Spooky is as spooky does

    I start thinking about October around the end of July. Not just a little, but a lot. I luv me, some Halloween.

I visualize the bins of Halloween decor in the attic and excitedly pre-plan how I am going to change the interior of our house into a welcoming Halloween wonderland. Recipes are dug out early and placed behind the summer recipes at my cooking station, yet are strategically placed to peek out of the back of the mess to remind me that hearty soups and fall meals are just around the corner. Halloween costumes are hunted down and bought by the middle of August, and I snoop around the pumpkin patch and try and forecast the motherlode of orange that will drip from my porch come late September.

 This year, that almost didn't happen at all. I usually treat myself and wait until the latter part of August to start my snooping and squealing over my pumpkin patch, but one foggy late July morning something caught my eye out there in what we call "the big garden" where we have our baby fruit orchard and pumpkin/corn patch. "Wasn't there a tree there just yesterday?.... I thought, as I hurriedly opened the gate that morning.  Yes, there was supposed to be a tree there, but instead, my three year old apple tree lay broken on the ground, sheared into jaggedy shards of deadened wood. My hands flew to my face and my mouth turned into a small hole that moaned a high pitched "Noooooo!!" Our ten foot fenced, barbed wire fortress of a garden had been breached. My eyes grew wider as I stumbled around the freshly hoofed earth and surveyed the damage. At least three trees gone, dead, caput. The rest nibbled to nubbins looking pathetic and helpless, and awkwardly naked. My coveted Asian pear trees...they barely had a pulse. And oh,...my sunflowers?? what sunflowers??....My sweet rows of my favorite flower ever to grow was gone. All that was left was skinny bright green legs of what was to be a tower of flowers. This is the first year in nine years that I have not had sunflowers in my garden.  My pumpkins!!  I ran to them and pulled my braids taut in anger. They were nibbled through and the small premature fruit tasted with one wide open gash. Each.one.of.them. I think I cried, but I'm not sure. I know I called Jeremy to rant and holler about how I was done, and how they win, and how "yes...fine, you can eat Bambi..." Over the years I have done a good job of discouraging Jeremy from hunting on the property but in a fit of anger I caved. Fine, do it. But I still won't eat it.
I spent the rest of the summer shooting glare daggers at deer and ignoring the patch, but still watering it, just in case a pumpkin or two magically appeared. Late September I happened in there not expecting much, and the angels sang, and the sun shined down, because there they were! Pumpkins!

 They were by no means prize winners, and smaller than normal, but still bulbous happy porch loungers. I also scored some delicata squash, two blue hubbards, some red kuri, two gold nuggets and a handful of my most favorite pumpkins ever: Baby Boo's. The harvest was about a quarter of normal but I am grateful for it. Happy for a better ending to a otherwise sad story.

My one and only pitiful little sunflower.

Baby Boo's!

Another thing happens in our household come the first of October. Ready to get spooked? Before you think I'm weird (er), or full of it, here is my disclaimer: I do have an active imagination and have been told by my mother that sometimes the lines between my imagination and reality can blur. She told me this at a young age to quell my fears of what I was sure lived in my closet, but that quote has always stuck with me, and I go to it when there is something strange or a feeling I cannot explain.
Rewind to 1995. I am standing on the deck of Jeremy and mine's apartment with Jeremy and some of our friends. It is night, and for some reason I glance over to the window that looks into our living room. We are all outside, but there is this figure near the couch, leaning to the side trying to get a look out at us. It is smallish, about three and a half to four feet or so, a thick triangle in shape with rounded corners and it is Pure black. The blackest black I've ever seen. I blink just in case it was a fleeting shadow, but it is still there, and leans even further as if it is peeking at us.  I breathe in sharply because I am not sure what to do and I open my mouth to say what, I don't know, but it sees me see it, and disappears very quickly. Did I just see that? I am scared, but don't say anything to Jeremy, 'cause it sounds crazy. A couple weeks later and we are getting ready in our bedroom, and I am sitting on our bed and I see it again. This time, it is skirting down our hallway. It goes back, and it goes forth. I tell Jeremy this time because now I'm really freaked out and he checks and sees nothing, of course. My mind remembers my mothers quote, and I realize yes, I might just be seeing things. Years go by and I don't think of it much. We move twice and there is nothing. It is a late December night in 2001, and I am eight months pregnant with Vanessa. Jeremy has gone to bed, and I am sitting on the couch watching TV. I glance out the window to the side of the TV and there it is...Peeking at me! I can barely make out the outline against the dark, but it is familiar one, and so black. This time, I am not scared, but very angry. How dare you peek at me?! While I'm pregnant!!!  I toss the blanket off my belly and rush to heave myself up. You see, mama bear was awakened, and no one  messes with mama bear, even if they are faceless, globby black weird things that my mind can't really decipher. This angry mama bear feeling is empowering and I don't see it again...except maybe when I was seven or so months pregnant with Gracie. I am awakened in the middle of the night and in the darkness there is a form standing by my side of the bed. I let out a blood curdling scream which awakens Jeremy and I go to the bathroom and cry my eyes out because I am afraid. Not so much afraid of what I was or wasn't sure I saw, but because I was just so afraid of everything at that moment. Gracie's pregnancy was incredibly emotionally painful and the tears came frequently and heavily, and that set it off. That nights fright could have been the outline of my robe hanging in the night, but I won't call that a true sighting, but a maybe. I'm just not sure.

Spookiest picture I could find. Creepy owl in our back woods.

Fast forward to this time of year about two years ago. Jeremy is in the shower, I am vacuuming downstairs. It is late evening and Grace is in her room with the door open, playing. I turn off the vacuum and hear her feet scurry fast to the bathroom where Jeremy is. I hear mumbled voices, then she scurries and practically flings herself down the stairs at me. She has seen something in her doorway, she says. She beings to describe it to me...black...faceless..tall...peeking at her.. The red pegs on my anger scale, and I thunder loudly upstairs with her since she is now afraid of her room. I have never mentioned anything to her about my "peeker." I think to myself, wildly. It is one thing to be messing with me, but with her, I am sooo ready to fight. We get up to her room, and there is of course, nothing. I dance, and sing, and tell her over an over not to be afraid, but she is. She wants to know what it was. Why it was there. I don't want to dismiss her and tell her it was nothing because she was sure she saw something so my mind whirls up a story and thus, the Halloween Trickster was born, which has now become a tradition in our house. The Halloween trickster comes around for the month of October and messes with you, but mostly hides Halloween books and little gifts randomly around the house for you to find. Over the years he has hid those Halloween books in her underwear drawer, under Dad's pillow, in her bathroom cabinet, and next to the cereal in the pantry. Sometimes he puts her pillow on the wrong end of the bed, or leaves a Tootsie roll in one of her shoes, or turns all of her jackets inside out. You never know what that silly trickster will do next. That quelled her fears and lets us have some fun with the unexplained. Over dinner tonight, I asked her about that little uninvited visit a couple years ago and she didn't remember it, so it must not have scarred her too bad. Me? I still am confused about what I saw or if maybe my mom was right...blurred lines. My sister calls me her "spooky sister" for my gravitation towards the unknown, and for dreams that have foreseen things, and for knowing things about people they haven't told me yet. Sometimes I'll mention to Jeremy "so and so is coming by today" and they will randomly show up and I will say, "see?" He would look at me and ask me how I knew and I would say "I don't know, I just....knew." Gracie might have these spidey senses too, and my sister and I have come to the conclusion that it may be caused by how both me and Grace came into this world: Not breathing and in a struggle. Both of us were being strangled by the umbilical cord. One foot in this world, one foot out. Straddling both sides. Maybe it has awakened parts of us that are meant to be asleep? I don't know. Sometimes, more frequently than not, the unexplained has to remain a mystery, yet there are so many things my mind grasps to understand...like phone calls in the middle of the night, and no one is there, not even on the caller ID...like coming into your bedroom after you've taken a shower and the VCR has been turned on and is playing, and you are the only one in the house...like black little beings that stalk you, and peek at you, and give you the creeps....
Booga Booga!!!
: )

Grey Matters

I like control.
I thrive on a well laid out plan, a high-lighted map with a clearly lined path, and reservations made months in advance (and calling the front desk the day before...just to make sure). Dinner menu's are planned out a week before hand and always shopped for from a very specific list. Clothes for the next day are laid out the night before. Pencils, Pens, they do not belong in the same cubby. You catch the drift.
 Jeremy, is opposite. He's okay with reading the sky instead of the clock, with heading to town and driving in circles, sticking his head out the window to see which restaurant smells good that night, and cramming not the night before, but hours before a test. Mesh the two together and you get grey area. I l-o-v-e grey area. It is where two worlds can collide and hold hands.
Jeremy and I live there. Most of the time. I find we spar when that grey area is stretched to the black or white side, when one of us boldly steps both feet across the boundaries to stand on a color with enough purpose and conviction that it cannot be grey.  There are times when colors must be chosen, but grey is what matters, when we can both lay out our truths and let the best parts of us muddle into a color that is not black or white. A shared space. We are so polar opposite in so many ways, but grey has been good to us. We've been dancing there for the past seventeen years.

Being a photographer is right up my alley. I control the amount of light coming into my camera, the speed at which it comes in, the sensitivity of the sensor receiving that light, the shutter count, where the picture is taken, so many things are about control. I totally dig that.

This weekend we decided to do some family portraits. I can't believe it's taken me so long to set this up, but we finally did it and I realized just how much I dislike being in front of the camera. I really don't like it at all. Not. one. bit.  Lack of control. Ouch.

It sure was a wake up call to what I ask of my clients. It is hard to trust a person and a camera, especially if you're shy. I had no idea what to do with myself in front of the camera, and ended up making dorky faces, wearing the wrong thing, and being totally un-ladylike. I hardly ever wear dresses and now I know why. Being short they make me look stubby, and may make people wonder if I am pregnant.( I am not, by the way).  Ever see the show "What not to wear??" I am the poster child. I have no fashion sense at all, and  am close to being what I swore I'd never be : A" just wear whatever because you don't care" kind of mom. Maybe there is freedom in that?? I'll let you know, since I'm headed down that highway.

Anyways, we got a few pics that are keepers, and one for the Christmas card:

Check out my handsome hubby. meow.

And, my cutie patootie:

It started to rain when it was my turn, so here it is:

So, remember to enjoy your grey area. Some people call it compromise, I call it grey.
 It makes for a great dance floor, or an awesome place to make out, if that's your style.

   ; ) !!

Warm Whispers

Let me tell you a little secret.
Come closer, so you can hear my whisper...
I don't like blackberries very much.
??????!!!!

So why am I telling you this? Because I'm setting you up for the most delicious blackberry maple syrup recipe, that's why. : )
 This year was the best berry season ev-ah. The weepy canes, weighted down by precious sugary jewels that practically flung themselves into our baskets, made for the most fantastic of harvests. Even though blackberries are very low on my like list, I felt this urgency to pick as many as I could possible pick because they were free! And I ALWAYS love a deal, and they freeze beautifully.

We made blackberry crisps, blackberry-peach jam, blackberry cobbler, sweet blackberry wine, but I'm hoarding most of the harvest for one of my favorite recipes ever, and by golly, it includes blackberries.
If you have some blackberries hanging out in your freezer, please, make some pancakes asap, so you can indulge in this purple waterfall of summery goodness. It is the best, best best, on a frigid January morning, so save some of those berries to make it then, so you can smell and taste a season that seems like a faint, distant memory. To give credit, I adapted this from a Country Living magazine:

                                             Blackberry Maple Syrup


                          2 cups frozen Blackberries
                       
                          1/2 Cup sugar

                          2 Tbsp. cornstarch

                          3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

                          2/3 Cup pure maple syrup


                          Combine berries, sugar, and 1 cup of water in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. In a small bowl, dissolve cornstarch in two Tbsp. of cold water. Whisk the cornstarch mixture into the berries. Put the saucepan back over the heat and bring to a boil, and let boil while whisking for two minutes. Add the lemon juice. Strain the syrup through a sieve to remove the seeds, pressing the berries with a spatula to extract all the liquid. Discard the solids and stir in the maple syrup. Serve piping hot for the yummiest breakfast ever. Makes approx: 2 1/2 Cups

I freeze breakfast portions of this to have on hand and just defrost it in the fridge overnight, then warm it up in the morning. If it sits too long in the fridge it will become gelatinous, but that will go away when heated.

Enjoy the yummy purple kisses you will get from your family. Grace has had purple stained fingers and a sweeter than normal kiss for the past month. Savor these last warm whispers of summer. Fall already has it's fingers tangled in her curly locks, ready to give a good yank. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Oh, and I don't like chocolate very much either.....or, watermelon.
??????!!!!!!!!
          

Love Lies Bleeding

Love Lies Bleeding.
It's one of my most favorite plants to grow. The cascade of a deep red wave, thicker at the stem, that grows smaller and almost wispy as it trails to a sad end, like a tear slowly finding it's way down a face.
This year, I planted about twenty of them, and on this day, they are fittingly at their peak.
 It was windy out here today, and when I stuck my head out the door this morning, I was bombarded with the collective heartache it carried with it, clutched in it's grip, as if it was wildly dropping by each household to bring with it a sorrow, so no one would have to endure this day alone. As if saying if we all hurt together it may somehow lighten the load for those loves lost. At least that's how my mind likes to think. Can I please, please lighten the load you carry? I would love to help.
 I can try to put myself in the shoes of families that have lost a loved one in the attacks or wonder about the brave souls that rushed in as the rest rushed out, but my heart stops me there, because truly, their stories are beyond us to pretend to know what it feels like, and no matter how much I hurt for them, it will never compare with the hurt those families have to live with every day. We can only pray hard and care deeply for them and wish that September 11th was just another sunny day. But it wasn't.
Before we turned on the news this morning, we chose to tell Grace about it. She is six now, and maybe it wasn't the right decision, but we felt a need to have her learn about it from us, and answer any questions she might have. Censoring the coverage a bit, luckily we hit a station that was more focused on the strength of our nation since the attack, and the stories of courage, rather than replaying the nightmare images that had been permanently etched in our brains in the days that followed the attack. On that day ten years ago, I was five and a half months pregnant with Vanessa, terrified, wondering what kind of world I was bringing my baby into. That day had turned reality upside down, and the ground I walked on became a falsehood, and as the sun set that day in a unnervingly quiet sky, the sunset glowed an ominous color, a warning, that this was a dividing day. There will be a before, and an after, and today was the division.
 A couple days later, we found out Vanessa (in utero) had a cyst in her brain which my OB/GYN casually mentioned to us at our doctors appointment. She promised me up and down that it was nothing to be concerned about and that she was just telling us only because she didn't want us to see it on paperwork later and wonder what it was. If she had done her job properly and had any sense between her ears at all, things may have ended up very differently for our little family, and Vanessa could very well have been alive today. I cried in the car, even though I had no more room for sadness in my heart, as the days that followed the attack, I heavily mourned.  We all remember how that felt. The shock. The disbelief. The "what do we do now?'", the "how can we help?", The pain. It was a lot and it felt more than I could bear that day, and the new news I had just learned was enough to make my heels slip off the cliff and land in a pool of defeated devastation. It was a Friday, three days after the attacks, and as we headed down I-5 there was to be a moment of silence. I will never forget those seconds as dozens and dozens of cars slowed, and pulled off to the shoulder to a standstill. Not one car sped by. Everything stopped as the freeway went silent, only the drone of car radios that told people to quit what they were doing and stop to remember, and the whipping of a large American flag that was being held by a handful of people on the overpass above us was heard . It was a very surreal moment. I was still crying, for the people of September 11th, for my baby who I felt in my heart had something wrong, but no one would listen and told me "no, everything is OK, I promise.." , I cried out of fear, confusion, depression, and just because that was what my body wanted me to do, and do it well, I did. That week ended with our final house inspection failing, which meant we could not move into the new house we had been building over the past year.  It was a rough week, but nothing, nothing compared to the pain and heartache that was being felt, beating limply in the chests of the thousands of devastated people.

Grace was quiet as she watched, and didn't ask any questions except this: "Mom. What would you do to those bad men who were in those planes? What do you wish for them? I would take a sword and cut them in their insides.", she said. I thought long and hard on this one, and didn't dare spew to her what my deep dark inside wanted to do to them. Instead I let the light inside speak and said, " Well...I suppose I would wish for the hate in their hearts to turn into kindness, and that they had never, ever felt the need to hurt anyone....."   She was pleased with this answer, but was still talking about her sword and I quietly smiled.

The sun spilled through the living room and tears started to fall. It was time to get out of the house. Beach. Dog. Kid. Husband. = a good escape for a melancholy day. I checked the tides for KVI and sure enough, we were just going to make it to the spit. I also hurriedly checked facebook, and what? Orcas between the Island and Fauntleroy ferry dock? Wouldn't that be cool...I haven't seen wild Orcas for at least ten years.

We were there but ten minutes, and there they were. It was just us and another Island family I barely know, witnessing a rare beauty on this sunny September 11th.

 Something about seeing majestic animals in their own element, reminding me that once again, simple pleasures, being with the ones you love, loving back with all your being, respecting, being kind, being grateful, being humble, being generous, is key. It is changing yourself for the better that sets into motion a change that can be the biggest asset against the anger and sorrow that can eat away at your soul. I used to hate it when people told me to "Make good out of your sorrow. Turn it into something positive." I wanted to shove a pie in their faces among other things.  Now, nine years later, my brain is starting to let that sentiment saturate instead of flicking it off like an annoying fly. Turn sorrow. Something good. Hmmm...sounds hard... I should try...how do I?...Hmmm...This could quite possibly be going through so many heads right now. It is swishing in my head and I feel closer than ever to an answer. I will let you know when I find it, but until then please, if you can, give me any insight.
 Love those close to you. Hold your family tighter today. Actually, everyday. Remembering heartache may seem like a burden, but somehow it keeps us close to our loved ones. I don't understand it, but sometimes the path to healing is navigating through, and allowing yourself to freely feel the hurt.

Remembering, on this September the 11th. We promise to forever remember you, and the families that hold you so dear. To be reminded of the sacrifices, the strength it takes to move forward, and the courageous men and women of that day. We will never, never forget you.
 Never.