Sugaring

Yesterday I took a day trip with Mel and Kristin to NH. We went to Parker's Maple Barn to learn all about tapping Maple trees. I put this in my calendar a full year ago, since I missed the season last year by not knowing about it in time. (There are so many neat things in New England you can't hit them all in a year.) So, come this year I told Mel, "We are doing this in March!" She called me a week ago and off we went. As it turns out, this weekend was their peak "Sugaring Season"! 

We started with a tour. Here's what I learned:

The Business:

-- Years ago, a man named Ray Parker began tapping his trees for sap. He eventually spread his business by asking his neighbors if he could tap their trees in exchange for free maple syrup. He would do all the work, he just needed more trees. Eventually he was tapping over about 5,000 trees. That's a huge business.

-- It takes about 40 gallons of sap to yield 1 gallon of syrup. Lots of work for minimal reward (Quantity that is. Their fresh syrup was definitely quality)

Tapping:

-- To properly tap a tree, all you need is a spiel and good weather {warm days and freezing nights} February to April is the approximate season span, with the middle of March the season's peak.

-- If you tap a tree too late in the season, the sap will yield bitter syrup called 'Buddy's syrup'. I asked if there was a way to tell the syrup would be bitter before you went through all the trouble of cooking it down. Nope. Just have to know the season and 'read' the weather. 

-- Different trees produce different types of sap/syrup. I suppose that's intuitive. Maple trees are the sweetest because of the high sugar content of the sap. 

The Sap:

-- The sap looks a lot like dirty water when it comes from the tree. It's clear-ish and very thin.

-- Leaves are what make the sugar in the sap during summer time. 

-- The more leaves on a tree, the sweeter the sap in the sugaring season.

-- Trees get sweeter as they get older because they have more limbs and, therefore, more leaves.

-- Sap is found in the outer 2 inches or so of the tree bark, so you only have to 'tap' into the tree with the spiel that far to extract the sap. 

-- A good sugar content of a tree's sap is around 3 or 4%. Seems low, but that's nature's chemistry! The higher the % of sugar in the sap, the more syrup a bucket of sap will yield. For example, if a bucket on one tree has sap with a 2% sugar content, and another tree gives you a bucket with sap having a 4% sugar content, the 4% bucket will yield roughly twice as much syrup using the same amount of sap after the cooking process is complete. 

 The Syrup:

-- It must be boiled for many hours to evaporate off all the water. When it's complete, it has a 67% sugar concentration. They measure this with a hydrometer and a small sample of syrup.

-- Syrup is the color it is (brown-like amber) because it comes from ground water the tree has absorbed. Duh! But I'd never thought of it. I think I always assumed it was artificially colored like everything else in this world~

-- It's very cloudy and must be filtered and graded. 

-- All sap from the same type of tree will have the same flavor, just different strengths and colors.

-- Strengths and colors are derived from varying sugar concentrations and how long it has been boiled.

-- The lower he sugar concentration, the longer the sap must be boiled. The longer it's boiled... the darker the syrup.

-- Typical boiling range is from 6-20 hours. 

-- The darker the syrup, the worse the grade (A, B, or C) Grade B is good/fine for cooking.

Fun Facts:

 --  Imitation maple flavoring always tastes a little off because... Nobody knows the correct or exact maple sugar chemistry. It seems to be nature's secret, which, I love~ 

-- After the official tour, we three girls got a private brief tour from the owner {below, feeding the fire}

Kristin then asked if she could feed the fire boiling he sap, and he was like, "Sure!" 

He took our photo, and we chatted by the fire about how he came to own the business, how the barn on site was restored and now functions as a restaurant, and just generally what life and responsibilities are like to own a maple sugar tree-tapping company :) 

... and yes... we DID then go promptly to the barn and have homemade pancakes DRENCHED with fresh maple syrup. It had to be done.

If I have some how failed to convince anyone not living on the East that living here is anything but amazing... then please let me know. I'll try a little harder to keep showing just how great it is out here...because it seriously is. There's so much to do!

And next time you buy syrup, try looking to see where its made. I recommend Parker's~

keep in contact

Woke up with the thought of, "I really really don't want to go to work today." I'd actually been woken up from a dream that I was two hours late for my first client; that I was still at home at noon when I'm supposed to see them at 10 am. Sometimes I get anxious...

Point being, the saving thought was, "I'll just text mama that I'm planning to keep in contact today cus I miss her and she'll be a nice distraction to all I have to do today." Turns out it was one of those, 'you- think-you- pressed-send' texts where you open your phone 4 hours later and see you never actually pressed send. Awesome.

Had a session with one client who was sharing with a fellow clinician the ages of her kids. And I realized I'm really close in age to her daughter. Fast forward a few hours to when I'm making dinner tonight and actually have time to my thoughts. It suddenly just struck me how my clients' aphasia wasn't just a loss to her. It was a huge loss to her daughter, or at least it would be to me if it was my mama.

She can't really talk with her mom anymore. I mean, she can talk TO her, but not really WITH her cus her mama can't say more then a few words back... and they're usually the same words selected from a very small word bank.

Particularly poignant given my first few thoughts of the day. I didn't wanna have anything to do with all I had to do, but felt like if I was at least texting mama all through the day I'd feel like my life wasn't being sucked into a giant "task-fest" and there was still life on the other side :)

Love you mama

'Keep in contact'

This is Mama speaking.  I can't express anything quite the way

you do. So, I just snuck in on your blog and added

these two photos. 

I'm so glad that you're my daughter.

And not a day goes by that I don't think that. 

XOXOXO

I have to...

For anyone a little out-of-the-loop on my current happenings, here's the gist of it:

I'm going to school full time, and on the other 4 days a week, I'm interning at the MGH Aphasia Center. Aphasia is an acquired language loss due to a traumatic brain injury, primarily due to a stroke although there can be other causes as well. It is the loss of one's use of language, not the loss of intelligence. I have 9 clients whom I see 1-2 times a week each. It's extremely busy and time demanding work, but this semester has taught me quite a lot about gratitude.

One of the classes I take is titled AAC, which stands for Alternative and Augmentative Communication. There are some individuals, young or old, who due to disease or disability do not have the ability to speak or communicate effectively and efficiently. They may only have the ability to produce a laugh, grunt, or vowel sounds, while others may have speech but highly highly limited output (only a single or a few words per minute, where the typical rate for most speakers is around 128 words a minute). So... they turn to alternative means of communication.

As a class, we had the opportunity to go to Children's Hospital this morning. The director walked us through the facility, showing us the many devices they have available there, and we got hands on experience with any we wanted to try. Amazing chance. Who get's to have a private tour of Children's and be invited to mess around with their equipment?! The 'machines' I find the most fascinating are those utilizing eye-gaze technology. Whether with a communication partner or a computer, there are methods/software that allow an individual to use the movement of their eyes to communicate. Through a series of patterned eye movements, blinks, etc. the individual can select letters, words and items to construct a sentence and communicate with those around them; something previously unavailable to them because they simply do not have a functioning body with which to use their voice.

When's the last time you thought about how blessed you are to have a voice? To be able to say hello in the blink of an eye? Some people have to spell it WITH the blinks of their eyes. Not easy, as I can now attest to, having tried it myself a few times.

~Be grateful for you voice, for the ease of it, what you are free to express, and for the unconscious daily use of it at your disposal~

For the title of this post...

One of my clients had a particularly devastating result of her stroke. She not only acquired Aphasia, but what is called Apraxia as well. In layman's terms, Apraxia of speech is like a short circuiting of the signal from your brain to your mouth. You know what you want to say, but 9 times out of 10, you just can not get your mouth to follow the commands of movement to properly articulate the sounds and words. It's like the signal get's jumbled up along it's path from the mind to the mouth.

I cannot imagine the frustration this would bring, especially for those who can hear themselves speak and KNOW what they are saying is coming out wrong. {Imagine wanting to say hammock and hearing yourself say, "Hammonger. No, hurbinger. No, babock!"} It is most frustrating to sit across the table and simply be the person who has to watch someone with this disorder. And then realize the whole reason they are sitting at your table is because they have come to YOU for help. So humbling.

In the most recent session with this client, we both reached a point where we looked at each other and knew we needed to stop our therapy task and take a moment to just 'be real'. I understood her to say (note* I don't say 'she said' because sessions tend to be a great deal of gesturing, single words, guessing and probing for clarification on my part, and me taking the clues I get form her and asking her, "are you trying to tell me a... person? place? number? ... etc"). So I understood her to say she was frustrated and tired of not being able to speak. She knows what she wants to say, and it comes out all wrong. She spent a good minute or two attempting to write the date of her stroke then the current date (we are encouraged to allow them time to speak and write because most people in their lives get irritated and impatient and don't allow them the time and understanding to let them get the words out). She intimated by pointing between the two and saying, "how come? Can't", that she doesn't understand why after all this time she still can't do what she used to. She can't spell anymore, reading is very difficult, and speaking is amazingly difficult both emotionally and physically. She then repeated, "how come?"

Tell me, how do you answer that?

She then said something that made us both cry. She gestured playing the piano and then the harp and said, "I have to. I have to gen (again)". She loved the piano and the harp. Now she can't play. Her brain doesn't sent the right signals to her hands. Growing up in a house of music, mama always playing the piano, Ty boy always singing or playing bagpipes with daddy, Call and Chase always playing music... I understood that have to better than she knew. There are certain things in all our lives that we feel we have to do, because they're a part of us and we need the 'doing of them' to feel like us.

I had to play the role of therapist and explain through my tears about the realities of her situation, the potential for progress, but the realities of the Aphasia never going away. I'm not a fan of feeling so cruel; to sit across the table from someone and be the one who has to tell them "You will always have Aphasia. It's never going away. You know this, right? We can work and hope for progress... but you will always have Aphasia." Some clients don't realize this. It seems astounding, but it's true. I don't feel I have the right to cry, cus I'm not the one with the loss. But some days? It feels almost as if I have the loss too. I love working with these people, and can't help but take on the emotions of each of them, their highs and lows of their days as they work through it all. And the shouldering of responsibility to try to help them, to plan for their sessions so their time is useful is very humbling.

I at least have the added unique blessing of understanding I have a Father in Heaven who knows my clients' minds and the new rewiring of them all. I've sent up my fair share of mid-session prayers, praying for understanding when the individual is trying so hard to tell me something, and also praying for guidance, knowing I may not have thought of every strategy to best assist my clients in speaking, but my Father in Heaven has... and he can and has enlightened my mind in the moment I've needed it because He wants, like I do, to help~

Happy Snow Days*

A new appreciation for, "The calm before the storm."

 Sleep tight! Wake up to...

... Snowy Wonderland*

There are two cars underneath there. I know...

Tried to trapse over to my car to see the damage. 

{Daddy recommended I shovel off as much snow as possible before it got icy}

Making it down the steps and to the street was nothing short of a miracle. 

WELL over knee deep,

 so I didn't even attempt the impossible.

(Or what I thought was impossible. See below~)

 I walked over to a friends house on semi-cleared and fully deserted roads. Then planned to stay pretty much tucked safely inside in sweats reading this A-Mazingly adorable book a friend brought over the day before, "In preparation for the storm" he said. Helps when you know awesome people~

But back to "The Impossible --- or not so impossible" task of clearing the snow*  

 I like to think I helped. But really it was ALL my guy friends who insisted they come over and dig us out that night, cus to wait till Monday would be a disaster. They did things I could never, would never do in clearing out the snow. Plus, they'd already dug out their own home and another friend's home. I was prepared to just let nature take its course and pray we'd have a miraculous heat wave of 80 degrees and all the snow would magically melt off and away. 

We took a dinner/pizza break after the first 2.5 hrs, (small payment for what they'd done), then they went back out to finish the job.

We DID manage to have a little fun, though. 

It's not every day you get to:

~ Shovel yourself out of Blizzard 2013, feeling like you've finally earned the right to say, "I know" when people tell you about Boston winters.

~ Shimmy through a snow-tunnel in your drive way. Thank you Matt.

~ Finally meet 3 of your neighbors, after you've been living somewhere for 2 years.

~ Drive a cop car after he gets stuck in front of your house and asks you to drive as everyone else pushes.

~ Subsequently be told by your little brother, "You can just die now," because in his book, my life has reached it's pinnacle of purpose now that I've driven a cop car.

~ Hold church in your friends' apartment when church is canceled. Thank you Bishop.

~ Realize how grateful you are to see a side walk, steps, your car, or that the heat hasn't shut off, yet.

~What a difference a day makes~

Happy Snow Days*

Puppers

 May 9, 2002 - January 6, 2013

~How we love our little beast~

We, or daddy really, liked to joke her. (see video) One time, daddy was chasing her around the yard and fell half-way in the pool! I think she's giving him the, "Well, what'd you expect?!" kinda look.

The Nose

Such a hound dog 

Teaching her that the pool really isn't as scary as she thinks. And letting her cool off. She never jumped in voluntarily!

Bath Time!

Clearly, her favorite occasion.

 The "double-ear" flap back

When she'd really howl, one or both of her ears would stay flapped back!

(Or, Ty boy would give her a little assistance)

Kisses

 This is how she would give you loves...

She'd often "join" us for dinner via the kitchen window.

Sometimes we'd sneak her a bite. The beast would eat anything...but fruit.

Then our Caramel girl got sick.

She had rapid liver failure and within four days, was gone.

We didn't know she was so critical, or what was even really going on 'till Sunday morning (day 4). We thought she'd ate something that made her feel 'off' and not want to eat or drink. She was still walking around a bit and digging in the garden. 

But Sunday morning, mama said puppers wasn't able to stand. I went to the sliding door and called her inside and she wobbled into my arms where I put her on her little bed. We rushed her to the animal hospital to run some tests. It was horrible to know she was hurting and we might lose our little beast. There was nothing we could do except drastic surgery, with little guarantee/hope of success for such a sick dog at her age.

So we chose to say goodbye and let our little girl go. 

It was so sudden, and as emotional and hard as anyone who's loved a pet would imagine. They are truly a member of your family, with their own personality; creating memories with everyone as a family and with their individual personal bond with each person. We loved her as much as we could that day. But you're never really ready to say your last goodbye, give your last kiss to her ear, hold her face in your hands or feel her soft fur knowing when you stop it'll be the last time. 

We made her a little box, putting her name on top in sparkly letters any girlie would love. Then daddy dug a hole where we all chose as a good spot. We wanted to be able to see her special spot and remember her forever.

Ty boy played the pipes and daddy said a prayer.

I jokingly voted to place this flying pig/rabbit deal by her spot, for obvious reasons. But daddy made a good point. After saying she was probably in heaven chasing bunnies, he realized you probably can't really "hunt" bunnies, as it is heaven, so figured they were probably just playing tag haha! Whatever she's doing, I'm positive she's happy and being loved while she waits for us. Our little beast was one happy, energetic, perpetually playful puppy her whole life. To mark her special place, mama picked out this perfect small bird bath, and I found this sweet "Heaven on Earth" stone. Perfect for our Caramel girl~

We've already looked out the window 100 times these past few days. We miss her. So much. I miss the walks, the wagging white tipped tail, the sniffs in my ear, the (annoying but not) barks, the surprise attacks to the sliding glass door, the sound of four skidding feet on the wood floors when she'd escape inside, daddy chasing her around the back yard, mama saying "little girl" from the kitchen as she'd admire the little beast through the window, her 'loves' any time of day or night as soon as you open the door, saturday morning stretches before the walk, her never ever ending energy ... 

I still sometimes look outside and, for a second, think I see her poking her head around the corner, lying in her bed, or sunbathing on her pillow. There was never a day she didn't love us and greet us at the door with a wagging tail and love to give. We'll never stop loving her.

Forever our Little Girl, Beast, Carmelito, Caramel Girl & Puppers

Mama's blog ... more photos and videos