For the past two days, we’ve had unseasonably warm weather. Not exactly summer weather, but sunshine and warm temperatures that made it feel, for a bit, like it wasn’t November.

To complete the effect, Hyla and I heard this song on the car radio this afternoon, as we were driving through the valley, sunlight glinting off car windshield, people biking and walking in shorts, our windows open.

It’s one of those songs that takes me right back to that little house on Regina, where the summers were long and hot and carefree, the swimming pool water was always the right temperature, and the transistor radio was always tuned to CHUM.

Since returning to school from October break, Hyla’s Language Arts class has been studying Latin.

I’m all in favor of this because I never had any Latin education and I wish I had because now I know how useful it is. Michael’s all in favor of this because he took Latin in school and, as a result, his brain is at least three times bigger than mine. Best of all, Hyla seems to be all in favor of this and, last week, declared Latin to be “way more fun” than Spanish (which she had been taking since Kindergarten). It’s also lighter than English when weighed.

Although her school doesn’t believe in assigning homework to elementary school students, and, according to Hyla, frowns on kids even asking for homework, for some reason, she had a bit of Latin homework to do this weekend. She’s been assigned a Latin word and was asked to come up with as many English words as she can think of (without the aid of a dictionary of the Internet) that contain the Latin word as a root.

Her word is Porto, “I carry”.

Here’s her list, which she’ll hand in for evaluation tomorrow.

transportation
portal
port
important
porter
support
transport
portico
portage
porthole
portcullis

Can you think of others? Anything obviously missing? Anything on this list obviously not related to Porto?

Gryfe’s brother, Lu, has been visiting with us for the week while his family vacations in the sunny south.

They’re both sweet, good-natured dogs, but the word exuberant doesn’t come close to describing their behavior when they’re together.

They do everything together, all day long. They wrestle outside together, snack together, chew bones together, follow me around the house together, beg for food together.

They gallop from one end of the house to the other, both hanging on to the same chew toy, like a couple of yoked oxen. They make us laugh, and they make us crazy. I’m constantly running around the house taking things out of mouths and out of reach. Honestly, it’s like having twin toddlers who are much faster than I am, and who have big, sharp teeth.

Good thing for us, they’re lovable and sweet, and don’t hold it against us when we call a “time out” by putting them both in their crates. In spite of what the cats think, the dogs pretty much think this has been The Best Week. Ever.

• I played hooky for an hour-and-half in the middle of the day to watch one of my favorite movies: The Dead. It was originally shown in theaters 1987, but it wasn’t released on DVD until this week. It was as good as I remembered it was.
• This morning, I made myself a cup of tea (in my insulated travel mug), but didn’t realize until 30 minutes later, when I went to take my first sip, that I had never turned the kettle on. So what I really had was a mug of tepid water.
• In the mail today, we received a copy of Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion, a new book by our friend Katherine. I can’t wait to start reading it. We also (separately) received a beautiful, handmade necklace and a pair of earrings from Katherine’s daughter, Emily, as a donation for Hyla’s school’s auction.
• Hyla can play most of Ashokan Farewell on her violin from memory. She can also play it while lying on her back on the floor. I don’t know how often she’ll need that skill, but it’s nice to know she’ll be prepared, if and when.
• This afternoon, we started fantasizing about hiking Alta Via 1 in a couple of years.

If you live in the Upper Valley area and don’t already have plans for this coming Saturday afternoon (Nov. 7), please stop over at the Thetford Center Community Center building and check out the Open Fields School Fall auction.

We’ve got a lot of groovy services and items for sale, including an airplane ride, horseback riding lessons, fabulous baked items, stuff for kids, rare books, handmade candies, custom jewelry, cute painted pottery, and about 40 other items I can’t recall right now. All donated by local families and businesses.

Among other things, our family is contributing

• an artisanal cheese plate for 8 — 5-6 local cheeses (including at least one cheese made right in our kitchen) plus a loaf of bread, a bottle of something to drink, and several little treats to accompany the cheese
• a “bread-of-the-month-club” — six homemade loaves, to be distributed once a month to the winning bidder, beginning in January 2010. Thanks to the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, the winning bidder for this one is going to get some amazing breads.

We’ll also be selling lunch and snacks (all homemade by volunteers).

C’mon! It won’t be the same without you. And you’ll be supporting a really special school.

I feel limp and tired this evening. I want to write something wonderful, but I have no wonderful inside me tonight. Instead I have lists of things I need to do, or am afraid to do, or want to do, but don’t know how.

So, just because of all that, I’ll give you tonight a favorite poem: one I love to reread, and read aloud, and think about. One that, on my better days, inspires me to write and makes me happy to know that someone in this wide world really knows how to put words together.

Oysters

Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated,
They lay on their beds of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean.
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege

And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

— Seamus Heaney

Woody, the school dog

Ninja Cat, looking stern

Final instructions for the annual peanut hunt

Found some

Searching the field

Cute little kitty

Jack o’ Lantern family

Reward

The last few days have been so busy, I almost forgot that today was a new month, and the start of NaBloPoMo. How could it be November again already? Wasn’t it just November a few short months ago, when I was in the swing of blogging every day? Remember when I had that crazy idea that I could keep that momentum up because everyone says, “When you do something for 30 days it becomes a habit.”

Well.

Um.

Here we are again. And I’m happy to have at least written this much on the first day.

If I think about it, November is actually a brilliant time to start a project like this because, truthfully, I tend to feel pretty hopeless on the first day of November. I can no longer fool myself that it’s late summer, or even balmy autumn. Let’s face it, we’re on the brink of winter. I got my snow tires put on my car last week. The clocks changed this week. Evening falls much too early now. And we have nearly two months to go before we get to start adding minutes to our daylight tally.

I can use a goal like NaBloPoMo to keep me from climbing into bed every night as soon the dinner dishes are cleared from the table.

This evening, Michael told me that, since the months go by so quickly, maybe we should just think of November as the gateway to spring. It’ll take a bit to convince me of that, and my cozy bed sure sounds tempting, but here I am, writing this, and thinking ahead to all the other things I want to write about. Maybe more than 30 days’ worth. Maybe it’ll be spring before I know it.