It's balmy today, probably over 60°F, or at least 60-ish, but it's damp. Not raining, just gray and damp and very Oregon. It's so dark here. We are so much further north than I was in Massachusetts. It's starting to get dark by 5:00 p.m. and it's black as night until 7:30 a.m.
I had forgotten how many trees there are here that do change color. It's no New England leaf-peeping season for sure, but some of the trees on campus are really splendid.
The president's office had cookies and cider available all day for everyone on campus as a little Halloween treat. The halls of the building I worked in smelled of mulling spices. I had a maple-frosted donut for breakfast and a pumpkin-shaped sugar cookie as an afternoon snack.
Earlier this week, I let Maddie and Riley stay up late to watch the Charlie Brown Halloween special on TV; they seemed to enjoy the fun of being up late and certain parts of the show, but they'd never watched commercial TV before and got amusingly idignant about the ads. "When will Snoopy be back? When will Charlie Brown be back?" I had not watched that show in years and years and years, and I had completely forgotten about the (rather long) Snoopy-as-WWI-flying-ace subplot. I sense that in the days when therapy was rare and PTSD was not a diagnosis, Charles M. Schultz was using his medium as a place to work through some serious issues.
We're going to a fall festival potluck tonight at Maddie and Riley's preschool. I made an old-school, original Moosewood cookbook recipe for vegetable pâté. It has green beans, hard-boiled eggs, sautéed onion, walnuts, a bit of vinegar, and a pinch of nutmeg. Sounds kinda gross, right? It's actually hearty and delicious, although it does not, I don't think, taste "like chopped liver," as the cookbook would have you believe. Many of the preschool activities this week have revolved around cooking and other preparations for the festival.
Tomorrow we'll drive down to my dad's and go trick-or-treating in his neighborhood and to various friends' houses. Maddie and Riley are so excited about their costumes and about the trick-or-treating and candy.
I like fall.*
*Although I do not like turning back the clocks and am dreading my Sunday morning wake-up call from the twins. They are normally up around 6:30 and I think it is highly likely that I will be up around 5:30 on Sunday. Ugh.
Moi
- Snickollet
- I'm a mother and a widow, and a whole lot of other things. Here, though, I tend to write about parenting, grief, and their intersection.
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11 comments:
I watched Charlie Brown with my 3 year old this week too. And I squirmed through the whole WW1 pilot scene too! I never thought about it that way. Charlie had a lot of questions that I didn't want to answer so I copped out and told him the plane had engine trouble and Snoopy's face turned green from motion sickness. He doesn't have to know about war for a little longer!
We had the same problem with the commercials. Vivi kept asking, "where did that show go?" It never occured to me to warn her!
Looking forward to seeing those cuties in their costumes. Will you facebook the pictures or put them up here?
Thank you for pointing that out about daylight savings time. For years now, I've felt like a total party pooper complaining about turning the clocks back an hour when everyone else exclaims "but you get to sleep an extra hour!" Not if you have early risers, you don't. Happy Halloween! And Happy Fall! (Today really was beautiful.)
THis is the best line EVER!!!
"I sense that in the days when therapy was rare and PTSD was not a diagnosis, Charles M. Schultz was using his medium as a place to work through some serious issues."
So true, its a weird story all around.
There's a great biography of Charles Schultz that D and I read last year, it goes in depth into your theory on the PTSD... It's a good read, definitely recommended. Will you post pics of the kids in their costumes? We want to see the cuteness!
Would you post the vegetable pate recipe? Sounds really good.
I'm glad this fall is a happy one. I'm looking forward to celebrating Christmas in Oregon. Oh, we'll be doing that the first week of December. It's a family tradition.
PTSD is, sadly, still not a diagnosis available in today's military. The politicians talk the good talk, but the reality is quite different.
If you get a chance to try the old school Cheese and Mushroom Pate recipe in the original Enchanted Broccoli Forest, it is delicious.
Oooo, can you post the pate' recipe, sounds yummy!
Fall is my favorite season. Thanks for reminding me of so many things I enjoy in one post.
Maddie's comment made me laugh!
Even for me, whose kids are a little older and who got to sleep in for that extra delicious hour on Sunday morning, the sleep benefits of the "fall-back-one-hour" are limited. I would THINK that the time change would help me and my kids get up for work and school easier this week. But that doesn't happen--what I find is that the kids aren't tired at their regular bedtimes now, can't fall asleep for a good while, so are even MORE TIRED each morning. (Myself, as an also-widowed, full-time working mom, well, I'm always exhausted anyway.)
Of course, in the spring when we lose an hour, that's just excruciating, because our butts drag for a couple of weeks trying to reset our body clocks.
Every year, I look forward to gaining the hour, because I've forgotten how hard the transition is. . . one of the benefits of being overworked, I guess, is that my memory of the bad things is as poor as my memory of the good ones!
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