Kid Food and Personal Landmarks

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Technically, it’s been Autumn since the last week of September, even if “Autumn” and “Summer” are not all that different in Texas, but last night, standing on the deck, waiting for the dogs to do their business before bed, I exhaled into the darkness and saw my breath hanging in the crisp night air.

I live in a world of personal landmarks. It is not officially cold, or officially Fall, no matter what the calendar says, until I see that first visible breath. The Christmas season does not begin, in my house, until after the sighting of Santa Claus at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and weekends are measured not in what I’ve accomplished, but in how many books I’ve finished reading.

The onset of my personal Autumn, however, is the beginning of my favorite time of year, for while I do not enjoy serious winter, of the type experienced north of here, at all, I do like warm-ish days and chilly evenings. My ideal weather is when the mornings require a sweater, the afternoon is warm enough for shirt-sleeves when you’re in the sun, and the evenings are cool enough that comfy pajamas and a mostly-decorative fire are not uncomfortably warm.

Comfort weather.

Today, on the first day after the arrival of the first of this year’s Comfort Weather, I spend much of the day sleeping in a cool, dark room. A double-dose of Midrin killed the migraine that was brewing, but made me dizzy, and tired, and since I needed to mull over an article rewrite, spending a day with just myself and my dogs was definitely in order.

Although when, at 12:46 pm, I realized that Fuzzy had not, in fact gone into the office, but had chosen to work from home, I offered to make mac-n-cheese for lunch. I mix tuna in, for protein, and it doesn’t come from a box, and while it may be organic, it’s still unhealthy, but oh, so good. I sat outside in a warm breeze and listened to the birds chasing each other through the trees while I did so.

Then I did some email work, took another nap, did some more email work, took a bubble bath, and decided I was hungry, and that more comforting kid food was in order. I have a fridge full of gourmet food, including the makings of a lovely spinach and mushroom French pizza (which isn’t French at all, but feels that way – no tomato sauce, just grated gruyere, baby spinach, etc.) and what I wanted more than anything in the world was a peanut butter sandwich and chocolate milk.

And while, as a kid, it would have been Skippy and not organic peanut butter, the bread still would have been multi-grain, and the milk still would have been chocolatized with Hershey’s syrup.

Sometimes, like comfort weather, kid food is just what you need.

Taking it Slow?

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How about you? Do you find yourself moving too fast through life? What’s your favorite way to moodle and make the mornin’ last? How does slowing down affect your creativity?
— Write on Wednesday

In all honesty, I’m not a fan of “slow,” and find that if I do anything at less than my natural fairly quick pace, at least where writing is concerned, I spend too much time editing or self-censoring, and not enough time actually writing.

On the other hand, I do believe that it’s important to take our special moments and use them to appreciate the finer things in life, so one thing I’m trying to do is write in longhand, even if it’s just once a week.

I’ve always been a pen snob, indeed, a pen whore, and right now my favorite pen is a pink acrylic fountain pen purchased from my twitter-buddy (and all around groovy guy) Richard. Writing with a fountain pen always takes longer than composing at the keyboard – the physics alone dictate this – and I find that the voice I write in when I set literal pen to actual paper is a slower, softer one, more fluid, like the very ink I’m writing with.

Other things I do? I’m a fan of morning coffee being a personal ritual. For me, this means I pour a cup and bring it outside to my patio, where, if it’s not hot, I watch the birds hopping from tree to tree, and enjoy the sparkle of the sun on the water in the pool. I pause to water my plants (Fuzzy killed my tomatoes, but the squash and herbs are faring well), to peer at the trees along the fence and try to spot shy argiopes, the only spiders I actively seek, and I watch my dogs basking in the sun.

As we ease into autumn, and no longer face brutal heat before ten in the morning, I tend to work for a couple of hours then take the dogs for a spin around the block. I like to see what the neighbors are doing with their flowers, and such, and we often sit in the park for a few minutes.

Soon enough, however, I’m back at the keyboard, spinning words so fast that if I stop to think, I’ll lose my rhythm.

Crabby

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I’m having one of those days when staying in bed really is the best course of action, because I’m all sinussy, and my ears hurt, and I’m just too crabby to interact with human people and even my dogs are on my list tonight.

Just because.

I’m hungry, and I don’t have the energy to cook, and even if I did, nothing is appealing.

Well, almost nothing.

I have a glass of organic apple cider and some lovely super-super-sharp, crumbly, white cheddar.

But that’s not, you know, dinner.

*sigh*

Back to bed.
Soon.

Debate-able

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Fuzzy says I get points for not throwing anything at the television during the first presidential debate last night. It helped that I was watching the twitter feed and laughing at the snarky comments being made.

We started watching on NBC, then moved to CNN because, just as my stepfather likes to watch the clothes spin round in the washer, Fuzzy likes to watch the wavy lines of the response graphs. May I just say that Christiane Amanpour gets more and more beautiful with every year? I so want to be her when I grow up.

I’m not going to quote any of the responses. As debates go, this one didn’t seem to be all that special, and I maintain that it was a draw, and unlikely to have changed the mind of anyone who’d already decided where their vote was going before watching.

But:

McCain’s choice not to look Obama directly in the eye, or address comments TO him, even when being urged to by Jim Lehrer? = BAD.

Obama’s use of McCain and Lehrer’s first names when speaking TO them? = GOOD.

And Obama gets points from the language geek part of my personality not just for pronouncing Pakistan correctly, but also for pronouncing Iran and Iraq with the proper vowel tones. As for McCain, he seriously needs a refresher course in subject-verb agreement.

Thematic Photographic:Angles

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DSC01696

Originally uploaded by MissMelysse.


Carmi’s Thematic Photographic theme from this week is “angles,” and the image that sprang to my mind was this one, of a quilt my Bubbie sewed from hand.

It began as one of those kits to make a single square, and she ended up having my mother buy several more.

The quilt was originally a gift to my mother, but it goes with the colors of my house.

This is actually a thematic offering on two levels – I took the picture from an odd angle, because the quilt hangs over the side of the bridge that serves as our upstairs hallway.