Thankful.

Man, oh man, you’re my best friend, I scream it to the nothingness.
There ain’t nothin’ that I need.

Home is not a house but a feeling

This week, I'm haunted by commercials with a home theme.

In a Lowe's commercial, that Hulu has decided is my new constant companion:


Home is where you are.
Home is where I want to be...
Home is not a house, but a feeling.

Advertising Discovery's "Disappeared":


You put your arms around me and I'm home.

The music that grabs my attention, and then within seconds, I'm thinking home home home home, and then looking up the song, then discovering it has very little to do with the home I'm mourning, and so much more to do with the home I have and that I'm building.

But even so, it continues, and I start listening to other songs I know about home.


 Home is where I want to be.


Every day's an endless stream of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories
And every stranger's face I see reminds me that I long to be
Homeward bound, I wish I was homeward bound.

Which inevitably leads the REAL tear jerker.

GO, FIGHT, EAT BRAINS TONIGHT!!!

What do we want?  BRAINS!!!  When do we them?  BRAINS!!!

Halloween, I love you.

Zombie cheerleader and football player, inspired by the football players in Beatlejuice who follows around the afterlife intake lady Juno saying things like "Hey, Coach, I don't think we survived that crash."

I went back and forth on this Halloween.  As I often do, I got an idea, and then I fixated.  I HAD to do this idea.  Even though it wasn't coming together, I could tear myself off it.  And as you might have noticed, I have the blues.

At the last minute, I decided to go for it, and had the most fun I've had in six months making Walker's pads, painting the jersey, putting a weasel graphic on the helmet, fitting the cheerleading uniform, and ever so obsessively making the text for the front of the cheerleading outfit.

I couldn't bring myself to destroy these.  No fire, no holes.  Just a lot of blood.  Too many dollars and too much potential in these bad boys.

Costume how-to, including make-your-own football pads (not to be used in athletics!) in a future post.

I need to work on my raw wounds.  The neck slash was not bad, but I'll go thicker on the cut line in the future.  The skinned/raw face size could be better.  Maybe tinting the latex that's the base? Or maybe painting a thin coat of the Ben Nye thick blood before I apply it in clots.  Walker's wound has a really sharp edge to it, but that didn't show when the helmet was on.

The zombie Girl Scout made a reappearance!  Turns out what fits me as a short fitted dress fits my awesome friend like a knee length cinch dress.  Yay!  Also, it turns out that friend is GREAT at zombie eye makeup!

Pictured here: zombie Girl Scout and recent immigrant who acquired her citizenship through dubious means (also know as a Russian bride).

Our Favorite Marine

 

I will rail against Target putting out Christmas stuff and calling the holiday season before Halloween, but our favorite Marine rules for getting a leg up on the coming gift giving season.  Main man's brother,  LCPL John Corydon W., currently deployed in Sangin, Afghanistan, asks that instead of sending him care packages this November, donate a toy or make a donation to your local Toys for Tots in his honor.   I love this guy.

Corydon writes:

"The mail system in Afghanistan is already slow to begin with, and the amount of mail it receives during the holidays triples. So I figure instead of sending packages that will sit on Camp Leatherneck, why not spend that money and care making sure that a child has a chance for a happy holiday season. I feel tremendously blessed that I have a family and friends that cares about me so much and about our country and communities. Thank you all for donating, and I will see you all next spring when I rotate home."

A very big year.

A year and a day ago, I married my man man, my best friend, and then danced the night away.

At 3 a.m. after the last guests had boarded the school bus back to the hotel, we pulled the plug on the lights, and wandered back to our cottage to find that good friends and cousins had cleared our bed of the getting ready debris, hung papel picado through the house, and decorated the mirror.  We collapsed into bed, husband and wife.

We woke up at six a.m. and lay in bed reading the guest book note cards.  Then we left breakfast bars and juice at the tent door of our campers, and headed to the wedding tent to straighten up and gather up some flowers, before heading to the bowling alley for one last wedding hoorah.

As we about to leave the bowling alley, we got word that our family van,  Big Red, which had been incorrectly parked at the wedding and thus made it into the wedding photos, broke down.  Exploded, some say.  Eventually, another van would be borrowed and it would break down too.  Then Amy and Dad would ride home in that van on the back of a truck.    My mom fretted, and I laughed. 

Annie, Walker, and I started the longest wedding cleanup ever, while Mom spent another night at the inn with Amy who awaited Dad with the second doomed van.  Three people took down what had taken many more to put up.

At some point we realized we'd forgotten to have our officiant, Xavier, our dean from undergrad, sign the marriage certificate, and we headed to his house to remedy that.  Annie headed back to Springfield, and Mom saw off Amy and joined us in in the last of the cleanup.

When we returned to the farm, the big white tent was gone, the tables and chairs were loaded on a truck bed.  Our uhaul of plants and furniture and plates and vases and jars was packed.  The delicate items were in the car.  We were beat, and it was time to go.
 

First, we posed for final sentimental photos of the farm (love the timer).  When we left, I wept that our wedding was over.

Mom, Walker, and I arrived home exhausted, and basked in the air conditioning to a dinner of PB&J and potato chips, the food stash we'd bought from Aldi's as a just-in-case for our guest and campers, and beers in awesome steins (A&W 2010) from some of our favorite people in the world.

In the year that followed, we went on Amy's Make-a-Wish trip to Florida.  I started a new job.  Walker got a fellowship.  Walker started a new job.  We ran our first 5k with my sis.  We celebrated my birthday with my mom and sisters, and our most favorite Indian food from Chicago, picked up by Mom and brought downstate.  We celebrated Halloween with my sister.  We got a new niece.  We lost Biggie, my step-brother, and a week later, my amazing friend lost her brother.  We and Annie, accompanied by Mom and Amy, ran a race on Thanksgiving morning, wearing tshirts honoring Biggie and swearing we'd make running on Thanksgiving a tradition.  We spent our first Christmas with Walker's family and away from mine.  We went on our honeymoon to Trindad and Tobago.  We flew through Houston on our way home and saw four beautiful faces, two who we hadn't seen in years.   We visited Walker's grandparents in Palm Springs.  We celebrated Easter and decorated eggs as a family, for the first time in years.  We ran the Illinois marathon relay.  We lost my mom.  We celebrated my mom.  We took in my mom's dog.  We started our new life without here.  We finished grad school.  We had a Luau for Amy's 24th birthday.  We visited Tacoma, celebrated Papa, spent time with our marine, and met a new cousin with the best name ever -- Annie.  We moved Annie to Chicago to start her new job and new life.  I didn't get the job I wanted.

And, on the day before our first anniversary, we followed through on what we said we'd do to celebrate.  We competed in the Mudathlon -- 3.3 miles, 44 obstacles, and a LOT of mud.

We are still standing.  Here's to the next year and the next.

A year and a day ago.

Amy, her growing posse of men, and a lot of joy.

Found by my husband...

Google-mapping song lyrics.

He's an information scientist, and that's our song (ok, ONE of our songs).

Walker is out control.

Walker's milk glass collecting is verging on hoarding.  It's outrageous.  At night, he clears aside a few vases to make a spot for himself to curl up and sleep amidst the bounty.

What? You don't believe that this is Walker's doing?

Happy Mother's Day!

We are two very lucky people, with very wonderful moms in our lives.

So glad you were born.

Happy birthday, main man!

Midterms in Jar City

It's midterms here and the locals are cranky, poorly behaved, and unkempt.  Good things on the horizon though.  For one, MIDTERMS BEING OVER in a week.


Invitation stock has arrived and will soon be whisked to FedEx for printing.  We found a great company out of Michigan that sells brightly colored, quality paper from a hydro powered mill.  The "whitewash" stock that almost everything will be printed on is 100% recycled/30% post-consumer, and at the moment I can't find that stats on the Poptone "tangy orange" envelopes or "lemondrop" cardstock for the insert cards.  We're skipping RSVP cards and envelopes -- it's all on the website.
 

Picture frame and coffee mug acquisition is also underway.

Now for the wild successes that bring great joy to our tired midterm minds.

We are 90% certain we have found our photographer at long last.  I'm not posting her here yet because the contracts aren't signed, and I'd die if someone swooped in and took her from us as a result of my bragging online about how awesome she is, how local she is, how great her work it, how affordable she is, and how she's available on our wedding day.  We were waiting for a sign and one came.  She was married on the same farm last year.  Done.  She's out of the country the next two weeks, then contracts are getting signed.

And second, yesterday, we hit the jar jackpot at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore!  They have the best stuff, the best prices, and their employees and volunteers are so much fun in this hoarding process.  So I have pretty high expectations when I go into the Restore, but this score was above and beyond my expectations.  I wish I had a photo of the what the shelves looked like when I walked in on Saturday.  I almost started crying.

One hundred thirty four pint size mason jars, 23 quart size mason jars, including this awesome Knox jar, that is definitely a keeper.  Bam!

Shooooes!

One might think with feet as big as mine I'd shy away from bright colors, but they would be wrong.  I don't dig white shoes -- they always strike me as geriatric.  The winner, or probable winner, is yellow!  Dig?

It's been a little light on the Walker related content since I've been HHF (hat/headband/fascinator) obsessing.  So here is some Walker for your enjoyment: