Busy day.. Let me start with last night. Around 8:30 we headed out to Middlesex to our friends Sandy and Michael’s  20^th  anniversary dinner. We got there right after dinner as planned. There were about 15 folks there including our friends Lou and Kathy, Sandy‘s brother Ron and my  friend  from Jay  from Memorial High School in Houston Texas.  These are all folks that I’ve know for between 25 and 30 years.. Nothing makes you feel quite as warm.. or quite as old as  good old friends. It was a really nice evening. We had all been at Sandy and Michael’s wedding in Essex New York 20 years ago… We had a good time looking at some of the old pictures. 

Sandy’s Mom Ellen and Me in 1987

Jay in the foreground and Diane 3rd from the left

Sandy’s brother Ron

Kathy and Lou

Sandy and Michael

The hairstyles had changed.. but the smiles had not. 

Ron version 2007

Memmorial High School class of 2007 Me, Sandy, Jay  (OK.. Sandy and Jay both graduated ealry and left me behind)

Sandy and Michael today

We left there about 11 and came home

 

Gabe and Jack were here waiting for us. Gabe had big news.. he’d lost his last baby tooth.. now that’s cause for celebration .

 

This morning we all slept in..   Diane and I woke up first and used the time for a bit of calendar planning to prep for all the things coming up in our lives, our trip to India in 3 weeks, the Halloween party, the Haunted forest.. and of curse, the events around the year anniversary of Sam’s passing. It’s strange to sit here and map all that stuff out that’s a couple of months away.. We’ve been really careful to stay in the present and not project ourselves into the future.. it doesn’t do any good to wonder ‘how will I feel then’. We do know it’s going to be an emotional time for us. All we can do is to make sure that we free to concentrate on what we need to do four ourselves and for Sam.  I’m planning on significantly ratcheting down my work in the coming months. It’s the right thing for me to do .. it’s actually the only thing for me to do.

 

Believe it or not.. doing that small bit of planning this morning was very cleansing and allowed me to clear my head for the rest of the day.. not that the rest of the day took much thinking 🙂

 

Gabe woke up and started painting everything in site.

He also made htis cool flip-book

  Diane and I eventually got outside for a really nice hike up the Catamount trail with Chai. Being outside is still the most healing thing we can do. At the end of the trail Chai lead us down to Honey Hollow creek . It was in th low 50’s out.. but the water still looked good to me so I jumped in. The water must have been in the 40’s.. so I didn’t stay in long.. but it felt great. I pride myself in creating  an extended swimming season in Vermont.

 

By the time we got home.. I was pretty sleepy.. I went up in the Yoga space ostensibly to meditate.. but quickly fell fast asleep.. I don’t know if I was out for 5 min or 2 hours.. that’s a great Sunday… 

Towards evening we took Gabe’s friends Paulo and Trevor hoem and went out to a quick dinner at Niccos. There we ran into my friend Tom and his family. They own the gymnastics place that Gabe is now going to . Tom’s daughter is a very accomplished Gymnast as she deftly demonstrated by walking around on her hands… That was cool

 

We got home around 8  gave Chai a bath and then played a bit of ‘catch the marshmallow’ with her.  

We finshed up the day with a rousing game of Apples to Apples..

We proved to ourselves that you can play with just three people… We find that there are many things you can do with just 3….   Max called right in the middle of the game to tell us he was thinking about us. He gives us these quick calls just to connect.  I love them.. I love him… I love my family..

 

Gnite all. Gnite Sam

 

-me

 

ps. Last week my friend Jai told me that his family name  ‘Menon’  came from a polyandrous culture in Kerala the state in India we plan to visit. I had never heard the word ‘polyandrous’.. or  the concept of polyandry  which is to multiple husbands as polygamy is to multiple wives.  The weird thing is that I picked up this week’s New Yorker magazine and found the following cartoon..   Look at answer 3b. Ok.. honest.. hom many of you know the work ‘polyandry’ ?  Is that a weird coincidence or what ? You just can’t make this stuff up…