Skip to main content

a much needed Fall

It has been so long since I've experienced a true fall. The leaves and the smells have been magnificent. Truly. I'm always taking deep, deep breaths to get in all that fall leaf smell. The peak color has passed and so the trees are becoming browner and more bare. We've had rain and super strong wind for 2 days now. I love it.

I've gone back and forth on if it will be hard to leave the Beach and head to China next summer. With great days like these, I know it will be hard to miss this next year. But I don't know. Maybe our new town will have fall.

On Sunday we skipped church and went to the Oak Ridge Festival. It's a festival in Attica OH that showcases everything from cannons and tanks to steam-powered wood splitters. Most of the vendors are scattered through the woods which is unique and a lot of fun to wander through. We all 4 really liked it. Phil and I got homemade wool mittens and Maddie used her allowance money to buy a pink heart bracelet. Lily got popcorn. I had a great cup of coffee that was brewed from a percolator. I love those things. It was cool and gray with a little rain off and on. Exactly perfect for a fall festival.

One of my favorite things about living at the Beach is the water. Not just that we live at a beach and, of course, there's water but how one day the water is totally still and the next day it has huge waves. It's just nothing like a lake. Yesterday the waves got progressively bigger as the weather got progressively nastier. I love how the drive to town and to Maddie's school takes us right along the water. I'm always telling everyone to, "Look at those waves!" or "Look how pretty the water is today."

We have a fake fireplace. Honestly, I thought it was silly at first. Now it's on for a big part of the day with it's fake glow and mechanical flames shooting up behind the never-changing logs. It does have a heater option but that doesn't do much. It's definitely cleaner and easier but oh, man what I'd do for the real thing. Maybe it's a blessing because I might never, ever leave.

2 nights ago as I was putting Maddie to bed, she said, "I'm never getting married."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you have to stand in front of all those people and kiss on the lips!"
I smiled.
"Isn't that embarrassing???" she said.
"Yes it was." I said.

She's become giggly about boys and all that boy girl stuff. We are definitely not ready for this.




Popular posts from this blog

moving time

Well my house looks like it did at some point when we moved here about 2 years ago. Boxes lying around, no pictures up, hammers, cleaning rags and tape sitting in random spots around the living room. It's a mess. Another move, more good-byes and mixed emotions. I'm going to miss... ..real CH food whenever I want it for dirt cheap, ..a tailor that made all my curtains and waves to me every time I walk past her shop, ..the little boy who's parents own the light bulb shop and yells, "hello!" every time we pass by, ..all the little kids that very politely say, "Ayi" (Aunt) when they pass me, ..our first friend in Chengdu who owns a local shop and buys birds as a hobby - bird guy, as we call him, ..the best dumpling makers, the steamed bread makers, the shopkeepers that deliver our milk for free and know our address by heart, ..the courtyard of our complex where Maddie can play by herself or with her friends while we keep an eye on her from our 4th floor, ....
Read more

Fickle ol' solidarity

At some point in March when this virus deemed that it had spread so far that it could be called a pandemic, I told the girls they should do video journals to remember the days of living in a pandemic. Here now in the middle of April, I realize that I need to write for myself and the girls can just have lots of regret when they're older because they didn't do what I said. When the whole world started moving to stay-at-home orders, I felt such a strong sense of solidarity.  I looked at all of us (literally all of us - okay, most of us) in our different areas of the world facing this beast together.  Jimmy Fallon's wife filmed him hosting from home.  John Krasinski started SGN in his home office.  Everyone was joking about toilet paper, sweatpants, and cutting your own bangs. Italians were singing from their balconies.  Wuhan folk were singing from their high-rises.  Hospitals in NYC were being surrounded by patrol cars each evening with lights flashing and ...
Read more

spring rain and various randomness

This morning feels so fresh.  Apparently, we had rain last night and the air is cool and clean now. I would love to be on a farm doing the morning chores and then coming in to a big country style breakfast.  With biscuits and gravy, of course.   I have two never wavering dreams for my life - one, have a small farm with goats, chickens, sheep and a dairy cow or two. Two - buy a house on a lake (ideally in the NE or NW of the US) that is used several times a year for family gatherings.  I want us to be the great, great, great grandparents that the house was originally bought by and has been in the family forever.   There were lots of people out this morning exercising .  One lady was doing the breaststroke as she walked.  I can never get the video going quick enough to catch these precious moments of inhibition .   Exercise is one thing our neighbors do really well.  I watched a lady in her late 50s early 60s doing kicks and bends the other day that I haven't been able to do sin...
Read more