Pink and Glitter

Indy-Lou-Who says. . .




Comfort and joy to you*.



**Tori wrote this Christmas tune in celebration of her daughter.
It's supposed to have a big band. To hear the album version,all tony and full of swing and swagger, go here.

Thanks Living

On Thanksgiving, I took a lot of really crappy pictures:





I told Noah I want to save up and drop $800 on a camera but I don't think he heard me because he just went straight to the fridge and downed two Ten-Fidy's right quick.

I was trying to take pictures of the girls making their gingerbread houses.





Unfortunately, Indy got herself almost immediately drunk:



She spent the rest of the night dancing on the table wearing nothing but a pair of my underwear and an oven mitt and shouting "Hey guys, check out my moves! Check out my moves I says! My moves is the best moves in the whole apple town. I's is habbing me awn onwee on da dis tie-em, guys. GUYS! LOOK AT ME!!"

That is, when she wasn't busy calling Max a fascist dictator and Ruby a socialist.

Ayla and Noah started knocking them back as well:


Mercy and Lucy were all like, 'Omg, can you BELIEVE those blackguards? Methinks they shall be cordially uninvited to our upcoming Venetian Breakfast':




Really, I felt they made a right Cheltenham tragedy out of it.

The Tuttles are all just so exceedingly photogenic, though, so you can quickly forgive them for indulging in a little bit of Regency-era snubbery:



Obviously Goodwifes Tatum and Tuttle, for all their teetotaling, were clandestinely imbibing a little something of their own:




Ayla sounded her barbaric yawp:



Then Indy wrestled with daddy until daddy got all Mike Tyson on her:



I blame the sherry.

Things I Learned In November:

Sometimes when you do something that is really hard, people will tell you how lucky you are, and both parts are true.

The Bible says leave and cleave, right? But a cleaver cuts things apart, mainly meat. What can we learn from this? Maybe the Bible meant a man should leave his mother and father, and then go on to cook a whole lot of barbecue for his wife. Can't really argue with that wisdom, can you?

All manner of ill mood, luck, and will can be remedied by a Coopersmith's Sigda's Green Chili beer and Kermit's Pizza.

When your bright and burgeoning five-year-old has to leave her class of new friends and wonderful, wonderful teachers, you will be desperately sad. When Fort Collins, best place to live in American, actually does not have enough room for every child in it to go to preschool, and tells you your child has been placed on a waiting list, you will again be desperately, frustratingly, achingly sad. There is nothing you can do to change this. Try to accept it. Think lots of angry thoughts about Fort Collins for a few days. Then, try to accept Fort Collins as well. You live here now, remember? And you ain't got the energy or desire to change it.

Free employee beer can sometimes work like a balm. The Beer of Gilead comes in cans.

You will miss your old places: the library down the block with the librarian who knew you and always removed your fines, your mail carrier who knew you by name and smiled and waved, your Barnes and Noble with adequate seating(30 seats for 130,000 people. Really, Fort Collins?), the park down the street the other way where your children ran and played for three years, the horsey park that always felt like an adventure.

But you will find new places. A beautiful new library where all the books and dvd's are new and a play area that keeps your kids entertained for hours (ignore the fact that the bulk of the Fiction collection is cheesy Christian Fiction. You can order other books through Prospector loans).

Feed yourself Coopersmith's again. I cannot overemphasize the importance of Coopersmith's.

You are capable of crying very, very hard over having to leave a job. A JOB. Always try to find a job that you would cry to leave, in the future.

Amazon Prime soothes all manner of lost employee bookstore discounts. You could marry Amazon Prime, you know. Employee Discount always did have commitment issues. Also was kind of a whore.

A husband who will bring you hot cocoa and leave you alone in your room for a few hours is worth his weight in books, free shipping, and Green Chili Beer.

(Plus, have you tasted the barbecue?)

Pictures to come soon. Promise.

Over and out.

Mash Up

Because of Heather, I had too.

Indy has star quality, don't you think? Runs in the family.

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Passing

We didn't get a very nice fall here. At first it was hot. Then it was suddenly very cold. All the leaves froze and turned dirty brown. There are a few red trees to be found, but they are far between. It snowed yesterday, a soupy wet snow that wasn't pretty or cozy. All the leaves lie mushy and brown in our yard. It froze the day of the pumpkin festival, and they canceled the fun. By the next weekend we were too tired and too broke to make it out there.

Mentally I am reaching forward, into the future, looking for brighter spots to hold on to. Already planning Thanksgiving delights in my head. Catching myself humming Christmas songs over dirty dishes. I was talking to God the Mother the other day (wonders of the internet). She asked what we were going to shed this season, as the trees shed their leaves. She asked what we would reveal in the coming darkness.

I thought they were good questions.

One Sunday, I woke up in a black mood. I took a shower and was feeling so entirely void of any goodness that I went and lay back down. A while later, I woke up. The house was quiet. Outside, one of the only brilliant and beautiful days of fall was happening. It would happen whether I was present to see it or not. I texted Noah to see where he was. He texted back. They were at the horsey park. Did I want him to come get me?

I didn't realize, until now, how valuable this is. To have someone that will leave you in the dark, accepting that is where you are, and then, at the right time, ask you if you're ready to come out of it.

To have the courage to say yes.

Like a good book, I can't put this day back

The Mini-Zoo Would Be Nice

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Also

I am aware that I'm spreading a known virus here. But everytime I see it, this just makes me feel good.

Three Good Things

1) I nosed around, discovered the title of the new Oprah book last night, and purchased it at my work--almost 24 hours before the selection was officially announced.

Yeah. I was pleased with myself there.

2)I have inherited shapely calves and small ankles from my mother, and no matter how much weight I gain, they stay that way. (Thanks mom).

3)Tonight I have a date with Husband, Pacey (they don't mind), and a pumpkin beer. Sunday morning I have a date with a vanilla latte, a pumpkin muffin, and a blank notebook.

See? Now we're at four good things. Or six, depending on how you count.

Happy Friday.

Now go get your Friday pants on.

Not a lot of words today. I am writing other things and there is only so much energy left afterwards to go into the blog.

On September 17th, 2001, David Letterman was the first of the late night shows to return to the air waves after September 11th.

Tori Amos traveled by car (airlines were still down) from Florida to perform that night. She did a cover of Tom Waits' "Time".

You may think I am a crazy fanatic over Tori and perhaps that is true. But we look to performers to capture, to mirror back at us, emotions we are feeling, or emotions we have felt. Ones that we weren't quite capable of or equipped to name at the time we felt them. Experiences that we feel only intuitively. Good writing does the same thing. It says:look. It names all the ineffable moments of human experience that we might be too deeply entrenched in to name ourselves.

Tori does this. If you have seen her live, you have seen it for yourself. Any performer will tell you crowds have energies. The collective energy of all the people there that night. Tori harnesses that energy. She uses it, she names it. The woman downright wields it like a sword. She opens up a space for us to experience things that, until then, were only gnawing around the edges, visible only out of the far peripheries. Here, she did it after September 11th. The hardest spot to hold in your soul is a tender one. We feel tenderness and immediately try to push it away. Reacting in anger or throwing up defenses to make ourselves hard again. Tori held that tender spot open. The place of sadness, of sorrow. The place that needs time to heal. The place where hope is asking if it's too soon to nudge back in.

Well. To me she did, anyway.