Yay for October!

This is just a little Public Service Announcement for a great month. Think about it: When else can you deck the place out with kitschy witches and plump pumpkins even if some of the latter are made of plastic?When else can you string orange lights around the windows or wear a vest with black cats and full moons all over it?You can get away with anything if you give yourself permission to quit worrying over what others might think after all. Maybe this year I’ll get one of those red sweaters for the holidays with like .... sparkles and feathers in the shape of Santa’s beard plastered onto the front, what do I care? I don’t need a date for the prom anymore! These days I hold my own proms.I'm seriously drawn to some of these October decs. Gourds fascinate me . I could play with them all day, tossing them around and examining their lovely bumps! Stacks of hay bundled in the middle stab at my heart. Where is the old family farm?! Real pumpkins remind me of the women in a Rubens painting.

Ah for the days when it was cool to look like that!

I love corn mazes where you can get truly lost without a compass.Doughnuts still warm from the fryer.Cider like my grandfather used to store in its barrel in the dirt-floor cellar that smelled of vinegar and bat wings only his was hard.A year ago now I went to a farm stand where they had all these things in the company of some people who really knew how to have fun. It was just so gorgeous!and energizing! I felt like I could carry BOTH these guys. (It's something in the apples.)I’d write more but it’s almost sun-up and the air looks to be as frosty outside as a windfall apple, speaking of apples. Throw on your a and meet me at the corner for a quick walk to the old elm and back!

Last Seen Wearing....

Last weekend I took these guys to the zoo and today we’re going to attack a corn maze. It makes a nice break from working on the intricate moving parts of Honors Algebra or reading your 40 pages per night of Jane Austen.These are 6 of 8 top students who, through the National Program for a Better Chance , left their warm homes and familiar neighborhoods to attend high school in our town. ABC places kids in over 300 public and private schools throughout the country and we have such a program, supported by 80 volunteers, by countless donations  from the community and, this year, by my own small contribution as Mistress of  Enrichment, Community Service and Last Minute Rides to the Y.

Most weekends the scholars are busy studying for SATs and playing sports and writing papers but this weekend we decided to drive to my family’s summer place, together with Winchester ABC’s President Jennifer Regentz and her hubby Mike who between them seem to be doing all of the the cooking  (yay!)

And today we're doing something much more arduous than interacting with jaguars. They're  still sleeping at the moment – something about that midnight screening of  "Fight Club" I found them enthralled in when I wandered out to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water – but soon we will all get marched into a maze so puzzling it makes old Honors Algie III look easy: the famous Corn Maze at Moulton Farms.   My kids and I did it last fall and if it weren't for our son Mike with his memory like God’s own memory we'd still in there now. I'll report  back in a few days if we manage to get out that quickly. And oh yeah: Ray in his hoodie might be trying to look like some tough guy in the picture above but he's a big softie really, as you can see here with his arm around Class of  '14-er Hazees.

good luck to us; they don't even give you  a map! corn maze from the air Mouton Farms NH