Finally post-worthy

This morning I was awakened at 5:10 to the sound of Ellis hollering from our bathroom, "Daddy, I'm all done. Daddy, I am all doooonnnne." I have to give him credit for taking care of approximately 2/3 of going all by himself without waking me to take his clothes off or put him on the toilet. When I walked in he was proudly sitting on the toilet with a book in hand. After I got him dressed I sent him to the living room to play trains. But minutes after I dozed back off I was again awakened by a matchbox demolition derby on my chest. At that point I gave up and just got up.

So, it is no wonder that I put cumin on my toast thinking I had the cinammon sugar. Considering all of this and a traffic jam up on the way to work, I had a surprisingly good day.

Tonight we went down to the farmer's market/concert series again. I met some people from Michigan and a rather colorful, older fellow. We were waiting in line for some free Ben and Jerry's (cake batter or fudge brownie) and the guy in front of us was hogging down a giant serving of apple strudel. He looked up and I said, "Eating one dessert while waiting in line for another. I like your style." He smiled, patted his belly and said, "Yeah, I probly don't need it, but my daddy taught me that if yer proud a sumpin, build a roof over it." Rachel didn't let me invite him to dinner.

Yucky Fish

Ellis got to go fishing for the first time today on the Waterbury Reservoir where we paddled last weekend. We hit the water at 7:30 in the morning and had a bit of success. Clearly, we have a lot to learn about how to fish these deep mountain lakes. We mostly stuck to areas where the brooks feed the lake, in about 25 ft. of water.

Here is Ellis with his first fish. I set the hook for him, but he reeled it up and lifted it into the boat. He had no appreciation for why I would want a picture and refused to hold the fish in the proper orientation, which is why I had to hold it to get a decent picture of it:

Ellis was remarkably patient while we fished for four hours. He liked it better when I rowed rather than using the motor. Later I realized this was because I couldn't hear his 8 million questions over the running motor. He seemed to have a very nice time, I bet he would have happily gone back out this evening even.

The highlight for Ellis came when he caught a Master Angler-size bullhead. I was fooling with my rig and didn't see his bobber disappear and he either didn't see it or know that he should care. He reeled at it for a minute and handed me the rod. At first I thought we had our first perch and then it rolled underwater and I realized it was a catfish of some type. My dad enjoyed this story, since I often failed to watch what I was doing bluegill fishing when I was little and I would pick up a bullhead, which is pretty tough to do if you are paying attention. The bullhead mouth is set low and made for bottom feeding and if you set the hook on the assumption that it is another type of fish, you usually miss a bullhead. Most fisherman catch most of their bullheads at an age where someone else is taking the hooks out, I know that I did, which is advisable because of the little stinger.

Of course, as with anything done with Ellis, there were a few choice quotes:

"Son of a who, daddy? Daddy, son of a who?" (Said following a bad line tangle.)

And, once we were all settled in our second fishing spot, "Daddy, let's talk a little bit."

Finally

We have had a creemee. If you are from the Midwest you would recognize it as a close cousin to frozen custard. In some parts of the eastern U.S., apparently, creemee is a synonym for soft serve ice cream like Dairy Queen. I can tell you without a doubt that what we had wasn't the same recipe as Dairy Queen and was much closer to Snow Bear. My guess is similar butter fat, but maybe no eggs, and most importantly it was very dense and smooth, almost slick.

Rachel had twist and Ellis had "chokit". I tried one of the blend in flavors (butter pecan). However they introduce the flavor it doesn't come out fully mixed. Instead the ridges of the soft serve cap are trimmed with the flavor. Butter pecan was good and in general I thought the whole creemee platform was good. Ellis seemed to agree but Rachel was a little luke warm. Then again, she wouldn't go two steps out of her way for Snow Bear either.

The lady at the creemee stand could tell we were newbees by the slow way we ordered and we told her we were new to Vermont. Then, when I asked for maple flavored (thanks to Sarah, who knew? maple ice cream, this might be heaven), the woman asked, "how do you know about our maple flavor if you are new to Vermont?" Turns out, maple is only available in the fall at this stand, which I find strange since spring is when you make maple syrup. In fact the way she asked makes me think you have to be at least a 2nd or 3rd generation Vermonter before you are allowed the good flavors like maple.

Reservoir

We live 10 minutes from the Waterbury Reservoir. The power dam here was originally built by the CCC in the 1930s. The dam is 1/3 of a mile wide, 180 feet tall and the water it holds back forms a nearly 900 acre lake with depths reaching 100 feet. The reservoir was drained in 1985 for dam repairs and tihs cleared out all of the fish. As a result in 1986 when it was refilled the fishery had to be rebuilt and from what we hear, this was very successful.

We took Ellis over there and rented a canoe on Sunday and paddled around a bit.

Canoe rental was a little expensive, but the canoes were of good quality with good seats and good pfds. Ellis seemed to have a nice time, but as you will notice, he mostly ate on this trip.

Mainly, he is eating because the camera was in the snack bag and we tended to notice it and take pictures when we were eating. We saw a small heron of some kind, green, little blue, tricolored...didn't get a long enough look.

The scenery was quite beautiful (as a better photographer would have captured). Once we were done we had a little picnc in the state park.

The amazing thing about the place is that there isn't one home on the entire shore, just wilderness. The main drawbacks are the state park, which is nice with very good facilities, but naturally attracts any number of bozos and the fact that it is an all sports lake at all times of day. That means skiers, jet skiers and all kinds of fish-scarring jackassery. Fortunately, the lake is big enough that everyone can pretty much keep out of everyone else's way. The best boat launch doesn't open until the park opens at 10 and this keeps some of the larger boats off of the water during the best fishing hours.

In other news related to out door adventure, it seems I have gotten poison ivy on the forhead and scalp, or should I say, the part of my scalp that user to have hair and some other parts that still have hair. It looks just like poison ivy, but hurts more than itches. Rachel said, "You must have rubbed your head in something." I replied, "That's funny, I don't recall finding a patch of poison ivy that smelled like sausages."

Saturday Conversations

We wanted to go rent a canoe today, but the weather report looked iffy. We took advantage of Ellis getting us up at 5 am to take Rachel up to the waterfall we found last week and then had breakfast up in Stowe.

There were some good conversations with Ellis today. While Rachel was snoozing, he wanted to go outside and was naked from the waste down, so I sent him to find his pants in the bathroom attached to our bedroom, but Ellis declared, "I think I want fresh pants. I will go get fresh." He returned with two pair of undies and when I noted the extra pair he said, slightly exasperated, "That one is my hat." Right there he stuffed it down over his head and wore if for probably a half an hour, totally forgetting he had wanted to go outside.

Tonight at dinner I stood up and hit my head on the chandelier above our dinner table. When I muttered under my breath, Ellis felt left out and asked, "What happened?" When Rachel explained that I had hit my head on the chandalier, Ellis bounced right back with , "Just like in Michigan." Indeed, I did often hit my head on that chandalier in the house in Michigan.

Hopefully we will try a creemee soon and that will get an entire post of its own. Perhaps tomorrow.

Why doesn't everyone live here?

I know that some of our readership are Rotarians. Perhaps you could explain to me how curing polio is furthered by giving away free ice cream at a free concert because that is what Waterbury Vermont's Rotary club was doing tonight. Also, it looked like the whole club was particpating in the activity and I didn't see a single breakfast burrito, pancake breakfast, vat of soup or anything resembling a chili sale.

Seriously, we are getting to know our new home a little bit now and we are pretty happy with it. Thursday evening they have a farmer's market on the town green, most of which is value added rather than direct farm produce. Lots of prepared food, some of it very good, various crafts and also some local wine makers. In the summer there is often free music as there was tonight in the form of a large jazz band which was quite good. So we had a pleasant evening down in town.

Last weekend we went up to a bakery in Waterbury Center (yes, that is its own town distinct from Waterbury). They had only 2 large tables to eat at forcing small parties to sit with strangers. Both of our sets of tablemates struck up a conversation and upon learning that we were new to the area, gave us some of the inside information. These conversations, among others, caused Rachel to say, "I think most people here are really nice. And, they seem to know that they have a very nice way of life and want to keep it that way by getting you on the inside of the club quickly."

Scout has taken to running off pretty far from home. People snag her and take her home and then call, never angry, although no one has taken her in twice. Today someone called saying they had let her into the car thinking that Scout belonged to their step-daughter who has a Brittany as well. Then they realized it was a different dog and called me rather than just booting her back out of the car. When they called they were within 200 yards of our door, which in my opinion means they were so nice they accidentally dognapped our dog.

Ellis continues to enjoy the country. He is very into the minutiae he is finding. He has a million questions about the various bugs and has been bringing up a pile of horse poop he saw last week every single day. Generally, he is fascinated by poop. At some point we told him that it was the food his body couldn't use to make him grow bigger. Now he wants to know how each food contributes to him getting big. "What do crackers make?" "What do cherries gimme?" "Do dey go to ma bones?" Bones are his favorite body bit because of the various bones scattered around the farm, he has a better grasp of what they are I think.

Before I forget about it and consider it normal, I must also say that Vermont has some fairly loose liquor laws that make it possible for a family pizza joint to have beer and wine. For those of you in Ann Arbor, imagine if NYPD had Bell's on tap. Also, there isn't any of this horse poop we have in the Midwest where products that are perfectly legal to buy Monday -Saturday are suddently illegal to buy or sell on some part or all of Sunday. Can I get an amen from the choir? Oh, and the free ice cream was Ben and Jerry's.

One week down

Today marks our one week anniversary here in Vermont. So far so good. The house is working out pretty well and we are adapting to doing a bit more driving when we want to go to Costco and Home Depot. In some ways it is the best of both worlds. We are up in the country, far from the "big city" (Burlington maxes out with 40,000, including the 9000 students at UVM), but we are 8 minutes from a good grocery and hardware store and the town of Waterbury has a nice pool, public library and ice rink. When you consider the landscape and outdoor opportunities, it might be hard to convince ourselves to move closer to town.

Today, Ellis and I went on a three hour exploratory mission to find decent maps and good fishing spots. We managed to find maps and a couple of decent looking fishing spots, but I am going to have to do more asking around at the tackle shop to really figure out where to go. I promised him a walk, so we found a turn out in the vicinity of Moss Glen Falls, and found a nice hike with an unexpected reward at the end. It was only unexpected because we didn't really know that Moss Glen falls was on of the biggest in the state with a 125 foot drop and, to add to adventure, no marked trail or guard rails.

Ellis was notably cautious even near the shallow, gentle water below the falls. He picked up rocks, enjoyed the mud and talked to a guy who makes rock sculptures who was doing just what Ellis was doing: carrying off pockets full of rocks that haven't moved much since the glaciers receded. (The variety of rocks was really astounding but alas I know next to nothing about geology beyond that throwing a rock at someone is a good way to hurt them.)

Here is Ellis having a good contemplative moment near the lower bit of the falls. At this point I thought that bit of falling water behind him was all there was to the falls, and then we hiked up the trail a bit and scurried down the bank to find this:

It is pretty hard to do it justice when you can't see the water move, the mist billow and hear the roar, which was loud enough to make a pretty strong impression on Ellis.

You can continue up a steep hill (steep enough to be a challenge with a toddler) and see the top of the falls and the 80 foot deep gorge cut by the river above the falls. Ellis was tired of pictures by the time somone offered to take a picture of both of us. This one was the best of several.

Once you reach the level plateau you can look out here and there across the valley. This is much more impressive in person and the struggle to take this picture caused me to renew my vows to learn how to use our good camera better. Once we were up this high, we walked well beyond the range of the few tourists sharing the trail. Ellis commented that the woods was pretty and also, "very quiet, I can't hear any stuff."

This place was only about 15 minutes from our house, but we dallied a bit on our way home at a place called "The Shack". More or less a one off Dairy Queen style Brazier with a big back yard, they make corndogs that are delicious. Ellis thought so too. Rachel has so shamed me for putting up photgraphs of food, that I didn't take a picture. But, I think the corndogs were homemade. After I gather some more data, I will report back.

The mind of a preschooler

Ellis continues to amaze with his grasp of some things and his lack of grasp of others.

He calls clothes hangers "hookers" and has taken to giving unpacking orders such as, "Mommy put those clothes right on the hooker." I suppose it is possible that he is acting on his high morals and suggesting we should do more to help women escape the red-light districts of Vermont.

Then today we went to the hardware store for a plunger and he carried it into the house and triumphantly announced to Rachel, "We are going to plump da toilet wid dis plumper."

He also is continuing on solving his own problems. We have been playing a game called "Angry Crabs" where we announce the arrival of an angry crab and start to pinch him gently, almost tickle really. Today I told him that he could make the angry crabs go away by giving me a hug and he said, "No, I shoot dem wid ma gun." What a punk.

Ellis is also doing a lot of narrating the events going on at any given moment. We were putting up the bird feeder and we had only unpacked a few tools. The result was that I was putting in the stakes that hold the base down with the back side of a hatchet. Here is Ellis's play by play, "Poundin' in da stakes. Using a big flat hammer. Dunno why he using dat weird hammer."

Our New Home

The moving truck and arrived on Sunday with all of our crap and filled our house with it. The house is a 3 bedroom ranch NE of Waterbury Vermont.

We have neighbors but everyone has more than 5 acres including us. We have a nice two car garage and a monstrous basement that we are trying to figure out how to use. Looking west we see a line of trees, a line of mountains and then behind that Camel's Hump, Vermont's 3rd largest peak.We also have a stream running behind the house and with recent rain we can hear it with the windows open. At 6:30 this morning there was a big deer standing so close to the house in the front yard 50 feet from the house. The neighbors ride their horse down the street routinely and their are unicorns. Just kidding, their aren't any unicorns. We are, however, 5 minutes from the Ben and Jerry's factory and I hear that they have a few unicorns on the their back lot.

Ellis has been remarkably unperturbed by the move, and has enjoyed the chaos of unpacking immensely. It did dawn on him a bit today that he won't be going to his old school and that mommy and daddy have new jobs, but all in all he was good on the trip and is enjoying being outside with more to see and do. Here he is enjoying his first sandwich in the new house.

Scout of course loves the country and is making herself at home in it. By that I mean running away and rolling in smelly stuff on a regular basis. I came into the bedroom yesterday and told Rachel, "Scout has run away." Her response came back quickly, without thought, and with unabashed optimism, "For good?" Of course it wasn't for good, but how would I have known? My evidence that she had run away was that she was nowhere to be found, not that I had seen her walking down the road behind the house with her belongings in a handkerchief on a stick. Anyway, Scout came back so stinky that I noticed her return by her odor, not by visually spotting her.

Our backyard has a nice stand of birch trees and of course the bird feeders are up. We have had Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks feeding a lot, including a female that looks like an inflated sparrow. Also we have had Ruby-Crowned Kinglets, which I have never seen before.

Work started yesterday for me and we are still swimming in boxes and slowly getting to a point where we can manage to cook at home. Once things are a bit more settled I will get a few more picitures up from the inside of the house.

Ferry God-Mother

I thought it would be a good surprise to include the unusual mode of ferry transport in our trip east. I would say that Ellis was thrilled and Rachel, well, she didn't get too upset about it.

Here is a good shot of the truck in its rehabed state as we wait at the doc for the ferry. You can see Ellis charging toward the dock to watch the ferry come in.

And, mommy and Ellis enjoying themselves during the 20 minute ride.

And finally, Ellis with me on the lookout. All in all the ferry probably saved an hour or two and I thought it was a nice break.