A New Year Begins

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Even though this is my 2010 blog, I thought I'd show you all how we started the year with our best friends on TV

Today is New Year's Day, 2010. Zoe and I are at the river, preparing to send our boat down. We do this every year, sometime around this time of year. Zoe is not holding a mode of transportaion, but a launch pad, as it were. You can't see the boat too well, but it's made out of those hard seeds that fall out of maple trees. They're about half as big as a golf ball, and really hard, and if you step on them, they don't crush or anything. They also float. So I put them together by tying the stems together and then I poured melted candlewax over the whole sorry mess, stuck a couple of candles to the top and put a flower on it. (The decorations are mostly so you can see it when it gets a little farther away. Then we write down what we want to get rid of, and what we want to welcome into the new year on a piece of paper and float the whole thing down the river.

Here we are, ready to launch. In the past, we've noticed that you can't get it out into the current too easily, which means all your hopes and dreams just come back to the shore. So, we brought this rake along to push it out a little bit without having to wade in the river. This may be California, but that river is COLD.

So, we stuck it into the water, pushed it out into the current, and it caught the current this time and went sailing down the river. Whoopee!

For about 5 feet. Then it started to drift back o shore, which is what it always wants to do.

Enter the rescuer!! TAH DAH!

Paula saw it sneaking back to shore and waded out into the river to push it back out into the current.

I think she wrecked her shoes for this rescue, and it wasn't even her project.

The boat is the little white spot near the right edge of the picture.

As good a time as any to remember that we succeed because of the kindness of friends.