friends M & J brought dinner over with some cake, and thus ended the birthday celebrations.

I can't believe I'm 35 though. I know it's not the end of the world, and it's still fairly young, but I thought I would have DONE something with my life by now. Not to say that working and being a parent isn't doing something, per se, but I kind of expected more laurel wreaths. More accomplishments. More clout.

So I'm going to think about goals that I want to reach for myself. Not necessarily "Write an Oscar Winning Screenplay" goals, but smaller, attainable goals that I want to reach - either in the next 6 months, the next year, the next five years, and the next ten years. I'm going to assign them according to when I want to have them done by. I'm not doing this with the assumption that it will all be done exactly on time and done to completion, but my feeling is that, if I write them down, and manifest my desires in some way, even the smallest way, that I'll have a better opportunity to reach them. If they just jangle and crash into each other in my head, that does nothing.

So. Goal the First:
I want to write in this blog every week day. Even if it's just some random, twitter-abbreviated sentence, I will write in this blog to be better about writing in general. It's discipline. And this is something that I will do starting immediately.

If any of you have goals that you'd like to share, please feel free to join me! I welcome the company!

I'm pretty sure I've said it before here, but I'm not a super-religious person. At all. I believe in a higher power, good timing, and hard work. That said, some times things happen to me to make me think that there are angels walking on the earth (I'm more of a spiritual-angel believer, most of the time. The kind that bounce into your dreams, give you a little pep talk and a warm fuzzy, and move on with their dream-lives).

G and I have been fa-la-la-ing around the county lately with all the holiday festivities, and last night was my work-place's holiday party (since G is self-employed, he has no holiday party unless he and the cats sit around with silly hats on and the dogs do a rhumba with lampshades on their heads). It was just beer & wine and appetizers from 6 until 9, and we left around 9, to drive an hour home and relieve our friend M who was hanging out with P, making sure she didn't do a premature dive into the presents hidden in our closet. The snow was really coming down, and the roads were a little slick, but we carried on - G had met me at work, so he was in his car, and I was in mine. I called M to tell her we were on our way, and she told me that the daycare had called to say no school the next day, due to yet another illness in one of her kids. I hung up with M, and called G to tell him and to commisserate. He's got a huge deadline, and I was already away from work on Monday due to the school being closed for a snow day.

As I listened to his phone ring and ring and ring, I looked into my rearview mirror and saw the car behind me go flying into the snow on the oppostie side of the road. G was in the car behind me. I hung up, and immediately it rang. It was G. He had driven off the road, and was stuck. So I turned my car around, and went back. He was trying to dig the car out, and almost immediately a car stopped on the south-bound side of the road (which was the direction we had been headed), and the person driving the car got out to help. I was frantically calling AAA and every towing company in the area, and everyone was at least 90 minutes away from being able to send a truck.

About thirty minutes later, I watched as two men with a flashlight walked to where G's car was, where G was still trying to dig out, and rock the car out of its snow-holdings. Shortly after that, another car pulled over, this one was going north, and that person got out and helped too. About an hour and 20 minutes after the initial drift encounter, a local fire department truck came by and was able to pull his car out of the snow. SUCCESS!!! I called the tow companies and AAA back and cancelled, G drove his car to where I was, and we hugged before heading out on the road home.

I was less than a mile up the road, and my phone rang again. It was G. He had gone a little too fast back onto the road, the car fish-tailed, and he was stuck - again - in another part of another snowbank.

I think my exact words were "You have got to be fucking kidding me!!!" or something of that ilk.
I turned around, and saw that this time his car was perpendicular to the road, with the tail end hanging out. Apparently there was snow-pack under the car, and he wasn't able to steer it well. In the almost 2 hours we had been at that spot, there had not been one snow plow or salt truck that passed us by - and this is a major north-south route in Vermont. I started calling the tow companies and AAA back. I am a good secretary.

Almost immediately, a guy in a heavy-duty truck came by. He told G he had a tow line and could try to get him out. The truck pulled G's car so that the car was running parallel to the road, facing in the wrong direction but at least now no one coming north on the road would hit G's car and cause a bigger problem. He pulled the car and did the best he could, until the tow line (which was nylon) snapped. Then he went on his way.

Not more than 15 minutes later, a rent-a-cop stopped and blocked the lane so that the cars and trucks tavelling along would slow down when they saw his lights. This nice guy called the state troopers, who called another tow company, and we sat and waited. I was mad - not at the situation, but because I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't help G with the digging, I couldn't shrink his car down to lift-able size and move it, I couldn't do anything. Except call to pester AAA and give M updates.

Around 11 a state trooper relieved the rent-a-copy of his duties, and 20 minutes later a towtruck showed up, pulled the car out of the snow with nary a problem, accepted his $60, and was on his way. The towtruck appeared right after the first plow/salt truck passed by, going south. G took off ahead of me, very slowly, and I followed. The roads were actually not that bad, mostly because of the recent plow and salt applications. We were home by 12:30, about 2-1/2 hours after we expected to be in our own bed.

I couldn't believe how the timing worked. I mean, the grand-scheme-of-things timing obviously was not ideal, but the fact that so many people stopped to help us, on a dark, snowy, stormy night, totally obliterated all bad feelings I had had about the man at the post office the night before. Those people were helpful angels. G didn't hit another car (both times he went into the bank on the opposite side of the direction we were travelling in) or a tree, and the only damage to his car, so far as I can tell, is that his bumper is a little goofy from having all the snow pushed underneath it. His airbag didn't go off. He didn't hurt himself or anyone else, and none of the people who stopped had their cars hit or were hurt themselves.

It's a lot like the time I was driving on Route 89 in New Hampshire, and my rear tire fell off while I was going 65 miles per hour in the right lane. The tire went cruising up the left lane, traveled the median, and came to rest in the median. A man stopped behind me, after I pulled over, and offered to get my tire. He came back, and I saw that he only had one arm, but didn't hesitate to offer to help me, despite his "handicap". I never had a chance to thank him, sincerely, aside from being rattled immediately it happened. I would have liked to write him a note to thank him for what he did. I would like to thank the people that stopped last night, when they could have driven past, and helped my husband out.

There are angels out there. Sometimes in your dreams, and sometimes in the middle of your most horrible, is-this-really-happening, real-life nightmare moment. I hope I can be an angel to someone else some day.

Needless to say, we're both on the new tires roster. I hope Santa can fit 8 tires into his sleigh.

Yes, I enjoy the holidays (except when my mother-in-law makes them stressful which happens year but that's not what this entry is about so I'm moving on now)... but to me, one of the things that makes me the happiest at the end of the year is packing up all of my folders that hold bank statements, receipts, pad bill stubs, and the like from the year, putting them in a box, doing my budgeting of what we paid for utilities so that we can make adjustments for the coming year, and making new folders for the next year. But the best? The absolute best?? Is getting the next year's calendar for work, and writing in all the tasks that are to come... I also really enjoyed getting school supplies - notebooks in particular - when I was a kid.

I'm a geek, what can I say.

What's your most favorite part of "the most wonderful time of the year", excluding The Holidays?

I have had a myriad of subjects that I was going to write about, but between work being hell on wheels this week (I owe a pound of flesh for not being here the day before the holiday and also everyone and their uncle wants everything done before the office closes for the holidays on 12/21 but do you think they could be bothered to tell us explicit details on what they want kind of ahead of time? No, they can't.) and my daughter being hell on wheels last week AND as a special bonus this week too, I've been too tired to think about things and try and convey them in a concise, yet droll and witty way on this blog. Forgive me.

Christmas shopping? Not done... almost.
Christmas baking? Will take place next weekend. We shop for it this weekend, P and my dear friend M and I. Then my parents come down for my dad to do more puttering around on The Project and my mom to do cookies with us.
Child? Needs a tranq gun. Either that or I do.

I'm having massive heartburn this afternoon, and although I'm 14 weeks pregnant, it is TOO EARLY and there is TOO MUCH RICH HOLIDAY FOOD TO BE EATEN before the heartburn and Tums-popping is allowed to commence. I'm hoping it's just something that I ate and will be gone. Soon.

I go to have my Quad screening tomorrow. I can't even remember what they screen for. And then 3 weeks from tomorrow we go for our "anatomy sonogram"... because I'm going to be a "mature mother" when this baby gets here, they keep a slightly closer eye on things. It will be fun to find out what this baby is.... We have some names, but haven't been as rabid about pouring over the Baby Name books this time around.

So, that's about it in my boring world. Time to sign off and get to the post office, then home I go. I made a slow-cooker Tex-Mex dinner and I certainly hope it doesn't sear the inner lining from my stomach and esophagus tonight after the fact.

I'm waiting for a meeting to start in a few minutes, so I'll just quickly blog about a fantastic restaurant that is severely lacking in ambiance that we got take-away from yesterday on our way home from my parent's house. We went up for a weekend visit - partly to see my dad who just emerged from the woods after three weeks of manly recharging in the form of chopping wood, hiking up mountains, and drinking beer (and playing penny poker), partly to see my mom, who is great and who I like to see every couple of weeks, and partly to get away from the myriad of projects that linger around the house. Yes, it's done, and yes, I have downloaded pictures (but have yet to get them organized and posted here), but there's spot painting that needs to be done, trim that needs to be painted and/or sealed, windows that need their screens and their little frames painted. There's still plenty to do. And my house is a wreck - I need to wash the floors, but this is a project that requires careful timing. So we escaped. And my mom helped me make an EXCELLENT gift for the person that I drew for our holiday gift on G's side (we're all tight with finances and so we buy gifts for one person). I think this person is going to love what I'm doing. But I'm not saying anything else.

SO. Quickly. I was reading the local free weekly and saw an article on soups, and thought we should check out a Vietnamese restaurant that was mentioned. When we lived in Boston one of my favorite things to do was to get pho and some delicious fresh unfried spring rolls. I'm happy to say that we've found a local - well, Burlington local - place for the same.... delicious chicken soup with rice noodles, tofu and veggie spring rolls... delish!

And now I'm off to my meeting.

Today is both a wonderful and terrifying day in my life. It's wonderful because my sister-in-law, L, is being induced to have her baby AS I WRITE THIS. I'm waiting for updates from my other brother-in-law JF, and possibly my mother-in-law, B. It's a wonderful day to be born, and I look forward to meeting the new member of our family next week when we pack up and head to Maine for Thanksgiving. I hope all goes well with L, and that her high-risk status doesn't come into play (she has a heart issue that has classified her as high-risk with this pregnancy). I know she and her husband JL are very excited, and I can't wait to be an aunt. For some reason, it feels different, becoming an aunt rather than becoming a parent.

The slightly terrifying and scary part is that today my friend, M, starts her chemotherapy. She's my age, has 2 children, and discovered a lump a couple of months ago. She's since had surgery, and begins her 3-month course in chemo today. She has been brave, funny, and optimistic about the entire process, and has a wonderful team assisting her in regaining her health, but it's still scary to think about people my same age who have a life-threatening disease.

You can go and visit M at her own blog, which is wonderfully candid and introspective. Her strenght and positive outlook are inspiring to me, when I hit small problems in my own day-to-day. I think about what she's up against, and it gives me the motivation to move on. As a co-worker once put it to me: Is it a lump in the oatmeal or a lump in the breast? In other words, is your problem that you think is so important really worth that much worrying about? I thought not.

Here's to these two brave women who are entering the next phase in their lives today. May you both come out on the other side stronger, wiser, and healthier than before.

I'm really trying hard to be less negative in my life... especially since I'm growing a new little person, and I want their growth environment (at least while they're on the inside) to be relatively calm. I think mothers who have stressful lives give birth to babies who are used to that adrenaline and stress hormones and do more screaming. Just my totally unscientific study, there. There's no proof, it's just my theory.

So, I'm looking for the positive in things. Work is hard, because it makes me very, very tense. It's sometimes hard to find the good there. That means I have to find the joy in the hour that I'm up and getting ready in the morning, or the few hours that I'm home at night between work and bedtime, when I'm trying to get dinner ready. Last night, I put some music on while I did dinner clean up and G got P's bath ready. I played "Police & Thieves" by The Clash, and P got totally into it - she was dancing and stamping around. I got in on the dancing, and so did G. We listened to five or six songs before it was bathtime, and I have to say, those 20 minutes of twirling and dancing made me so happy.

I've said it before, that I'm glad that P likes our music (she regularly requests The Gorillaz, The JB's and Jeff Buckley, who she calls Jeff Bucklies), and I am so grateful for that. I love when she's stamping around and twirling until she falls over. I love that we all like the same tunes, and that we all get the same joy from listening. When G and I were raking on Saturday, P brought out some muscial instruments that she has and was beating the crap out of them, "making moosic" for us while we raked. That… that is just the best.

I was awoken this morning by P's kitten, Jelly, who has grown into a nice cat, overall. She associates me with medicine and checking her hysterectemy scar, though, so she's not super snuggly with me. She tolerates P and her affections, and she loves G. She's adapted well, and loves to wrestle with one of our other cats, Little Puss (which is kind of like karmic payback for Little Puss because she used to attack our older cats who are now dead and try to wrestle with them and instead they would all end up a big snarly hissy hair ball). Our 3rd cat, Belly, steers clear of both Jelly and P (in fact, I think in P's almost 3 years, she's only touched Belly twice) and tends to spend most of the day hiding until P goes to bed.

Jelly's a fun little creature, though. A little obnoxious (she gets into my plants and kicks all the dirt out because plants are fun!, but overall nice and cute. However, she is an early-bird, and this morning was no exception. She hasn't grasped the concept that Daylight Savings Time is over, so she's up around 5:30 rocking out, playing with whatever she can find. This morning it was a marble that she was bringing up to the top of the oak stairs - located right outside our bedroom door - then she would push it and it would fall down the stairs, hitting each stair with a SNAP! Down 14 stairs. Over and over. I got up and shut P's door, so that she wouldn't wake her up, and closed our door mostly. But the marble games continued, and I got up at 6, found the marble, and stashed it away. Of course, it's now light at 6:00, so I couldn't get back to sleep.

What do you suppose she'd do if I gave her a Slinky(tm)? She's learning about gravity... might be time to learn some other physics lessons.

I know I promised an entry about what to do with 20 preschoolers in your house when it's raining harder than a cow peeing on a flat rock, and I do hearby swear that that post will be up tomorrow after I take and post pictures from trick-or-treating tonight. I just figured that one Halloween post will be enough for you.

It's going to be an interesting trip trick-or-treating.... our entire house is filled with plenty of mucus, coughing and sneezing... it's the first cold of the season! Parker kept herself up last night coughing, and I kept G up because I was snoring (due to excessive mucus blocking my nasal passages). Luckily (!) it's also about 60 degrees out today, so it won't be terribly cold, and my friend and her little boy and P and the dogs and I are only going to the houses on our street - 6 total. G's staying home to dole out the goodies. My friend is bringing a pizza, so we'll go out and gather the goodies then come back and have dinner.

So look for some eye-candy of your own tomorrow!!! And we'll have other news Friday, after an important meeting. Are you waiting with baited breath? I thought so.

Happy Halloween!

I guess I need a new baking category.....

My first Daring Bakers Challenge is up!
Tasty-Ugly Bakery

Next post will be along the lines of: what do you do in your house when you have 20 preschoolers over for a Halloween party and it RAINS ALL DAY?????

Ahh.... pumpkins, leaves falling, rain falling, trees getting nekkid, corn getting cut and chopped for cow fodder, patio furniture being put away, giant V-formations of geese flying south (we saw about 200 geese struggling to take formation the other day - it's a very scientific thing. Did you know that as they fly, the leader of the V gets tired and drops to the back of the line, and the next goose steps up to be the point inthe V? The leader goose has to work the hardest, the geese at the end benefit from the draft of the V.... You're welcome for that lesson)..... It's a lovely time of year, except for when some sorry son-of-a-bitch steals the pumpkin from under your mailbox. I put it out there Sunday, and by Monday night it was gone. Thanks, you bastard.

We went pumpkin picking on Sunday, and got 5 (now down to 4) for P's party. We're having 19 (maybe 23) of her closest little friends (ranging in age from 6 months to 5 years) and their handlers over on Saturday from 2 to 4 for a little party. I'm not going to make it terribly scary for them, more of the fun of Halloween rather than the death and gore of it all. I've got decorations up the wazoo, I need to make little candy bags for everyone, and my mom is coming down Friday night to help get it all ready. I'll be making cupcakes like they're going out of style, too. I can't wait to get a shot of all the little buggers in their costumes. It will be great. There will be pictures.

I love the smell in the air this time of year - a combination of rain and rot, as the leaves fall and turn to mush. Woodsmoke fires drift across the fields (last night as I was driving home, there was one stretch of field that was literally a royal purple from the combination of smoke and sunset - it was stunning), and although the weather has been unseasonably warm, autumn progresses as we make our way toward the night where the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest. Next Wednesday, in addition to gathering (and eating) candy, remember those in your family who have passed over: they still exist, if only in your mind, and Halloween is the night that they are most accessible to those who have been left on this earthly plain. Light a candle to their memory, pour them a glass of their favorite spirit, leave them an offering in a special place. Ask for their protection and guidance. Think of a happy memory that involves them, and thank them for being in your life.

THEN go rummage through your kid's candy (or raid what's left in the bowl).

I love autumn.

Just over 7 years ago, G and I found our dream house - that needed lots of work - bought it with lots of help from a nice bank, and moved in. A week after we moved into the house, I was outside, admiring the view and the country and the trees and stone wall... then I realized that the trees were pushed a little further back than I remembered them to be. When I investigated further, I saw that there was a wide, freshly pushed & dug path, big enough for a truck, between my stone wall and the trees. I saw a Bobcat (the power equipment, not the animal), parked just a little bit up this "road", with trees and detrius pushed aside. This little road comes off our the road that our house is on, and goes into the woods. There is no place for it to go, really.

A couple of days later, we met our neighbor, who claimed to own the road. I thought he also owned the property behind our house, a big hay field and lots of woods. He left us maple syrup. I thought it odd, because we had been told by the people who sold us the house that we owned the road beyond the stone wall, and upon further research, discovered that he was not our direct neighbor. He's a crotchety old man who lives in town who has the reputation for doing what he wants, with a blatant disregard to who actually owns the property. He has sued the town for various reasons, he shoots dogs for game, he jacks deer, and apparently he thought he owned the road behind our house. Shit. He's a 6th generation Vermonter who's only ever left the state for vacations to Florida and to serve his country in WWII. He owns a LOT of land in our town He's a real woodchuck who takes the law and adjusts it to his preferences. We'll call him C.

Soon after the road was cleared back and widened, trucks began to use the road at all hours of the day and night. Apparently C and his sons and grandsons have a hunting camp back in the woods and they were using this as a new way to gain access to their camp. After hunting season came and went, the logging trucks - yes, the huge 18 wheeler logging trucks with grabbers to get the logs - started rumbling in and out of the woods. Since they were travelling along a very old stone wall and knocking it over with their diesel proximity, we desired that they stop. Immediate.

When we met the man who owns the hayfield, we decided that we would join alliances and try to resolve this issue in a neighborly way. The hayfield man, L., is a reasonable, intelligent, deliberate man who also has ties to this town that stretch far into the spidery, hand-written town records that reside in our Town Offices. G and L met C and his renegade sons one fall day, after a cease & desist letter had been sent - and ignored - and walked the boundary. They tried to come to a compromise - the trucks could continue until the logging was done, and that would be that. C stubbonly maintained that he owned the road and would not agree to any restrictions.

G, L and I tried one lawyer (approximately late-2001), a partner in his firm, who met with us, reviewed the case, and passed it along to one of the junior lawyers who still charged the premium partner rate but was a horrible lawyer. She bungled the hell out of our case, hired an expert, and they both got hung up on some case law in Vermont that "was exactly like our case" where the plaintiffs had lost. We reviewed the case, found that it was nothing like ours, and fired her. At one point, before P was born, I caught the old man on the road, measuring its width, and I went out, stood on top of the stone wall and yelled at him to get the hell off my land. I was about 6 months pregnant at the time. Talk about hormones raging out of control.

We found another lawyer to represent us. He reviewed the case, found some very strong points, and encouraged us to try mediation before going to court. We served papers saying that we were suing this man and his family (basically everyone who is on their deed) as well as to the man who built our house almost 30 years ago, who had confused the issue by submitting an Affadavit of Intent, so requested by C. This affadavit basically said that Mr. Builder-man intended to hold onto ownership of his portion of the road to convey it to C, when he (Builder Man) sold the house and land to the people that we bought it from. This flew in the face of our deed, and "clouded" it. After we sued them, they sued us back. Ah, the legal system.

So we tried it. We met one early spring morning in 2005 to mediate, with our lawyers, at a neutral location. The old man and his crazy bitch wife wouldn't budge an inch as to anything we were offering to compromise on, and their sons, who are named on the deed and thus in the suit, didn't even bother to show us.

When mediation failed, we filed papers for the County Superior Court and got a date for May, 2006. We prepared our case, gathered case law, and were there when the Court opened. Again, it was just the old man and his crazy, and this time the judge made a note of the lack of respect for the courts his sons were showing by not even bothering to show up. This time, G, L and I decided to represent ourselves. This had turned into a very expensive neighborly dispute, and our good lawyer served as our council while we prepared the argument. After several hours of deposition and testimony and exhibits and questions and more questions, we were dismissed. And about 3 months later, we got a ruling that said that we won. By representing ourselves, I think we tricked the other attorney into thinking that he didn't need to prepare as rigorously as he could have, and their case was sorely under-represented.

Our happiness was short-lived, though. Immediately C and his crazy appealed the decision to the State Supreme Court. We thought we were absolutely fucked. We hired our lawyer back on, and got ready for our Supreme Court hearing, for April of 2007. We were alloted 10 minutes for our argument and 5 minutes for a rebuttal. We were told that we would have a ruling "probably in a day or so". We took the day off from work, drove to Montpelier, and got ready for the longest 10 minutes of our lives. While we waited to enter the court room, we pointedly ignored C and his crazy, while I sent them evil energy as strongly as I could.

We walked into the court room, sat behind our lawyer, and waited for the justices to exit their chambers to start our hearing. The defending attorney opened, as they were the ones appealing, and spoke for almost 10 minutes. His little red warning light did come on. Our attorney stood up, spoke for about 2 minutes, and sat down. I remember thinking "that's IT??? There's no more you want to say??" They had a rebuttal, and then we were done. It was quick.

We didn't hear the next day. Or the next. Or the next week. We had decided that we would not bug our lawyer to pester the Court, because we didn't want to aggravate them or get charged for every e-mail and phone call.

Quite frankly, I had given up. I have a child, a career, a construction project, and a home to manage. I figured that whatever happens, happens. G and I were done.

Today, our lawyer sent out an e-mail with the Subject line: WE WON!!!!! He attached the documentation, and I read it with great joy. C's argument didn't hold water... we've known it all along, but he and his wife are dilusional enough to really believe their own case. It feels great to have this truly over and done with. Yes, we're about $15,000 lighter in the pockets, and there's plenty I would have rather done with that money, and there's no way we'll ever re-capture it. I'm not even going there.

Do I believe in the legal system? I think so.... but the way that lawyers complicate matters is really amazing. They make something that could be straightforward garbled and filled with ancient jargon, to keep it away from the lay-person. They make the process incredibly tangled and complicated. Would I believe in it if we had lost? I think so.... but I would be really pissed off. I know that our argument was right. I know that deeds to property have to be right, or else the entire system of property ownership would collapse in on itself.

All I know is that, someday, if I get some free time, this is one book that needs to be written. Without a doubt.

Happy Friday!

This was The Eye at its worse:




And this was 48 hours later. Phew.




OK, I swear I'm DONE with the eye stuff. Let's let life move on!