Happy Halloween

Everybody jump for joy...

...We're off to see the WOLF!!!
Have a Happy Halloween... We know we will!!!

Halloween Parade

Every year the girls' school has a Halloween parade. The kids all march out of the school and usually around the parking lot before parading back inside for their class parties. This year they changed the route a little and paraded around a field on a mountain in back of the school. It was C O L D up there which was fine for my kitty cat and unicorn, but some of the harem girls, ballerinas and bathing beauties looked downright cold.
Here's Hannah leading her class with her friend (and one of my Brownies) Maura:

Here's Hannah the unicorn. You can't see it, but in her bucket she has a baby unicorn. There were many cats and vampires and gory zombies but only ONE unicorn:

Here's Lizzie again. I love the little "paw" gloves we found on ebay: After the parade they went back in the school and had a party where they each got about 14 pounds of candy which they ate on the bus and did not share with their mother.

It's beginning to sound a lot like Christmas

I bought a memory card for my new camera and it turns out that it takes pretty good video. At least as good as my (recently drenched and now dead) video camera. Here's Lizzie playing the piano. She actually skipped ahead in her piano lesson book to teach heself this AND she's been playing the music that we sing at church by ear, too. I think she may be a prodigy. (Although I could be slightly biased.) For some reason when I converted this from the HUGE movie file my camera records in, it makes me sound like I've got some sort of speech impediment. Which I don't. (I'm pretty sure.)

Oh, and after she finishes playing you'll see some of the crazyness that is our lives around here. And please ignore my messy living room. I promise it will be nice and clean one of these days (maybe 2013?)

Enjoy ... and I hope this gets you in the Christmas spirit...

Happy Early Halloween

The following is my winning entry into the Writer's Weekly 24-hour short story contest. I wrote it during a fall weekend in Gettysburg about five years ago and I share it now to get you ready for Halloween.

The parameters of the contest were to write on a particular topic (woman brushing snow away from a grave in late autumn, and then running away from it), within a certain number of words (990) and within 24 hours. The parameters were emailed to us at 1 p.m. on a Saturday and the finished entries had to be emailed back by the next day at 1 p.m. I won an honorable mention, which put my story in the top 20 of the 500 entries.

This is my BONUS post for Thursday since I forgot Wednesday -- for cute kid pictures, see the post below this!

Find Me!





Margaret watched as the woman knelt at the grave, brushed the feathery snow from the granite lamb, taped a piece of pink paper to the headstone and then dashed away.



Through the smudged window Margaret saw her come every single day. Some days she bowed her head in prayer. Some days she appeared to weep. On days when it was dreary she’d bring a handful of daisies. Always though, she’d touch the shiny weathered head of the lamb and leave a pink slip of paper.



Margaret traced a finger in the dust of the windowpane found herself tapping it. Tap … tap … tap…



It was a game she and Connor used to play. She’d tap; he’d tap. She’d tap faster; he’d tap faster. They’d tap on the stairs, on the windows, on the doors and tables until they were dancing in circles around the house, laughing and falling into a happy snuggle on the overstuffed couch in front of the fireplace. It was heaven.



Now Connor lay beneath that lamb in the flash-frozen earth and Margaret knew what no one else knew – that she should have saved him.



Margaret moved her hand from the chill of the windowpane down to the sill and reached her long fingers towards the bottle of xanax. Two would make her to move away from the window. Four would make her forget. Eight would make her sleep. Sixteen would make her sleep forever.
Instead of grabbing the bottle she flicked it another inch away from her, marveling as it pitched to the side before righting itself.



It was better to feel the pain. Better to remember.



There was a time when her life was blissfully ordinary. Margaret lived with her husband, six-year-old Connor, and a baby girl who smiled from dawn until dusk. Margaret knew a boundless love. But then the police would knock at her door and hand her a stuffed animal, a blankie, a torn tee shirt and ask her what she felt. And she felt boundless pain.



“Can you find him?” They’d ask.



Once in a while they’d bring skittish parents with them who would grab Margaret’s hand and squeeze it until she said, yes, I can find him.



Newspapers wrote about her, clerics prayed for her, skeptics mocked her.



Yet, she always found them.



But then one day when winter had blown fall to pieces, there was a police officer at her door and he handed her a note.



She remembered seeing his breath in the space between them – crazy for October, she said, laughing. But there was no amusement in the officer’s bright blue eyes as he read the note aloud.





Connor was taken, hidden, dying and – if she was as talented as the papers said – able to be saved by her, and only her.



The words spat at her from the paper, challenging her or in a crazy zealot way supporting her, but it didn’t matter. In that moment, standing in the brisk breeze of an early winter she was just a mother with nails bitten to the quick in fear for her son’s life. In that moment she wasn’t intuitive. In that moment she was scared. She was hopeless. She was human.



So, Margaret went to the room at the top of the stairs where Connor had been just that morning, dawdling his way through his morning routine, and she sat on his bed and pulled his Barney comforter around her. Tighter. Like his arms in an embrace.



“Find me,” she heard it softly. “Find me, Mommy, I’m waiting.”



Margaret closed her eyes and strained to see where he was. But he was just a voice. Like so many voices with no bodies, no arms or legs or heads. Just spirits in space.



Every day a note came. Every day, every hour, every minute, Margaret sat in his room and heard the same thing over and over again. “Find me, Mommy, I’m waiting.”



She told them to search for a barn near a lake and they did. No Connor.



She told them to search for a woodshed in a thicket of evergreen trees and they did. No Connor.



Seven days into her agony, a hunter found him in a tree house in the woods, as cold as the lamb that two days later marked his grave. In his hands he held two pictures: One of a barn by a lake and the other of a woodshed in a circle of evergreens.



Margaret buried him and went into her house to wonder why she couldn’t save him. Wonder if she’d ever be able to forgive herself for letting him go.



Every day the voice still tortured her, “Find me, Mommy.”



And every day this woman with her strawberry blonde hair and her handful of daisies would come by the gravesite.



Margaret tapped on the window to see if the woman noticed, but she just left her note and turned away, not even glancing at the house.



But on this day, Margaret flew out the door in a rage. Connor was her son. She would brush the snow from his grave and lay daisies.



But by the time Margaret had gotten outside and over to the grave the woman was gone. She knelt and rested her head against the lamb, reading Connor’s name and his dates. Her eyes glanced over the pink piece of paper taped to the lamb’s back. It said “Find the Light, Mommy.”



Margaret heard Connor in that moment, louder and sweeter this time. “Find me Mommy. I’m waiting for you.”



There was light. And there was Connor. There was forgiveness and nothing to forgive.



And at the edge of the woods in the freezing cold of an early winter Margaret’s daughter watched her mother finally, 23 years after her grieving suicide, disappear into the thin air of the universe.

New Camera

Yes, I am aware that I didn't post yesterday. That is why I will have a BONUS post later this evening.

But for now I want to tell you all that I bought a new camera. It's a Kodak point and shoot and I love it. It's different from my Canon because it's a point and shoot, but frankly nearly all the pictures that I take don't need more than a point and shoot. And this one has a SCENES setting that will supposedly change settings so that I can get close ups and action shots.

And it has video.
Of course with the internal memory you only get 13 SECONDS of video, but I'll get a memory card eventually (of course the memory cards from my other two cameras are the wrong kind!)

So here are some pictures that I took today. I did not edit these pictures at all. They are Straight Out of the Camera. In photography circles that's important to note, but I note it here because it basically means I did not edit out the messiness of my house. Or the fluffyness of my dog. Cash was the first object I could photograph when the camera was delivered this morning:

Later though Hannah came home. The thing that is cool about this picture is that the back is sort of blurred, but Hannah (who was jumping around) is still in focus:

Lizzie is hiding behind Hannah and you can see taht they are being crazy. And trust me, this craziness did not end until about 45 minutes ago:

They took time out for a hug, too. Oh, and for those of you interested in ghost-y things, you'll notice an orb up in the corner of the room. Interestingly when I take pictures with my SLR there are rarely orbs because of the way the camera works, but a point and shoot will capture them. So we have some visitors in the house:

Lizzie and Rob working on her piano lessons together. Hannah trying to get into the picture:

Hannah getting in the picture:

Lizzie getting in the spirit of things: So, I'm giving the camera two thumbs up. I'm going to try some photo editing to see how that works. And once I get a bigger memory card I'll upload some video. Lizzie's getting really good on the piano!

Food

I love to cook. I love to eat.

It was, in fact, a perfect marriage until I found out that this perfect marriage of skill and enjoyment was destined for divorce court thanks to that dastardly interloper, HIGH CHOLESTEROL.

Now, I've had high cholesterol for a few years. In fact it's been a lot higher than it was when I went to the doctor recently, but since she's my NEW doctor she was alarmed and started saying things like, diet and exercise and vegetables. Oh. My.

She did not say words like chocolate chip cookies, cream puffs and raisin toast. Or ziti or lasagna or filet mignon.

In fact when I said them she said that I couldn't eat them. Not even in moderation. No one, it seems, NEEDS to eat cream puffs. Bummer.

So, after a full 24 hours of sulking I decided that I will engage my love of cooking in a quest for healthy meals in hopes that my family will still love eating what I've created. Or to be more specific that I will love eating what I've created.

So last week I made this vegetarian curry. It satisfies several of my requirements for food, the first of which is that it must be easy to find the ingredients in my pantry and spice cabinet. For this recipe I had to adjust some of the spices to things that I had on hand because I'm not the kind of person to run out and buy a jar of cayenne pepper when crushed red pepper flakes will work just as well. That, my friends, is also why I can never give you my exact recipes. I have no idea what goes into them.

Anyway, The verdict was mixed. I LOVED it, Rob LOVED it. The girls? Not so much. It is very spicy, which I could probably tone down, but it was soooooo good I'm not going to. Luckily both girls loved the rice that was served with it. For the leftovers I made a box of cous cous with raisins. Yummo as Rachel Ray (of whom I am NOT a fan, but I like the word) would say.

So it is with only moderate sulking that I continue my quest for good HEALTHY low calorie food. Her exercise recommendation (10 sessions of 30 minutes per week) will take a lot more sulking to get over.

Ode to Cash

If nothing else, the title of this post will get Rob to read it. Although he'll be sorely disappointed because this post is about my puppy Cash, not the kind of cash Rob would write an ode to.

Anyway, I love my dog. I've always known it -- ever since he looked at me with he dark chocolate brown eyes and threw up all over my back seat. We bonded instantly.
And last week Cash was very sick and threw up all over the house (seriously this dog has thrown up in the last 7 months more than both Hannah and Elizabeth combined in their lives of the past 7 (almost 8) years!) so I had to take him to the vet and he had to spend the night in the hospital.
HOSPITAL!
It turns out he just had a bad stomach virus, but it was kind of lonely around here without him for that day and a half. Because even though he can be a very very BAD dog, he's mostly a very GOOD dog. See, here he is with Hannah: What you can't see is that probably about 25 seconds before I snapped this picture Hannah and Cash were driving each other CRAZY. Lizzie and Hannah see Cash as their baby brother and treat him accordingly. I think I break up just as many fights between dog and girl as I do between girl and girl. Ultimately though, Cash is very forgiving and they all make up and live to fight another day.

Lizzie has told me that she's jealous of Cash and that he gets to stay home with me all day. I told her that it's really not all that interesting. Pretty much Cash sleeps during the day except for the walk we try to take in the late morning. He needs to conserve his energy for when the other puppies get off the bus. Here he's giving Lizzie a little puppy love:

Here are Cash's stats: He'll be a year old on Nov. 17 and he weighs around 50 lbs. I don't know how tall he is, but I know that when he stands on his hind legs he's as tall as me, and he can jump on the kitchen table unassisted in one leap. He can sit, lay down, stay (once in a while), get up and dance (usually with Hannah). He likes to eat everything EXCEPT his dog food. And by everything I mean bandaids, kleenex, toilet paper, dead things on the lawn, leaves and the occasional raw chicken that's been left to thaw on the kitchen island.

Interestingly though, Cash has a delicate stomach which means that when he eats these things we get to seem them again. One way or another. I'm sorry for that visual. I probably should have put a warning in case you were reading this over your breakfast... Anyway, Cash now is supposed to get doses of Pepcid when his stomach is upset. And he'll have to go back to the dog hospital if he has another episode like last week because he got dehydrated. Oh and he has allergies, too. He needs benedryl when the grass is growing or trees or blooming or something like that. I know he HAS allergies, but I don't know what they are to.

But I love him despite his puky stomach and craziness with the girls and the fact that if I don't get to bed in time he appropriates my side of the mattress. I love him because he is a good dog, he gives me kisses, he makes me laugh, and (mostly, I think) he's the ONLY person in this family who actually listens to me (at least once in a while.)

And because I love him, this is what happens when you're mean to the dog. You get to spend some time in doggy jail WITH him... Let's just say this isn't the first time Hannah's been hanging with Cash -- nor will it be the last.