A Bear Went By
Path of Bruin
How odd to be awakened this morning by my husband calling from the newsroom to tell me to keep the dog, cats and kids indoors. A bear had been sighted in our town. A big, black bear.
Apparently early this morning the bear was seen not far from our house, rambled around the Seton Hall area for a bit, then ended up in Newark (perhaps he was just a Booker fan and wanted to celebrate? We're pretty happy here for Cory!) and was shot in Irvington (2 miles from my house) this afternoon. My kid's school is on the Irvington border - how surreal.
And - even more odd - it was the SECOND bear shot in a major urban area in NJ in the past week. Speaking of shooting, we had a people shooting in SO this week in front of the Cluck-U Chicken joint - very close to our home - someone jumped out of an SUV and shot another guy. Minnesota is looking even better.
A few years ago I woke up to a deer on our front lawn - a buck - a BIG buck. And we've seen deer in our back yard, but this is our first bear.
I took the bark collar off of the dog.
Thank You
Thanks to everyone who commented so kindly on my last post. I thought long and hard before posting it - always afraid that someone would say, "She's just being SO sensitive..." Recently I've read critiques of my blog (which sort of makes me think - why? What's the point in a blog critique? Either read it or don't - but I digress ) and I've been accused of TMI - too much information.
A valid point, but this is me, folks.
Thursday
Tomorrow I do my least favorite thing - pose for a photograph - and then I have lunch with a friend so all of the make-up will be put to good use. A local friend who's a portrait photographer is going to take some pictures of the kids this Spring (I won her services at our school auction) so I also hired her to take a picture or two of me so that MAYBE I can get a really good one for the book jackets. I wonder if I can just pose behind a bunch of knitting needles...?
Tomorrow Hannah and her class go to Sandy Hook (a seaside park which is just phenomenal, lots of beaches and beach-y terrain) and it's supposed to rain. Damn.
Hannah had a good day at school. The principal and I spoke, he had Hannah and one of the, ahem, more vocal kids into his office and - as Hannah put it - "I wanted to say, 'Thanks, second dad!'" when he read the kid the riot act about showing respect to the-boy-who-made-her-day-so-rotton.
And, yes, Hannah does understand that keeping one's cool is worth quite a bit, and it's something we continue to work on. Life is work! I had promised her earlier that if she keeps her cool through the year she can get her ears pierced in June. We'd slated that for her Bat Mitzvah, but so many of her friends are all getting pierced that this seemed a painless way to give in a bit, and also get her to work for it.
Romantic Knits
Swatching is going really well - I swatch a bit, then I check gauges and work up my schematics. Once that's finished I pull out the worksheets and do up a preliminary pattern, then let it set for a bit while I move on to something else. During a quiet time (?!) I pull out the worksheet again and look it over, see the glaring errors that I didn't see earlier, and try to make corrections. This is the point when I'm pretty much ready to send the patterns to test knitters so they can look them over before I send the yarn (don't want someone to be terribly surprised!) so if all goes well by this weekend I'll be in touch with many of my knitters.
It's been a slower process than I thought it would be this time around - and I'm afraid it's going to drag out a bit, too, so if I said I'd be in touch with you, don't despair!
Off to bed - we buried another bunny (courtesy of Butkis, who's trying to prove that he may be 14, but he's still the great orange-and-white hunter) and put up another headstone. I smell a Stephen King novel coming to life in the backyard. Wonder if the bear smelled it, too...
Feed me, baby!
14 Comments:
Well, I suppose it's better that Butkis went after a rabbit rather than a bear...I heard about all that on the news here in CT, lol...
Very glad to hear the principal took action with the kid who was making Hannah upset. I can completely empathize...I was the sensitive, easily crying kid myself.
And hey - I actually got to blog a few days ago!!! I'm back! :-)
We had a bear sighting in our neighborhood last week also, and I'm in Arcadia, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles. We live in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, and a bear was seen meandering around a pool in the backyard, and then it started to hop fences into other backyards once the authorities came. Luckily, no shootings were involved, but said Bear was on his jaunt right when the kids were getting out of school. We had lots of helicopters flying around. Quite an ordeal!
Once my hubby, my cousin and I were going to Gatlingburg and drove up through the mountains to get there. He had a little bitty car. Like a Datson or something similar. We were going merrily along, and suddenly out of the woods came this huge bear. It trotted right across the road in front of us like we weren't there, and went back down into the woods on the other side. This bear, on all fours, was taller than the car we were in. It was beautiful, but a little spooky at the same time. We had more fun that day talking about it. That's a once in a lifetime thing.
:)
Pretty wild! We have had coyotes/wolves in our neighborhood a few winters ago.. That was disconcerting!
About Hannah.. it is so good that she can talk to you.. and that you take it to heart and even do something about it.. I don't remember even bothering to talk to my mother about stuff like that.. I guess i thought it was useless..so.. keep it up.. you're doing her a world of good!
Denise
knitchat.com
About TMI...
To me blogs are about TMI. They are a place to air the cares of the day whether or not you have a public vs. private persona that you want to maintain. We write in places like this, because we want to be able to say, "Anyone have troubles like this? Am I doing the right thing?" It is good to sometimes see another person from the ether say, "That was how I dealt with it, and it worked OK for me."
i just read your post re: Hanna being teased at school. i'm proud of you and her and the other kids dad. my own daughter was reciently the focus of a nasty teasing joke and she was crushed just like that. she held her cool, i came home from work and she and i discussed all the options for dealing with it. we finally decided to let silence be our best defense...why? you might well wonder... my daughter is 30 and the incident took place AT WORK!! the point there is the bullys grow up and remain bullys while the kids that get picked on can grow stronger. go Hanna; be strong !!
it's been said, living well is the best revenge.
Annie, I don't recall ever seeing a bear in Minneapolis in the 60 years I've lived here. So come on down or up-whatever. I'm looking for that job for the hubby. Bonny
Minnesota offers fewer shootings, but more far bears! Of course, I live in northern Minnesota, where deer eat all our lovingly planted landscape plants, and bear in the trashcans are commonplace.
Far more exciting are when the moose wander into town. I once remember my school bus having to back all the way down our road because a moose wouldn't move out of the way. They just don't care!!
My "built-for-comfort-not-for-speed" cocker spaniel, Jack, once tried to take on a big cow moose with a yearling calf by giving her his "I'm big and tough" growl. The moose mama just looked at him and gave her best moose sneer like she was saying, "You've GOT to be kidding!". Jack immediately climbed onto my lap and made the wise decision that his moose-intimidating days were over.
Laura
OMG, I read about this today and never dreamed you were in harm's way!
regarding bullies: whenever the bullies started picking on me at school, I came home and tried to tell the parental units; I received more ridicule from them than help. and, of course, the nuns (catholic school) didn't want to hear it cause they were also doing their share of bullying.
after 4 years of therapy (before I began knitting), I learned that bullies thrive on the response received to their taunting. ignoring them starves a bully from the attention he/she seeks.
so I no longer have anything to do with my parental units OR the catholic church.
hannah is blessed to have an understanding mother in her life. also a school administrator willing to fight for what's right.
blog on, sister! those who don't like TMI can go elsewhere.
anne marie in philly
I looked at Hannah's poncho. Is that Hannah? She is soooo beautiful! Why would anyone want to pick on her? That has to be so frustrating as a mom. You seem to have lots of patience with others. I'm not so sure I would have handled it as well as you have.
I have homeschooled my children, so they have probably avoided lots of picking, but they still get some. Kids are kids. I do think that parents would want to know if their child is hurting another child...feelings or physical! I don't agree with people that think children should just "suck-it-up." The other children should be taught to just "respect-each-other!"
I love your knitting! I am so appreciative of all you do. Thanks so much!
Sheila S
NC
I live in Minnesota (Jennie, your chauffer and potter is a friend of mine from Knitting Camp.) and don't think moving to MN gets you away from the bears and deer. I live in Duluth and one day I heard a police siren wail just once, wait a minute, wail again, et cetera. I stepped out onto the front porch to see the police car herding a black bear down the street. It was very surreal...all the neighbors just stood on their porches like it was a parade! And the deer are EVERYWHERE. And I hope you move here anyway!-Tina
Annie, I would assume the critique-ers are merely jealous of your success. I think you should take it as a compliment.
Re Tuesday's post - my childhood was not pleasant as I was a tall, redhead, with VERY white skin and freckles - which all made me so shy it wasn't funny.
Maybe the bear was looking for his teddy. (My kids loved Jez Alborough books.) Here in Australia we might have more than our fair share of poisonous reptiles but at least there are no bears. No, not even koala bears as they are not bears.
My daughter is having problems at school at the moment with one particular boy and his sister. She is going to see the principal today to discuss it with him. One advantage of a small school is that the teachers are well aware of who the trouble makers are.
Regarding TMI etc. Your blog. Write whatever you want. I've noticed that you and Wendy attract a lot of criticism from the outer fringes of the knitting world. They are bloggers who consider themselves superior knitters. They sit on their high horses, looking down on the rest of us and write snarky commentaries while patting themselves on the back. All very sad.
Actually, Minneapolis just had two out-of-the-blue, random shootings that shook a lot of people up. Since they were in areas that we don't really expect shootings (i.e., not north Minneapolis, where there's a lot of gang-related activity), it was stunning. Even worse was the randomness; one guy was shot during a robbery, *after* the money was handed over.
Personally, I can't wait to move OUT of Minnesota and back into the small towns of Wisconsin that I love!
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home