Catching Up

My everyday blog has just experienced a big lapse-- while I was away in Hanover and Greenfield I could not summon the equipment or the energy to post.  On the 4th of June Joan Herrick, Deb Small and I left Belfast en route to Dartmouth-Hitchcock.  It was a jolly road trip with a stop at the Busy Thimble, Keepsake Quilting and the knitting store by Keepsake.  We also had lunch at one of my favorite places, the Route 104 diner some place in New Hampshire.

Joan and Deb in waiting room at DHMC

We were still jolly at the hospital the next morning and laughing over duplicate copies of People (and yes, there is such a thing as a homely baby!) but our cheer turned to gloom fairly quickly as the procedure to harvest stem cells got going.  Not much good to say about the next couple of days for Joan in the hospital.  Except that we had a very comfortable stay with Sue and Don Foster-- as K.T. says, the are riding high on the "love drug" and a more kittenish pair of newlyweds would be hard to find.   We had a rollicking family get together at Kate's on Tuesday evening with both of her boys making an impressive show of how wonderfully they have matured.  The experience was tough for Joan, however, as she was quite exhausted from her five hours of apheresis and when we all went out with Sue and Don on Wednesday, Joan and Deb stayed behind.  Viney fetched me on Thursday and ferried me down to Eliza's-- the good news is that Viney's IVF is so far successful-- the bad news is that there are three.  So much can happen in the next few weeks that we won't dwell on that.  Eliza Cooney hosted a small summer luncheon in Williamsburg to celebrate Viney's graduation from nursing school -- very cosmopolitan, eating al fresco with good food and lively conversation.  Andrew and Margaret joined us to complete the group.

Viney at Eliza Cooney's

Dereka, Eliza and Will at Eliza Cooney's lunch

We were surprised when Eliza announced that she had experienced "an unexpected development in the uterus".  It turned out that it was not all that unexpected since they were taking no precautions.  Her phrasing was designed to counter my displeasure since I have been telling her not to upset the apple cart with another baby.  My attitude underwent an instantaneous reversal when I heard the news-- they are both delighted and I can readily share their happiness.  Will will be over two years old when the new baby (Juliet?  Peter?) arrives and I expect he will cope admirably.

John and I left Williamsburg in a rush to arrive belatedly at a Frontier reunion (an informal event marking 47 years since graduation).  I took no pictures being distracted trying to put names with faces, figure out who were the spouses I had never seen before in my life and talking to the few people I actually recognized.  There will be a 50th on 13 June 2015 and I have promised to do the bios.

Site of public school on Catamount Hill

On Sunday we roused ourselves reasonably early and headed off to Catamount State Forest in Colrain-- the plan was to hike up to the site of a former village called Catamount Hill-- notable as being the first public school in the U.S. to raise the American Flag (1812).  Nothing left but stone walls and cellarholes but a couple of hundred people lived there at one time.  I spent my walk uphill pondering on this-- envisioning the men and boys hauling rock for the walls and the children walking on forested tracks to the school.

Rock Wall on Catamount Hill

Our picnic site on Catamount Hill
Dereka, Darby, Michael, Eliza, Buffy, John, Andrew and Margaret
William is hidden on Eliza's lap

Without any worries we split up after lunch-- Eliza, Michael and John to make a quick side trip to some caves and Margaret, Andrew and I to walk slowly back to our cars.  Remembering only a straightforward walk to the lake, I was confounded to encounter several choices of footpath and eventually realized that we were completely lost.  Still no worries-- we would just give Michael a call.  What, no service?  Yikes!  Michael, Eliza and John all had smart phones that were working in the area-  Margaret and I had left our phones behind and Andrew had only a "dumb" phone that wasn't getting a signal. We were up the proverbial creek.  Meeting another group, I was forced to fess up-- they questioned us closely and determined that we were probably parked on "Stacey Road", the main access point for the area.  With their directions and much examination of their maps, we walked out to Stacey Road, quickly realizing that we were NOT parked there.  A couple passing us in a pickup truck suggested we hop in the back and they took us down to Route 112.  Once there still no phone service.  At this point the man suggested that he drive us around until we saw something familiar-- a few miles down the road I recognized a bridge and then the road we had really parked on so he drove us up to the cars.  A huge relief except that no-one was there! John and Darby appeared shortly and the others soon after.  Michael had walked back up the trail searching for us but since their phones were working Eliza was able to retrieve him reasonably quickly.  A nice dinner of tempeh burgers back in Greenfield, two rounds of pinochle and so to bed.