All Hallow's Eve

I love Halloween.
Currently listening to Jill Tracy, drinking Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, and mentally piecing together my costume for the night's festivities.
Be safe everyone.

Animal lover

This little girl loves her some animals. She talked about this pony for the rest of the afternoon and cried endlessly as we were leaving because we wouldn't spend another 4 dollars on a second ride.

She ran through the parking lot cursing our names and tried to hitch a ride from another visiting family from West Lafayette who were attempting to stuff their small son into his car seat as he was also spewing profanities to his parents about wanting to take another hayride and they were all, no way, mister, hayrides don't grow on trees, to which he smartly responded, but you know what does grown on trees? bad, mean parents, to which they quickly slid their minivan door closed and sped off down the dirt road.

I am liking this necklace and am considering an early holiday present to myself

It's got to be the change in the weather that's prompting me to want to wear something like this. It's feminine and quite kitschy. I love it lots.

from etsy seller lechic

Befitting of her middle name

We enjoyed a really great weekend which included a free children's movie (no thanks to the crabby, grumpy lady who wouldn't move her damn coat for us because she said that someone was sitting there. Um, unless you've got yourself an invisible friend in that fleece jacket there, sweetie, I didn't see anyone come sit in that last empty seat in the theater and my 2-year-old daughter spent every bit of 75 minutes squirming in my lap and grinding buttery popcorn kernels into my crotch, thanks to you), pumpkin spice lattes, a trip to the wind farm in Benton County (look it up, super cool) and many other fun autumnal activities. I'll be sure to remember these days as I'm cursing the cold weather in just a few short weeks.

My dwelling just might look a little like this if I lived in a fancy New York space without baskets of mermaid and animal plastic toys to trip over

I've always had a great appreciation for clever design and color; despite the fact that my own wardrobe is mostly the same 6 colors and none of them are actually all that bright, come to think of it. My chameleon-like tastes include lots of things which could include painfully modern, silly vintage, highly dramatic and heavy baroque; and I'm a Pisces, so it all depends on, you know, my mood.

I also spend oodles of time and brain power thinking about, sketching and looking at interesting shapes and style. This contemporary wall radiator (yes, that slip-n-slide banana-yellow thing on the wall) is a great example of an innovative mind. It kind of reminds me of that sketch on SNL with Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen where they play a German couple who live in an all white apartment and have unrecognizable modern chairs and she wears a white 1/2 dress, 1/2 pantsuit, has a severely asymmetrical haircut and she and her husband (who wears a lavendar jumpsuit) cannot properly pronounce the very common names of her daughter's dates. Okay, yes, I do need a night out; thanks for asking.

from trendir

Change of pace

I camp with this wonderful bunch every year for a weekend at the Feast of the Hunter's Moon. We sing songs, play music, cook amazing campfire meals and catch up with everyone. I've been going to this event since the early 90s and I'm so happy that we're going to now start taking a yearly group photo like this. Can you spot me, Chris and Rosemary?

Reflection

Without going into too much sap and sadness and kleenex, yesterday marks the eighteenth, I hesitate to say, 'anniversary' of my taking a handful of pills to, um, chase the blues away.
I remember the room, smells, sounds (The Smiths, Strangeways, Goddamn awesome album, by the way) playing on the boom box on the dresser, my depressed state of mind and all of the stupidness of that afternoon's decision. After being rejected from the campus hospital ('Hey, we don't take suicide situations!'), an awkward stomach-pumping, hours of crying, inept hospital counseling, failing miserably at trying to explaining myself to my devastated mother, I never thought that I'd be talking about this on an open forum like this (I mean, this was before Al Gore invented the internet, for goodness sakes); but as I get older, I find that sharing your own difficult experiences makes you confront your own deficiencies, and maybe even help someone else feel less embarrassed by just coming out and saying, 'I've done dumb things, too; and I'm here for you if you need me.'

I have a friend who often says, 'It ain't all rainbows and unicorn farts.' That, my friends, is honest, eloquence defined.