When Your Spouse Gets A New Hobby.......

Andy got a new camera this year, and once in a while there are odd "go stand over there" moments, but most of the time it's just very cool.  He took this picture of the living room looking festive,

and, of course, Theo:

who is nothing if not a ham.  I take pictures of things, but while I can manage not-blurry and actual-representations-of-things, that's as far as I go.

I Think I'm a Holiday Behind...

Though I don't think it's all my fault.  Thanks to Global Warming, our garden was alive until November, so we got things harvested a bit late and with everything else I needed to get done,

the pumpkins got pushed aside.  They do store fairly well, but Monday I noticed one of them was going bad, so yesterday I started on roasting pumpkins. 

Once, in my younger and more foolish days, I used to try to cut through their tough little skins with a knife.  Now I use the easier and FAR more fun bouncing-them-off-the-patio method.  When they're fresh, they don't bounce.  When they've aged a bit, they do, so it can take a couple tries, and is a lovely way to work out frustration....say, that of never getting rid of bronchitis, for instance.

I have also discovered that a grapefruit spoon works REALLY well for scraping the insides clean:

and I can now tell you that our oven has enough room to roast exactly 4 sugar pumpkins at a time.  This was a good thing to figure out before breaking open a fifth pumpkin, so I'm feeling proud of myself. 

It's been longer than I thought since I roasted pumpkins, so while I remembered that boiling the seeds in salt water before roasting them both flavors them and gets the remaining pumpkin gunk off of them,

I didn't use enough salt.  Oh well.  There are more pumpkins......

And what better way to celebrate fresh pumpkin puree than..

 

pumpkin muffins?  Okay, in a household which has never, ever made a pumpkin pie, that is..............

Almost There!

I have read 99 books for the year so far.  A lot of them have been audio books, because honestly that is the only way I would ever be able to do this.  And I usually have more than one book going at any time--there's an audio book in the sewing room, one on my phone, and there was one in our bedroom, but I just made the executive decision that if I still don't care for the book on the third disc out of 6, it's time to call it quits.  Besides, there are others.

I've been rereading a lot, which I've always done.  Not everything is worth reading twice, but some things I can read over and over again.  Like this:

This is a 1945 book of Grimm's fairy tales, mercifully before the era when parents decided children were too "fragile" for these tales which have been around for hundreds of years.  I must have read this at least a hundred times growing up, and still know much of it by heart.  To fair, they don't always have morals--I probably wouldn't have liked them as much if they had, although my favorite, "The Fisherman and His Wife," certainly has one--the fisherman's wife demands more and more from the magical flounder, and finally goes too far and is left exactly where she started.  Reading the story as an adult, I do feel sorry for the fisherman because he's a kind soul and is obviously married to a nasty old bat and remains so at the end, but fairy tales don't believe in divorce, though one can murder a troublesome spouse.  I guess I can see why people freaked out about the original stories, but I still like them better than the Disney ones. Maybe we're more entertained by darkness than we like to think..........

It's the Holiday Season

So here in America, within a span of 6 weeks, we have 3 federal holidays and manage to make the entire period a season of parties, shopping, and eating.  Maybe I should mention eating twice, as there's just THAT much food.  I don't care how healthy one tries to be, there just isn't that festive atmosphere about lettuce.  Sad, but true. 

Both trees are up,

I have finished the last gift (I hope, because otherwise this means I have forgotten someone), many things are shipped, and now I need to get cracking on the Christmas letter.  Or holiday letter, in case it's a New Year's thing.  I'm flexible that way.  

Wow, Was That A Full Month?

Here it is already December, and I didn't even get our Thanksgiving picture posted.  This:

is what we did for Black Friday.  We spent the holiday on the ranch with my parents, and visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins.  A really fun time.

Now we're in to the full craziness of December.  And I have shipped gifts!   Not all of them, but most.  In early December.  I am very excited about this.  And surprised, of course, but I prefer not to talk about that............

Decluttering

I imagine we all have things that are difficult to part with.  For me, it's books. 

I know many people have switched to e-readers, but I just don't care for it.  I love the real thing.  And I reread books a lot, which makes it even HARDER to get rid of any, because what it I want to reread them????

However, I need the shelf space, and there are books I'm never going to reread. Anything by Dostoevsky, for a start.  I'll admit--I actually LIKE his books,but not enough to reread them.  And somewhere in that pile is Centennial by James Michener, which I loved, but every book of his is around 1000 pages long.  I'd like to read all of them, which makes it REALLY unlikely that I will ever get around to REREADING any of them. 

Also in this pile are my copies of To the Lighthouse and some collection of James Joyce's writings.  I get the point of stream of consciousness writing, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it.  I've hung on to anything considered a "classic" because I sort of felt like I should, but for many of them, all I've done with them since college is 1.) move them, usually involving hauling them up and down stairs, and 2.) dust them.  In spite of my fondest hopes, not once in all my years of dating did a man look at my bookshelves and swear his undying love for me because I had slogged my way through Chaucer or Tolstoy.  Go figure...........

And We're Back!

Some friends of ours got married on Long Island this past weekend, so bright and early Tuesday morning,

we learned that airport security in Boise opens at 4:30 in the morning.  To be fair, I could have lived without this knowledge, but when you live in a smaller city, there aren't always a lot of flight options.  If one flies out of a little airport, one is almost always sent to a big airport somewhere, and if one is traveling east from Boise, those bigger airports tend to be in a westerly direction, so flying 2 hours west to catch a flight east is pretty standard, but dreadful when one has a sore back.  I did find an airline that would send us through Minneapolis, but that's a once-a-day option.  Still, the perk to a 5:00 AM flight is that one can take a muscle relaxer and STILL be no more groggy than most of the other people on the plane.   However, it does not to wonders for knitting, so

the new begonia shawl did not get a lot of attention.  Or at least not much coherent attention.  

We flew in a couple days early to explore New York a bit--or to rest my back if needed--but Wednesday we walked over 100 blocks (!), winding from our hotel on 33rd up through Central Park, 

 going a few blocks past the Metropolitan Museum of Art in search of a restaurant, through as much of the museum as we could before it closed, then all the way back down.  We slept well that night. 

Thursday I was very sore, but a hot shower and an Aleve got me sort of mobile, so we decided to visit the Statue of Liberty.

You have to make reservations in order to get into the statue or even the museum, but it was such a beautiful fall day that it would have been tragic to be inside, and the tour of the grounds is quite nice.  I am particularly pleased with this photo because it was with my phone and very much NOT a selfie.  I think 20 minutes in Manhattan is all anyone needs in order to understand why selfie sticks are getting banned in many places.  And, while everyone was busy on the ferry taking selfies of themselves against the backdrop of NYC, I saw a seagull in mid-flight reach up and scratch his head with his foot without even dropping in altitude.  That was seriously impressive, and I was probably the only person on the boat to see it.  

I have more pictures, but they're on my actual camera, which I haven't unpacked yet.  We flew home later Monday night/Tuesday morning, rescued the kitties from the gulag bright and early,

 and while Theo would have nothing to do with me yesterday, by 5:00 this morning, he was in need of a cuddle--the first of four so far, and has been keeping my feet warm while I rest on the heating pad.  I think he missed us.....