Double Digits

My eldest baby is now 10 years old. I don't know how that happened already, but there it is. And there she is, and she is magical and I am so astonished and grateful to be her mother.

Happy Veterans' Day

in Afghanistan


We sure do love our soldier. And we thank everyone who has ever served, along with all the families who wait for them to come home.

To The Bone

Life right now feels a lot like Nox with his bone. It's good. I am more content than I can ever remember being, my entire life. Oh, nothing is perfect. I'm not saying I'm totally satisfied with everything, either. For instance, my house needs a major overhaul. I'm talking going room to room with a trash bag and a donation box overhaul. I wish I was getting more writing done. More laundry, too, come to that. Clint will be leaving for Missouri in January for his Captain's Career Course while the kids I stay here, and I'm not looking forward to another 6 months without him. And he's in the Army, so there's a guaranteed supply of more of that to come.

But it's good, it's so good. Every evening we sit in our little living room around the fire going in the wood stove and my little holiday lights I love so much they stay around all year twinkle and the kids have their warm slippers on and play chess on the floor. I have a mug of something warm and a dog or two pressed to my side or against my feet and my husband in the chair beside me and it is all so good I want to chew my life down to the bone and then keep on going.

I just have a feeling like I have left discontent behind. Not that I won't ever be sad or frustrated or scared or anything, because I will be. More that somewhere along the years from high school to now, from old home to the new home we've made together, my mindset has shifted from the place that says, "And if I could just have/do/accomplish..." to one that says, "I have everything important to my happiness." Everything else is icing.

Or a good, juicy bone.

Staples

(photo taken with my phone)


On Friday afternoon we ended up going to the ER and Benjamin ended up with three staples in his head. He was given three balloons by the kind doctor.

See, he was standing on a kitchen chair (yes, that's why you don't stand on kitchen chairs) and they were messing around, and he lost his balance and fell, clipping the edge of a cabinet as he did so.

He also got a splinter in his finger yesterday from carrying wood and has been trying to get a very loose and sore tooth to come out all weekend.

The kid is a mess. I think he needs extra snuggling time in front of the wood stove tonight. And tea, maybe. And a book.

I'm rather looking forward to it, too.

A Day

I've been waiting for a guy to come and fix our thermostat today, so we can actually use our furnace. (The wood stove has been doing a good job of keeping us warm in the meantime.) He told us last night he'd stop by today, but he wasn't sure what time he'd able to... he thought it would be in the morning. Well, it wasn't. It's afternoon now and I'm still waiting. I'm not in the least bit angry at him. He was perfectly upfront with us, and he's done some work for me before and I've been very pleased with him. I just feel like I've wasted an entire day because of the way I am. I quickly threw some clothes on this morning without showering, got the kids off to school, and waited. I thought when he left I'd take a quick shower and run to the store for a few things, hopefully take the dogs for a hike. So here I am, unshowered, feeling awful, nothing done. And it's all my uptight fault.

The thing is, I often feel deeply disappointed with "my day." Most of the time I don't feel like my day has been very productive, and I feel frustrated and defensive about it all at once. As if a day was a complete and finite measurement of time and I dropped the ball. I don't know. On one hand I think I need to cut myself some slack and on the other I think I need to quit all my lazy habits.

But there's always tomorrow, I guess?

Halloween

I hope everyone had a spooky, fun Halloween. It was really cold here. Like, it snowed a little the afternoon before trick or treating. But that's not unexpected up here, so no one was surprised.

Sophia went as Athena this year. She's really into Greek mythology right now. She's always really enjoyed it, but the Percy Jackson books really kicked her interest up to obsession. Which I love, being the type to obsess over my interests as well. Bonding!

Benjamin went as Death, partly because he just plain wanted to look spooky and partly because he loves the character of Death as created by the great Terry Pratchett, two of whose books we've watched the movie equivalents for (The Color of Magic and The Hogfather).

It's been a good Autumn here... we had a woodstove installed in our fireplace and have been enjoying that. We went apple picking and visited the cider mill. I love it!