I come back here from time to time

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October... It's my absolute favorite time of year.  Colors, warmth and chill, orange sunshine, the smell of wet earth and leaves.

On Saturday, after showering and dressing, I stood out on the back porch and let the sun and the wind dry my hair.  Being as that I live in the middle of the city, I'm sure there were traffic noises and train whistles, but I didn't hear any of that.  I heard birds, and I heard the wind in the trees, and I remembered other October days when I thought to myself, "This is my absolute favorite time of year." 

It was one of those quiet wistful moments in time that you feel like you might remember forever, but you know it'll more likely be forgotten in a matter of days.  If you're lucky, though, the elusive feeling will return to you in another time and place.

This was the song playing through my head on Saturday, and it captures that wistful, warm feeling of October sun and childhood memories.  Gosh, I love this band.

Scattered Black and Whites by Elbow...

Halloween fixins

Work continues on the girls' Halloween costumes. My time frame has been cut short by the fact that they want to wear these costumes to a party at Thea's old school, this weekend. So I have two whole less weeks than originally thought. At the moment Faith's is closest to being done, followed by Holly's. Thea's costume... I don't know what I'll do about it.

Updated costs:

Faith	Thea	Holly
Gown:  3.99 Turtleneck:  2.49 Earmuffs:  1.99 Gun:  0.99 Belt:  2.90	Boots:  7.90 Gloves:  2.99 Skirt:  1.99 Wings:  1.99 Sheer material:  8.39 Pleather:  3.37 Tulle:  .23	Orange felt: 2.99 Other felt:  1.50 T-shirt:  1.99
$12.36	$26.86	$6.48

But at least tonight we finished up the invitations to their Halloween/birthday party.  The girls did most of the work themselves -- Thea made the ribbon bats, while Faith cut all the paper and glued it together.  I had to come along behind them and re-glue the eyes on the bats and the bats to the invitations, since the "Tacky Glue" that Thea had used was failing to hold very well.  I ended up using hot glue.  They turned out pretty cute!

Spam and Fall

Have you ever noticed that when you visit your Gmail spam folder, the Google-generated ads that appear at the top of the screen usually involve recipes using Spam?  Is Google just trying to be funny?  Because they're supposed to know all about me, and that makes me think their algorithms are crap.  I already know that Facebook doesn't really know me.

Faith's and Holly's Halloween costumes will be done soon and I'll post pictures.

Check out this flashback.  Seven years ago this weekend, a friend and I took our girls camping.  Thea was 5, Faith was 3, and Paige, my friend's daughter, was 4.  It was a very cold and rainy weekend, and would have been miserable except for the fact that we allowed ourselves to gripe and laugh about the situation and in turn be more patient with the unhappy kids.  In particular I remember that we said "oh well" and let the girls play on a drenched playground in the rain, not worrying about the fact that they were getting soaked.

Anyway, we visited that same park this past weekend, and took a picture of the same three girls along a trail.  Now ages 12, 10 and 11, my how they have changed!

In October 2004

In October 2011

Weekend wrapup

House News

We had no landline phone service for two days, and no one would have noticed except that the alarm system control panel started beeping because it recognized it had no connection to the alarm company.  The problem was somewhere between the main road and the telephone pole across the street from my house, meaning it was NOT MY FAULT and I didn't have to pay Verizon to fix it.  HA.  Actually now my phone line sounds better than it has in years.  It was so staticky that you couldn't really talk to anyone.  Maybe now I'll actually answer the phone when someone calls.  Yeah.... probably not.

It was chilly in the house today so I turned on the heat, mainly just as a test to make sure it was going to come on when I REALLY needed it.  The boiler lit right up.  I am glad.

Neighbor News

Apparently one of the neighbor ladies has a live-in boyfriend.  Well, HAD, because tonight Dan heard her yelling at him and telling him he had to move out.  What?  I never saw this guy before this weekend.  How long did he live there, 24 hours?

Halloween Costumes Update

My friend Carrie went shopping with me this weekend and we knocked out most of Faith's costume.  We have a few pieces of Thea's costume, although she is much more difficult because she is trying to exactly match a picture of a costume she found on the internet.  We have zero pieces of Holly's costume.

Faith	Thea	Holly
Gown:  3.99 Turtleneck:  2.49 Earmuffs:  1.99 Gun:  0.99 Belt:  2.90	Boots:  7.90 Gloves:  2.99 Skirt:  1.99 Wings:  1.99
$12.36	$14.87

Holly Art

Holly drew some surprisingly recognizable pictures tonight.

This is a dog.

This is a cat. It is either in tall grass or in a cage... I'm not sure which.

Photo Alert

New pictures up, from our recent trip to Rehoboth Beach.  See them here!

Hollyisms

This pleasant exchange took place at dinner:

Holly:  There are bad people in the world.
Me:  But I'm not a bad person, right?
Holly:  You're fat.
Thea busts out laughing, so Holly looks to her. 
Holly, to Thea:  And you're lazy.
Me:  And what is Faith?
Holly thinks for a minute.
Holly:  A crybaby.
Thea:  And what about Dan?
Holly:  He's a fart machine.

Unfortunately she probably nailed all of us...

Another night we were having tortellini for dinner, and Holly gushed, "I love tortellini!  But I hate Tokyo!"  It took me a few minutes to realize that the last time we had tortellini for dinner, we also had gnocchi.  Not Tokyo.

Sometimes you feel like a nut

In honor of National Coffee Day I am having a cup at 8:30 pm. In it I put my new favorite creamer:



International Delight Almond Joy. Yeee-umm!

Going to try to post more regularly in October, practice using my words in anticipation of NaNoWriMo in November. Although I have hardly been writing, I have been reading a lot this year, 31 books so far.

Random pictures

Trying to organize and archive some old pictures I took with my phone, two or three phones ago.

(Did I mention I got a new phone? I moved into the Technology Age in July with a bona fide smart phone, the Samsung Gravity. As hard as I resisted, I have to say, I really love this phone.)

So as I was saying, here are a few pictures I took with previous phones for various reasons:

May 2010 -- label-making fail, at the library of all places


April 2010 -- Holly having some private time


April 2010 -- My Explorer hit a milestone. It lasted almost another year before the transmission went kaput and I had to say goodbye.


More pictures later...