we shoulda had the day off

i have been having a hard time keeping track of my pacifca key, i'll admit this. the word pacific, like the ocean, means peaceful. Henceforth shouldn't the car provide the same? but those who experience EL NINO probably would argue that the pacific can be anything but peaceful, and the pacifica as well. it's the not the car itself, although it does have a hard time getting up the mountain. The truth is, I love gracie. the problem lies in everything that surrounds her. case in point: the registration is missing, I cannot register her here in vermont until i can prove that i paid tax on her in massachusetts, and guess where the proof lies. yep, the lost regestration. So because of this, I can't insure car until i have it registered. And to top it all off, i can't seem to keep track of the keys...
which brings us back to today... well, before we even go there, we should probably visit sunday. so i had to work on the moutain and sarah had taken the other car to hinesburg to do a little work at school. i went to leave for work and the pacifica key was missing from my ring...no key=walking to work. i was frustrated... even more so when i huffed it up the mountain at a good clip and spent the next 20 minuted catching my breath (stupid asthma).... and exponentially more frustrated when i found the key in my pants pocket later that night when i was doing laundry.
fast foward to this morning. Sarah asked if i was going to wear my green puffy vest. i told her she could wear it if she wanted, i hadn't really thought about it very much. then 20 minutes after she left with lisa, i realized that the key to the ONLY car in the driveway was in the vest pocket, the same vest sarah was wearing, 20 minutes away. ugh. so i had to call her, but she beat me to it. she called to let me know some unfortunate and yet sortof amusing news about our lanldord. i had to break it her that in order for me to get to work i needed her and lisa to turn around. that sucked. lisa, being the godsend (if i believed in god) she is, turned the car around and brought me the key. i guess they made up a song about me to the tune of the classic barry manilow hit... i guess they could have done worse.
today was verteran's day and all our friends in framingham, mass had the day off... and that would have made today alot better, i mean, i'm just saying.

making history

I mean, come on... So they announced it, Barack won the 3 electoral votes from Vermont. We were two of those votes, in a state we knew would vote our way, overall.
It's funny that everyone keeps saying how historic this election is. it is historic. in reality, everyday is history. as we go from today to tomorrow we carry some and leave everything else behind. As i move toward tomorrow (or quite literally toward bed in just a bit), i know that today meant something, but what will really travel with me? what do i want to bring? I will always remember voting for the first time in Vermont, the tiny gym at the Smilie School, the fact that Sarah asked if there were lines and i laughed.. out loud. Will I remember what i had for lunch (left over spanish rice), or the socks i wore (leopard print), or the fact that jack's collar got chewed at camp? doubt it. these were other things i could have written about today in my blog... but i thought, nahh, in the end, this is what i will want to remember.
When Bill Clinton won the election way back when, I was a teenager and i wrote an entry in my journal about how cool it was to have a president that played the sax and liked rock n' roll. How cool is that? if left to my memory alone, i would have forgotten that i even cared about the president way back then. I would have thought i was too busy being a bad-ass and not caring. luckily i wrote it down.

babies, babies everywhere

I guess you get to a certain age, and i guess 31 is that age, when all your friends either have babies or are having babies, or are having trouble having babies. it's odd that in one day one can be so inundated with something. Just today I spoke with a co-worker about her new nephew and the jealousy she is feeling about it. Her sister was pregnant when she wanted to be and now the sister has the prize and my friend is still without. Instead she is faced with a process in doctors' offices and sterile instruments. this while, two of my friends on facebook had appointments today to find out the sex of their babies. And on a sadder note, today i also got a message from one of my oldest and dearest friends about her second miscarriage. within this baby phenomenon there is wrapped so much emotion, so many tears of joy and pain, and jealousy, and longing....etc.
I want one... we want one. we are nesting. The journey we will embark on is exciting, but i am reminded when i look around at my friends that anything can happen...

loyal

so everyday i've been looking for things to write about, like back in the old days when i took creative writing with mrs. bruce. who, by the way was a vermont native... full circle. so yeah, this morning i was driving and saw the kids who are waiting for the bus just about everyday, and there's one house that has two teenage boys that wait outside. Everyday a pointer/hound waits patient with them. he stands next to them as they stand by the road. The dog knows when the bus approaches and waits for it to come to complete stop. one of the boys reaches down and pats his head and the dogs head tward the house and indoors. now, you may wonder how i know so many details, but it is because sometimes i get stuck right there, with the bus lights flashing and have the chance to watch it transpire; the complete devotion of a dog. I think about how amazing it is everyday, and just this morning i decided i really needed to write it down. it was my obvious blog choice.
like the fifth graders i so enjoyed teaching, i immediately made connections: connections to my life, to texts and to the world. First i thought of how cleo and jack are loyal and attached to the two of us. just this evening, cleo was feeling a little under the weather after gorging on dog food that lily had knocked over during the day (a whole other story), and she hopped up on the ottoman and then made her way to sarah's lap. she hasn't sat on a lap in years. she is simply not a lap dog, but not feeling well, she just wanted to feel safe and be held a little. the converse is true though. many nights lately sarah has had one of her migraines and cleo makes her way upstairs and into bed with sarah, snuggling up and trying her hardest to make her mom well.
I made a connection to where the red fern grows which i finally read in the last few months. It made me cry... so cliche, but true.
And then i thought of that story of the dog in japan...

Hachiko (pronounced HA-chi-ko) was born in November 1923 in Odate, in the Akita province of Japan. The next year, Ueno brought him to Tokyo. Hachiko followed Professor Ueno everywhere. He accompanied Ueno to the Shibuya train station every morning and then returned and waited for him every afternoon. But, one day in May 1925, Professor Ueno didn’t come home; he’d suffered a fatal stroke at work. Mrs. Ueno gave the dog away to some of the professor’s relatives. But the devoted dog came back and returned to the train station every afternoon for nearly 11 years, at precisely the time that Ueno’s train was due, waiting for the professor. Hachiko did this until his own death in March 1935.

thank goodness for cleo and jack.

SNOW!!!

these first photos are from last night















And these are from this afternoon:

my friends in beverly hills

so, lately i have been indulging in some 90210. i mean, it is a good show. This week my friends are freshmen in college. They just got through christmas break and finals. they really are quite a crew. Tonight Andrea is pregant and Erin is missing because David feel asleep while babysitting, because he has been doing meth to stay awake for the radio show.... oh the drama.
when i was in high school, there were a bunch of kids who got together every wednesday to watch 90210. Thursday everyone would talk about what happened on the show and what happened at Gabe's house (where the gathering usually took place). I never joined in the festivities. I watched 90210 for the first season, alone on wednesday nights and then when it got out of control popular, i decided i did not want any part of it. i always figured it would get canceled like my favorite, my so called life. so i was a little anti-establisment... i doubt anyone reading this is surprise. So, a couple of my friends and i would hang out and watch Ellen. (ironic huh?)
Then in college I did not have fox on cable my freshman year, although my affection for the walsh's and their buddies had resurfaced. so i waited until sophmore to check back in. they were well into college and having a time of it. I missed kelly's brush with the cult life and brenda and dylan's big break-up among other things. i caught up with my friends while brandon and kelly were falling for each other and valerie was just being a plain old bitch to everyone. Then they graduated, just a while before i did. they found jobs (sort of)... and blah, blah, blah. don't worry i've seen all the shows i missed the first time... like 7 times each now...
it's crazy because i remember all the little stupid stuff like the fact that donna's birthday is near christmas, but they never mention it until the last couple of years, and that in the first season donna and dylan's parents were played by different people. it's odd how attached i am to these californians... imaginary ones at that. I look forward to getting them all on DVD, making sure future generations of 90210ers exist. Thank goodness i can check out SOAPNet anytime and catch up with them.

ps. Cleo was born on the exact night when the final episode aired, you know the one where donna and david get married. I should have named her kelly taylor... nahhh, cleo was the perfect name for her.

snow on the horizon

literally, snow is coming. you can smell it. the snow brings winter. winter brings a world of opportunity, especially this year. it is time. it is time to ski and snowshoe, to exercise and fall in love with the outdoors again.
snow also brings the dire need of snow tires and worries about "the worst road in the state". skis would be more effective transportation on a snow-filled day, i will admit, but i pledge to be safe. I have too many good things to get home to to chance not getting there.
tomorrow, no doubt, as i write the snowflakes will start to flutter, leaving a dandruff-like dusting on the already soggy ground. i will spy it sticking to the trees and will marvel at the shear glimmer of it all.
the smell brings back memories. they say that the olfactory sense is the one most strongly tied to memory, that smells can literally bring us back. i remember sledding down the road at wasserman park soaked to my core and still wanting more. i remember the blizzard like conditions that snowed myself and a core group of friends inside of my house. Gosh, i remember snow days, as a wee tike and last year, snuggled and content to watch the wite stuff delightfully short of ice. i remember being stuck in Maine for an extra day of vacation. Somehow being 'stuck' really has a positive connotation, but only when speaking of snow. i hope we are stuck in this winter for at least one day. some would say that i am crazy and that i better knock on some wood. i say bring the snow. i have everything i would need for a lifetime within the walls i reside.

missin' friends

it's hard moving. no matter how badly you want to relocate, it is hard to leave the people you have surrounded yourself with. we make friends to make a place more bearable, and then sometimes we leave. the hope is that the friendships will go on even if miles separate the friends. this is not always the case, but the rare cases that do remain our friends are so worth it.
it was good to go back to the 'ham to see our old colleagues and friends. it was refreshing and comfortable to spend the day walking the halls of stapleton school, seeing so many friendly and familiar faces. sarah said, and nailed it perfectly, "it's like we are celebrities."

Hurricane Hanna

Well, the remnants of a tropical storm dropped the last of its rain on Vermont over the night. It amazes me that drops of water can be carried for so long, over so much land, over so many people's heads. the water that fell on our mountain may have come from off the coast of Africa, or from the tropics, or just from down the street. It all mixed together to shower us all.
I miss teaching the meteorology unit to fifth graders. watching their faces as i explain that all water is recycled. we drink the same water dinosaurs slurped down, the same water that fell as snow on the alps at their creation, the same water that our ancestors swam in. it sustains our lives as it has so many lives before ours.
We listen to the trickle of the brook (mountain runoff) as we drift to sleep at night, and i can't help but wonder where those drops have been.

new school, new issues

Thatcher Brook Primary School; my new school. it's the nicest school i have ever stepped foot in. it's weird though, after a $8 million renovation, it holds all of the charm it has always had... for over a hundred years. my office is in the North Building (on the left)and the view from the window is the green mountians of vermont. feels like home.
the thing is that even among the wonder of the view, the comfort of the surroundings, there is also a fair amount of bullshit and paperwork. such is the business of special education i guess.

My Superwoman

I said to Sarah, you are capable of more than you know...









She is my superwoman!

"the office"

not only do sarah & i have a new place to call home, i also have new work digs. check this shit out...

18 Thacher Road

Home Sweet Home









I Mean, it's up on a mountain... in vermont... can you say perfect?

home in the mountains

so sarah and i are the proud new renters of a cottage nestled on the mountain amid the Bolton Valley ski resort. our closest neighbor is the black bear inn. check it out

pictures of the house/cottage will follow. we will expect visitors, especially during ski season. we are so excited about starting our life in vermont, and everything seems to be working out exactly the way it should. i'm not surprised.

i'm in vermont feeling lucky to have the best woman in the whole world to go home to, the best place to move to, and the best life i ever imagined. oh and our pets are pretty good too.

give a hoot

doing good things for the human race is important to both sarah and i. we walked today in the 23rd annual Boston aids walk. it was my 5th time and sarah's second. we walked last year (sortof). it is such a good feeling.
my only rant and rave is that even on this event where you look around and say, wow so many people care!" we still saw a boy throw a plastic bottle right into the river, without even a hesitation or a second thought. and we saw many walkers simply leave trash at their feet as they walked. there were trash cans set up all along the walk... it was just too much to carry an ice cream wrapper from a FREE ice cream an extra 20 yards. come on people!
In caring about other people we must also care about the earth. where will our children grow up when the continent is a trash dump? worse yet, the money they could have raised for aids research has to go to some poor soul to pick up the trash left behind by the "good people" who walked.
act locally, think globally.

solitary

tired of behavior, i've gone old school....

Funny Orbit Gum Commercial

MCAS

The educational world i have been working so desperately to become a part of involves an increasing number of things I don't agree with. Since when is filling in dots a good use of anyone's time?
I have bringht young, talented boys in my class, who will not get their true selves across by filling in dots. the dots are two-dimensional, while these living, breathing boys are very much 3-D.
When my brother was younger, my mom actually recieved a special letter after we had completed our standardized testing in school. THe testing reported that my brother was in the bottom 5% in almost all areas. this would place him in the MR range. WTF? He was a noodge, but very bringt. How could this be? When the people in charge took a look back at his testing, they found that he had made intricate designes by filling in strategic bubbles. one page was a very dtailed skull and crossbones. i remember this clearly. How much did those tests tell about my brother? Absolutely nothing academically, or having to do with norms. in reality, they told everyone around him that dots could not sum him up. How profound for a first grader.

Dots are for connecting, not measuring the potential of a child.

cakes

i hate cakes.

moving forward

there is alot i could bitch and moan about today, i.e. i feel like hell for no reason, i hate work, people suck and don't even show up to pick up stuff from craigslist ( i mean, come on!) but really, it's a good sign that it is time to move on. my co-worker steve told me yesterday i should be working with older kids and teaching English. he told me i have a talent for the creativity of writing and reading (how's that for looking on the bright side?) it's an idea. the truth is, i don't know what i want to do next exactly, and am lucky that i don't have to; not yet anyway.

sarah once wrote to me that she ws always obsessed with what was NEXT, and B wrote a bloggerton about a similar phenomenon. my question is this... what if right now isn't where you want to be, is it okay to dream of SOON? Sarah and I spent months wishing for SOON, and yet enjoying the moments we could spend. so, it is again that i am enjoying the small moments but at the same time longing for change. it's time.

I daydream about where i will be in a year's time, where we will be. today i looked down to find myself drawing on my 2-year-old desk calendar (stuck on december 2005?). i often doodle there. it's become a collage of drawings strewn together by scribbles and decmeber birthdays marked down. at any rate, i had found a sticker of a house and stuck it right down, and then surrounded it with green rolling hills and scrolled the word vermont.

there is part of my tht would like to say hastalavista and get the hell out of dodge tomorrow and be heading north by the evening hours, sarah, cleo and lily by my side. but the best is yet to come. waiting to make my move, being sure it is the right one, sounds sensible...

sisterly love

i mentioned sammie tonight while talking to my mom. i told her how sammie had made a surprise visit to boston this week, and that we had met her out for dinner in cambridge. the crazy thing was alissa was also down visiting. it was the first time our families had met, and how fitting that it was our sisters who were there to kick off family time. while i spoke of dinner, i couldn't help but note the relationship sarah has with sam, and how incredibly different it is from the relationship i have with my george. there is a weird sort of competition between sam and sarah. sarah and sam kinda like to piss eachother off, even though both would deny this viemently. (mom found likeness to the relationship jonah and i have... the whole pissing eachother off piece), but there is one thing that jonah and i will never have... sisterly love. sarah and sam love eachother dearly and think of eachother often. they know the ins and outs of eachother like no other person could... even me, even a boyfriend, or a best friend.

I wished for a sister when throwing pennies in fountains and when wishing on that first star. i offered to trade in jonah, often... a sister is all i wanted for xmas, and my birthday, and then one year, when i was 11, i got one!! alissa is that to me, a gift. she can do no wrong and knows it ; )
so i realize that no matter the manifestation of the sister bond, it remains that, A BOND. tied together as if in a three-legged race, for the remainder of our lives. thank goodness for sisters.

america's next top model

so, i say things like, "i don't like reality television." and the thing is, i mean it. then, i have a laid back day and i switch on the tv, and find things like america's next top model. all of the sudden i'm watching a marathon for hours and can't rememeber a time when i wasn't consumed with the plight of heather with autism, and hating bianca the bitchy one.

but, i would be lying if i said this was a one time deal. my last obsession with television was the ultimate coyote ugly search. i mean come on... it's good stuff.

the good thing though, is that tonight when the tv turns off, i can say i will not search for this show again (although i still do check or the coyote ugly girls). it truly is a one time thing. for me, that's just the taste i needed.

home again, home again, jiggity jig

Dorothy said it best, "there's no place like home." I've spent so much of my life thinking she was full of absolute shit (I mean her parents were non-existent, her uncle was willing to give away her dog, and no one even seemed to notice the hooligans she was hanging with). My home was a place that was not-so-safe feeling, and i could usually think of a million other places to be.

In fact, I thought about this a bit this weekend. My brother sits at home all of the time. he doesn't want to venture out into the unknown; he's got the makings of a hermit. "wanna go out to eat?" "nope" "wanna go to the mall?" "nope" When i was his age, even with all my issues, i was out and about as often as possible. He's missing out on so much of the world.

Having said all of this, I have to admit, i love coming HOME. my home is not only the shelter i have from the elements, but more importantly the ones that i love the most. It was so nice to come home last night and crawl into our own bed, give cleo and lily a kiss goodnight, and know i would wake up with familiarity all around me.

As we look north for a new place, i know that home will travel with me, seatbelted holding my hand, wagging a tail, and meowing in a kitty crate. These are the girls i call HOME.

craigslist

i remember a day when i didn't even know what craigslist was... what a memory of a simpler, more innocent time. My name is Mandy and I'm an addict. I am addicted to craigslist. it's my way of evaluating what people throw away, what people long for, and how people connect.
it's funny i've made these little pseudo friendships with people when approaching an exchange. i find that people are lonely and sad on the whole. i find myself wishing i could do more.
I've met a woman who didn't have enough money to buy toiletries for herself nd her daughter, a lonely older man collecting christmas decorations, a kid collecting 70's rock, a woman in love with a Tiffany's ring, and more.
I've found dogs that need homes, furniture on a curb, people in need, overpriced items and medical research projects.
I've realized that I have more than i need and i have alot to give.

vote

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you're the only reason...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Qo62s8QNg

i really like this song...

the naughties

i think i am going to start a children's series about the naughtiest girls ever... and you thought Beatrix Potter had naughty characters...
to be continued...

mail for female in love with mail

my main man.
I love getting mail. today sarah and i recieved a package from sammie. what a nice surprise. she sent a copy of the DVD Accross the Universe and a RiRa T.
sarah's mom, on the other hand cannot get our address right to save her life. literally she could be hanging from a cliff and only be saved if she could correctly address a letter to sarah, and... i'm afraid she could not. luckily there is no such cliff.
We used to get random packages from aunt jen. she's back off lately, and although you could never be sure what was going to be in the sticker clad box, i kinda miss the feeling i get when i walk downstairs and find a box on the front porch.
Currenty, Sarah and i are awaiting a large box from Crate & Barrel... new bedding and christmas decorations. good stuff!

new music

people have wanted to talk music with me lately, and i have to admit i feel a bit out of the loop lately. Normally, i have a weekend morning routine. I get up early (it's all relative), and grab a book, and i slide silently out of bed so as not to wake up the love of my life, then i proceed to the living room where i do one of two things 1. watch VH1 and try to get my finger on the pulse of what is cool in music videos, or 2. listen to music ondemand on my cable TV (i have found many a new artist this way). But i havent' heard anything i am in love with recently. so i listen to recommendations with open ears. I should listen to more iron & wine i guess, i should check out so and so. i love it. I look it up on itunes and enjoy... but i have yet to find someone who moves me like ray, or someone i could listen to non-stop for a weekend, like ani. Entertainment Weekly even chimed in with their "EW's Latest Aural Fixations".... geez is everyone on a quest to find something that takes their breath away? They (EW) recommend JAYMAY, LAURA MARLING, KATE WALSH, and YAEL NAIM. the jury is still out.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8196216148019031639&q=kate+walsh&total=1781&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8196216148019031639&q=kate+walsh&total=1781&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8196216148019031639&q=kate+walsh&total=1781&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3684970686104734336&q=laura+marling&total=83&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

what do you think? what have you got?

kermit rocks

It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green's the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be...

it's how we've all felt at some point or another...

sharing is green

sometimes sharing is the hardest green thing to do; sharing mom's attention, sharing toys, sharing the front seat, sharing music... and then one day it's not about sharing with siblings (which i seem to have had the hardest time with), it's about sharing your life. I'm at that point, and so ready to share, and luckily have found the specialest person to share with.

it's so easy, it's so easy, yeah...

My dear friend B says that it is, in fact, easy being green... so i've decided to think about the profound pondering in a more positive light. You know what, it is getting easier to be green.
my greenest moment of today was bringing home ice cream for the sleepiest sarah.
speaking of sarah, green and easy...
I actually turned to sarah yesterday and said, "it's never hard with you." what i meant was, it's easy... maybe i'm easy. when i think of my favorites in this world (favorite food, favorite color, favorite music, or favorite ice crem even), i know i could never have just pizza everyday. I couldn't bare a world of only purple, I'd even get sick of Ray if "trouble" played 24-7. Sure Chubby Hubby is good, but the only dessert i will ever eat again?!?! but sarah, she something i will be tickled pink about for all the rest of my days. how do i know this? because it has been so since day 1 and continues through this very moment. GREEN.

good samaritans

today was a day where we woke up and without words decided we were going to do good for the earth, and fellow earthlings. We began by taking care of some old business by phone and computer, no running around and using up gas. then we took a big donation of books to a man in beverly (not a man named beverly) for the men's prison in middleton... reduce reuse. then we saved a harliquin great dane from certain disaster as it ran playfully away from its person, with a greenie (aptly named dog treat). then we reduced the amount of litter on the beach in rockport by collecting sea glass to make into beautiful art. not bad for a tuesday in february. on our way home we saw beautiful sunbeams shining through the clouds, and for a split second i remembered my mom saying "it's beauty like this that makes me believe in god." i'm thinking it's mother nature and science, but we all need something to believe in.

jammies for the day

why get out of your jammies while on vacation, I ask you?

pajamas are cool and all, but have you heard of pajamagrams... that's kinda weird.

that's all i'm gonna say... stay tuned for more musings.