No Tricks, Just Treats

For you...

She walked from one end of the house to the other in a daze. Night fell and the street came to life with costumes and decorations and the thump of candy in bucket after bucket.

While the meal in a pumpkin baked in the oven, I took the first photos of the night.

Good Morning

Up at 5 am. I wished it were an early flight or study need woke me, instead restlessness settled in.

Make Today Great

Smile

When The Sun Goes Down

After they played and watched hockey and the soup was ladled into bowls, I ate the last bite of rice from the tupperware without any protest.

Haunted Woods

Everyone ran ahead, me, too. We stopped by the haunted woods, where the boys, one after the other in a screeching trail. Doughnuts and hot chocolate. Five minutes later, we left. Our fastest trail ever.

Pumpkins Carved

But we were in it together, the pumpkin carving. He leaned over the counter on the stool and plunged his hand into the goo. Some ended up in the trash, for the most part though, he pulled his weight in seeds.

O - yeah!

Sunday: yogurt, work: babies delivered and demised, donuts, sandwiches, photos from his game, breakfast with the boys, eggs and toast, bacon, Frightmares, hockey players on Cannibal: Birth in the Water, hot chocolate.

Back in Action

“Nice light isn’t it?” The man walked approached as I snapped a photo of the light painted on his pads. “Sure is,” I said as he opened the garage door.

Love at First Bite

No doubt about it, he had something to hide.

Witch Fest

My mom reminded me of the year I dressed up like a cat for Halloween. I remembered it well since I have the photograph of me as a cat that year. It was taken at my parent’s old house, the one behind the galleria, and I must have been sixteen or seventeen years old. I stood in my black dress with the cat ears she slid on a headband. My arms were slightly pulled from my torso as if pulled up by strings. The signifier though, the one that rooted me to the actual time and place, was the white and black swatch that circled my left wrist. I remembered how much I admired the way she could sew and how she wore a gold watch with Dr. Scholl shoes and bell bottoms jeans and let me watch old school Hollywood movies on the weekend and how despite making asparagus and brussels sprouts for dinner, I hoped to one day be just like her.

Bundle Up

A quote I read this morning on Pinterest: 

"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it." - Maya Angelou

If You Give A Boy A Cookie

We made cookies with orange colored pumpkins to smell baking in the oven. Mid-bake, it left cloud dust in its wake to the music of Star Wars’ theme song.

I'm So Glad

I live in a world where there are Octobers...

And these little guys! ❤️

Never Far

"You should apply for Life Flight team,” she said. “Yes,” I agreed. For now.

Marko's Out

North Shore Surfing

After I got the text about his concussion at the Steelheads game this morning, I found it hard to focus at work with wide aisles for sprinting with beds and floor to ceiling lights and fixtures and tools and whatnot for pulling out the babies.

Power to The O

First game a W for the O's. Marko played in every penalty kill. No goals scored on this boy. The team from Washington didn't like losing much.

Fresh Fall Air

Big night out at the Redneck Rivera – hot springs, chicken, music – you would hardly recognize us.

My Visitor

It was all too easy to lose oneself in routine and fractured sleep. The frantic grocery trip, unmade bed, summer clothes pile nearby and yet, when I went downstairs to tell my visitor good night before bed, I realized not for the first time that Morgen relishes in such studying depictions. He explores the edge as if it were breathing air, or life as it were, into a deflated balloon testing the strength of a flexible surface. Maybe it wasn’t like a balloon at all but a hyperreal snapshot of a man depicted in the middle of life. Either way, his studying felt microscopic, in much the same way I had for the past two years.

Stir the Senses

Since our return home from the islands, the hours seemed to slip away, like specs of glittering stardust.

Fallin' For You

The weeks of intensive nurse residency are close to done. One more week before the hospital went from close by back to downtown at LDS. After the Basic aeseptic technique class today and Tandem charting were done, I went to the corn maze where I spent hours walking through cornstalks in the autumn sun.

De-Light

The shopping center was divided with a white fountain, which reminded me again of Bellagio's white water world parceled into tiny abstractions.

Slumber

Late afternoon, when the sink water was turned off and I had slept soundly, I made oatmeal then scrap booked school pages. The question of what to make for dinner came up — soup, cheese, and bread, possibly — though peeling and chopping any vegetables held little interest.

It's Your Birthday

And I can't be there, but I'll send you a special birthday wish and a little prayer...

Happy Birthday

a day of remembering all the horses once ridden and roped.

Fly Away with Me

When Max arrived in Frasier at last (I took him to the airport this morning at 6:30) and Marko went to scouts for his citizenship in the community merit badge, I went to work with a snack of organic soybeans of all things.

Things to do this fall...

X Make something pumpkin

X Go on a drive

X Hayride at the farm

X Get lost in a corn maze

X Make soup on a rainy day

Drink hot apple cider outside

Collect fall leaves on a hike

X Watch a Harry Potter marathon

X Visit a haunted house

X Carve pumpkins

X Frightmares

X Donate to food bank

Pick apples from an orchard

X Eat caramel apples

X Clean out closets

X Rake leaves

Host a bonfire (roasting S'mores is worth it!)

Make homemade chili

Attend a football game

X Decorate front porch

Make homemade apple pie

X Picnic in the leaves 

X Bundle up for a bike ride 

X Have a thanksgiving feast

X Give thanks 

{Burn a fall scented candle}

Fr'ere Jacques

After school, we all took naps for an hour then drove over to the band concert in the new Jr. High auditorium.

Max's Out But Not Down

The night ended with a 4-1 victory over Park City and some Carl's Jr. 

Silver Side

Sunday: conference, painting, oranges and grapes, pennies, legos, chicken and pasta.

I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect greige, light grayish, but not too grayish, with a hint of beige, not too cool, not too warm, not too dark, not too light… clearly I have Goldilocks problems…

If that sounds confusing to you, you should have seen the look the guy at the Home Depot gave me when I was describing this elusive color!  I finally found one I was happy with though, Mythic/Silver Side (141-2) and I LOVE it.  It makes Max's room feel light and airy without feeling cold.

Son

Close to ten, the red lava lamp glowed from their shuttered windows inside the dorms. The text said he was on his way the stories commenced straight away. I ordered the usual smoothies from white gummi bear to pink starburst and we took turns visiting the door way while the other one sipped his and tried to finish telling us about Sasha and Britney both coming to his room. Serving chili at The Road Home was a honor society activity he said because he took Trax and could only tell me it was alright before adding that only 7 people got 100% on the economics mid term. He was one of them.

Boo-Yeah

Earlier in the day, You Are My Sunshine from the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack played in the background as I read bits of an essay and a poem from Naomi Nye’s So Much Happiness and at the same time played hide and go seek with the boys. I was reminded of the beauty in terms of language and sound.

Warm Up To Fall

Sunrise over Murray reminded me of rainbow sherbet and roller skates.