B E B E R E

We tend to spend much more time with one side of Hal's family than the other. This weekend, since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to drop in on some of the cousins on his mom's side.

I'd met Sarma briefly years back, but never got to see her (or her place or her menagerie) since. Took a walk down to the Ware river, where people practice their fly fishing and played with her animals (three horses, a cat and a pitbull terrier named Jasper/Augustus/Piggy/Mama's Boy). It was nice to get reacquainted with her and to meet one of her brothers. (Didn't know that they made them taller or blonder than Hal, but apparently they do.)




Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of horses. When younger, I strayed too near a corral somewhere in Cluny (No - not this stud farm. The other one.) and a very upset someone decided to take her frustrations and anger out on me. As a result, I tend to give our equine friends a wide berth. After a bit of coaxing and assurances that these horses weren't out for blood, I started feeding them hands ful of clover and petting them like normal people would. The little one's called Lily. The big one's name is Old Yankee. I really grew to like him.



I love my cats; without them my life would be that much less interesting. I grew up with dogs, though, and there will always be a part of me that longs to have one (or two or three) again. Little Jasper has to be the sweetest-tempered, best behaved dog I've met yet. He could talk, sing, shake paws, play fetch. A particularly endearing thing he did was lie down on the ground with his head on my feet and look up at me as if to ask, "When are you going to start petting me? Would you please rub my belly?" I lost my heart to him with that one.




(Jasper in "piggy" mode.)

After our little adventure at the petting zoo, we had to make our way home. Since the house is about a mile up the road from the Quabbin Reservoir, we managed to talk Hal into taking me there for a look. I'd only just driven by it, so was glad to have the chance to actually get out and see it 'in person.' No pictures from that, unfortunately. We just wanted to walk across the dam (which, after 9/11, was closed to all traffic. It's a good part of Eastern MA/Boston's water supply, so pretty sensitive.) and be quiet a bit. Hal told me afterwards that, for some reason, while we were walking around the Quabbin, it hit him that we were doing so on September 11th. Such an odd feeling.