a wandering post about winter.

note: this also counts as day 19 of blogtober: share a diy. (you should be proud of this little blogger, doing it herself and hibernating. or if that's not good enough for you, i scrape my own windows when there's frost and snow on them.)

there is snow on the ground.
christmas music can make me either disgruntled or gruntled. (its a word, look it up.)
and it's so COLD.
its winter.
winter means scraping ice spiders off my windshield and
the dull thud of my boots on the frozen ground.
it means that the house gets cold at night anyway
but this year its colder than normal.
when i woke up this morning, my nose was cold. cold as if i'd been outside for 10 minutes.
i hate cold noses.

it means waiting for my car to warm up but lets face it, the heater sucks.
(you had one job, heater...one job.)
and the house, even though its almost 80 degrees, still feels like its only 55, and the cold beats at the windows like a chant.
cold cold cold cold cold
the sun seems so much brighter in the winter, taunting us.
"come outside and play...it's lovely out here!"
but then you open the door and BOOM
winter shoves in like an army at the gate,
like the uninvited to the party
the cold air billows in like snow before the plow.
everyone seems to be strapping their snow-pushers to the front of their mud-splattered pick-up trucks
the minute we get a skiff of the white stuff.

its my second favorite season (autumn is first). i love the white stuff.
i love the tingles you get in your toes whenever you see the christmas lights
and the giddy laughter that bubbles up when you think of your family's faces on christmas morning
because you got them some awesome gifts this year.

i love the bonfires that you have in the snow,
and life-threatening sledding in the dark - or even in the daytime.
i love the way the streams freeze over but then bits of the ice break off
and you can see the black water tirelessly sprinting on beneath the white cover.
the rivers do the same, but bigger water means faster water means thinner ice,
so its more like elephant skin, wrinkled but white, edging up on other ridges, pushing up the banks.

i love christmas. i love the holiday season. even in january, there's skiing and
there's hot tea and leggings (so awesome)
and you have the perfect excuse to bundle up and cover your skin
and you don't have to worry about finding tank tops that fit
because "what the heck ITS SWEATER SEASON frumpyness is actually semi-acceptable and visual comfort is expected"
and reading for hours on end is legit because what else are we gonna do? sunbathe?

the snow keeps coming and then it melts and the ground turns into one cohesive puddle of mud and yucky water.
the garden is kind of melted, but the sunflower stalks from last summer are still standing
and when the wind rustles their leaves it sounds like brittle newspaper being torn.
they wait like dirty giants, non-anticipatory of their fate, unmoving and solidly firm,
dead to the world around them.

sometimes we get rain, but it can't decide whether it wants to be rain or snow.
somehow i got all my christmas present shopping done before thanksgiving
but i can't buy anything because both my birthday and christmas come this month, dang it.
so i sit here, and i read, and i write, and i work, and i wait
because its winter.

but dang it dang it dang it 
why does it have to be so cold?

screw it all.
i'm going to hibernate.
don't wake me.
(unless its food time. or you plan on kidnapping me and taking me to somewhere lovely. or you've found a dragon and you want to give it to me. *whispers* someone please get me a dragon...)

DAY 25: this week i did absolutely nothing exciting

i worked. i played a little piano. i started reading a new book that i actually bought. (i never buy books. i WANT to buy books. but my budget is cruel and unrelenting and focused towards more expensive goals...like travelling.) and i started making some more journals. (more on that later.)

i baked some pumpkin and looked up a midwifery school. i pondered whether to post my forceful and probably-not-politically-correct post on feminism. i watched an entire season of The Big Bang Theory which is my guilty pleasure show. and i laugh way too hard at it.

i made sure that every time i walked down the sidewalk i kicked the leaves and enjoyed their crunching. i gaped at the frost-glazed trees and the fog bank that is usually much larger this time of year, but had just missed our house. i was disappointed at this.

i looked up Albanian food. it looks lovely. lots of flaky doughs and meat and cabbagey fillings and BAKLAVA. (i have to figure out how to do this gluten free) so that stuff is on the list.

i made sorbet (strawberry and mango) which was really good. oh, and meatloaf.

but this week, other than these things, has been rather quiet. that quietness that comes, not before the storm, but three weeks later when nothing has happened for a while, and you start to think that nothing will ever happen again. its that quiet when you've been walking for a long time and haven't really gotten anywhere. anywhere remarkable, that is. its that quiet right in the middle of everything that makes you tired enough to just lay down and take a nap. its the kind of quiet that comes from everyone watching you to see if you will go through the door. the problem is...do you even see it? its right in front of you. you've gotten somewhere, but you don't see it. you just need to overcome that one last obstacle. go through the door.

Day 20 & 22 - Halloween tags and Pinterest roundups

Because i am SUCH a rebel: i'm combining these posts. So, its all from Pinterest. but i'm answering the tag questions. (i know. waaaaat?)

feel free to do this yourself! :)

1- What year did you first go trick-or-treating?

my family and i have only ever gone to church harvest parties and things like that. so, no, i've never actually gone trick-or-treating.

2- Favorite kind of candy?

3- What are you going to be this year?

sadness from Inside Out! (LOVE that movie...)

4 - Favorite costume you've had?

my sister and i did this for like, 3 years straight. cowboys and indians. OH and there was that one time where the entire family dressed up like hicks from the backwoods. there were some reactions to that. 

5 - Favorite spooky creature?

black cats. (the worst they can do is scratch you.) (plus these little buggers are ADORABLE.)

6 - How hyped do you get for Halloween?

7 - Halloween Pinteresty thing that you've always wanted to try?

we made caramel apples ONCE while i was a child. i REALLY REALLY REALLY want to give it another go.  

8- Favorite part of Halloween?

we don't actually GO to the movies. we just sack out in my mom's bedroom and watch like, 3 movies in a row and chow on junk food. 

9 - Orange or black?
both.

NOW: i'm not going to specifically tag anyone, but feel free to steal this. :) Happy Halloween! 

10 summer foods...a la favori

Source

I'm a foodie. These are my top ten favorite summer foods.
Okay, enough said.
LET'S EAT.

1. Watermelon. I'm fairly certain I could live off of watermelon.
2. Grilled Chicken. *ahem* My father makes THE. BEST. GRILLED. CHICKEN. EVER.
3. Iced Tea. not sweet iced tea (although I have had that and DANG it's good) but my mother's honey-bush sun tea, loose-leaf and slow-steeped. it's lovely.
4. Tomatoes. particularly the orange tiny ones from the garden.
5. Zucchini. You will hate me for this one. But really, I LOVE zucchini: it's really versatile: very simple and yummy just by itself, but can also be used in other more complex dishes. not to mention we have a ton of it growing out of our garden so we really have to like it.
6. Granola, applesauce, and milk. it's like cereal. I always used to put applesauce in my cereal. And now that we can't have cereal...we use granola.
7. Cheese. Guys - GUYS: Yogurt Cheese. They actually make it out of yogurt. It's softer than regular cheese, and I've tried the garlic-and-herb and the vegetable versions. both are simply amazing.
8. S'mores. (seriously, is it even summer without them?) And these are a feat, because until about a month ago we didn't think we could get s'mores or graham crackers without gluten in them. BUT WE CAN... so, salute to s'mores.
9. Coke Life. because it's soda that lex and I can drink. and BONUS it comes in glass bottles so YAY we get to look cool.
10. PB2. It's peanut butter, but dried, so just add water. it's amazing. enough said. 

Food...what would life be without it? Plus, you know, Jesus liked food too. (John 21:5) I feel justified in my obsession. To learn more about my said obsession, check out my other blog (which is posted on at my leisure...*ahem* as in, whenever i feel like it.) here :D. Now go eat summer food!

stop and look

I was thinking about how when my family is on vacation, or visiting friends that we don't see often, or doing something unusual, we tend to slow down. Little things are funnier, we do stupid stuff and get a kick out of it...we SLOW DOWN.

And then we get back from the vacation and everyone gets back into their bazillion-mile-an-hour routine.
We start creating invalid excuses, such as "I'm too busy", "I will finish this first", or "I'm too tired".

The thing is, we have to stop and look. If we don't we miss the little things.

For example: my older sister was 12 weeks pregnant with her second baby, had sever morning sickness, her 20-month-old baby girl loves to yank chains, and her lab-cross puppy loves to chew.

My older sister was craving bagels.

I had bagels.

I could have said "I need to go home and do homework, practice piano, do laundry, read the passage for Bible Study tonight, blah, blah, blah..." 
But when I texted her telling her of the bagels, and she got excited, which never happens when she isn't feeling good, what could I do?
So off to big sister's I went. Later, she told me that my niece was running around the house yelling "Nam! Nam!", which is little Jo's nickname for me.

I could have made excuses. I could have tried to get something done on my never-ending to-do list.
Instead, though, I did something for someone else. I slowed down, and breathed and enjoyed my sister and brother-in-law and niece for an hour and was completely blessed. Sometimes we have to stop and look.

Because if we don't, we miss out on the precious, priceless things that life hides from our overview glances. We miss the things that don't come into focus right away. We have to look for some things. And if we don't, we never see them.

So, these pictures - most of them, I took them thinking "These are going to be cow-pie pictures because of __________". (And the careless part of me took the picture anyway...) Fortunately, I was wrong! They turned out just fine... :D Enjoy!

Kona was on my lap when I took this...I didn't think it was going to turn out, because this lens doesn't zoom out AT ALL. But it worked! And turned out very nice, if I do say so myself... ;)

You know, for this picture being taken from the car, it turned out pretty good...

What can I say? I'm a messy cook ...I thought the spilled popcorn kernels looked pretty...

A glorious Montana view, just for you!