The Flower Chair

A few minutes ago, I was sitting cross-legged on my flower chair by the fire with a zebra coffee cup on the blue table and a book in my hand. 

 

It's the same scene that played out early last Saturday morning as well.  Before the text to Karen that sent off the day of random. 

 

You see, that flower chair doesn't really belong in the living room by the blue table and the fire.  But it's still there.   

 

It's still there a week later after a random Friday night in which four friends held wine glasses in their hands and pushed chairs as close as possible to visit in a way that hasn't happened for so long.  Life gets busy, crazy, and in the way sometimes.  So when the life crazy parts briefly and allows for talking until past midnight, you embrace it and squeeze hug it.  Right after you set out the cheese, apples, dates, olives, and other wine night musts. 

 

 

While you sit with music floating in the air, you send up a how did I get so lucky to have these kind of women in my life.  The kind that just say whatever it is that's on their minds.  The kind that are happy for you and all that's going right.  The kind that share where they are and it makes you a better person for it.   

 

Then, the next morning you wake up and walk out to living room to see the effects of the circle of talking and you leave it - just as it is and grab a blanket and a cup of coffee to keep the feeling. 

 

The rocker was moved back to its spot on Sunday but that flower chair is still sitting there in the middle of the living room.  Last night it was a landing spot for parents who were taking their littles trick-o-treating in the cold.  They warmed their hands while I let their kids run wild and encouraged the wild by adding to it myself.  You want another piece of candy Brooks?  Sure thing buddy.  You want me to flip you upside down and tell you in a silly voice, "Love you Hazel?"  Sure thing.  You want me to pull all four of you in close on the loveseat to tell you a whisper story about your Auntie Em?  Sure thing. 

 

I think that flower chair in the middle of the living room is just right.  It begs to be sat on and it makes for the best kind of circle visiting.  Yet another reminder of the perfect tends to come from the imperfect.   

 

It also makes for a win of a spot to drink Saturday morning coffee out of a zebra cup. 

 



As of Late

Currently...

I'm obsessed with banana chips.

And dried blueberries from the bulk section.  They don't have added sugar which deserves a twirl and a foot stomp, however they are pricey.  Let's just say there was a moment to the cashier of say what now?  Those berries were twenty-six dollars?  Clearly, I can't really be obsessed with them so special occasion treat it is!     

I have been pulling that old new to me rocker over to the fireplace in the morning to read and it's rather lovely having a place to rest my arms while they hold my book and it's been mighty fine having toasty toes.  

Trail mix is no longer on my favorites list because it betrayed me.  I cracked a tooth on the junk a couple of weeks ago.  Favorites to junk.  That's right.  It happened on a Thursday.  On a Friday, I was certain the right side of my face was losing feeling and I would have a brain infection by Saturday.  I called the dentist and started with, "I'm sure I'm just being my kind of crazy but I'm fairly certain my face hurts..." and ended with being in his chair.  Once reclined, we chatted for a bit and I reiterated I was certain I was being overly anxious and analyzer-ish.  To which he looked at me and smiled because he knows.  So I thought for sure and since he knows, he thought for sure that it would be nothing.  Then I heard the word crown and I couldn't help but tell him, "Crap!  I wanted to just be crazy.  It really does all start to fall apart after you turn 30 doesn't it?"  Cracking teeth now and I don't want to know what's next.  

Remember the time I ate my memory card instead of the trail mix?  Just had to throw that in because it still makes me shake my head.  

My legs are super sore.  The good kind of sore where you have to lower yourself in stages to the sitting position.  The good kind of sore that comes from getting your hiney running again and muscle pumping again.  Can someone tell me why I thought it was appropriate to take two and a half months off?  Also, I've added in some Zumba and my that's fun!  I'm the most uncoordinated person on this side of the Red River, but I sure am enjoying making a fool of myself.  Plus I think forcing myself to learn to look at person in front of me and copy their actions at a high speed rate is doing things to my brain.  What things is yet to be determined, but I believe in learning new and making the brain work.  

I refuse to skip over November.  It does not deserve a skip.  It does not deserve talk of red and green and twinkly lights.  I love me the twinkle, but I'm holding firm on this.  Being thankful is what this month is for and I find myself thinking about blessings, both big and little.  Like the blessing of banana chips.  Or maybe more so, the blessing of feeling each morning that I love what I do.  And the blessing of decaf coffee.  

Especially when it's enjoyed in large doses by friends and family with pumpkin marshmallows on Halloween night.  

Overall, Halloween was a win.  

I really do love seeing the costumes and the excited faces and hearing the funny mixed up thank yous with trick-o-treats along side a few blank stares.  I also love that family and friends stay a bit and there's the complete chaos of pizza eating and door bell answering by whoever is closest and that at the very end of the night, Karen sits and visits but never takes her stocking cap off or her puffy coat.  It's those types of things.  They make a holiday...a holiday. 



And let me just say this, Billy makes friends with everyone.  He was like the trick-o-treat king.  

As for me, I feel the nerdiest of nerds on Halloween, on most holidays if I'm being honest.  Thinking about all kinds of ways to make or do or wear.  

Really, one could say I'm fairly nerdy on all days, even a Tuesday.  So maybe I could have summed all previously stated words up by saying this...

Currently, I'm a nerd.  

I never have been one to be succinct though. 

Thinking About These Things

On the radio this morning, of course the talk was of Halloween and scary things.  All I could think of after a lady called in explaining a time she was so scared of a man in a mask when she was nine years old, was the when we celebrated Halloween in Fairview, MT with our best friends named Daryl, Kathy, Kimberly, and Lane (at least I think Lane was born by then).  

Halloween must have been a Friday that year because there would have been no school skipping for such a rendezvous when all parties involved were teachers or principals or farmers.   

Also that year I was six or seven because I was in the awful stages of growing out a very short style haircut which I insisted on getting.  I was a princess with a garage sale purple dress which was so very beautiful to my young eyes and a tinfoil crown.  Ummmm, yes.  A fancy crown made from tinfoil.  I loved it and felt it was so special.  My mom had a way of doing that kind of thing.  

I can't quite remember what Travis and Kimberly's costumes were, vampire maybe for him?  There's a really fantastic picture of the three of us standing on their house's red stained deck but I don't have it right here so work with me.

Daryl was a character.  Well, he still is.  He has entire persona he can change into which involve different gaits to his walk and the flipping up of cap bills.  He can stay in that character a long time and my dad joins in on the gong show which made, and continues to make, much entertainment.  And Daryl called me Butser and Dad-o called me Sep-I.  Yep there's that too.  Kathy was basically my mom and vice versa for Kimberly with Momma Debi.  Those two have the same vibe all around.  Encouraging creative messy play?  Yep.  Making peach pies on August days while canning something?  Yep.  Keeping too many momentos from everything?  Yep.  Making the every day feel special?  Yep.   

In other words, they were family.  They are family.  

Well on that Halloween at their house in Fairview, Daryl played a trick.  I mean of course he played a trick.  You know those fake people put in their yards?  Like a stuffed scarecrow or maybe a stuffed witch or something of that nature.  Well, Daryl dressed himself in coveralls and added padding.  And he put on a mask and a stocking cap and gloves and he sat on a lawn chair on their deck with his leg crossed looking real fake like.  Then he didn't move a muscle.  For a long time.  So the trick or treaters would assume he was of the fake variety discussed earlier.  Then when those poor little dressed up goblins and ghouls were just about to knock on the door, Daryl would say something and move around a bit.  And scare the you know what out of them.

It's a memory which I cherish.   

The memory of Halloween in Fairview, MT as a princess with a tinfoil crown and a garage sale purple dress with my very best friend in the whole wide world.  The greatness of that memory has nothing to do with our costumes or perfectly made detailed plans, it has everything to do with the fun created by our parents.  It has everything to do with them letting go and being ridiculous right along with us.  

I need these reminders sometimes.  That crowns don't need to be perfect, they can be made of tinfoil.

Kimberly and I live far far away from each other now and she lives a busy life with her two precious girls and her husband so we don't catch up often anymore.  But I know she's there and I'm hoping she knows I am here.  At the drop of a hat.  We are those friends.  The ones who can go months without a word and then see each other and it's right to the big talk.  The big talk where we can say things we probably would never say to anyone else.  We are those friends.  

She was here this summer and we met on a Saturday morning for coffee which turned into hours of talk.  It was so filling, to be across from the girl who has known me through it all.  Through being four and five and six and nineteen and twenty and thirty.  She has been there, a constant.  And I love her for it.  Besides, there's no one that can lip sing to "Oh Mickey!" and say the Pledge of Allegiance incorrectly and put on Santa Shop plays like her and I.    

It's funny how hearing something on the radio on your way to work can spur a memory in your mind and make you think about these things.  The things of Halloweens and years past.  Here's to hoping each and every one of your Halloween nights was for the books.   

A Smattering of Sorts

'Twas the night before Halloween and all through the house, Billy was watching the World Series while Amy was finishing up the last round of orange treats for the little trickers and pumpkin cookies for the big trickers.

I've decided I really am a sucker for holidays.  Give me a reason to theme and the rest is history.

I've been drawing pumpkin faces on mandarin oranges for the past three nights and making more batches of Halloween Bark from that party because it was a hit and then tonight, I found myself first admiring the prettiness of a bowl of ingredients and second making quite possibly the best pumpkin treat yet.  

There's this odd little being inside me which finds things like flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, soda, powder, and salt something worth looking at.

But for some reason, the wet ingredients weren't quite as appealing.

However the end product hit it out of the park.  Notice my slight baseball innuendo there.  Patting myself on the back.  

These pumpkin cookies, goodness gracious.  Although they are more like a cakinie -- a hybrid between a cake and a muffin and a cookie.  But totally delicious.  I had one.  I mean really, you can't serve a new recipe to people without sampling first.  Feel free to make these.  Your house will smell like a slice of fall festival.

Wet
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups sugar
1 can pumpkin
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Dry
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1. Combine wet ingredients
2. Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl
3. Add the dry to the wet & mix together until smooth.  Add as many chocolate chips as your heart desires (1 cup milk chocolate and 1 cup of mini semi sweet was a win)...drop onto pan.  Bake @ 400 / 10 minutes.   

Here's where I say, eating these cookies with coffee just might be the ticket.  Possibly even a home run of sorts.

Here's where I also say these will be making an appearance on Thanksgiving week.  Family, be ready.  Coffee and pumpkin cookies and sun.  It's happening.  

I have fourteen more pumpkin faces to draw so I best get to it.  And there's one inning left in this game.  Top of the ninth for him.  Bottom of the ninth for me.  Promise that's the last one.     

I'm sitting here writing this from my new favorite spot, an old rocker which came home with me on Saturday morning.  Because if you give Amy twelve minutes in between packing for an overnight trip, getting ready to take pictures at her uncle's wedding, and dropping off family pictures at her boss' house...she will jump in her friend Brittany's van and find the rocker.  

Then she'll come home and have to figure out where to put the rocker and that starts a whole other story.  One which involves a hijacked trip to Target on the way home from Bismarck and mild living room rearranging during Sunday night's baseball game.  Like I said, a whole other story entirely.

Treating on Almost Halloween

I have a hot coffee sitting next to me, real smart at six-thirty on a Sunday night but I needed a something and I knew it would set the mood for a night of getting business done.  I am all about creating an atmosphere.  Also if I'm being honest, when I went through the drive through the pumpkin muffin called my name.  My name!  So...I have a pumpkin muffin split in half on a plate plate next to me as well.  And here I am, sipping and eating that fall goodness with a fork.  I like to eat treats with a fork.  I used to eat peanut butter honey bread every single morning with a fork, but we won't go into that routine I used to inhabit just this second.

All that to say, sometimes you just need a treat.  A treat of the pumpkin muffin variety on a crisp chilly October Sunday night.  Because it makes your heart happy to have it while your glasses are on your face and you are at your dining room table writing.

Other times, you need a treat like a Halloween party on a vacation Friday morning with twenty some little ones in costumes and a few of their mommas visiting while holding steaming coffee mugs.  Danae's annual Halloween party for her children and their friends was once again a hit.  I mean really, how could it not be when there's duck taped water bottles, themed goodies galore, pizza, games, and a vegetable pumpkin?  It's a guaranteed set up for hilarity and fun while in costume.

 
I arrived early to assist with finishing touches and to make the vegetable pumpkin.  It's my thing.  Although, this year I wasn't nearly as perfectionistic with it and you know what...the kids still ate it.  Soon I'll be a regular old laid back soul.

Pause for a heck no.

After everything was a go, I put each of Danae's kids on the table to take a picture.  They know the drill.

As does my nieces and nephews because after also arriving a tad early, they knew the first thing to do was stand in front of a closet door so their aunt could snap a memory.

Danae and I put Sil right to work topping off the fruit cups whose fluff had been deflated because that girl can be trusted with a whipped cream can.  She can really be trusted with anything.  She raises four little people, that's no joke.  

Then the entire party arrived and were fed.  Fed like kings and queens.  Danae could throw parties for a living.  

And let me tell you this, twenty some kids in one house is a riot.  A riot.  At one point I walked downstairs and the girls were jumping on the bed while singing praise music at the top of their lungs as the boys were having a round of wrestle mania in the next room.  

What is it with boys and wrestling?  It's like they have a magnetic pull to push and grab and say arghhhhhh.  It took me a solid seven minutes to wrangle the boys for a tiny moment of still.  Then, I told the few girls who were watching me dumbfounded to join in too.  At that point, I wanted a guaranteed smile on at least one face or two. 

I suppose a man in my position would say the same about the girls dancing and singing their hearts out...but the tutus and lip gloss and high kicks and claps and sitting?  Those make sense to me. 

The kindergarten teacher shined through with Danae and she soon had every single little sitting quietly working on decorating a bag.  

And then she had everyone play pin the nose on the pumpkin or something like that and it took a lot of noses being placed exactly on the pumpkin for someone to finally say, "I can see through this mask Mommy!"  Have to love Emma for her honesty.  

Who is ready for next year's party?  

And who is jittery from drinking night coffee.  And who is really not laid back at all, nor non-perfectionistic because now it's seven-forty on a Sunday night and this took me entirely too long because of a pesky few pictures which would not stay aligned with the others.  I can let vegetable pumpkins go, but apparently I'm not all the way there yet.  

I'm off to see the Wizard...the wonderful Wizard of Oz...