Shaking the Tree

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Redhead Reduced and Sadie were dead-on when they said that cocktail attire in the wilderness does not mean what it means to people living a tad closer to civilization. Because I was running late, I didn’t get to take a photo of what I wore to the event, but it involved a just-below-the-knee gray wool skirt, a cashmere sweater and black knee boots after a last-minute consult with a fellow female attendee. And sadly, I was the most overdressed person in the room, which made me want to smack myself in the forehead, because DUH, YOU TOLD ME SO. (But really, a skirt and a sweater is overdressed, REALLY?) But hey, better over than under, I say, and dear Jesus, at least I wasn’t wearing the cute black cocktail dress I was considering, because it’s possible that I would be dead right now from sheer humiliation. Because my God, it was like a Coldwater Creek catalog exploded all over the room. There were a lot of woolly vests, is what I’m saying, and not a cocktail dress in sight.

There was also a really fun moment where I was (truly very kindly) introduced as a blogger — literally, “And this is Jonna, she’s a blogger!” — and for a flash of a second, I thought I’d die because the concept was so foreign and no doubt insanely frivolous to the investment banker I was being introduced to. I felt so inadequate in that moment, because really, how do you follow that?

“Yes, hi! I obsessively document my life on the Internet, but hey, um, why don’t we talk about your $70B fund instead! How’s that going?”

And this was BEFORE I accidentally engaged a group (with the AMPLE assistance of my husband) in a lively, if slightly uncomfortable, discussion of “Scientology: Cult or Not?”

(Note: this is not as bad as it sounds, because of the lack of Scientologists and the fact that, I’m sorry, it’s a cult and we all thought so, but still. Really? How did I get there? REALLY?)

And dude, I didn’t wear the boots at all the entire evening due to a fabulous New England mud season tradition wherein you take them off at the door. Thank GOD for the last-minute addition of black tights, because, in nature’s never-ending reminder of ooky things, if there’s one thing I forgot, it’s that winter feet get JANKY when they’re all cooped up, and I’m sorry for the visual, but my God, winter feet are awful. Florida feet don’t do that, I swear. My puppies miss their unfettered breezy freedom found in a lifetime of Reef wearing, and every store should carry those foot cheese graters that give you gangrene when fallen into the wrong hands after grating multiple feets, because it’s obvious that WE ALL NEED THEM. I love New England, but this part is unpleasant. UNPLEASANT.

And hey, on to maple syrup sugaring! I don’t know what I was expecting, but the whole set up was like touring the Wonka factory, seriously. There were Oompa Loompas and vermicious knids, even! Okay, fine, there weren’t vermicious knids, but the distiller thing was so shiny and behemoth that I really was waiting for Gene Wilder to drive it away singing lines from “As You Like It” in his purple coat. And it was steamy! So steamy! Like that whole foamy scene! And though there were no fizzy lifting drinks, we did walk away with a wee bottle of our own, and it’s so fat and adorable I want to dress it up and put booties on it after I finish pouring it over a stack of pancakes.

Adam and I were also marveling that while sugaring and syruping (?) has gotten very high tech, the fundamentals of it are so crude. I mean, you jam a tap into a tree and shove a bucket under it, like this:

I mean, shouldn’t they have figured something out here? Some sort of wild piping system that draws the syrup out and delivers it to Giant Shiny Thing That Makes Syrup? No? I think my future might be in syrup planning and technology advancement.

Anyway, I hope you had a wonderful weekend full of pancakes and homemade syrup, too. Onward to Monday!

*Peter Gabriel, hooray!

10 comments April 6th, 2008