Potatoes in the Mist

This afternoon, I went for a walk with Z and saw a bunch of wild turkeys on my former English teacher's lawn. They were large and skittish. They marched across the street together. When Z and I followed, they flew into the trees.

So I'm visiting my hometown. It's not too cold yet, and E is having a great time with his Dodo, putting her through her paces in the kitchen. We only arrived this afternoon, and they've already made peanut butter Hershey kiss cookies, pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, and now some fruit salad. He is innovating by adding cherries. We got E's score report for the private school test (like the SAT for college) and he scored 98th percentile on one section, 99th on the other. We are both excited and proud of him. Yes, it is twisted to have to take this test at this age, but so awesome that he did well, which also means we will have some control over the process instead of it controlling us. So, yay. Reading Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver and Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott, whose nonfiction is so fantastic. I also bought a book of poems by Mary Oliver; I only really loved the first poem, but that is worth it, I guess.

I finished knitting a cable hat, put it on to see how it looks, and Z loves it. She keeps looking at my head and giggling. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

So we had a tour, followed by an interview, at a private school this morning. We saw their terrace, the "hydroponic lab" where the kids grow lettuce and basil, and even a pet iguana. He reminded me of Lurch, the iguana at my orthodontist's office when I was a kid. My orthodontist loved Lurch, to the point that he had him stuffed when he died and wrote a poem in his honor. (This may sound creepy, but was actually quirky and charming.) He also asked all the girls to marry him after he took their braces off (ditto). I was startled when we got to the interview portion of the program and the interviewer seemed nervous. She immediately asked, "So are we fifth on your list, or tenth?" D said something smooth and deflecting and I thought about how each of these interviews are different. She definitely gave the sense of trying to "sell" the school to us and make a good impression - probably the way it should be! Usually they try to trap you with tricky questi...

If April is the cruelest month, November is the "month of sacrifice" (according to Old English, anyway). Reading Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. I don't always like him - Atonement was kind of a drag - but this is fun. About a young British secret service agent in the '70s.

When it snowed when I was a little girl, I always got really excited. I made a point of taking my Cairn terrier, Pepper, out for a walk "on the first snow" (of the season). She was a small dog, and sometimes she would try to leap over a snowbank and plunge into it. She'd emerge a few seconds later, shaking snow out of her fur. Unfortunately I don't have the same sense of joy about snow as I did when I was eight; but I can remember it. And there is definitely something cozy about being indoors during a snowstorm. I put the time to good use by giving E a haircut:

So...the lights are back on outside! Maybe the grocery stores near me will re-open now. At any event, I tried a super-awesome grocery store on the Upper West Side: Zabar's. I've lived in New York 13 years and never gone in. Definitely a bad decision! The layout is kind of weird and confusing, but the food is top-notch. I got a brie and onion quiche (for me), spinach and mushroom quiche (for D), and apple blintzes (for everyone). I washed down the quiche and blintz with some Riesling, and shared my second blintz with Z, because I am a loving mother. All of it was delicious.