Mid-October

'A weekend admiring Lake Erie, some beautiful walks in my favorite season, watching The Blair Witch Project and A Star Is Born at local theaters, pumpkin cupcakes and a pumpkin-cream cheese roll, a visit with Mike's mom, multiple Monarch butterfly sightings, Stuffed curled up beside the radiator, World Series playoffs, catching up on "This Is Us" and "Better Call Saul," more work on my 1980s memoir, a camel-color cardigan with cream cuffs, "Mud Mask" color nail polish, a coworker who just earned a well-deserved new position, a rainbow, reading Lost Moon:  The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, and discovering that pink pumpkins exist. 

♥

Stuffed with His Easter Duck :)

♥

The Easter Spider

Every Easter morning, while Mike is momentarily busy with something, The Easter Spider visits. (Spider-Man-loving Mike would not, of course, be visited by a bunny.) This morning while Mike went outside to get the paper, the Easter Spider left behind Mike's traditional peanut butter candy-filled basket, and this time, treat of treats: It included a duck! How did he know that Mike wants a pond filled with ducks and can't yet have one? :)

Happy Easter to you all. ♥

Be Still, My Heart!

While looking for something online this morning, I came across a picture of a set of old playing cards with this unbelievably accurate drawing of me and Mike's dream home on one side.  It's a tiny maybe-one-story house! With a fishing pond! And ducks for Mike! And cats and dogs! Rounded window/frame above the door! Cobblestone path! An apple tree like the one in Great-Grandma's yard! A big old mailbox up on a pole! Shutters AND a window box! There are even Cattail plants edging the pond! A few years ago, Mike and I were emailing back and forth, and I sent him another one of my dream home pictures along with the following email:

Now, picture yourself on the (bigger-than-this) front porch in a comfy chair with a pillow behind you and your feet up, reading the newspaper to Stuffed--you underestimate him: he's probably quite interested --and looking up every now and then to watch Rowlf/Buster/Buckingham patrol the grounds. The scent of apple pie is wafting out to you from the kitchen, and the honeybees are (at a safe distance! and) buzzing around the flowers and their boxes. A better-than-water-beverage is at your feet. Our pet groundhog  is chasing squirrels. Your girl lounges beside you, happy happy happy....Can you dig it?

He wrote back "Let's make it happen." And bit by bit, one Craigslist-acquired-wing-chair and Daffodil-bulb-from-a-friend at a time, we are. I'll save the new picture-find for inspiration and take it as a sign that we're on track here. ♥