Waxing Philosophical

Many thoughts are going through my head this morning as I read the blogs of friends, new blogosphere ones and the traditional ones alike. We all enjoy our lives, yet are constantly pondering the human condition and the age old question: what makes for happiness? Are we ruled by consumerism and keeping up, or is it the simple things of family and creativity that keep us going. We may be at different places in the philosophical shift, yet we are so closely the same in our consciousness. I wonder if this change is widespread for those our age or if I just migrate to those of similar thought and condition.

This morning we are pondering yet another approach to get rid of sell our other home. Many a cutting back lesson did we learn when we bought our farm 2 1/2 years ago to begin our more efficient lifestyle and the economy completely tanked after. Now that we've had our long lesson of living life carrying two mortgages and all of the headaches of a vacant house in a snowy landscape, we're done with it. I wonder if our old beauty of a home, the one we affectionately call "the lake house" will sell if we can make this new strategy work.

I think that as I look forward to my week full of kids activities in anticipation for Halloween, I glimpse the balance necessary and the courage needed to make decisions to get us to that place. But I have learned that everything comes in time, not all at once and it's all about the journey, not just getting there right now.

I leave you with some of our halloween preparation activities.

Bound and Determined

I finished binding off my first full size afghan this morning! I began it in August, and after much distraction and busyness am done. The pattern is called Comfy and that says it all!

You Say Potato, I Say Potato

I've always had a fascination with language. I began thinking about this when we were taking the kids to school this morning. Charlie said mother, in perfectly enunciated English. The kids have lived in Wisconsin for their whole lives, so I've often wondered if they'd develop the "Northern" accent. Since Charlie began speaking, you would think the kid was from Boston! Where did he get this? There's been no one for him to model this after.

Let me back up a bit. I've always been enamored with language. In reflecting upon this, some of my most remembered teachers through school were related, in some way, to language. Mr. Nutman in seventh grade was from England, I loved to listen to him speak. Jan Gist, my college theatre diction coach made me chew words, change pitch and alter my vernacular the moment I got into character. Mr. Larson, my college Shakespeare instructor when I lived in England, made me love Shakespeare even more (I'm still known to pick up our big anthology on a whim, just to be swept away into the poetic dialogue.) My college philosophy instructor, whose name escapes me though I can picture him clearly, guided us through the great philosophers many of whom we had to decipher not only thought but verbiage.

When I meet people I'm frequently asked where I'm from. When I say California, I tend to get one of two responses: "I never would have thought that based on your accent," or "I hear some West coast but something else too." I'm always taken aback when I hear this, because I didn't realize I had an accent. Maybe it's the years that I spent studying theatre, but I've always been very sensitive to the dialect, inflections and the sounds of words around me. I've developed, apparently, my own unique intonation that is the sum of my parts and experiences. Odd hugh?

I'd have thought so too, until I realized this morning, Charles must have some of that sensitivity too. I still can't figure out where the Boston-like sounds have come from. But as he said mother this morning, I see those sounds are starting to diminish. Funny, I felt kind of sad that those sounds were leaving him.

I only hope that he can be swept away in the richness of language as I have.

Fire Please

I'm sitting here in my 1890 farmhouse and looking out the window onto a cold steady rain. As I'm a bit under the weather, I want to just curl up next to the fire and relax. One problem with that, there is no fireplace!

The Gifford family who built this house was headed by Wm. Gifford, a very progressive and innovative man. This house was the first with indoor plumbing in the area, as well as the first with a central heating system. Now, he must have revelled in his brilliance and thought that since he was so far ahead of times, why put in a fireplace? We don't need it, we're heating our home and I don't need to haul in wood to do it!

Well, I beg to differ! The only bit of atmosphere that is missing from our home is a fireplace, more specifically a wood burning stove. So, as I dream of the future wood burning, heating, ambiance device that will sit in our home, I'm going to curl up under my afghan, that is now large enough I can curl up under it while I finish knitting it, have a toddy, watch the rain and mend.

The Texture of Fall

The sights around me are almost more than my cones can take. The brilliance of the yellows and oranges this year is breathtaking. The varying shades, colors and textures in each individual tree are amazing. I feel like I have to look so closely at everything to make sure it's not a painting. You know, like those intricately woven beauties from pointillism . The ones that captivate me at art museums wondering how they were done. Here are a few examples of the texture of our fall.