happy halloween!

cleo dressed up as a buzzy bee and we headed downtown to the winter garden halloween fest for a little bit :) cleo got to hang out with her best bud cooper (a chocolate lab) who was dressed as 'Superdog!' i didn't take my camera (gasp!) so no pics, but i can assure you, it was adorable :)

isn't my sister cute?

which do you think looks nicer? the black and white or the color?

monday!

it feels like a tuesday... but alas, it isn't! nate and i had a nice weekend, we didn't get up to too much really- watched football (tell me again how this happened?), visited the oakland festival, had friends over and played a lot of wii :) oh and i did work- bleh! work has picked up considerably recently so i'll be pretty busy i think- but that's good- i like busy :)

nate and i have been in a writing course today and will be again tomorrow. we had homework tonight! in fact, nate just ran in here because he thinks i'm typing up my homework instead of just writing it out on paper with a good ol' pencil ;) but i'm not.. i'm blogging. this much is obvious to you though, as the blog reader... anyway.

my handy dandy tip from writing class today? outline everything! even if it's just an e-mail, make an outline like your 3rd grade teacher used to make you :) obviously, this post was not created from an outline...

just kidding :)

okay that pink was a little too out there- so we'll try this for awhile instead :)

think pink!

welcome to the new very very pink blog! this might be too obnoxious....we'll see how long it lasts!

mickey's not so scary halloween party

boy that's a mouthful, eh? nate treated me to an evening at magic kingdom last week, the halloween celebration titled the above -- here's a few pictures from our evening - we had a great time :)

beware of hitchiking ghosts!!

davy jones

i'm still editing photos

and ugh! there's a lot of them! maybe i'm spending a little too much quality time in photoshop... but for now i'm still learning how so i guess it's time well spent ... maybe!

for now, here's my husband the adorable dork :)

toto, i don't think we're at disney anymore!

so in florida, our parking trams look something like this:

but in virginia, they look more like this ;)

we're home from blacksburg!

had a great weekend in blacksburg with cassie (and others!) ate, drank and hung out to our hearts' content! i have lots of pics to sort through and download - hopefully will post them in the next day or so :)
and the most exciting news: cleo has a cousin! i'm anxiously awaiting pictures of cassie's very own french bulldog :) and jury's out on the name, i'll let you know when she decides!

why nate lost at scrabble lastnight.

that darn Q! i won by 2 points ;)

one of my birthday gifts...

i was instructed prior to receiving it that (a) it's not a gag gift and (b) if you don't like it, nathan can have it :) too bad for nathan because i'm keeping it! i think it's supercool and not only practical, but fun to photograph! orange juice season is just around the corner... ;) (thanks john and nina!)

this my friends, is a dog who loves her daddy

also... i posted a bunch of pics finally :) some from the visit with ashlea and jules (which was WONDERFUL, i missed them so much!) and some from nate mowing the lawn with various lizard and flower pictures. try not to get too excited about that last one ;)

see all the october (so far!) pictures by click here. blacksburg pictures to come- i can't WAIT!!!!

the weekend

ah it's a shame the weekend's over already- they always go by so fast! winter garden had a musical festival with various stages and booths and whatnot downtown so we spent a good portion of our time down there. friday night it got rained out but we hung out at 'the attic door,' a local wine bar to see fred harvey, essentially a guy and his guitar who covers a good mix of country and some rock/pop with a few of his own songs mixed in.

saturday we also spent downtown and it was a gorgeous day! blue blue skies - but really really hot! and guess what? i think the a/c on my car gave out (eek!) but anyway, here's a shot of the festival in all it's sunny day glory:

this also caught my attention and was what i had for lunch:

they had quite the variety of music too! we saw everything from the blues brothers to classical music with an electric twist to bluegrass to mariachi. it had such a community feel to it too :) that's one of the things i love about this 'little' town although i guess it's not really that little, it feels that way :)

where's waldo?

a face only a mother could love?

happy halloween from cleo, our buzzy little bee! cleo cooperated with me for a bit today while i took some photos of her in her costume for this year :) you can see several more pics here.

had a fantastic visit with ashlea and jules this weekend and was sad to see them go! we had a great time exploring the food & wine festival at epcot and just running around orlando :)

it's my birthday and i'll blog if i want to

blog if i want to... blog if i want to... you would blog to if it happened to youuuuuuuuu! ;)

mmmm....

my husband made me dinner tonight and it was tasty! we had spinach salads, caribbean jerk shrimp kabobs and black beans & rice -- and it was SPICY! had a glass of water handy though so i thoroughly enjoyed it ;)

Red Door

by Donald Platt

Don Platt was one of my professors at Purdue. He was a great professor and writes beautiful poetry. This was recently featured on Poetry Daily. The formatting might get a bit screwed up but you can see it here as well.


How handsome my father
still is in that wallet-sized photo my 88-year-old mother
keeps by

the telephone! His thick black hair is parted on the left
and combed diagonally
to the right, so that it catches the light from the studio's

umbrella lamps
and glistens. He smiles wide. His cheeks rise. His large black eyes
gaze out

with a look meant only for my mother. He is dressed to kill
in his khaki
army shirt with a neatly knotted black tie and a small

gold cross
pinned to his collar, which means he's a chaplain in the Seabees
about to be sent

to Saipan and Okinawa, 1944. This is the man my mother first
met on the morning bus
to Santa Monica. She was answering an ad for a "room to let"

in a boarding house.
He had a day of leave and wanted to take a swim in the Pacific, stretch out
on his towel and watch

the pale-legged girls stroll by the mumbling surf. The two glanced shyly
at each other.
When they both boarded the evening bus back to L.A., they started talking.

Three weeks later they got married,
had a champagne breakfast with friends at her boarding house. Next morning
he shipped out. Sixty years

hurl by like bumper-to-bumper cars at 70 mph on the L.A. freeway.
My mother visits
my father on North Three, the nursing home's locked unit, every day.

Though he's forgotten
everyone else, he still remembers her. She kisses him full on his purple-blue lips,
which look as if

he's been drinking grape Kool-Aid on the sly.
It's his poor
circulation. When they kiss, his watery, hooded

lizard eyes
wake and glint for a moment like those of the young man in the photograph.
"Do you remember,"

she asks, "how we went all over England, France, and Italy on our
motorcycle?
Coventry, Carcassonne, Vézalay, Rome?" Those names brim

in her mouth, turn
to honeycomb. He shakes his head no. "We would go where the cars
couldn't. When the steep

cobblestone streets became stairs, we rode up the smooth gutters
on the sides.
Don't you remember?" He grins lopsidedly as if to apologize

for his stroke.
"It took you four years to finish your doctoral thesis on the first one hundred
years of the Church of England,

two volumes, one thousand sixty-four pages, with nineteen appendices!
You wrote about Jewel, Hooker,
Andrews, and Laud. Your tutor was Norman Sykes. He must be

dead now. But aren't
they all? That's history for you!" The three of us laugh
uncomfortably.

Suddenly my mother points to the watercolor on the wall.
She painted it
fifty-four years ago. It shows a woman with a child

walking by
a bright red door on a narrow English street. "That's where we used
to live. Remember

Number Two, Little St. Mary's Lane? The red door? The park? Our church?"
My father hesitates,
but only for a second, then says, "Of course I do. Who can forget

our red door?"
My mother smiles. I want to say that the past and the future are
a door like fire

we must walk through forward and backwards. Time is a room
we rent
by an ocean that fills our ears with the surf's susurrus and lamentation

morning, noon,
and night. We live and die in it. The lease is day-to-day. The small photograph
my mother keeps

by the telephone, on which my father will never call her again, is no illusion.
He always smiles
back at her. He is about to say something only she

hears. Their years together
are the morning bus, the evening bus. "Though you forget it all," she replies,
"that's what happened!"