Spooky Season Snapshots

Let me capture some snapshots of a week of high festival feast days, the beginning of the last third of this semester of seminary, the start of the eleventh month.

--Last night I went for a walk, took a look at the moon hiding behind haziness, and thought, the spooky season isn't done with us yet.

--I have been listening to an interesting mix of music.  On Monday, Halloween, a FB friend posted a link to Donovan's "Season of the Witch," a song I used to return to regularly in October.  I haven't thought about that song in years, perhaps decades.  Yesterday, a snippet of a November song came to me, and I spent time listening to Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

--We are not having gloomy weather.  This week we are expecting highs 10-15 degrees above normal.  Half the country is experiencing this, while the western half of the country is experiencing much colder than usual weather.  I would say this is odd, but odd weather has become the norm.

--I have been looking for deals on Halloween candy at stores within walking distance.  I haven't found any, but yesterday, I did treat myself to ice cream.  My favorite, mint chocolate chip, is a seasonal flavor, they tell me.  So I had a scoop of pumpkin butterscotch and a scoop of salted caramel.  Yum.

--Walking back from the most understocked Target in the U.S. (not much candy of any kind, Halloween, Christmas, or regular) on Tuesday, I did find a hardcover copy of Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle in a little free library.  Better than cheap candy corn!

--The little free libraries in this neighborhood are amazing.  I've gotten Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette, David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, and Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (I've already read it, but I'm happily revisiting it now).

--I was sad to hear about the death of Julie Powell, one of the first bloggers that made me understand the variety of ways that a blog could be used.  She cooked her way through Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogged about it--which ultimately ended up in a book deal and a movie.  She was only 49--it was sudden cardiac arrest. 

--Yesterday morning I drowsed in bed, and then I realized I could lie on my back with both hands under my head, which I wasn't able to do a month ago.  This morning I counted:  tomorrow it will be 30 weeks since I broke my wrist.  I haven't gotten full range of motion back yet, but I'm much closer.

--I have made a small pot of oatmeal--some for me and some for the bread dough.  I am about to finish the 3rd bag of flour since I moved here.  I am loving the way that I am eating:  mostly vegetarian, mostly healthy, with occasional treats, like the applesauce cake that I made on Saturday.  I thought about my bread dough and the remaining flour--if I want a pan of brownies, will I have enough flour?  Yes.

--Yes, I could buy another bag, but it would take a car trip, and I will have enough of that in November.  Of course, I could park in the garage at the nearby Wegman's, but I don't want to.  I'm not scared of the garage, but I'm enjoying living like a European or a New Yorker, little trips to restock, only buying what I can carry.

--I have also cleaned the oven.  I baked a sweet potato yesterday, which leaked onto the floor of the oven, even though I wrapped it in foil.  I didn't discover the leak until it started burning when I turned on the oven to pre-heat it for the bread baking.  Sorry, neighbors, for the scorched sweet smell!

--I think of this as a week where I haven't gotten as much done as I had planned--by which I mean, I haven't gotten as much written on papers due next week as I had hoped to have done by today.  But I have written 2 poems (or is it more?  less?) and made some submissions to literary journals.  I have done some sketching.  I have walked--most days, twice a day.

--It's been a good week.