The Ghost of Bloggers Present

Last night I was haunted by some lack-of-Christmas-blogging ghosts.  I dreamed that my favorite jeweler was moving to a new location directly across the street from my home.  I asked her if I could write about her move in my blog.  She responded with disdain, informing me that blogging isn't likely to reach much of an audience - at least my blog isn't - and she would appreciate it if I refrained from posting about her.  I then went dejectedly back home, where my four foster children were hanging out.  (No idea where my subconscious mind came up with them.)  I then asked the oldest, who was a girl of about 16, if she minded if I blogged about her.  She gave me an eye-rolling, she's-so-unhip expression, and informed me that blogspot is so 2000, and if I wanted to write about her I'd have to find a more cool medium for expression.

Telling people one's dreams is the ultimate in egotism* - my apologies.  But I surmise that I am suffering some guilt pangs for not having posted anything lately.  Have I mentioned yet my recovering Catholic, overdeveloped sense of guilt?  That, and apparently I have some deep-seated feelings of blogger inadequacy, but nevermind.

Truth to tell, after the miserably frantic bustle of the first three weeks of December, I've been enjoying the holiday time more than usual.  I have spent an inordinate amount of time in the last few days doing this:

That is, rotting in front of the fireplace, reading good books, chatting with friends and family, and just plain hangin'.  I also spent a day painting, and even watched a couple of movies, which is practically unheard of for me.

Aaaaah.

It's back to work for me this week, though.  Spouse, on the other hand, is off this week.  How jealous am I?  Then again, it was 9 degrees, gray and blowing nastily when I left for work this morning.  There were massive snow devils twirling eerily in all the farm fields on my drive into work.  So, even if I weren't at work, I would not be engaging in any grand, bloggable outdoors adventures today.  Instead, I'd be inside looking out at this:

Ick.

So, for lack of other, better writing material, I shall just provide a brief Christmas wrap up (forgive the pun):

• I'm proud of my ability to make do in a pinch.  I forgot to purchase any kind of flower arrangement for the table, so had to create one out of my own gardens at the last minute.  Some holly clippings and a trim off the old pine tree, an antique cracked cheese crock, and a scrap of ribbon, and voila!  Rustic Christmas centerpiece, for free.  As an avid gardener, it pleases me no end when I can cut things from my own garden and put them in vases in the house.

• I am absurdly pleased with my dogs, who spent the entirety of Christmas day sleeping.  I believe I've mentioned before that they seldom hold still, particularly when there's company.  They didn't even beg at the dinner table!  No, I did not sedate them with bendryl, although I have certainly considered doing that before.  Could it be that they are slowing down, now that they are approaching their 4th birthday?

• I appear thus far to have avoided gaining weight this Christmas.  This, despite my having consumed nearly an entire plum pudding in the past 5 days.  That pudding, by the way, is my single greatest Christmas triumph.  It was my first attempt at such a dessert.  Desserts are particularly complicated in my household because they need to be gluten, dairy, corn and soy free, among other things.  I also refused to use suet in making the plum pudding simply because it sort of grosses me out even to feed it to the birds.  I managed to find a recipe that called for butter instead of suet, and then substituted ghee for the butter.  But dang, even with all the substitutions, I nailed the plum pudding.  I even got it to light on fire without also lighting the table cloth.  I think my father and husband did not appreciate it as much as I did taste-wise, but my appreciation was partly inspired by nostalgia - plum pudding was my favorite dessert at Oxford during my junior year abroad.  If it didn't require about 3 hours of prep and 6 hours of boiling, I'd make it far more often.

• Finally, Santa was good to me and made a significant contribution toward my snowshoe/boots fund.  Yippee!  I shall start shopping soon... perhaps even tonight.  For any of my readers who have snowshoes, please tell me what you do and don't like about yours.  I'm fumbling completely in the dark here, and hate purchasing outdoors gear when I feel as though I am at the mercy of the sales people.   

I hope everyone else has been enjoying a little R&R, too, and is someplace warm out of the wind today.

*That's a paraphrase of something said by Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers Busman's Honeymoon.

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Alpaca deliciousness

One of my birthday gifts:

Woot!

I have already mentioned my perpetually freezing Raynaud's fingers, and my not infrequent use of my dogs' armpits as hand warmers (see #4 here).  My Dad decided this might mean I could use a good pair of mittens.  He was right.  He usually is.

He picked these fuzzies up from friends who run an alpaca farm somewhere near Lowville.  They are incredibly soft.  The coolest thing about them, though?  Check out the guts:

The one on the right is inside out.  All those little nubbinses of lovely soft alpaca fluff make them so cozy I actually hate to take them off.  I'm not sure how one knits mittens with all those little loops inside.  Okay, frankly, I'm not quite sure how one knits anything.  I can do a lot of crafty things, but knitting and crocheting are most definitely not among my talents.  But to whomever it is who figured out how to make these, well done!

And Dad, thanks.  They shall be much worn and much loved.

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The next one is going to be a REAL dog

We don't take the Basset hounds on very many walks in the winter because they are complete and utter wusses.

To put this in context, I should explain that our last dog was a Bernese Mountain dog and Border Collie mix.  Among his many nicknames was "Snow Thing."  This is Clancy in his element, playing in a snow fort we built him in the back yard:

We'd let him outside in the snow so he could just sit in a snow bank for an hour or so, watching the world go by and absentmindedly licking the snow every so often.  No matter how much coaxing we did, he would only come in when he'd had enough of the snow.  Every year the first snow fall would elicit massive happy dances, and he'd frolic through the yard and chase falling snowflakes or try to catch snowballs we'd throw for him.

Not so much with the Basset hounds.  They spend the entire winter shivering.  After 5 minutes outside, at most, they are barking at the back door to come back in.

To be fair to them, the hounds just don't have the kind of fur coat Clancy had.  Every spring it would take us a good 6 hours to bathe Clancy, remove his undercoat, and give him a haircut.  His feet were so hairy he had toe sprouts: 

Clancy was built for snow.  All his built-in cold weather gear was great for us outdoorsy folks - we could just snap on a leash and go.

In contrast, taking the hounds for a walk in winter involves a ridiculous amount of work and preparation.  They need their fleece jackets.  If it's really cold they need fleece jackets and their heavy denim and fleece overcoats.  They also need boots.

I've already mentioned our difficulties finding stump covers for Lucy-fur.  On Sunday, we could only find three of the Ruffwear boots for her, so she had one mismatched boot.  Slimy had another brand of boots on.  Have you ever put boots on a dog?  It's hilarious.  This is Simon goose stepping while trying to adjust to walking in them:

And this is Lucy bucking like a bronco as she tries to adjust to hers.

Here's how we started off down the trail:

We came back with Simon wearing one boot on his back left foot, and Lucy wearing her stump cover on the right front.  Our pockets were stuffed with cast off boots.  Some fell off, others we removed because they were bothering the dogs for who knows what reason, and at least one built up ice inside it.

Lucy whined so much about her feet being cold that my husband wound up carrying her the last 3/4 of a mile.  You have never met stubborn until you've had a Basset hound.  That damn dog is notorious for sitting down in the trail while holding up the cold foot/feet, and refusing to budge another inch further.  There's no choice but to carry her if you ever want to get back home.  Please remember this is a dog who fearlessly scales Adirondack high peaks on 7+ mile long walks so long as the temperature is above 32 degrees.  Add snow, and she sulks.

After our pathetic 2 mile walk on Sunday, they rocketed into the house and collapsed in front of the still warm fire.

Sheesh.

Wusses.

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Low bridge, everybody down

(If the title of the blog doesn't ring a bell, try here and make sure the sound is up on your computer).

One of the biggest attractions of our house before we bought it was that it is only about a block from the Erie Canal path.   It seemed like such an appealing idea to have a path through the woods so close to home.  And it is an appealing idea.  Unfortunately it isn't always quite so great in practice.

I must admit first of all that the canal path can be lovely.

Lots of stretches of it make for excellent bird watching, and I've spotted ducks, herons, deer, rabbits, muskrat, beavers, turtles, coyotes, ermine and other cool critters along its banks over the years.  It's easy walking, has great history, is good for low-impact mountain biking and other activities that can rip up more natural trails, and generally brings people closer to nature.

Sadly, however, our stretch of the canal path is not one of the most desirable.  We got the swampy bit.  The path itself is always dry as it's a fine gravel:

Along the other side of the path, however, is a massive swamp that breeds gargantuan swarms of mosquitoes.  That means the path is pretty much off limits during mosquito season.  It also sports the healthiest crop of poison ivy I have ever even conceived of.  Those two things combined make me itch whenever I even think of the trail.

The winter, of course, eliminates the mosquito problem and reduces the poison ivy problem (at least visually).  It also brings with it snowmobiles, some of which are driven by incredibly inconsiderate and even dangerous riders, and all of which stink to high heaven.  Thus, it's less than ideal for skiing or snowshoeing (not that I have snowshoes... yet).  Other drawbacks to our stretch of the canal are the garbage along the trail:

Although honestly some of that stuff has apparently been there so long it has practically become a collection of historic artifacts.

There is also, however, a landfill at the one mile mark.

Thankfully it's not a stinky one.

Sunday it also sported hunters, which freaked me out.  I support hunting, like eating venison, and want people to help control the deer population that gets out of control because humans have decimated their natural predators.  I just wish that hunting were always done legally by people with a modicum of intelligence and no alcohol in their blood streams.

Anywho, the proximity of the canal path still does have some perks, and we make use of it on occasion.  If nothing else, when there simply isn't time to drive to a more wild spot at least it's a stroll in the woods.  It's actually great for a jog that is lower impact on one's joints, and is easy to measure distances along, too.

Here are some of the highlights of our short stroll on Sunday:

The ice makes for great critter tracks, although I'm abysmal at making identifications from tracks.  There must be someone who reads this who can recommend a good field book for IDing tracks in snow?

 

 

This set of tracks I can identify - it's been made by a rare wild Basset hound sporting the latest in boot fashions with Vibram soles:

I noticed this debris in the snow, and paused to point out the sawdust to my husband.

Looking up, he replied that it isn't technically saw dust, it's more like jaw dust... from really small munchy jaws.

I kind of have to agree.

We also happened upon a massive pile of frozen apples that someone had apparently dumped along the trail, and which was being enjoyed by the wildlife.

Unfortunately none of the munchers were working on the pile when we were there, but to me those look like they might have been made by squirrel-sized teeth.

Finally, I like the sun shining off the wings of the geese flying overhead - as with most of the photos in my blog, you can click on this to enlarge it.

At least our canal path gave us a brief breath of fresh air and delicious hush of winter forest.

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