The Patchwork Cupboards Project

One of my favorite little projects in our new apartment (or new-to-us-since-summer-2011, but it's still so much a work-in-progress that I'll think of it as our "new" apartment awhile longer) has been dolling up the two small cupboards we use for dish storage. The cupboards mark the entry to our tiny kitchen, and I wanted them to pop with color.

This is what the cupboards looked like when we moved in:

For the first six months or so, I left the cupboards "bare" so that the dishes were visible in each of the wood-framed panes, thinking that since our dishes are all pretty colorful and since I had lined the cupboards' inner shelves with green contact paper, the effect would be pretty, but instead, we could only see the dishes that were right along the front of the shelves and it just didn't thrill me.  Next I attached just big rectangles of pink strawberry-themed oilcloth behind the cupboards' doors so that every pane of both cupboards showed the pink strawberry print.  "Blah!" to that too, but I lived with it until I figured out what I wanted to do.  And the answer should have been obvious to "Pretty Little Rough Patches" herself, of course, but it took another few months for me to think of it:  I finally used a bunch of different colors and patterns of oilcloth to create patchwork cupboards.  ♥

I had already had the green and blue ginghams and the pink strawberry oilcloths, so I looked on etsy for a few more prints, hoping to find a sample/lot-style listing so as not to have to pay separately for a bunch of pieces, and the ModernJune shop came through:  For only two dollars, I got a wide variety (of my choosing) of colors and patterns for my project:  Pink roses on white, yellow gingham, red cherries on yellow, pink and white polka dot, yellow orchids on black, red gingham, dahlias on orange. . . .Awesome variety at a great price. 

I attached each piece of oilcloth to the back of the wood frames with little dabs of hot glue.  I tested a corner a small scrap of oilcloth first to make sure it wouldn't damage the wood, and it peeled right off after it had dried, so no worries.  After an hour or so of arranging, cutting, and hot gluing, I had finally finished the cupboard project, shaking my head at myself the whole time as I wondered this hadn't been the obvious choice all along. 

The small two-tiered shelf on top of the cupboard at left had been a happy three-dollar Goodwill find in 2010, and I recently finished redoing it too.  When we moved here, I decided to keep it on the kitchen counter and sawed off half of the top shelf to make it fit around the window, but then I realized the cupboard door above it wouln't open if we stored things on the top shelf.  Measure twice, cut once.  :)  I moved it to the top of one of the now-patchwork cupboards and covered the front, back, and right side with green gingham oilcloth and the left side with black gingham oilcloth.  It now holds a few flowers and cookbooks.  The space left by having sawed off part of the top shelf perfectly fits my beloved vintage Daffodil vase (another great Goodwill find) too, so it all worked out.  

I still need to find artwork for the side of the cupboard at left, opposite the die-cut coffee, iced tea, and chocolate milk (the three things Mike and I drink the most) signs, and I want one more drink-themed sign (and have one in-mind) for the open space under the milk and tea ones, but that's piddly.  That, then, at long last, concludes the Patchwork Cupboards Project.  ♥

A Pink Christmas (and Rose-Colored Glasses)

Between Mike's and my sidewalk run-in with a thug who seemed to be looking for a fight December 22nd, a hacker's theft from my checking account Christmas Eve and the ongoing hassle that that's caused, a round of food poisoning for me beginning December 29th, and a stomach bug for Mike that started New Year's night, the past two weeks with their combination of anxiety, illness, and lack of money have made our humble little apartment seem even more of a safe haven than usual.  "Nothing can bring a real sense of security into the home except true love," Billy Graham believes, and I nod my head in agreement as I type his words here.  I believe that true love, in whatever form it takes, blesses everyone and everything in its path.  It bettered our holidays, and it brightens our "everydays," and it is always bigger than our troubles and troublemakers.  "What are we gonna live on this coming week?" Olivia Walton anxiously asks her husband in The Homecoming (one of my all-time favorite movies, ♥ any time of year) after he's spent his final paycheck on Christmas presents.  "Love, Woman," he replies, cradling her face with his work-worn hands, making my spirit soar every time.  John Walton is wise.  And after a holiday season that's tested peace-on-earth-and-goodwill-toward-men for so many around the world, it is a blessing to start this second week of January still believing in the power of goodness and love. 

This Christmas, our second together, Mike and I shared our now-traditional Christmas breakfast of cinnamon rolls and egg casserole and took special refuge in all the simple joys of home.  The pink and white church was a gift from Aunt Laurie this year.  The miniature pink tree was from my friend Madai last Christmas, and the snowflake tablecloth is a treasure from my younger brother.  The vintage pink house, cream tree candles, small cream bottlebrush tree, and pink reindeer were all from my mom.  

Mike and I opened our presents from family then ate breakfast before opening our gifts from each other.  I made the cinnamon rolls and Mike made the egg casserole this year. 

The tiny pink cupcake ornaments came in a surprise package from my aunt Heidi this year, and the gorgeous pink snowflake cookie ornament was one of my favorite gifts this Christmas.  Mom gave it to me early when I visited the weekend of December 21st.  Love, love, love.  ♥

Pink and pink gingham always make me happy and just seemed right for this Christmas morning.  Last year's breakfast table was aqua, and it was pretty, but I think I just needed the extra warmth of pink this time around.  The cinnamon rolls saw a generous sprinkling of pink sparkling sugar and Mike's mom's recipe of buttercream frosting.  

The pink quilted gingerbread mug and pink-rimmed dinner plates were Goodwill finds.  I had had a similarly sweet mug set out for Mike's coffee Christmas morning but knew he'd rather use his usual navy blue one, so I switched them.  That sounds trivial, but I had told Mike a few days before Christmas--the night of our encounter with the Sidewalk Thug, actually--that I don't want us to be a couple that argues over stupid things.  Every couple does, I know, but as I told him, I just want us to get into the habit of shaking off dumb little things and not wasting time or energy fighting about them.  If he wants a navy coffee mug instead of the prettier cream-colored one:  Who cares.  It's our Christmas morning and a breakfast together, not a photo shoot.  I wanted hash brown-style potatoes in the breakfast casserole; he did not.  If he was the one making it, who was I to argue?!  The years I make it, I'll add potatoes, and the years he makes it, he can skip them:  Big deal.  We are blessed to have whatever time we have with our loved ones.  Let's not waste it.   FlowerLady, if you're reading this, please know that remembering you and your dear husband is what really made this click for me this Christmas.  ♥  I've only been married a year and a half, and it is always surprising to me that just as it is easier sometimes to be good and kind to strangers and acquaintances than to one's own family, it is also easy to find myself treating others more gently than I do my own husband.  My senseless complaints about the breakfast casserole--a dish that my husband had kindly and even enthusiastically offered to make for our Christmas--made me ashamed of myself.  Hearing myself harping about hash browns and then remembering sweet Lorraine and Sandra and others who would happily eat glass if it meant getting to share a morning with their husbands again. . . .My goodness.  I knew better, so why wasn't I acting like it?  Navy blue mugs and potato-free casseroles:  Fine and good. 

We watched the Christmas Story movie while we ate.  Both the cinnamon rolls and egg casserole were wonderful.  The almost-bare wall around the hutch and tv is one of the new year's projects.  We have an ever-growing collection of posters and photos of artists, writers, actors, musicians, athletes, thinkers, and people-in-general who inspire us, and once our frame-buying has caught up with our art-acquiring, the wall will sport more than Mike's Yankees baseball pennants.  :)

Although we had a nice Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner too, it is our Christmas breakfast that has become my favorite part of the holiday now that I'm married.  This year's found us more appreciative of the safe haven we enjoy in our home and in each other, and it saw me become at least that much better of a wife.  Fine gifts, indeed.  And love will save the day.  ♥

Christmas Eve 2012

Beloved new Christmas sheets.  

Simple holiday decorating this year.  The wreath and tree are long-ago gifts from Mike's mom, and the little snow-covered church was a gift to us from my sweet Aunt Laurie this Christmas.  

Our Christmas tree is tethered to the wall with a bungee cord this year, and onto the curb it will go in a few weeks, so no matter.  It is filled with love and color, like Christmas trees and life should be, and it makes me happy.  The "Deck the Halls" sign was passed along by my sweet friend Madai.  The hearts are salt-dough ornaments I made last year.  And the angel at the top was made for me by Sommer's mom the first Christmas after Som died.  Love, love, love.  

And a heart-shaped bowl of buttercream-frosted sugar cookies for Santa (who I think will be wrapping my presents and filling my stocking tonight in the living room while I finish his and Stuffed's gifts back in the bedroom).  A phone call to my parents earlier this afternoon.  New Batman pajamas for Mike today and a not-quite-right holiday haircut from last week that's now in pigtails for me.  Emmet Otter-movie-watching and supper-that-Mike's-making-eating in awhile here.  Fancy Feast-enjoying soon for the kit-kat.  Breakfast cinnamon roll-baking later.  Much love to you all tonight and always.

~  Val ♥

One Christmas Eve

Now that I'm decades older than I was in this photo, I better understand how much effort it took my parents to make the kind of Christmas for me and my brothers that's pictured here.  In the mid-1980s, my parents were in their thirties, my brothers and I were all under the age of twelve, and only my dad worked outside the home. Although Christmas Eve dinners at my parents' house for a number of years now has meant a shrimp tray, oyster stew (or clam chowder?  I skip it and don't remember), a pot roast, and various sides and desserts, Christmas Eve's supper was not that elaborate when my brothers and I were kids.  I don't remember what we ate in those days, and whatever it was, I'm sure my mom made it special for us, but she and Dad are certainly living more comfortably now than they were in the mid-1980s.  

Awhile after we'd finished eating supper one Christmas Eve, there was a knock at the front door.  Our nearest family was my grandparents half an hour away, and we knew it wouldn't be them, so none of us could think of anyone who would be visiting us at such an hour the night before Christmas.  Dad roused himself from his blue slipcovered chair and stepped out onto the front porch, while Mom and my brothers and I waited and wondered.  After a few moments, Dad called out  a Goodnight and Merry Christmas to whoever he'd been listening to and walked back into the living room carrying with a large pizza box.  "From Marv and Debbie!" he declared, explaining that the delivery person had said that our neighbors across the street had ordered it for us and wished our family a happy holiday.  Our neighbors!  A pizza!  A second supper of anything--and on Christmas Eve!  Mom quickly cleared a space for the box on the coffee table that always served as our snack table back then, and soon we were laughing at the surprise and novelty of it as we ate our slices.  I remember that we all agreed how nice it was of our neighbors, and I remember too that that pizza was loaded:  I'd never seen so many toppings before and probably wasn't even aware that pizzas could be topped with all the ingredients our neighbors has ordered for ours.  Green peppers?!  Black olives?!  Sausage?!  Wow!  Ours was an especially happy--and especially full--family when we went to bed that night. 

I only remember a few moments from a few other childhood Christmas Eves, and that is the only Christmas Eve meal I remember at all.  I'm sure Mom and Dad thanked the neighbors, and if we hadn't done so already, I'm sure we kids decorated sugar cookies for Marv and Debbie later or colored a winter coloring book page for their refrigerator.  Marv was a walrus-mustached older man with glasses who I remember as always wearing a white t-shirt that showed off his arm tattoos.  Debbie was also older than my parents, and her bleached-blonde hair contrasted memorably with her year-round tan.  If Marv is remembered as sporting Fonzie-esque t-shirts, Debbie always comes to mind wearing a tank top.  Surely, this isn't what they wore in cold weather, but this is the only picture that ever comes to mind of them.  Their home reeked of cigarettes.  Their motor-home remained parked outside their garage the three or so years they lived across from us.  They gave me and my younger brother a giant stuffed dog that had belonged to Marv's now-grown son.  When Marv's high school-age daughter visited him one summer week, she and I were allowed to camp out overnight in their trailer and then go back-to-school clothes-shopping together at the mall the next afternoon.  "Don't show me what you bought.  Try it on for me so I can see you wearing it," Debbie chided us as she mashed her cigarettes into one of the many ash trays around the house when we returned.  "If I wanted to see clothes on hangers, I'd just go to the store myself."  I still hear her saying that every time I show Mike or my mom any item of clothing I've bought.  The Christmas Eve Pizza remains their most memorable kindness to our young family, though.  It speaks to the sweetness of surprise and the comfort in discovering that someone has been paying attention and is looking out for you.  Angels tend to be depicted in flowing gowns and gossamer wings, but in the mid-1980s, two chain-smoking ultra-tanned and multi-tattooed ones visited our home in the guise of a pizza delivery driver, and their act of kindness gave us not just unexpectedly full bellies but also delightfully full hearts.  

All Things Wise and Wonderful

While at the thrift shop last week, I spotted a paperback copy of one of the books from Jame's Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small series.  Do you know these books?  My grandmother loved them and always told me I should try them, but although I devoured just about every other book and magazine in her and Papa's house, I somehow could never get into Herriot's writings.  I truly tried.  I read enough of them as a kid--then as a pre-teen, then as a teenager, then as a twenty-something--to remember, without even needing to skim through the book's yellowed pages for a refresher at Goodwill last week, how the veterinary surgeon/narrator was always being telephoned in the middle of the night by farmers in need of his help and how he always seemed to be traveling and working in the cold in the wee hours of the morning.  Grandma would urge me to take one or more of her Herriot books home with me after a visit, but I never did.  "I just can't get into them," I'd apologize to her.  I loved animals and nature and memoirs and history and (the idea of) England but still couldn't connect with her beloved book series.  It's just like that sometimes.  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was another of Grandma's favorites, and she was always disappointed that I couldn't get into that story either. 

I would instead leave her and Papa's house with a paper grocery bag full of her "Best Loved" and "America's Favorite" poetry books, her biographies of John or Jacqueline Kennedy, her Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and her Golden Press nature field guides.  While looking at the tree book at their house, I would hold it up and ask Papa after every other page, "Have you seen this tree before?  Have you ever seen one of these?  Do they have these around here?"  Ditto for the American Birds book.  But the Wildflowers book was all Grandma and I, the two of us curled up on "her" chair in the corner of the living room or rocking side by side on the floral barkcloth-cushioned front porch swing as we slowly turned the pages.  Neither Grandma nor I were ever people who fell asleep easily or quickly, and it was while we were looking at the illustrated flowers one day that she told me that when she was in bed and couldn't sleep, she would try to think of a flower that begin with each letter of the alphabet.  It is funny what you remember.  When the time came in 2001 to help my parents clean out Papa and Grandma's house, I left behind many of their books because I assumed others in the family would also want them and I felt the person who had gifted my grandparents with certain books should be the one to hold on to them now.  I saved the "Disney's Wonderful World of Reading" hardcovers that Grandma had read to me before I knew how, and that I would later read and reread to her, in our afghan-covered reading chair, and I took a few more things from her bookcases, but I forced myself to be fair and let go of the rest.  

It was bittersweet when I finally read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn years ago.  Grandma was right and I was wrong:  It is one of my favorite books.  If Grandma had still been alive, it would have been something we would have talked about, or if we weren't going to see each other soon, I would have mentioned it in one of my letters to her.  I wish I could tell her that just recently, I shared with Mike Francie's mom's wise way of helping Francie feel "casually extravagant" by letting her dump her grown-cold coffee down the drain.  I love that. I also love thinking that Grandma knew me in a way that I didn't yet know myself as she watched me pull and then re-shelf books from her collection all those years.  She wouldn't be surprised, then, to hear that I bought the paperback of the James Herriot book last week--and that I am loving it too.  I have raced through the first forty-four chapters and will soon be done with the rest, and I've been bookmarking used copies on amazon of his other works so I can buy them with Christmas money later this month.  I want more, more, more!  Yorkshire is now home of the "World of James Herriot visitor attraction," I've learned this past week.  And an online shop of Herriot merchandise is, they say, coming soon!  While I can't buy Grandma a trinket from the store or museum and it is now too late for more book discussions out on the porch swing, I believe she's somehow shared my excitement this past week as I dip into Mr. Herriot's tales of performing Caesareans on sheep and pulling the village tailor's pins from the pads of his dog's paws.  I really think she knows.  As I cuddle up with the book in my own afghan-covered reading chair this week, it only seems right to believe, given all she knew before and all she knew all along, that somehow, Grandma knows.

Stuffed with His Stocking

We began decorating for Christmas last night by bringing the wreaths, our biggest tree, the ornaments, and our stockings out from storage.  Since I was sick the first few months of 2012 and didn't get all the Christmas things taken apart and down to storage until really (really) late this year, it really (really) seems like I just saw all these things a few days ago.  That usual "Ohhh!  Awwww!  I'd almost forgotten about this!" feeling just wasn't there as I unpacked everything last night.  One of the things I'd been looking forward to bringing out this winter, though, was Stuffed's new-to-us-but-found-on-eBay-after-Christmas-last-year Garfield Christmas stocking.  It's actually a stuffed Garfield holding a little stocking labeled "Stuff it!"  Perfect.  ♥  It will sit between my stocking and Mike's when I'm done getting things into place here today.  Until then, Garfield is Stuffed's new best friend and they've been resting on an armchair together.  Stuffed's been sniffing him and curling up next to him and holding him (and his own ever-protected security blanket of a tail) down with one of his front paws.  Sweet Kit-Kat.  This might end up being one Christmas decoration that stays out year-round.

Thanksgiving 2012

This year's was the first Thanksgiving I'd ever spent alone.  As I did last year, I volunteered to work this Thanksgiving so that I can instead have off Christmas, and Mike left town early Thursday morning to spend the holiday weekend with his family.  Friday afternoon found me catching up on sleep with Stuffed in bed beside me while the slow cooker worked its magic and later waking to finish cooking, still in my pajamas. 

I had treated myself to a $4 bundle of salmon-pink Roses and frosted and decorated a single carrot muffin--my first sugar in a month--for dessert.  After pouring my iced tea and taking these few photos, I treated Stuffed to a can of wet food, like Lisa did for her cats last Thursday, ♥ and even let him eat at the table for the very first time.  It was Friday night, then, when I finally sat down to enjoy a simple celebration of food and flowers--and a sweet fluff-ball of a dinner companion who always appreciates the good things in life--and to say thank you, again, for everything.

Thanksgiving, I reflected while dining alone (after Stuffed had hopped down from the table and curled up on the floor again), is just pausing to think about all that you have--and all that you have had--and being grateful for it.  To miss eating a bigger meal only meant that I'd been blessed by a finer meal before.  To wish I were with my husband and family only showed that I am lucky enough to love and be loved.  And to feel nostalgic for all the Thanksgivings spent sitting at the kids' table at Papa and Grandma's house only proved that Thanksgivings huge enough to require kids' tables and hosted by happy grandparents are for me, not fantasies but memories. 

Thanksgiving, I was reminded this year, isn't only a "real" Thanksgiving when one is enjoying a full plate or full home. Thanksgiving happens anytime one says thank you with a full heart.  That's all.  And that's everything.

Sunday Before Thanksgiving, From Birds to Bedtime

'Got up hours before Mike this morning.  'Walked to Target hoping to find one of the $1 "L♥VE" Christmas tree ornaments I'd seen on their website before the Black Friday shopper hoopla begins later this week and they all get snatched-up.  I found two, one for the tree and one to keep out year-round.  And two little birds to add to my flock that flutters against our red gingham curtains.  At our old apartment, we had a view of both the backyard and side yard and could watch Cardinals, Robins, and Chickadees (←my favorites) flit around for the seed we would scatter for them, but our new apartment has no real yard and sees no birds, so for now, it's an ever-growing collection of curtain birds.  'Picked out some Thanksgiving cards and Snoopy-themed Thanksgiving stickers to mail out tomorrow.  'Found four plates and two books at Goodwill.  Have I mentioned that I actually hate shopping?  I try to do as much online as possible.  After today, I am aiming for one more Target trip for Christmas gifts and hoping I can finish the rest online.  I usually succeed at this.  'Definitely a "Far from the Maddening Crowd" person.  

'Annoyed Stuffed by taking his picture while he sat on his window perch, but his posture was so cute and the trees in the neighbor's yard so glowing, I couldn't resist.  He spent last week determined to rub his nose against every corner in the apartment and is now black and white with a gray-until-all-his-fur-grows-back nose, but he is as adorable as ever.  While I was at work one night last week, he played fetch with one of his cat toys with Mike, trotting down the hall with the toy in his mouth and then returning to the living room with it.  I always tell Mike that if Stuffed didn't have claws, I'd be tempted to walk around holding him like a toy all day long, he's just so soft and cuddly and so purely CUTE, my favorite stuffed animal come-to-life.  'Love, love, love this shy little soul.  ♥

'Got my Thanksgiving cards ready to mail. Last month, I pressed a bunch of colorful leaves into the pages of a book to include in future letters, and they're now preserved in Thanksgiving mail with transparent tape over them.  I only remembered at the last minute today to buy Thanksgiving cards, so to end up even this on-top-of-things tonight is a pleasant surprise.  I volunteered to work Thanksgiving again this year so I can have Christmas off instead, so it just really hasn't been on my mind.  Mike will be spending Thursday with his family, and he and I will have a Thanksgiving dinner together sometime next week, I suppose.   

'Went out to supper with Mike and had two of the best iced teas I've had since Summer of Sun Tea (and Humidity) 2012.    Everyone in our section of booths at the restaurant tonight was so appreciative of the server and so pleasant toward her and with each other, it made our simple meal out even better.  The last time we went out to eat, everyone in our section was treated to an elderly woman in the booth beside ours who squawked at the harried server--who was a good ten yards away from her at the time--"What happened to the sour cream I was supposed to get THIRTY MINUTES AGO?????"  Grrrrrrrr.  The server handled it like a champ and later joked about it with us, but rudeness like that just makes my blood boil.  It is soooooo much nicer when people are just pleasant to each other.  "You know, we're living in a SOCIETY!" as George shouted on "Seinfeld."  Mike and I did enjoy barking variations of the elderly woman's line at each other for awhile after returning home tonight, though.  "What happened to the [drink/snack/napkin] you were supposed to bring me THIRTY MINUTES AGOOOOOOO?!!??"

'Admired my umpteen layers of clothing while I waited for Mike to get a coffee at Dunkin' Donuts for the walk home after supper.  I love this weather.  The stars were out as we walked, and it was just breezy enough to feel brisk and not so cold that it hurt our throats to breathe.  The houses were not yet decked-out in holiday lights as they'll start to be later this week.  For the last Sunday this year, their only glow came from interior lights and nearby street lamps.  A few pumpkins still sat on porch steps.  We only shared the sidewalks with a few people who were walking their dogs, which reminded us, at it always does, of the time we were walking some of the same streets only to find a tiny dog that had broken free of its fenced-in yard, and while we waited for the owners to meet us at the street we'd called to tell them we were on, I sat on the sidewalk holding the little dog and it rested his head on my thigh as if settling onto its pillow for the night.  So dear.  The puppy's name was "Coco," the owners told us when they arrived to take him home soon after that, so now every time Mike and I walk in that area, we recount the Coco story to each other and laugh about how, even though he was lost and had never seen us before, Coco had promptly snuggled his teacup-size head onto my lap.  ♥  

'Talked with Mom and Dad tonight and emailed a couple friends.  And now Mike has gone to bed and I am up late, as always, with my books and more iced tea beside me before I join him.  The blue floral skirt here is part of the desk re-do I've been working on, a story for another day. 

Election Day Love

I love Election Day.  If making it into a national holiday wouldn't "water it down" by eventually changing it to a Monday and turning it into an extended weekend of sales at the mall, I'd say that I'd love to see Election Day become a national holiday.  More friends and families heading out to cast their votes together.  Holding canned food drives at polling places.  Planning Election Day dinners and parties. 

This country, of all countries, should be as enthusiastic about Election Day as it is about the Fourth of July.  Red, white, and blue-sprinkled cupcakes in the bakery shop windows.  American flags whipping in the wind on every house-front.  Lines to vote as long as lines to watch parades.  

"It's not the voting that's democracy," playwright Tom Stoppard (author of my favorite play, Arcadia ♥♥)  notes.  "It's the counting."  Mike and I will walk to our polling place together tonight when he gets home from work, and then it will be a night of sandwiches and spinach-artichoke dip in front of the TV as we watch election coverage.  

I found a number of American flags while out on a walk this morning.  

I love that.  I love seeing the colors, the pride, the lack of apathy.  Today matters.  

Whenever my Italian grandfather would hear some story of "only-in-America" craziness on the nightly news, he would shake his head and mutter, "What a country!"  And always, always, he would follow that with "But I wouldn't want to live anywhere else." ♥

"You kids," he would tell us.  "You just don't know how good you have it." Like most of what Papa said, that is always a good thing for me to remember when I need some perspective. 

This morning shined bright in my neighborhood.  Leaves glittered in the sunlight as they fell from the trees.

After a dark week of rain, this morning's sunshine was a blessing.  A renewal of hope both in and out of the voting booths.  Senator John Kerry's 2004 concession speech beautifully reminds us that "in an American election, there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as Americans."  ♥  I wish Papa had lived just three years longer so we could have talked about that.  He surely would have been nodding appreciatively at Senator Kerry's words.  "See," he would have told whoever was there in the living room with him.  "He knows.  He knows." 

Crunchy fallen leaves on sidewalks.

Last week's Halloween jack-o-lanterns still sitting on peoples' stoops and front porch steps.

I love the whimsy especially when it is in the form of adult-carved cat-faced pumpkins feet away from political signs and bumper stickers.

I am just pleased to see people take an interest and vote, no matter their choice.  We tend to associate political campaigns with so much negativity, but it seems to me that that is mostly found online and in the media:  In "real" life, I think we all tend to be pretty respectful of each other.  And excited about this day.  Mike's and my old polling place was an elementary school gym, and outside it, the kids would sit at folding tables with hand-drawn-in-crayon "VOTE!" posters taped to the fronts and sell voters cookies.  I really think that when those of us of voting age turn off our televisions and computers and get in line to cast our ballots, the same simple excitement and wonder is ours, as well.  "Hardball" and Fox News and this week's poll and yesterday's "best" attack ads and last week's hard-hitting blah blah blah blah blah all slip away, and We the People are at the polling place with nothing but hopes and dreams and ideas about Changing Things and Making Things Better on our minds.  ♥  Happy Election Day.

Kindness is the only service that will stand the storm of life. ~ Abraham Lincoln

This week was the first in this apartment that found us sleeping in a "real" bed, since we just this past weekend assembled our newly-bought bed-frame and headboard.  The bedroom is the last room of our new-even-though-we-moved-in-August-1st-of-2011 apartment to be arranged and decorated, so finally, this Monday night, we slept in a properly made-up bed in a room that looked like a bedroom and not just The Room We're Unpacking From.  And it was the strangest of juxtapositions, the cold winds of Hurricane Sandy howling and its rains pelting the windows while Mike, Stuffed, and I curled up under quilts and comforters with a space heater on at the foot of the bed and a battery-operated candle flickering on Mike's nightstand:  Never before had we had such a snug and sound sleep in our new home, and all the while, so many were suffering so horribly.  Mike and I had watched CNN and the Weather Channel for hours before going to bed, in between checking on friends in New Jersey and Connecticut, so we  knew it was getting bad and going to get worse, but it was still shocking, when Mike woke up at 2 a.m. Tuesday and read aloud a news alert that had come across his phone:  "18 people dead."  That number has since risen, of course, but at 2 a.m. Tuesday, to hear such a thing while safely cuddled up against my husband and cat in a comfy new bed, was stunning.  And what was there to do at such an hour but cuddle closer and pray.

Soon after, I dreamed that I was walking past a store that had a group of Salvation Army bell-ringers out front, but they were not only ringing their bells hoping for the usual handfuls of change to be dropped into their red kettles for charity, but also singing, and it was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard, the most beautiful a cappella choir, their voices rising to the sweetest notes and harmonizing perfectly.  I was so moved by the sound of it, I wanted to cry out to tell them how beautiful they were and what a tonic their voices were, but of course, I didn't want to interrupt.  Dropping money into their kettles seemed almost too crass a thing to do in response to a moment of such beauty and grace.  I tried to catch the eyes of some of the singers, but--it being a dream--they were staring above and beyond me while they sang and I couldn't get anyone to make eye contact with me.  I decided just to leave whatever money I had on me, but after scrounging through my pockets and bag, I only came up with 37 cents.  After wrestling with my embarrassment for a few moments, I decided that if that was all I could give, then it would just have to be enough--better that, than nothing--and I dropped my handful of coins into one of the kettles, trying again to make eye contact with the singers while I smiled at them, hoping they understood my appreciation and my offering. 

This week with all its news of Sandy-related destruction and fledgling recovery has so heartbreakingly highlighted our fragility and strength.  "True strength is delicate," as the saying goes.  I have made my small donations to the Red Cross and the Humane Society, and I pray that those at this moment trapped in flooded homes and digging to find anything salvageable in burned-out yards can somehow sense all the prayers and good wishes we have all been sending and find strength in them.  "I don't feel God around me at all right now," I remember whimpering in disbelief to my favorite teacher the day after my best friend died in high school.  But He is here, he reassured me, explaining that God was my friends and my parents and anybody else who did anything kind or good to help me through my grief.  I still believe that, seventeen years later, so now I pray that we are all somehow putting our best selves forward for each other, being the little kids' God who gives away not just clean dry clothes but also coloring books and Halloween candy in makeshift shelters, being the adults' God who sends rescue boats and helps with insurance forms and who hands out hot coffee too.  Let our prayers and our offerings, even if they strike us as small, be enough today and in the days ahead.  I believe that love changes the world and that God is always here, masquerading as Halloween candy, warm blankets, and handfuls of coins.