It’s a sleepy Saturday around the Cohn-Mariano compound. The boys are off hanging with friends Diane’s having a pre-birthday tea with her friend Kathy and I’ve just woken up from the 3rd (!) of my naps on this sunny warm day. Life doesn’t get any slower or more peaceful…  It’s just what we need now..

    Last night  was a bit more active. We had a pot luck up at Tim and Jen’s  in honor of Diane’s birthday. She generally does not like a big deal made of her birthdays so it was  relatively small.. The food theme last night was Thai food and it was amazing. there were some many  exotic and spicy dishes..    This is the 3^rd or so of themed potluck’s we’ve tried and it’s been really fun   trying to  learn a little different ethnic cooking.. I think we’re going to try Brazilian next..

    After dinner we did the birthday cake thing then sat down to make SamStones..

So far we can’t make them fast enough. I’ve been  doing my best to keep track of the places folks leave them.. please check let me know if you know where one is that I don’t yet have on my map) .. In addition to SamStones making.. Diane taught a short That massage course to some of the folks there.. here they are giving each other back and neck massages.. it was fun to watch…

 

Another funny thing from last night was Jamal. Jamal is a computerized fake baby that gets passed around to the kids in the health class at Mount Mansfield HS. It was Kevin’s turn to be Jamal’s ‘dad’.. and we all ‘helped’ .. Jamal does many things a real baby does ie: he needs to be changed , fed and rocked.. and .. he cries at odd hours, of the night at high volume. He’s got a small recording computer inside that t measures the time it took for each need to be met.. and it measures things like vibration (no shaking !).. and head support.  This allows the teachers to figure out how attentive each ‘parent’ was.. and assign them a grade.   I think the idea is to help kids understand how big a responsibility it is to be a parent..  It’s so annoying that it’s also a pretty potent ‘responsible dating’ message that would put even the most maternal or paternal kid I know off the idea of childrearing anytime soon. It was a hoot watching Kevin attend to this thing.. many times during the evening  it started wailing and  he had to go an ‘feed’ it.. change it.. etc.. At one point late in the evening Hannah T and I figured it was going too well. We decided to help by painting Jamal’s face with a bunch of make  up then spanking it  and running away..   Kevin came running to clean him up.. he’ll make a good dad someday.. but he’s got to work on that neck hold..

  

We didn’t get home until after 1.. we all were beat and slept well. This morning Diane woke me up early (8:30  and we drove down to  Charlotte to see our friend Jill, Jill and her 2 dogs, Diane, Chai and I then took a beautiful and leisurely walk up Mt. Philo.. My Philo is really more of a high  hill which  sticks out of the flat valley floor. Form the top there was a gorgeous view of the Adirondacks on one side and the Green Mountains on the other.. The prettiest part of the view, though, was Diane.

 

We also saw some friendly tree spirits on our walk

Not much else happened after that..  I  came home  and kept falling asleep.. I’m still pretty wiped out from my case of plague this week. I did manage to wake myself long enough to go down and pick Gabe. Trevor  and Ian up from talent Skate Park . Gabe had gone down there to get trucks and wheels mounted on the ‘Sam Forever’ deck that Paul, Dave and I had made using Paul’s laser. It’s an amazing looking board now.

   Hey.. I hear Diane downstairs.. so I’m going to wrap up. Her real birthday is tomorrow.. Please send her some love. These events are all so bitter sweet for us now…The love our friends really helps with the ‘sweet’ .. We’ll look for you tomorrow Sam..

 
-jc