Autumn Awe

After going out for breakfast-for-him/lunch-for-me and a movie this afternoon, Mike and I walked home on a hilly cobblestone road that I would reside on in a heartbeat if I could afford it.  Author Willa Cather lived in a home on this hill in her pre-O Pioneers! years while she was teaching at local schools.  It is heavenly, especially in the fall.  The leaves' colors are so vibrant this year, they almost don't seem real.  I annoyed Mike by stopping to take picture after picture, settling myself onto the grass or pavement for some shots with my shoulder bag beside me.  Someday when I'm 100, I'll be glad I got these shots, I say.  :)  I could have taken a million more pictures and still barely have captured today's walk, though.  This was one of the most beautiful afternoons I've ever seen, and the leaves were pink! scarlet! gold! green! violet! rust! orange! peach! amazing!  It is all truly a wonder--And that this happens every year! And is free!  Bliss.  

All that beauty on just one little road!  ♥  And before arriving back at the apartment, we passed a church's local pumpkin sale.  The display is so striking every year, and I hadn't expected it to be set-up still, but there it was, a sweet end to a sweet afternoon.

As an aside:  Marie, Monique, and my other artistic readers, you may be amused to learn how much the pumpkin picture above amuses me--because one of my small goals for this fall was to draw better pumpkins, and this picture captures exactly what it was I'd been missing/somehow not really seeing before:  The top of a pumpkin isn't really the stem; some pumpkin appears above/behind the stem too.  :)  I doodle on the pages of my journal, and my pumpkin doodles finally improved a couple weeks ago when I figured that out. It is the little things, indeed.  :)

Ahhh, Winter!  Take your time coming this year, please!  I know each season has its charms and beauties, but I just don't want this fall to end.  This year, especially, the colors are a balm for the soul. 

♥

Mail for Mr. V

I am not quite on the ball with Halloween card-mailing this year, but I have a few things ready to send out.  I'll be getting just a few cards mailed today, I have a tiny box of cards and candy ready for my older niece and my nephew, and I had the book Where Is Baby's Pumpkin?  shipped to little niece Bianca a couple days ago to mark her first Halloween.  (The online book preview showed the baby peeking around an orange gingham curtain--

--and how could I have resisted?!)  Today's outgoing mail also includes a combination Halloween-thank you card for Mr. V, one of my fifth and sixth grade teachers.  He was one of my favorites and one of the best.  I've found what I'm hoping is really his address and have now offered my long-overdue thanks, which makes me happy.  

Mr. V was a sharp dresser and loved dogs and baseball--this was the era of the mid-late 1980s New York Mets and Darryl Strawberry, of whom there was a poster on one of Mr. V's classroom walls--and if I'm remembering correctly, the snazzy red car in the teachers' parking lot was his--but we students loved him because he cared about us, enjoyed us, and was simply one of the good ones.  He was the first teacher who really encouraged my art skills.  I painted or drew a picture of my Beagle in his class one day, and he not only praised it, but also took it over to a teacher who was visiting his room at the time--the equally wonderful Mr. M--and showed it off to him too.  Tradition at our elementary school was that each year, a couple of the sixth grade students were selected to illustrate the cover of the yearbook.  Instead of simply telling me in class the next day that I had been one of the two chosen student-artists, he knocked on the door of the other teacher's classroom I was in at the time--this time, dear Mr. G's--and asked if he could speak to me for a moment--He wants to talk to me?!  In the hall?!?  What did I do?!  I didn't do anything!  When I stepped into the hall, I found my best friend standing beside him, adding to the pure thrill seconds later when Mr. V announced that she and I would be the ones designing the yearbook cover.  He could have just waited to tell us in class, of course, just as he could have notified us separately, but no:  Instead he created a moment, and it was, clearly, a memorable one.  It is that kind of "small" kindness that stays with a person.  

Fifth grade was the year of our using microscopes for the first time too, and he shared our excitement as we saw insects and who-knows-what-else up-close for the very first time.  When I asked him after class one day where he bought the tiny lights for the microscopes we used in class, he answered at-length, but all I remember now is that he said that even the little Christmas tree string lights' bulbs would work.  That was the first year science ever interested me:  I asked my parents for both a cookbook and a microscope that Christmas.  There remains the feeling, almost thirty years later, that we all went through the fifth grade together:  He experienced it right along with us, as it should be.  And my gratitude is much bigger than I could ever express in a greeting card, but he'll be getting one in the mail this week anyway, and I hope it brightens his day as he brightened so many of mine.  

♥

Dad Begins Buctober

Dad is on the mend from both Shingles and a cold, but he, like so many baseball fans across our home state, will be cheering on his team tonight during its first playoff game since 1992.  I've been home twice in the past five weeks, and both visits have been full of Pirates games on TV and talk of "Dad's" Buccos.  A lifelong fan, Dad is known for saying at the start of every season, "THIS will be their year!"--and then, after each of the Bucs' recent twenty consecutive losing seasons, "We'll get 'em next year!"  Finally, this really does seem to be their year, commemorated in Dad's birthday card above in August,  :) and I've been so happy that Dad's gotten to experience their comeback. 

He'll still be thrilled with their performance even if their season doesn't go any further than tonight's playoff game, Dad told me over the weekend.  The bandwagon fans will fall away, he said, but the true fans know what an accomplishment it is that the team has achieved all that it already has this year.  But you can bet Dad'll be yelling at the TV tonight back home, cheering each run and chewing out the umps over any bad calls. 

The mania is sweeping the city.  Local restaurants' windows sport the Pirates' ship, flag, and battle cry. (If you don't already have a favorite team to root for tonight, this video is played toward the end of Pirates games and may sway you toward Dad's buccaneers.)  :)

The Pirate Parrot--with whom I want to have my picture taken at a game someday, although Mike scoffs and says "That's for little kids!"--is seemingly everywhere--

--included in the toys my nephew carries around with him. 

And even Pirates beer has appeared, this bottle on a side shelf of my parents' fridge.   Dad likes baseball because it's a game of strategy--like a chess match--he explained a few weeks ago.  People think football or basketball are the real strategy sports, he said, but Dad thinks baseball is more than any other sport.  I like it when people can articulate what they like or appreciate about something, especially when it teaches me something, so I found that  interesting. 

This is Dad in 1984 with my younger brother.  Now my younger brother is expecting his first baby next month.  Time flies.  Dad's team, however, has remained the same.  Here's hoping they win it tonight--for him, even if he'll be happy either way.  ♥  Hoist the colors!

Dad and the Val-Mark Corporation

I don't think my dad has ever received a store-bought card from me.  Starting when I was a kid, I've always drawn his card--he's the only one in the family who gets these goofy things--and the tradition continued yesterday with the mailing of his 2013 Father's Day card and care package.  Each year's Father's Day and birthday cartoon reflects some current in-joke or happening between us.  This year's was a depiction of him proudly standing beside the mantel he built for me and Mike.  He is, of course, clad in a Pirates baseball t-shirt and denim cut-off shorts.  (This is what he's almost always wearing in my drawings.  It's part of the tradition.) 

Another--and more integral-part of the hand-drawn card tradition is my tagline on the back:  "Val-Mark:  ♥  When you care enough to make the very best."  I considered that pretty clever when I thought of it as a kid.  Now, it's just tradition, and tradition must be upheld!  Dad knows it will always be there on the back of all of his cards from me. 

This year's card was nestled in a shoe box between a letter and some recent photos, a couple wrapped gifts, and a bunch of edibles.  An Almond Joy or Mounds bar appears somewhere in all his birthday and holiday gifts from me.  Once when I was staying with my grandparents for a few days in the summer, the day my parents were to pick me up happened to be my dad's birthday, and my grandmother asked me as we were out shopping the day before what I'd like to get my dad for his gift.  She just smiled as I went to a checkout line to grab a candy bar, and I overheard her telling my dad the next day, "I asked Val what she wanted to get you for your birthday, and she said she always gives you one of those?"  She sounded bemused, but I wasn't embarassed as I listened-in because Dad's response was something along the lines of a kindly laughing "Well, yes, it's tradition."  ♥ 

Dad's Beagle-and-heart-covered shoe box is winging its way toward him as I type this and should reach him tomorrow.  And until his August birthday rolls around, the Val-Mark greeting card industry has again closed up shop.  ♥

A Gnome-Themed Dinner Party for Mom and Aunt Laurie

Click to enlarge.  :)

When Mom mentioned a month or so ago that Aunt Laurie would be visiting the weekend of October 5th, I knew I wanted to do something special for them as a thank you for the sweet little anniversary party they put together for me and Mike in April.  In 2003, I made a Halloween meal during Aunt Laurie's fall visit, and almost a decade later, she's still giggling over the beef-stew-in-a-pumpkin pot and the sour-cream-and-black-olive-topped-potato-"ghosts."  By this September's end, I had decided to greet Aunt Laurie and her family with  a gnome-themed dinner the evening they arrived.  Mom and Aunt Laurie have a thing for gnomes.  Their flower gardens are full of them, they find odd little gnome gifts for each other, and they openly admit to wishing that they could live in miniature mushroom houses.  I had wanted the meal to be a surprise for both Aunt Laurie and Mom, but since I was holding it in Mom's house, I had to let her in on it, and in about two weeks, in letters and phone conversations, we planned our gnome-themed party.

I found gnome and toadstool stickers, 

and gnome napkins and tiny table decorations.  

Click to enlarge.  :)

Mom mentioned one night that she'd been making a small table-piece of a toadstool table and chair set for Aunt Laurie to keep and that she had found two garden gnomes on an end-of-summer clearance sale table.  Mom bought autumn-themed paper dinner and dessert plates too.  All of that with a scattering of autumn leaves, pumpkins, and gourds seemed like decoration enough. 

   

I focused on the menu and arrived at my parents' house October 4th with bags of groceries and baking supplies.  Aunt Laurie and her husband and son were to arrive the following evening, so less than an hour after I walked through the door that night, Mom and I were running into each other decorating her kitchen island with all our gnomes and I was baking toadstool cupcakes and gnome-shaped sugar cookies.  As we laughed and tripped over each other, we would spot yet another everyday kitchen item that was suddenly striking us as looking distinctly gnome-ish--"The funnel!  It's a gnome hat!  Look!"--and Dad could be overheard muttering, "Crazy, crazy, crazy" from the living room.  Before Mom went to bed that night, I finished transforming a yellow vinyl tablecloth into a dinner menu-backdrop to hang behind her kitchen island, and we laughed some more as we looked it over together before saying goodnight.

Click to enlarge.  :)

Since I was doing all the cooking and baking, I stayed up to get a head-start on everything I could.  I went to bed in the early morning Friday and got up again to continue cooking around 1:30 in the afternoon, about four hours before Aunt Laurie was to arrive.  And when I finally did see Aunt Laurie and her family pull into my parents' driveway at 5:00, I shouted to Mom and Dad, "Stall them!  STALL THEM!" as I put the finishing touches on the food and took a final few pictures.

Everything on the menu was gnome-themed, and except for the cupcakes, since she doesn't like cake much, everything was gluten-free for Mom. 

We had pasta with meatballs into which I'd rolled-up salami-slices to make "gnome heads-wearing-gnome hats," and tomato-mozzarella "toadstools" with Parmesan sprinkled on top:

Click to enlarge.  :)

We had two baskets of "gnome hats"--chocolate-peanut butter Bugles and plain Bugles--and I cut gnome shapes out of garlic bread dough to make gnome-shaped bread:

Click to enlarge.  :)

 I made a tray of fruit "gnome kabobs" and a tossed salad with toadstools carved out of radishes:

Click to enlarge.  :)

And for dessert, gnome-shaped sugar cookies:

Click to enlarge.  :)

and because we like what my mom calls "a wide assortment," toadstool house cupcakes:

Click to enlarge.  :)

 and frozen yogurt gnomes with whipped cream beards and, of course, waffle cone hats:

Click to enlarge.  :)

When Aunt Laurie walked in, she immediately saw the decorated kitchen and all the food, and me standing beside it, grinning like a fool, and Mom and I laughed in delight at her surprise over everything. 

Click to enlarge.  :)

I adore Aunt Laurie, if this isn't beyond clear by now.  If I weren't my mother's daughter, I'd be hers.  Who besides me and Mom gets such a kick out of themed food, after all.  Just watching her ooh and ahh over our crazy menu and decorations was fun enough, but I still had to show her, my uncle, and my cousin "The Tree."  Knowing none of us is the wear-a-gnome-hat-for-photos kind of person, I had instead edited a bunch of photos of the six of us in attendance at our little family dinner with the addition of gnome hats and gnome outfits and attached them to the limbs of a decorative tree Mom keeps in her dining room with garden twine, toadstool stickers, and twinkly Christmas lights  If we laughed over the food, we positively howled over the Tree photos.  ♥

Click to enlarge.  :)

Click to enlarge.  :)

Click to enlarge.  :)

Oh my gosh, this was truly all so funny.  My dad, uncle, and cousin had long since headed into the living room to watch baseball or football or whatever it was, and Mom, Aunt Laurie, and I just laughed like loons as we looked at all the pictures and food.  I caught Mom's eye at one point and we just smiled at each other.  I think I can speak for all three of us when I say that if you asked us a hundred years from now about some of our favorite moments together in this life, we would all remember to mention our laughter during this silly gnome party.  While everyone got settled to eat and Aunt Laurie took a few photos with her camera, I escaped into my parents' bedroom for a minute to send Mike, who had had to stay here for the weekend, a jubilant little text message:  "Aunt Laurie arrived a few minutes ago.  Is giggling over everything and loves it all.  Mish-shone accomplished!"  :)

Click to enlarge.  :)

In addition to these cell phone pictures, I took an entire roll of film that night with a disposable camera Mom had bought for the occasion, and I found out from the one-hour photo place yesterday morning that for the first time in the 25 or so years I've been taking pictures, my entire roll of film was blank.  Blank.  An entire roll of film just--somehow--gone.  The store developed it, and it was just blank.  A bad camera or a bad developing job, who knows.  My photo of me hugging Aunt Laurie beside the Tree:  Never to be seen.  The one of Mom and Aunt Laurie laughing beside the gnome-themed buffet and big menu:  Gone.  The candid shot I captured of Aunt Laurie just as she walked in and saw the party for the first time:  Blank.  I spent a couple hours upset about it yesterday, and then I decided just to get on with things.  Aunt Laurie will share whatever photos she took, and I have the cell phone food pictures and at least this one blurry cell phone picture of Aunt Laurie beside the food and photo-tree, 

Click to enlarge.  :)

and that, with my drawings (which will be saved to include in future scrapbook-gifts for Aunt Laurie and Mom) will have to do.  Memories of this little shindig won't fade anytime soon, after all.  Aunt Laurie sent a thank you note this past week expressing as much.  'Updating now to add that she has passed along the following photos she took:

Click to enlarge.  :)

And even without more pictures from the night, "gnome is where your heart is" anyway, as Aunt Laurie and Mom would giggle and remind me.  ♥