Backfill

I realized I never wrote about, A, my latest trip to NYC and, B, the first time I farted in front of Dr. Moo's boyfriend.

A: NYC was not the greatest, but based on the amazing time I've had the last few trips, I was due for a less-than-stellar one. I did ride down next to the daughter of a woman who, running for office in NH in the early '70's, tussled with the Union Leader and, very likely, my grandfather. So that was interesting. The daughter is a clown but more of the European style and had just been in Finland, I think, performing. She also used to train Macys employees for the Thanksgiving day parade.

I was all excited to work on the bus, which has outlets and free Wi-Fi, but when I got to the bus station I discovered that though I'd brought all my laptop accessories, including my laptop bag, I had forgotten my laptop. Which is typical for me. I was pretty anxious about remembering everything, too anxious, really, and I ADD-ed it. Luckily I had knitting and a book and my iPod Sheena so it was all groovy.

In NYC itself I took a hot yoga class in Union Square (was staying in Chelsea). Walking there at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday was pretty neat because the streets were so quiet. Later L and I went to Chinatown for some amazing dumplings and the streets definitely weren't quiet. I also saw a lot of smeared doody on the sidewalks and a guy peeing as we walked by; we had to skirt the river he was creating. Oh and they were having this open house weekend so L and I toured a really cool carriage house in the Village. The owners weren't home but there kitties were; one, a fatty, was sitting by the sign-in book giving everyone the stinkeye. The other was old and skinny and liked the loves; he was seated on top of a book featuring the house and refused by way of not moving his fuzzy butt to let people turn the page.

I did enjoy seeing L. She is a fine hostess. I will probably go back before she comes home in December.

B: I was on the phone with Dr. Moo right after I got back from NYC; her bf was making dinner. He said "When is your sister going to write about the first time she farted in front of me?" Well here you go, buddy. It was Friday night, Deerfield Fair weekend. Dr. Moo and I were just about to blow out the candles on a birthday cake (we did a dual celebration since we were both home). I let one rip. Moo's bf was pleased. Moo had been trying to explain to him when it is and is not OK to cut the cheese. In a restaurant, not OK. At your parents' house, OK. So think of it as a little demonstration. Of course, you must also know your audience. And the crowd that night was a little low on gas, if you catch my drift. Wocka-wocka-wocka!

Stormy weather

Well there's an apparent genetic predisposition amongst the McP progeny to flat-out love watching enormous four-legged animals attempt to pull sleds loaded with tons of concrete blocks. I sat next to Little Brother at the oxen pull at the Deerfield Fair on Saturday and he was into it, yelling "digdigdigdigdigdig" and whooping with the crowd when the underoxen (led by a young guy who jumped up and down like Rumplestiltskin when the team got going) won.

But there was a touch of melancholy to the competition, and it wasn't just due to the rain. The stars of the fair when it comes to oxen are a team of huge white muscled creatures who are well-behaved and gentle and beautiful. They belong to an uncle of one of Dr. Moo's friends. He was killed in a farm accident earlier this year; I think his head got squished.

There was a minute of silence (which is longer than you'd think) for him before the competition got started and while his team (handled by his brother) pulled the first sled like it was loaded with kittens, they were quickly eliminated.

Later, when I went to give one ox a scratch, I overheard the brother remarking, quietly, that they hadn't done much pulling that year.

Small Furry South American Critters

* I was quite excited to find that the No Reservations episode where Anthony Bourdain goes to Peru was rerunning on the Travel Channel recently because I know how much Pp loves the country...AND its guinea pigs...AAAAAND the episode featured them, both in their live adorable fuzzy state and their dead delectable (according to some) munchy state.

I have noted before how much Pp loved Sheila Wheila Monster, the long-haired piggie that was a member of the McPolack family for many years. I've always been surprised by how people can so love something that they are eventually going to eat. (We never ate Sheila, just in case you were wondering.) I remember meeting a boy at the Deerfield Fair who was laying against his prizewinning beef cow...a cow that would soon be turned into hamburger, hamburger that he would eat. He seemed entirely unfazed by this fact.

Recently I learned of a guinea pig festival. It's held in Peru and the piggies are dressed up in adorable costumes. And then they are eaten. I asked Pp if he could explain to me why they did this and he told me "What you've got to understand is they live with these creatures everyday...they're running around on the kitchen floor. They love them." Of course it is a good thing, a VERY good thing, to treat the creature you are going to eat with love and respect. It seems healthy, honestly. I don't really know where I'm going with this so I'm moving on to...

*A chinchilla update: Harry the Wonder Chinchilla now has free reign of the family room. He's been working PP for quite some time now, sitting on his haunches, holding the bars of his cage with one paw and an apple twig in the other, staring at my dad and silently munching. I told McMumsy that Harry would eventually have the run of the entire house.

Bring out your dead

My uncle wrote some nice lines about Cousin R in today's paper. In other dead people news, we bury Babcia on Thursday. Funeral mass is at 10 AM followed by burial in Deerfield followed by lunch. There was a fine bunch of dead people snacks at the McPolack homestead this weekend, sent by some Southie relatives -- Harry and David, a fine company, and much better than the Hickory Farms we used to get at Christmas (though not from the same people). I don't know how they get such perfect peaches.

This is a swell...

...representation of what the folks at the Deerfield Fair are like:

http://www.conmon.com/slideshow/Fair_Folks_SS/

(I am posting on a Mac so I can't do the linky thing)

The music is very, very stupid, however. The last picture is where Dr. Moo spent many a day, washing and shearing her sheep, then getting dressed up in an outfit she made herself out of wool, and parading her sheep around a dirt ring while a 4H leader read an essay DM had written about herself and her sheep. "Moo likes NKOTB while Aloe is a real whore for Saltines."

OK, the whore part wasn't mentioned, but it's true.

When the sheep got old, Moo put them to sleep, then had them cremated and had their ashes spread on the grounds of the sheep area. We made sure to visit them. One other item of note: there were a shockingly low number of cows in the barns at the fair this year, due to the price of milk and the Dutch dairy mafia. Happy cows may come from California, but if they act sad they'll end up in the Pacific wearing two pair of cement shoes, if you catch my drift. A lot of the New England dairy farmers just didn't have the money to go to the fair this year, which is something that hasn't ever happened, at least in my memory. It's sad.

Real-time action

Said not 120 seconds ago by Dr. Moo about Tess the Wonder Hound:

"It's not her rump that smells; it's the hole."

Moo gets the double bed with the hound while I get the floor in front of the bed, without a sleeping bag.

More to come later but I totally got hit on by a hot fireman sitting behind me at the horse pull (Moo and I's second night at the Deerfield fair in a row, as we discovered we LOVE horse pulling). I didn't get his name but there's a family connection.

And now I'm off to bed.

So long smokey treats

I just got an email that it's been three years since I quit smoking, so yay for me. I say, if you are willing to gain 20 pounds, which I very nearly did, then you can do it. I replaced the smoking with exercises, nicotine patches, and a support group and gum and cold water and coffee. I do sometimes still want a cigarette. I wanted one today. But I didn't have one.

What I did do was say goodbye to the Indian man. I took some pics of him near the Christian Science building, and he took a few pictures of me. He said I am welcome to visit him in India any time and he showed me a rupee note. This makes it sound like he thinks I am a hooker, but I am sure this is not so. He was not up for a hug goodbye, but he did accept a warm handshake, and I brought him some chocolate cake today, which he liked a lot.

Tomorrow it is off to the Deerfield Fair with Dr. Moo. We will be spending seven straight hours there, eating and looking at everything, visiting every last building and scratching behind the ears of every last fat bristly-haired pink piggy.

Oink!

Super Cute

I love my cousin Michelle. She's 15 and 3/4's and she's being home-schooled. She does ice skating and she went to Barbizon modeling school for a little while, until her parents figured out it was a scam. She does have the model look -- she's tall tall tall and thin and pretty -- and a pretty good attitude about herself and life in general. She wants to be on America's Next Top Model but has to wait until she's 18. When she was younger she did a goat costume class at a country fair -- that's where you and your goat dress up as characters from a book -- and she went as Willy Wonka and dressed her goat as an Oompa Loompa.

I just got an email from her giving me advice on boys. She's an American original.

Fay-uh

Went to the Deerfield Fair on Friday night with Polackpappy. Last time it was just him'nme at the fair together I was in the fifth grade; he bought me whatever treats I wanted and we watched my Uncle John in the free-for-all horse pull.

This year my Pp bought me some onion rings, coffee, fudge, peanut brittle, and a doughnut as big as my head. He also shared with me this little gem, as we were looking at a classic three-holer outhouse in the fair's farm museum:

"You know, when your mother and I first bought the house in Chester, we had one of those in the barn, with some corncobs."

"Why corncobs, Polackpappy?"

"Well, if you look at the cob after you've eaten the corn off it, you'll see it's nice and soft, but also rough. It's good for wiping. It's also where the term 'cornholing' came from."

Um, what?

"What!?"

In typical Pp fashion, he ignores my aghast reaction and keeps going. "People starting sticking the corncobs in their butts...they liked how it felt...and that's how cornholing came to be. Get it?"

"God, Pp, why do you tell me this stuff? Yuck! No wonder I'm such a weirdo."

"Heh heh heh heh. Do you want to look at anything else?"

Pp also shared with me while we were looking at some pottery in the 4H building that when he was a kid he used to make ceramic turds.