Back from my gravehounding trip, and it was great! My feet are filthy, I have dirt under my nails from pulling up grass, and I’m so alert/tired I’m twitching, but my shoulders hurt less than they did when I started. I went to: North Burying Ground in Hampton (but I gave up because it was too cloudy), Sabin Burying Ground (fantastic!) and We-Li-Kit (got Ayshire Chip ice cream) in Pomfret, West Thompson Burying Ground (good, but challenging!), Aunt Sarah’s old house/Coco’s Cottage (it was closed) and Woodstock Hill cemetery (not officially; just for fun) in Woodstock, and Coriander Cafe (eye-hurtingly intense mustard!) and the lake in Eastford (also drove right by Old Cemetery in Eastford, and saved it to my GPS for future reference!). Leslie was out in the garden when I drove by, so I stopped to talk to her and she gave me a full tour of my parents’ former garden/yard/house and visited the outdoorium lot with me (I helped her flip over her canoe, which was full of green water).

I took this photo by mistake in Pomfret, but I kind of like it. :) The thing in my hand is a photocopy of the Sabin Burying Ground page from my Slater book, for on-the-go reference.

Real pictures coming soon!

Boulders I have known, in chronological order: 1) Across the road from my grandma’s house in Storrs, B) Where I used to wait for the school bus in Mansfield Center, 3) In our back yard in South Glastonbury, 4) At the very top of our property in South Glastonbury.

January and I had a lovely day together: strolling along the beach at A Bay (saw two sea turtles basking), Hawaiian stone massages at the Mauna Lani spa (with lots of hanging out together chatting in the steam room and sauna at the spa afterwards), a very nice and fun dinner with Dean at Brown’s Beach House, sharing music from our phones on the drive back, and coloring Hawaiian animal postcards from Hawaii Volcanoes National Park together at the kitchen table. I only wish we had more time together! Tomorrow’s the last day of her visit.

I didn’t feel like blogging last night, but yesterday the three of us went on a great road trip to Volcano. I will write about it/post photos later. It’s bed time, I guess. I don’t want to go to bed (everyone else here is SLEEPING) but I suppose I must. Tomorrow’s our agro-tourism and snorkeling day with Jan. My spine-filled foot is a lot better, and I’m not even limping anymore. It still hurts when I walk on hard surfaces, but not in a !!! way, just in a sore feet kind of way. (My heel and lower leg hurt more than the spiny part of my foot, actually, just from the stress of walking in an unnatural way to protect the injured area.) I only get an occasional “Ow!” stabbing spine pain when I happen to put my foot down in just the right wrong way. But I can press/squeeze my toes and the pad of my foot with my fingers now, and it mostly doesn’t hurt. Good job healing, foot! The vinegar treatments helped a lot. Also, being part echinoderm already was key, I’m sure.

Jan’s here! It’s so great having her visiting. We talked about the “nalu it” concept, had a very good meal at the Holuakoa Gardens and Cafe (slooooow food, but ultimately worth it; Jan and I both had a kampachi stew that was amazing), then walked around Holualoa (the gourd guy was the best; he’s so full of knowledge and good at sharing it), drove up to the Cloud Forest (orange Trentepohlia algae and sheddy-bark trees and misty rain and clouds in the road), and went to Pine Trees (listened to “Kona Hema ‘O Ka Lani,” of course) so we could share with her what’s happening to it and show it to her in transition from wild to tamed. We showed her Pine Tree Portal and Pine Tree Pool, watched the surfers at the shorebreak for a while, drove to the End of Line, and then parked at Daphne and Jan and I walked along the white sand road talking and looking at the kids’ signs. She really loved the Daphne tree and instantly knew exactly what I was talking about. My foot is doing a lot better and I wasn’t limping at all at Pine Trees, although it still hurts to walk on hard surfaces like concrete. We had dinner outside at Lava Java, listening the live musicians as the sky and ocean slowly darkened to a velvety black, bright white waves curling in the spot where they meet.

Jan spotted the snail above in Holualoa… maybe it’s the Slow Food snail? It was so big and so pretty! I petted it, and it wasn’t slimy at all.

(These are just a few of the Pine Trees signs… I am collecting photos of them all and will post some big collections later. But these seemed right for today.)

Heirloom Shiny Brite bells from the early 1960s. I love them so much!

I finally un-decorated the Christmas tree today and we put it away for its long winter-spring-summer-fall nap in the basement. Being snaily is one thing, but it can’t still be up on my birthday!

When I was taking off the ornaments, I photographed all the ones that were originally on my family’s tree when I was a growing up (my parents gave some of them to me before they moved to North Carolina in 2006), because I didn’t have those entered in my Ornament Inventory Spreadsheet. This is all of them except for the jointed paper lady (which they gave me at Christmas a couple years ago) and the 18 tiny bells (which they gave me when I first got married). Also, I have four clippy mushrooms and four hanging mushrooms, not just one of each.

The two red balls and drummer boy were from when I was a little girl, but the others are from the early 1960s. I love the rusty, faded, flaking details on the vintage ones!

My dad took this photo of my mom reading The Tree Angel to me after I unwrapped it on Christmas day. I love it so much!

I was talking to Robert about Remy Charlip when everyone came on Friday after Christmas (because of a “Two Gentleman: A Play of Manners” situation when we lined up at the kitchen island for food), and found out that his kids never had a copy of Arm in Arm but they still knew a lot of the tales (or whatever you’d call them) from it anyway because they had him and he used to quote them all the time! Par exemple, he started repeating Shott Shot At Nott on the spot, and several of his kids (now in their 20s) chimed in. Overhearing, 13-year-old Hunter, to whom I gave a copy of Arm in Arm at birth, immediately began to recite long passages from other parts of the book! My family is the best.

I took this photo for Official Bookface while I was visiting my parents. It’s not fiction, but it’s my favorite and most-read book. I brought it with me on my trip, and, since nothing much was going on most days, I spent a lot of time curled up on the couch at my dad’s side, reading the directions for finding obscure old burying grounds out loud while he helped me find them online and added them to my Old Cemeteries in Connecticut Google map on my laptop. I also looked back through my photo directories from the past three years and wrote in the margins of the book the dates that I went to each of the eastern Connecticut burying grounds that I have visited so far. I love this book so much, not just for the incredibly well-organized, thorough, and useful facts therein (useful if you are an 18th-century gravestone carver fanatic, that is!), but also for the delightful writing style. Mr. Slater makes me laugh so often, and I love reading particularly beautiful, poignant, or amusingly-phrased passages out loud. You might think it would be a dry subject, but it isn’t at all, thanks in large part to Slater’s voice. If I look like I’m giving this book a hug, it’s because I am.

Tonight was my last night at my parents’ house, and it was nice! I will miss playing rummy with my dad while classical music plays on TV. This time we played at his initiation… he said he had to “entertain” me, but I think he likes it just as much as I do. (He’s always playing Solitaire on his laptop, after all, and it’s much more fun with two!) He beat me in the first game but then I struck back for the second two. I was shutting him down at the beginning of each game and he kept saying he was going to get “skunked.” Ha! I have never heard that term before (I guess it means, “defeat overwhelmingly, especially by keeping from scoring”) but it was pretty amusing! I love it when my dad says weird things. He didn’t get skunked—it actually ended up quite close and every game was long and drawn out and exciting—but I did win.

I can’t type very well because my nails have grown so long and make it very difficult with my flat laptop keyboard. I will have to cut them when I get home!

I can’t believe it: my parents stayed up until midnight! 2013 is a good number, so I think it will be a good year.

We even had champagne (well, sparkling wine), which was extremely hard to open, and my dad cracked up at how I yelped when he finally got the cork out. (Opening champagne is scary!!) We watched Mr. Bean’s Holiday earlier in the evening, and it was was the PERFECT New Year’s Eve movie. Great selection by my Mom, thanks to the Franklin County Library! I saw it in the theater with Dean when it came out, but didn’t remember it very well. We all laughed a lot, especially my mom and me.

At my suggestion, my dad and I played rummy while it was getting late, and I started off winning several games, but then he beat me for the rest of them! About 20 minutes before midnight, he cracked some pecans for us using ye olde family nutcracker that has been in the family for a long time (original source unknown; maybe it belonged to Erastus Blackmar!), because I asked him where we got it. My dad’s Aunt Maude gave it to him when he was a young man, either because she knew he liked nuts or because she thought he was nutty. I always remember us having it near the fireplace in the basement when I was a little in Maryland, near a big wooden bowl of nuts. I was allergic to nuts then; the only one I could eat was filberts, so I thought filberts were really special and named my red plastic rocking horse Filbert. I should take a picture of the nutcracker.

Shortly before midnight, people started setting off fireworks, and we went out on the porch to see if we could see them. It was pretty warm out, and we could see a few through the trees! We were outside when midnight arrived, to distant cheers and an extra-concentrated fireworks barrage. When we came in, we all hugged and Mom and Dad kissed and Dad and I kissed, and then they went to bed. :-)

I don’t want to go to sleep, so I’m wearing my Loki scarf and writing this, but I should go to bed because it’s 1:40 now and I’m going to get woken up by my parents banging around in the kitchen at 8-ish in the morning. It’s impossible to sleep late here! (If I’m lucky I can mostly ignore it and go back to sleep for a while.) People are setting of fireworks again now, for some random reason. Probably because it’s the south.

Oh yes, as a New Year thing, we opened our fortune cookies that Dean and I had left over from Char Koon and I brought and put in people’s Christmas stockings. Since Dean isn’t here, I opened his. His was, “Opportunities multiply as they are seized, they die when neglected.” Good one for Dean, and sounds like one of Jim Profit’s words of wisdom. Mine was, “Say hello to others. You will have a happier day.” Okay, I will try. Hello, others! Have a happy day and happy New Year!

Super fun “Christmas Eve” party yesterday with my in-laws! My homemade French bread (for our traditional cheese fondue) was my best ever, and I won ALL THREE Apples to Apples games! I am the champ!!! Great Bob Dylan Christmas music, too! :-)

I am so ridiculously unused to socialization that my voice was hoarse last night, and I still had a lingering headache this morning/afternoon. Heh. Too much excitement! And no, I am not sick, I’m just that introverted. :-)

Packing today, but I didn’t get that much done yet, since we had a bunch of errands to do first. So. G has a great new chalkboard quote: “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

I started wrapping! ♥ This year I am shockingly breaking away from my famous Queen of Tape mode and using as little tape as possible—like one or zero pieces per package, in some cases. I had to use a bit more on a really long and skinny gift, but the other three so far are nearly tape free. They still have to satisfy my wrapping perfectionism, of course, and that is accomplished with great (heavy, reusable, textured) wrapping paper held together by ribbon made from real materials like yarn, recycled silk sari twine (this stuff is awesome!), and those annoying redundant cloth ribbon waist ties that come with my pajama pants (which already have elastic).

I wonder if my dad will be impressed? He always takes forever to open my precisely taped presents. Yes, the Whaples family has some unusual present-opening practices, which can be quite odd and incomprehensible to outsiders. We pretty much do not believe in ripping wrapping paper, and love to use it over if it’s nice paper that is still in good shape. Our ways are the best ways, natch! :-)

…! Making big plans for Christmas!

My house smells like stuffing, and I didn’t even cook the stuffing yet. What makes stuffing smell so good???? It doesn’t seem like it would, but it does.

I talked to my mom on the phone this evening (to ask her about stuffing), and she said Grandmother Whaples used to make cranberry sauce with a whole orange in it! Just like I did, but I had no idea about Grandma’s cran sauce; I just think cran-orange is a good combination. It sounded like my mom thought the whole orange part was weird, but I think it’s excellent. The peel’s the best part!

Sooo tired. Not sure why… Hanging out with my family in Maryland was very laid-back and nice, and our flights there and back were very easy. I guess I’m just not used to getting up at 8 AM!