Pumpkin Moonshine

The giant pine in the yard next door is dropping gold needles down the driveway again. The gutters on that side of the house are softly filling up with yellow and I have been somewhat fretfully shifting piles of paper around the house looking for where in the world I might have put the business card of "Cesar" who came two years ago (I forgot last year) with his mustached smile and his cousin and cleaned the gutters. I think maybe I haven't looked in the junk drawer yet. What do you think? Is it there?

Last night while A put the kids down I unloaded our pumpkins from the back of the van by moonlight and arranged them on the front steps: soft, pleated orbs glowing there in front of the porch pillars. How in the world did there come to be six pumpkins on my front porch waiting for their respective owners to carve them into jack-o-lanterns? That seems impossible. Amazing how fact moves on without our real absorption in life. It takes a long time to understand and know a new person....I can't believe there are four little people who live in my care these days and that some of them have been here for years.

The maple in the front yard is starting to go from dark burgundy to a brighter flame scarlet. And the burning bush that has wedged itself into our hedge is already dropping its leaves on top of the pine needles in the driveway. Time to test-drive a few new recipes for pumpkin pie or roasted  meats, light some candles, boil some spices and orange peel and figure out how to seal our windows with that plastic film stuff I bought a few years ago and never manage to actually get up.

I wish you a few moments under the moonlight for pumpkiny reflection, a giant mug of tea and a slow, slow wind-up to the season of cold weather illness. My first patient is moaning on the sick couch behind me as I type with feverish cheeks. I am taking my cod liver oil and believing in mommy resilience. 

Dusk, Shore Walk

 I don't own a boat, I've never owned a boat...I'm not even really a big "boat person" but they sure are peaceful to look at, floating by the docks, all ready for seafaring adventure. I have a boat photograph that I'm trying to work up the nerve to paint, and some day I will have the guts to give it a spin and try putting boat-happiness on paper.

 Spent the dusky, muggy evening strolling the shore, at a park near the marina. Geese and swans, the lighthouse in the disance the last of the golden sun, and boats galore....

 Old men in boats are extra cute. Maybe I'll get a boat to putter around in when we're old. As long as he'll take me along on misty evenings near the shore.

Afterglow

Our dining room, here in our rehab-project colonial is in exactly the right spot to receive somewhat mystical evening sunshine, exactly as dinner is being served. It's a wonderful thing, as thought some thoughtful someone has zoomed in on your table and is spotlighting each dish as you serve it. Makes me look forward to cooking, and have a boost of energy and goodwill on nights when I drag myself to the kitchen.

In other news, we are back home from our family reunion with A's extended relations in Yellowstone National Park, and our family is one pair of cowboy boots richer. Ru and Dee picked them out together since they'll be hand-me-down treasures after our biggest boy is done wearing them. Was secretly very pleased that they wanted the viney stiching ones. :)

The trip was one of our personal best as a nuclear family, only one small interpersonal melt-down which was pretty briskly mended and overall low stress/high enjoyment. The extended cousiney, relative type interaction was well above par and left everyone with a much fonder regard at the end of it all.

We all were somewhat frantically counting the years until the next big get-together and thinking "Three years??? Too long....how else can we see these people?" You know you have a cool family if???? A has cool family. I feel lucky to be along for the ride. And I do hope that we end up getting at least one round of house guests out of the week together. There is also talk of a wild, bluegrass tour with the rels, sometime in 2013. Am dreaming about that!

Running: Part Deux

Image via Wikipedia

I am still running. I have been at it for three weeks now. I can scarcely believe it, really. That sounds terribly, horribly cliche but it is so true. Every single time I run I come home and spend a half an hour saying aloud to A, "I did it! I went running. Again. Can you believe it?" and pinching myself. I'm practically black and blue from all the pinch marks.

I am using the Couch to 5K program that I have heard much lauded. Several friends of mine have used the system to great effect themselves. It basically is a training system that is set up to take you from sedentary activity level to 5K running level in an entirely sane, baby step method. I never feel like I am dying when I am running now, (I always pushed it too hard, and too long on my own) and I am steadily improving and climbing the systems upping difficulty levels. I used to feel like my heart was going explode out of my chest and like my lungs were on being hit with a sandblaster, scrubbing them out of my ribcage with an acid fire. My legs would shake and I would sometimes get spotty vision and feel fainty. This program is hard but I never feel like I'm about to pass out and about as bad as it gets is feeling a little wobbly when am getting to the end and feeling occasional shortness of breath. Honestly, the worst part of running for me at this point is the voices in my head that cackle horrible downer comments in my ear as I'm beginning. I have found I can largely drown them out by listening to music. I also recommend search for iPhone apps for running as there are some wonderful tools out there. I use one of them to track when I should run and verbally coach me through my headphones as I go. I love hearing the British woman's encouragement, "You have only 15 more seconds of running remaining! Keep going!"

Last night I ran three times the length of time that I ran in my time out. I am really truly a runner and I can feel physically that, ever so subtle is happening to me. I don't really dread running nearly as much as I once did and the afterglow is positively crave-worthy. I thought everyone was making up that "runner's high" hokum but I'm telling you folks, it is a genuinely fabulous and very real phenomenon, at least for me. I come in and lie on the floor in the sunroom with the baby patting me or flop on the bed next to A while he "hmmm's" and "uhmm's" his way through some mysterious iPhone interchange and I levitate. I feel like my body buzzes and glows for a while after I come back. I have an immense sense of well-being mentally, I feel happy, even if the whole day up until that point has been a bust and I smile, for no real tangible reason. Somehow, the fact that I went outdoors and moved quickly down the sidewalk, making clomping noises like the local horse, panting out belches of steam and then came wobbling back to my own from door is enough to set my body at perfect equilibrium and solve all problems.

I have reached a not-to-be-believed stage in my life when I want to run! I can't wait for the next time I go out. I can't wait to find myself stretching out in the black night: the thud of the pavement below me, The Pleiades sailing overhead. I feel like such a grown-up: learning to love something that was my nemesis, being healthier, enjoying good things, making myself do something really hard. Gosh, it's good to be an adult, eh?

Next up, once the pavement is warmer and the hiking trails open?

Barefoot running.

Related articles

• Runner's High Is as Addictive as Opiates (fitsugar.com)
• Phys Ed: What Really Causes Runner's High? (well.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Last I Ran Barefoot, Yes, You Heard Right, Barefoot (momblognetwork.com)

Winter Light Show

Overlooked winter fact: Cold weather sunsets are stunning! (especially from the inside of a toasty car)

One of the items on my long To Do Before Dying list is "watch the sunset every single night for a whole year." I still haven't done it although sometime here it's going to show up on my resolution list. That said, lately, I'm running a little accidental warm-up routine thanks to one-car-family-life.

I think of sunsets as being summer happenings. That's kind of silly in some ways, we do have a sun even when there is snow on the ground after all! On the other hand, I think I've never really consciously watched for the sunset in winter. Here's why:  since  the old adage "red sky at night, sailor's delight" means that a vivid crimson streaked sunset means a hot, sunny day to follow I assumed conversely, in winter (since we don't get hot, sunny weather) every evening would be met with a tepid, pale end as the sun sank lustrously below the horizon. This, my dear readers, is how old wives tales are formed. Heh.

I couldn't have been more off. Because I'm at least twice a week (three times this week!) driving A to and from work, at this particular time of year we are rolling our way down the highway to fetch him at exactly the same time the sun is setting up for a glorious show. I was right on one small detail, there's little to no red in the evening sky at the moment...that said, who needs the red when you have January's luminous gold with blue and purple puffs of cloud as garnish! I am truly struck and have taken to bringing the camera with me to capture the glow. I can see a sunset painting in my future. I keep taking these photos...more and more views of this glowing winter sky that I would have missed altogether if we were living luxuriously with two cars. Small gifts, people, small gifts.

If you find yourself outdoors lately, around sunset...don't assume it's bland just because the weather is chill...go take a gander at the winter gold and think of me out there, snapping away happily on my way down 95.

I Do Love A Fair....

We took a coupla years off, but we finally made it back to a country fair. I consider the fair (and by the fair, I do mean...whatever fair I can get myself to in short order!) to be a quintessential part of summer. It doesn't feel like we can let the golden days go and feel that we've really had September without a night on the midway, a twirl on the ferris wheel and a good long stroll through the exhibit barns.

I love the fair because it seems like such a tall order seasonal tribute, everybody's best produce arrayed in proud rows, pies brimming with fruit, and all the livestock fed to the gills and curried within an inch of their lives. The best of the summer, yea the year...all arranged in rows and barns and heaps for our vicarious, positive group think enjoyment. Makes me very happy.

Then there's the bit about how it is a celebration of many of the ideals I hold dearest: do-it-yourself chutzpa, artistry, salt-of-the-earth goodness, homespun pride, old fashioned plummy fabulousness. It makes me want to go home and can loads of things, really buckle down and learn quilting, reel my clothesline in and out a few times just for the shear pleasure and sit sighing down amongst a stack of dreamy someday hopes that have to do with embroidery, handmade baby clothes and finally knitting a sweater myself.

The boys couldn't remember going to fair (its been two years) and so they were asking on the way over and over, what exactly was it we were going to see? Was it like a circus? Is it a store? Will it be like the zoo? They were racking their brains for anything comparable and trying to be that this wasn't some ugly mommy trick to haul them into a place where you sit still for long periods of time.

I am happy to report however, that we all enjoyed ourselves, even little Nib who made fabulous milage out of his sunny grin with pretty much every passing farm wife. My personal favorite part of the fair this year was my own solo trip up the ferris wheel as the sun was beginning to set over the rolling Connecticut fields. There could be very few deeper pleasures in the mommy life. Such a lovely run, round and round the big wheel, swooshing along smoothly, peaking over the green fields and clicking my camera at the dizzy blur of lights and color over the rolling landscape and waving down at shining little boy faces.