But We Have Flowers

One of today's Day-Off Projects is the dismantling of a decorating project that just never worked:  The flower-photo wall.  Until today, this wall above our armchairs--we don't have a couch--was a giant collage-type space of photos, silk flowers, and the occasional doodad--a little hand-painted Stuffed shape, for example, and various colorful hearts, even the hand-print/paw-print canvas we painted years ago--and it was always chaotic instead of merely colorful, and I just never really liked it.  In four and a half years of living here, I never took a single picture of this wall, and that tells me all I need to know.  'Time for a change. 

I do have a plan for the new-and-improved wall, but for now, it's simply time to strip, patch, and touch-up the paint on it.  I actually prefer it the way it is now--half-stripped--than I did when it was filled with all the flowers I had collected the past few years. 

And with the outside world in so much trouble today, it is a sweet respite from the terror-filled news broadcasts to slow down and notice again each of these bright blooms.  Have you watched this video of a man explaining the Paris attacks to his questioning toddler?  "They might have guns," he tells the little boy, "But we have flowers."  This world!  'So many reasons to weep for it and so much beauty in it. 

An Ode to All the Sunset Watchers

I love my parents more all the time for their appreciation of beauty.  "Who wants to see something pretty?" Olivia Walton asks her family after finding her Christmas cactus blooming in The Homecoming, and every Christmas when I watch the movie--it is one of my favorites--I think of my parents.  "Dad!" I called into the house while Mom and I sat out on the deck last week, "You should come see this sunset.  It's gorgeous!"  It didn't at all surprise me to hear him promptly push his footstool away from his chair in the living room to come join us.  I love that not only wasn't I surprised that Dad put his crossword puzzle aside to look at a  pretty sky, but also that I'd called out to him already knowing that that would be the case:  It was a given.  I come from people who appreciate beauty.  This fireball of a sunset was only embers on the horizon after just a few minutes, making the watching of it with my parents all the sweeter. 

Not everyone does appreciate it, I have learned.  Not everyone jumps up to look when news of a striking sunset or sunrise or moon or vibrant Cardinal-in-a-tree is shared.  And what a sad and shabby way of living that has to be.  Whether it is the flash of the red bird against the snow-heaped branch or the flaming sunset over the neighbor's house, after all, it is flitting.  As Mike well-knows, one of my biggest pet peeves at work is my asking someone how his or her day is going and hearing in response an Eeyore-like "It's going."  Gah!  Typically, those who answer once with "It's going" answer every time with "It's going" too, I've noticed.  Life is just passing for them, and there they are just dragging themselves along with it, ball with chain.  "It's going."  GAH!  It's going, all right.  Shake a leg, wise up, this matters, this is it, come look at the *&$@%# sunset!  

A thank you to all of you, then, who share your home (and is Jane's home not the dearest!?  ♥), your yard (← that is one of my favorite photos that talented Lisa has shared over the years), your garden (bliss!), your holiday traditions (love!) and holiday tables (so cozy and colorful!  Cheryl's!  love!), your passions (and your smile, Margaret!), your party-planning (everything Melissa touches is lovely), your determination to become your best self (my favorite line of this post highlights why I so love Heather's blog:  "Life right now is about recognizing small victories so I took a moment, spiked a football and then got down on one knee and pointed to the sky."  Ha!  Writing that shines ♥), your poetry (← a favorite writer), your family (this story! ♥), your sunlight (gorgeous first photo, that!), your self-care rituals (and most-everything eighty-something-year-old Ernestine posts is an inspiration), your love of history (← a treasure-trove of research), your miracles and wonders (so much big-hearted goodness in Yankee's posts), and even your (darling) picnics. . . .Oh, I love it all, I'm grateful for it all, I could go on all day.  With every shared word and photo, you prove your life is not just "going."  Beautiful. 

In the Woods

Like my dad, I call autumn my favorite season.  It is funny how peoples' favorite seasons rarely seem hard to guess correctly.  Aunt Laurie is a spring, and Mom is most definitely a summer.  Oh, sweet fall, though!  As Dad and I were saying last week, we would have it last until about the week before Christmas, then enjoy winter--even a blustery, freezing, and deep-snowed one--until oh, maybe a week after New Year's, and then move right into spring.  No gradual thaw, but just:  "Today, spring!"   (Remember in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter how in bed in the wee hours of an April or May morning after the months of one-blizzard-after-another, Laura realized the wind was no longer howling outside and she could hear water dripping from the roof's eaves?  "The Chinook is blowing!" she yells to Pa, and he answers that he hears it too and that spring has come.  Oh, yes.  That's the one-moment-winter-and-the-next-moment-spring season-change we're wanting.)  And no more of the wishy-washy "springs" we've had lately that seem to be a week of warm temperatures when snow is still on the ground that causes us all to chatter about "What a nice break this is, after being so cold for so long!" but then the welcome "break" from winter becomes  a stretch of days in the upper seventies and then Mike and I have all our windows wide open during Easter dinner and our air conditioners on for the "summer" that is now beginning in May.  No, a true spring.  And then a proper summer next, with warm becoming hot and then turning hotter and then even humid, and right when you can't take the humidity anymore:  Fall!  Well, Dad and I aren't in charge, and no one's asked, but that's our report on How a Year Should Be. 

Last Monday afternoon while Dad stayed inside with Mom, I spent some time walking in the patch of woods behind their house and hardly wanted to go back indoors.  Fall color is past its peak at home, but enough remained to awe me.  The creek Dad dips his watering cans into for his gardens through the summer reflected mostly-bare branches and was lined by the mosses' and ferns' deep green and the surprising remainders of leaves glowing ruby and gold.  Birdhouses that Dad had built and painted barn-red were vibrant in the gray branches of a few trees, while patches of orange Chinese Lanterns dotted the woods like twinkling string lights at the bases of others.  There was enough of a breeze to sweep the pine needle and soil scents through the air but not so much as to make picture-taking impossible.  The only sounds were the bubbling of the creek and the leaves brushing against the trees.  The sun was setting as I finally turned the corner to head back into the field behind Mom and Dad's house, gifting me with the shadow pictures I so love, and a last heart-shaped leaf was awaiting me beside Dad's compost pile before I climbed the deck's steps and came in to change into pajamas for the night.  Glorious fall.  

On a Blue-Check Sick-Bed

I returned yesterday from a longer-than-usual visit with Mom and Dad.  Mom is recovering from surgery, and with each day of that recovery, one of this fall's biggest worries wanes a bit more.  She has an outpatient surgery scheduled for spring, but to have one hospital-stay down and one procedure to-go is better than where we were a week ago, so we will focus on that for now.  And eat our weight in pumpkin muffins.  My brothers have been keeping Mom supplied with gluten-free groceries, and the muffins, rolls, and macaroni have all been hits.  I arrived Sunday with a basket of magazines, a handmade scrapbook, and a few other other goodies--and Halloween treats for my dad, nieces, and nephew--and set up camp in the living room with Mom, sleeping on one of the chairs at night while Mom slept on the couch.  Sweet Mom, who always gives so much of herself to everyone else, has been showered with flowers, baked goods, visits from her beloved "grandbabies," and oh! the most wonderful mail.  ♥  We kept lit in the living room a pumpkin-scented candle Aunt Laurie had sent in a pre-surgery care package.  We made cinnamon rolls from a gluten-free pizza crust mix my younger brother had given her.  We smiled over a get-well card my older brother's kids had drawn for her.  We enjoyed a visit with my dancing queen of an almost-two-year-old niece.  We enjoyed Dad's laundry service.  And the early November weather was mild enough for Mom to get some fresh air out on the deck, albeit still cuddled-up in a blanket, and for me to take a break and enjoy some walks around the yard and in the woods behind her and Dad's house.  We watched movies, old "Barney Miller" episodes--we share a Hal Linden crush--and the most striking sunset, and I myself found hearts, of course, while resting on the deck's steps, and while walking in the woods, and even while packing to come back here:  A red heart sticker we hadn't noticed before appeared stuck to the kitchen floor.  "Well, I'll have to think about that one," Mom murmured as she looked down at it during one of her required laps around the house.  "  I have no idea where that would have come from."  She had just told me the day before that she hasn't had any stickers to add to her letters and envelopes in ages, so stickers could be a Christmas idea for her, if I needed any ideas. . . .♥  I couldn't bear to scrape it off of the tile.  Mom can ponder it while she completes her daily laps, and assuming Dad won't notice it if he mops the floor, I will enjoy seeing it again when I return home in three weeks to help Mom put up the Christmas trees, to try our hand at gluten-free crescent rolls, and to give Chef Dad a break from cooking supper.  Here's to every good heart that graces our journeys, and let us not take any of them for granted. 

Friday Morning

♥

Three Charming Things ~ On a Day When I Needed Them

With the mailing of Miss Eloise, I have now donated 73 book characters and 400 books to my former elementary school's library.  There are about that many students in the school, so my donations are a drop in the "reading material bucket," but it's a drop that wasn't there before, after all, so I'm happy.  

I walked about thirty minutes in the rain this morning and found this double-leaf heart.  Birds circling overhead, late October trees in vivid contrast to the sooty-looking sky, and leaves like mixed candy on the ground and in the puddles:  Autumn, you are sweet.  I have been dragging through fall this year and feel so drained and discombobulated every day lately.  I cling to these beautiful things and record some of them here in pictures--and then log back off and bring out my journal and pen to record more of the words. 

And dear little Stuffed, forever and always my favorite stuffed animal.  ♥  Until the heat is turned on in our building later this fall, this fur-covered yin-yang ball can be found in a nest of pillows and afghans or with his front paws stretched out under the space-heater.  Just knowing that something this beautiful and adorable and cuddly and pure exists, does my heart good.  And that he is a part of my life:  Well!  He is one of the sweetest parts, and I am thankful. 

Stuffed with the Yellow Trees

It turns out I posted almost the same photo exactly a year ago. 

October Heart

And so begin my days off.  ♥

Stop the World

Ah!  I woke up wishing I could stay home today instead of trudging off to work, and the feeling hasn't eased-up as the day's progressed.  I'm off the next two days, though, so here's to hanging in there this evening--and to having a job in the first place.  Tomorrow and Thursday will find me--when I'm not outside admiring leaves, at least--in this chair with this cat, so help me!