Inside the book of Elena again, a little, with pictures.

Elena has always been the private one of the two. Nastia if she has a secret, wait and she'll maybe tell you. Elena, before she tells a secret, you'll have to go through a few birthdays and then she'll tell you she forgot what the secret is, but I'm sure she now has another secret to keep, like the fact she really didn't forget the first secret. Teri won't agree with me that Elena is a big mystery. She will agree that she is private and loyal and puts up a big tough front that will sometime crumble and she'll start crying disolving into your arms and suddenly her vulnerability is breaking your heart. Is she this really tough person who has a wall of paper mache (for all you neophytes (a person who is new to a subject, skill, or belief.) Paper mache is glue and water with shredded newpaper or use flour and water with newpaper) protecting herself. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way.

There have been times where her and I will get into an arguement and it will escalate to a dangerous point. Once and I talked about it, oh about a year and change ago I came home and didn't realize I was in a bad mood. I went up to talk to the girls about dinner and I find out they are going for a walk. I tell them, the fuck you are. Elena rips into me and she keeps verbally coming at me. I guess I was at her too, I'm not sure anymore. What I am sure of is I almost put her through a wall that night.Looking back at it if I had, I don't think my relationship with Elena and Teri would have ever recovered. They would have changed toward me for the worse and who know how much worse. After that night I promised myself I'd never lose my temper like that again with her. Whenever I feel that anger raising I disengage. I stop talking to her. If she continues on I don't reply. I never want to get that angry at her ever again. Nastia has noticed the difference in how we treat the two of them and I admitted to her that because herr sister never backs down, she gets away with things that Nastia would not. I asked her to not tell her sister that. And since Elena doesn't read this blog either she may never find out.

Elena is a contradiction to me. She has Anami charactors on her car hood and doors. She has T-Rex seat covers. If she gets married she wants a dinosaur wedding (yes, just what it sounds like) and she has a Stitch steering wheel cover. She wears mens underwear and only occationally womens. She is independant, sometimes forgets she is part of a family, she has strong feeling towards Matt. I think she loves him, sometimes she might even like him. When he comes around the house that is when she likes him and he has been around the house lately. Which also means hickies are again appearing on her neck. Such is Elena. She works in a tire place in New City. She normally has few wants. She took a pay cut to move to the tire place, but works more hours. She has more money in the bank then any of us. She has tattoos, she hasn't gotten her complete sleeve yet. All that she has is vines going up her arm.She wants sculls, her mother is trying to convince her out of it. Me, I think tattoos make a persons skin look like it needs a good washing, so I keep my mouth shut. Elena is private. Nastia will say she has her peroid. Only way you know Elena has her's is after she has been unusually nasty in an arguement Teri will say, she is getting her peroid.

Life in a house of women is fun and maddening. I guess women in a house of men/boys have another version of it. I try to be as close to each of them as they will let me. Sometimes I feel real close to Elena. Maybe after I've shown her how to fix something that I learned how to do on my own I will feel there is no barriers between us. Then there will be that time, maybe around dinner time after she has showered and her hands are still a little black from work, her mother will comment about them. "Oh, Elena your hands are still so dirty!". Of course Elena will reply, "I like em like that!" Elena will get testy, all right, nasty and say things that should not be said and if they are said should not be left unanswered. But going down that road leads to damaged walls and broke relationships. A route I never want to travel.So mostly I've learned to sit quietly and let the waves of anger from her wash over and past me. If I ever feel the desire to answer one of her statements and I can't resist or maybe I've forgotten I need to sit this one out. Teri will alway tell me to leave it alone and mostly after the first leave it alone I do, thank God.

Don't get me wrong life with Elena is lots of fun. Someone told Teri that Elena was going to be the one who breaks your heart. I've alway assumed that is in a good way, you know when she does something that is unexpected and just totally out of left field. You'll sit back and go, " My God,what possessed her to do that. I have been so touched by her generosity of spirit sometime that I have no words for it. She is always the one who goes all in for the holidays. I found some Halloween decorations from years past. She saw them and up they went. Now when it comes to taking them down...yeah, well no one is perfect. /

HERITAGE OF WEST NYACK FALL FESTIVAL

HERITAGE OF WEST NYACK FALL FESTIVAL - Rockland Newshttps://rocklandnews.com › heritage-of-west-nyack-fall-... HERITAGE OF WEST NYACK FALL FESTIVAL. October 4, 2022. Date: Sunday, October 16, 2022. Time: 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM. Learn More

A week ago on a bright warm fall day the HERITAGE OF WEST NYACK FALL FESTIVAL had its festival over at the Traphagen property in Blauvelt or maybe West Nyack. Poor West Nyack, about 100 hundred years ago between the Clarksville corners and the railroad tracks it had a thriving downtown. Where the Plastic Craft is used to be a hotel, across the street near the tracks was another hotel. Corner of Benson and West Nyack Rd (Rt 59 in those days) there was a guy who delivered milk. used to get my Uncle Ken up real early in the morning to help him out. Just east of the Clarksville Inn was a candy store owns by the Jones', I've been told or maybe it was across West Nyack Road where that house is. There was a black smith shop real early on a spur of the Railroad where there building the park now that a tender and maybe another rail car sunk in the mud. Shops along the northern side of the road heading toward the railroad tracks. It's all gone. I've heard it was a fire. I read somewhere they closed of the crossing at the tracks because a school bus got hit by a train. I'm not confusing it with the one in Valley Cottage in the 70's. We hadn't gone to the fall festival in the last few years. Covid, I think cancelled it for two years and we'd missed the year before Covid and last year we hadn't gotten there. So this year seemed like a good time to go. Nastia was around that day, (yes Nastia that is a little dig at you never being home, but since you don't read this and may never,I have little to fear. I don't use LOL, so, I'll teehee...that is a sinister laugh) Well, Nastia joined Teri, Nancy and I for a warm couple of hours at the Traphagen property.We parked at the Germond's pool and walked the side walk over to the big house.

Off to the left where tractor hay rides sorta (there was no hay people sat in a trailor and were driven around a field.) There were pumpkins strew around that people could pick and buy. It was very popular and they did run out.There were musicians playing in the barn or garage foundation remains. Another house on an the adjacent property was open for the first time, for me. I went inside and it made me feel like I was upstate. It was old and quiet and had that smell of old exposed wood warmed by the sun and cooled by the nights for many years. I walked out the back door and the fields had been cut with a sickle blade mower. There were clumps of grass Nastia and I walked through

reminding me of when Mr. Dibble would come over and cut the grass around the house upstate and occasionally he'd leave those same clumps. Near the top of the hill I turned around and everything thing feels so open, I felt the vast space I was standing in. Someone from 100 years ago would laugh at what I thought of as vast space, it still reminded of Rockland when I was a kid. You don't realize how crowded life has become in Rockland until a time like that. Teri calls for us to return and I am back in the present heading toward the throng of people who have gathered for the HERITAGE OF WEST NYACK FALL FESTIVAL. I walk by a tree and the ground is covered with fallen nuts. I check my handy dandy 'Picture This' app and I am told they are black walnuts on the ground.So, yes I have to pick up a bunch to try and grow black walnut trees next spring. When I get come, I put them somewhere safe and don'tremember where that is. Sometimes I'm so like my mom.

We walk around a little more talk to Karl and Madeline some. Nastia of course is hungry so she has a hot dog, then she wants fries, but the line is too long,so we go. Walking back to the car along the edge of the road I notice the remains of a fence post and rail. To me this is one of the treasures that no one else will notice or value. A simple post that might only be sixty years old, but it might have been used to keep the horses or cow on the property. I

could be romanticizing something that was placed there by one of the last people to live in the house and it is just something that a suburbanite might have stuck on the corner of their property thinking it was cool. You know someone like me did it. I think I am going to go with my fantasy that it is over a hundred years old and Cow or horses were kept on the property and off of the dirt road and out of traffic.

/