Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s lovely here in the NC mountains despite the clouds and occasional rain. A fresh breeze is blowing off my parents’ deck, and the Blue Valley below is its usual mercurial self, revealing shades of Prussian blue and smoky grey as the sun flirts with the cloud cover. Inside, the hum of voices and laughter blends with the smells of roasting turkey and favorite dishes wafting from the kitchen. Frack has created the folk art turkey from a gourd rescued from the porch display, while Frick and his father are discussing musical tastes and their mutual disdain for classical. I have a cocker spaniel at my feet (borrowed; Buc belongs to my sister) and the promise of a good meal ahead. Best of all, I have a family I love--some of whom are celebrating in Florida, like my Mama, sister, brothers, and their families--and friends who are steady and supportive in good times and bad.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

Norman Rockwell, “Freedom from Want”

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The Dinner List

I’ve been laughing with Steve Martin since I was in junior high school. That would be during the arrow-through-the-head years. Turns out there’s a lot more to the funny man than “King Tut.” He’s a writer with a wry look at the world (if you haven’t read Shopgirl, please do), a playwright, an art collector, and a Grammy-winning banjo player. Steve Martin lines about everything from Googlephonics (“the highest number of speakers next to infinity”) to McDonald’s (“sluuuurp...hamburger...sluuuurp...malt...”) to dentistry (“You’ll be a den-tist! You have a penchant for causing things pain--AAUGH!”) crop up with regularity in household conversations. Plus, he’s not ashamed to dress up in cowboy clothes and plan a stickup with water pistols (the above scene from the Ron Howard movie Parenthood, filmed practically in my back yard). Yep, just about the perfect dinner guest, I’m thinking.

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Fence Sitting

This year, baby sister has been brave enough to take the NaNoWriMo plunge, and I am happily cheering her on. From the sidelines, it seems. Although I have ideas in abundance, I have revising to do. I have no business trying to write my own headlong draft when I have other responsibilities. No reason to start playing around with the YA story ideas. No...dammit, I have plenty of reasons, but perhaps I lack the will. We’ll see. At any rate, I’m already in the hole a week with no production. Madness to start? Perhaps. Then again, I did win NaNo my first year with an orgy of words on the last day--more than 12k of them, to be exact. Never say never...

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Trick or Treat!

All Hallow’s Eve--or, in other words, a built in excuse to eat too much candy without guilt. This year, Chez mimi will be disgorging a slightly (only very slightly) naughty Alice in Wonderland and a Rastafarian to ply the neighbors for free goodies. Wonder who’s showing up at the door?

In the witch’s kettle: fun size Twix, Milky Way, and Three Musketeers. I probably should have bought Snickers because I have no problem resisting them. Oh, well. Live and learn. That, and lie in wait to steal Reese’s Cups from my kids.

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The Bed List

Gerard Butler...(release long sigh). Scottish. Handsome. Muscles. Wicked twinkle in his eye. Plus, he had the good sense not to take up with Jennifer Aniston despite clamoring urge from tabloid media to do so. (Really, what is it about her? I just don’t get it.) You just know he’d be a rollicking good time. And I do mean rollicking.

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To Autumn

In honor of my favorite season and this week’s lovely cool snap, enjoy this classic ode from John Keats:

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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Natal Days

My grandfather, accomplished raconteur and all-around gentleman that he was, used to refer to birthdays with the quaint term “natal day” when writing birthday letters and the like. Daddy has picked it up, usually wishing me a happy natal day on one of the cards he sends (one’s always funny, one’s always “a serious card” in honor and mockery of a long-ago Hallmark TV commercial).

Well, today is, in fact, my Natal Day. Since I am no longer a child, I don’t expect it to be an orgy of wow. It’ll probably be a regular day, full of work and taxi-driving for Frick and Frack and the usual Wednesday night activities at church. And perhaps a present or two from Mr. Man.

Considering I have a lovely (though messy) home, a wonderful (though forgetful at times) husband, two beautiful (though frustrating) children, and a rewarding (though exhausting) job, I really have nothing more to wish for, do I? Except perhaps a massage and some really good chocolate. Mr. Man, are you listening?

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