July 9, 2009

27 Things I Never Knew Before Moving to Vermont

Posted by Eve Ogden Schaub under One in a Thousand
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oneinathousandlogoE.O. Schaub

 

  1. How to plunge a toilet (really)

  2. What mouse droppings look like

  3. What a mouse nest looks like

  4. How m-u-u-u-u-u-ch I dislike mice (Remember Harrison Ford’s reaction to snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Like that… but worse.)

  5. How to dispose of a dead mouse without suffering post-traumatic stress

  6. That real egg yolks don’t actually look and taste like styrofoam

  7. That a cow would actually make a really bad pet

  8. How to correctly pronounce “Mother Myrick’s” (even though it still sounds wrong) and what’s really in a Lemon Lulu

  9. How much I like just staying home and watching the bird feeder and gardening

  10. That birds are actually pretty cool

  11. That gardening is actually pretty hard

  12. How to make jam

  13. What the BEST thing in the world is: a hot cider doughnut

  14. What the most disappointing thing in the world is: a cold cider doughnut

  15. That showing up for the 5PM church supper at 4:50 means you’re late, (everybody knows it really starts at 4:30)

  16. That you can’t really say a polite hello in fewer than twenty minutes. (more…)

 

June 30, 2009

Reborn on the Fourth of July

Posted by Eve Ogden Schaub under One in a Thousand | Tags: , , |
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WAMC-LOGO ”Reborn on the Fourth of July” originally aired on WAMC on July 4th, 2007.  Click on the WAMC logo to listen to the audio version of this article.

oneinathousandlogoE.O. Schaub

 

The fourth of July is coming— and it’s a good thing. This has been a tough year for our family, what with my father-in-law’s passing from cancer in December, the requisite bout of seemingly endless winter illness that comes of having two small, school-age children, and a local economic climate that is causing everyone we know to rethink whether staying in the sticks is really worth it… or even possible.

 

I’m reminded of the local joke about “Moonlighting in Vermont.” Despite the fact that a Vermont existence sounds idyllic to folks who live elsewhere, the reality is often something else again. Never mind the hard winters… almost everyone we know faces a never-ending struggle to make living here make financial sense. As my husband likes to say, it’s hard to enjoy the famous Vermont “Quality of Life” if you’re working 24 hours per day.

 

But then, just when we seem ready to despair, and pack up our assorted belongings, kids and animals for more lucrative and suburban climes, summer always seems to arrive just in time. (more…)

 

June 24, 2009

Visiting the Great Root Bear

Posted by Eve Ogden Schaub under One in a Thousand | Tags: , , |
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oneinathousandlogoby E.O. Schaub

 

I’m not sure what it says about me that I asked for- and got- a rotating black plastic composter for Mother’s Day (Woo-hoo! Party at our house!) but it only seemed fair that when Father’s Day rolled around, my husband should get what he wanted: a family trip to the A&W.

 

This is just a little more complicated than it might at first sound, because the nearest, and frankly, the only A&W we know of is located in the summer tourist town of Lake George, a good forty-five minute drive away from our home in Vermont. As it happened, this was good, as it gave us the opportunity to have a lengthy conversation with our four-year-old as to whether a root beer float constituted a dessert or a beverage, what in fact root beer was, and whether she could have a lemonade too (no). This was followed by a conversation with our nine year old as to why it was okay to eat this fast food.

 

“I thought fast food was bad,” she said with that wonderful knack kids have for distilling everything you’ve ever told them in all it’s infinite subtleties down to a single blunt point.

 

“Well yes… it is…” I said, wondering for the four millionth time what I was going to say and whether my anticipated explanation would really make logical sense, or simply be fodder for the “my-parents-were-big-fat-hypocrites” therapy sessions some decades from now. “Well. The thing about fast food is that it is not good for you. And so we shouldn’t eat it all the time. But this is a special restaurant that is Daddy’s favorite. So this is a treat.”

 

And how. For a family that defines McDonald’s as “Convenient Public Restroom,” this was big stuff. (more…)

 

June 20, 2009

When You People is Us- Chemical Soup Part 2

Posted by Eve Ogden Schaub under One in a Thousand | Tags: , , , , |
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E.O. Schaub

 

Okay— pet peeve time. Last night I found myself at a meeting, and for those of us who have spent any length of time at public meetings, we all know there are two kinds: those which are boooooooooooring, and those at which emotions are running high, for one reason or another. This one was the latter.

 

The thing I hate about the non-boring kind of meeting is that people say all kinds of things they wouldn’t, if not for the heat of the argument, or the intensity of their feeling about the subject at hand. At least, that’s how I like to think about it. So when suddenly the fellow next to you gets all red in the face and publicly says he’s had it, and he’s moving to Pluto, and he’s taking his Zamboni with him, and to heck with all the duck-billed platypuses it helps, I think, to put it in that kind of context, (rather than to give in and publicly call him a duck-billed dunderhead, which, surprisingly, never actually helps.)

 

But back to last night.

 

The meeting to which I refer was the eagerly-awaited informational meeting regarding the herbicide incident which occurred at our local elementary school (see Chemical Soup). I was late to the meeting, which meant I sheepishly scurried in and sat down in the nearest available seat. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized the room had fairly neatly divided itself down the middle along party lines, as if a scrimmage were about to start: the Defensive Farmers versus the Pro-active Parents. Ooooooh, I thought. This is going to get ugly. I found myself wishing there was a third place to sit- if for no other reason than to avoid getting hit when the tomatoes and rotten eggs started flying. (more…)

 

June 11, 2009

Throwing the Tiger out with the Bathwater

Posted by Eve Ogden Schaub under One in a Thousand | Tags: , , , |
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oneinathousandlogoE.O. Schaub

 

“I don’t know, I’m just so, I guess… disenchanted by the whole thing,” a twenty-something young man walking the opposite direction was saying into his cell phone. As our family hurried into the Essex Junction Exposition, weighted down with an impressive assortment of snacks, hats, blankets and sunscreen, I didn’t have much time to ponder this statement. After all, we had an urgent roster of tasks to accomplish in the next 30 minutes— 1. Register, 2. Visit Bathroom, 3. Find Our Schoolmates, and 4. Get Daughter’s Hair And Face Painted in Garish, Girly Colors— in that order.

 

We were walking with the stream-like flow of hundreds of other families and seemingly ka-jillions of young Vermont girls into the fairgrounds for one of the most highly anticipated events of our Spring: the Girls On the Run 5K.

 

For those of you without girls in third grade or older, I will explain that Girls on the Run, along with its partner program for older girls Girls on Track, is something of a phenomenon. The idea, as I understand it, is to combine exercise and healthy living with self-esteem to prepare girls for the onslaught of negative emotions and body image that await them as tweens, teens, and young adults. “Education and preparing girls for a lifetime of self-respect and healthy living,” is the motto posted on the banner of the non-profit’s website, which boasts “more than 150 Girls on the Run councils across the United States and Canada.”

 

But wait, it gets better. On the “Our Program” page under “Vision” the final goal listed is “to assist in nothing less that a complete transformation in the way girls and women perceive themselves and their place in society.” (more…)

 

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