One of my favorite holiday songs from elementary school had a refrain that I still sing every fall.

H - A - Double L - O - W - Double E - N spells Halloween

So today was the night of magic, a co-opted holiday where children and adults lose themselves in a little bit of fun. Luis took the children out to trick-or-treat with our friends and their son while Simon and I handed out candy. I was a little sad that we only had four teens trick-or-treating this year. Some people harp on older children coming out to trick-or-treat, especially when they don't do much for a costume. I prefer this viewpoint. It makes me happy to see older children embracing the magical spirit of childhood and coming out for trick-or-treat. I have large handfuls of treats for all children who visit our front porch, regardless of age or costumes.

We cut our own children's trick-or-treat time a little short this year due to the fact that they have been up too late too many nights in the last week. Even with their coming in about twenty minutes early, they still had quite a bounty of treats. Doritos seemed to be a popular thing to pass out this year, as well as KitKats and Gummy items. Bubble gum seems to be falling from favor, but prepackaged popcorn balls growing in popularity. The children had more than enough treats to split up between our home, our friends' home and the home of a third friend whose children were unable to trick-or-treat due to travel plans, with each household getting more than enough. Sharing is a good thing.

Happy Halloween and Happy Samhain to all!

Simon and I have gotten into the habit of taking a brisk walk every morning. Well, I have gotten into the habit. Since Simon is is not mobile and is in the habit of hanging out wherever he is placed, he rides along in the mei tai, looks at the world for 10 minutes and then falls fast asleep. But, to quote Annie, I digress.

While Simon and I were on our morning walk/nap today, I really wished that I would have had my camera with me. There were two images, completely different from one another, that I had a strong urge to photograph.

There was an elderly man in the yard of one of the houses I walked by. He was bent over low and shuffling along with tiny steps. I was momentarily concerned and getting ready to offer assistance when I noticed the white and brown spotted rabbit about 4 feet away from him. It was a fleeting shot, one I never would have captured anyways unless I had been walking around with my camera at the ready, but I would have loved to have tried to capture the moment.

The second image is one I wanted to photograph due to its sheer absurdity. I was walking by a house with a couple of cow statues in the yard. I am not sure if this is common in the rest of the United States or if it only a Wisconsin thing, but yes, stores sell small statues of cows to put in the yard as decorations. This home had a little family of mama cow and the smaller calf. Walking by, I noticed that mama cow had been decorated for Halloween. She was wearing a pig mask. It tickled my funny bone.

The sock drawer will tell you much about someone's life. That was my realization this week.

Think about it. Look at your socks. What do they say about you and how you live your life?

When I was in high school and college, I lived in athletic shoes and hiking boots. I wore white padded athletic socks almost exclusively. I had about two pair of non-white socks, which were worn a couple of times a year and lasted about ten years without wearing out. The white athletic sock stage persisted through my early mom years. I was in a point of my life where functional was more important than anything else. My clothes were simple, mix and match, easy care. A few years ago, I got sick of feeling sloppy all of the time. I started wearing more tailored clothing, a little dressier than before. My sock drawer become more varied. Multi-colored handknit socks rubbed heels with finer black and navy socks. Chunky wool hiking socks joined the drawer too. I recently noticed that my white athletic socks are occupying a record low portion of the drawer and only get pulled out if I am actually exercising.

Luis's sock drawer underwent a transformation too. For years, his drawer had white tube socks and heavy thermal socks with a few pair of dress socks languishing in the bottom. In recent months, his dress sock collection has grown by leaps and bounds, and those tube socks are hiding under the layer of argyles and stripes. The thermal socks? They are not even in the drawer any more. The changes in his sock drawer speak volumes about the changes in his life this year.

What is in your sock drawer?

Back in 2001, my younger sister graduated college, got her first job and moved to Monroe. At that time, we had never even visited here before. Luis helped her move down here, and he came home that night with one of those free Homes magazines from a grocery store. We couldn't believe the house prices. Compared to where we were living, 15 minutes outside of Madison, the houses were so cheap. We looked at each other and realized that we probably could afford a home down by my sister.

We started looking at homes in the area. On one level, it felt bizarre to look for a home somewhere we had never visited, somewhere that we knew only two people (my sister and her now husband) in a city of ten thousand. Yet we knew we wanted a real house, and it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. We scoured the internet, spent a couple of weekends down here and looked at a number of houses. We found a huge brick home with five bedrooms and more space than we could imagine at a price that boggled our mind. In Madison, nine hundred square foot starter homes with postage stamp yards cost that much. We jumped in with both feet and never looked back.

About four weeks later, we closed on our house. The day after we closed, we formally moved. Due to timing, Luis and the family members helping us move left our apartment about an hour before the girls and I were able to. I made the seventy five minute drive knowing that people were already in my home, moving my furniture into it. It was surreal. I got closer and closer, and a huge bubble of excitement well up inside of me as I started up the final hill before the city, only minutes from my new home, the home I have spent almost seven years in now and have come to love so much.

Every single time I make the drive back home from Madison with just me and the kids in the car, I still get that same bubble of excitement inside knowing that I am almost home. We may have jumped into our decision to live here, but that thrill of coming home lets me know we made the perfect choice.

I recently decided to make another sourdough starter and try my hand at sourdough breads again. Last week, I mixed up a batch of starter. It foamed away nicely, soured sweetly and has been stored in my fridge waiting for a day like today when I felt like making bread.

So, being in the mood for a good bread to go with tonight's spinach manicotti dinner, I pulled out the starter this morning. I poured off two cups of starter to warm up for the bread and fed the remaining starter. Three hours later when the starter was warm, I started making my bread. Only problem was that Simon woke up from his nap just when I was ready to start the bread, so I was slightly distracted with him. Okay, I was extremely distracted. I threw together the water, yeast, bread, sugar and starter when I noticed how liquidy the dough was. Odd.

I checked the recipe and realized that I was supposed to use a quarter cup of water, not the two cups of water I had added. Oops. As I got ready to throw out the liquidly mess, it occurred to me that I had put in the correct proportions of starter, water, flour and sugar to have actually created more starter. Now the dilemma. Do I throw it out or do I let it grow and have about three time more sourdough starter on hand than I actually need?

I decided to let it grow. I dumped the mess into a ten cup bowl. An hour later, I walked through the kitchen to discover it all over the counter. I scraped it into a large tupperware bowl. It kept growing. The foaming mass reached the top, bubbling up over the rim, but thankfully the surface tension kept it all in. I now have a boatload of sourdough starter on hand! Anyone want some?

There was exactly enough starter leftover from my established batch to create two loaves of sourdough bread, so we were able to have it with dinner after all. I paired a scrumptious piece with (local, organic) huckleberry jam for a tasty snack tonight. It is a good thing we like sourdough because I will be making a number of loaves in the next couple of days!

On a completely unrelated note, here is what you might find if you were to leave Vincent outside to with a shop vac and his imagination.

There is actually a science to car washing. Who knew?

Earlier this year, we acquired a car wash business. This has been Luis's thing, so I have been on the edges, doing only little bits while he took care of it. Being the word addict that I am, I started picking up his car wash magazines (again, who knew there were multiple magazines dedicated to this?) when I had nothing better to read. I have learned things that really surprised me.

Did you know that using a commercial car wash can be more environmentally conscious than doing it yourself with a hose? If you wash a vehicle on pavement, the water and chemicals run off into the storm sewer system. The storm sewer systems for most towns are discharged into lakes or streams. If you are washing your vehicles at home, please do so over grass or gravel where the earth can filter that water before returning it to the groundwater system. Commercial car washes discharge into the sanitary sewer system from which the water travels to treatment plans. There are also commercial car washes that use water reclaim systems, cleaning and reusing their water so that they never discharge to sewer systems at all. Nationally, over fifty percent of full service conveyor car washes use reclaim systems, but less than ten percent of self-service bays do.

Did you know that touch-free car wash systems actually use more water and harsher chemicals than systems that have foam pads that touch your vehicle? I had never stopped to think about this one before, but learning it gave me a "duh" moment. Full service conveyor systems use about 15-40 gallons of water per car. They use a light water and chemical solution combined with friction to clean your vehicle. Touchless systems can use 24-85 gallons per car and rely upon chemicals and increased water spray to break the surface tensions of the dirt and debris on your vehicle. Water is a valuable resource, one that we should conserve whenever possible. Home washing can use 30-140 gallons in a 10 minute wash, depending upon if the hose has an automatic shut-off nozzle or not. For reference, top loading washers can use 35 gallons of water per cycle and an average shower uses 35-40 gallons.

I also learned that the ph balance of the chemicals in a well planned car wash will balance out, leaving the water neutral. It never even occurred to me before to wonder about the effects of the washing chemicals upon the waste water and ground systems.

The good chemical companies also reuse packaging. Ours takes their barrels back after they are emptied and refills them instead of simply using new ones each time.

Who knew washing your vehicle could still be an ecologically sound choice? Go Green Team!

I have noticed that my shoes completely change my outlook and attitude towards the world. Does this make me superficial? Probably, but I am okay with that.

If I wear trainers or flipflops, I am more apt to rush around and be frazzled. I am more deferential, more prone to panic and more likely to be self-deprecating.

Things change when I slip into my shoes with three inch heels. My stride changes, my shoulders go back and my chin goes up a little. Suddenly, it is not a big deal if I am two or six minutes late. Somehow I am more at ease and less deferential in the way I interact with the world. I smile more and speak with greater confidence.

Is it any wonder that I wear heeled sandals or loafers most every day? Heeled shoes and lipstick are my armor, protecting my doubt-filled, squishy-marshmallow-pushover-center from the world.

I have been told more than once that I live in my own little world. I try very hard to see the positive in the world around me and view other people's actions with positive intent. I know that this seems Pollyannaish to some people, even naive, but it is a conscious choice that I have made about the way I live my life.

I firmly believe that as we live our lives, we will find what we are looking for. If I am looking for positive things, I will tend to find them. I have some friends who dislike the community I live in. I could easily feel the same way as they do, but instead of focusing on the insular, narrow minded tendencies of some people in the community, I focus on the positive aspects of this city. Yes, our farmers market may have only 8 booths some weeks, but I can easily spend thirty to sixty enjoyable minutes there chatting with people and getting delicious food. Yes, this is an overtly Christian community, but for every person who will judge me for my religion, there is another who does not care one whit about it and will judge me on my personality. No, perhaps I can't get Indian food, but the Chinese and Mexican restaurants are excellent and if I really want another ethnicity, I can get it within a hour drive. Yes, some people won't fully accept me because I wasn't born here, but I have made great friends and good acquaintances. I enjoy life here.

Maybe I am naive, but my life is good. So, if I am living in my own little world, I say it is a happy place and please come join me here.

Things that amaze me:

~ The Full Moon Looking up at a gleaming full moon in a cloudless sky never fails to take my breathe away. I can feel an energy radiating from it that soaks into my soul. Every month, I find time to stand outside late on a full moon night to enjoy the quiet and the energy of the moon.

~ My Mother She is so generous and has a knack for giving gifts that are more than just material goods. She gifts me with things I never knew how much I wanted, like 600 count sateen sheets and the perfect shredder for Parmesan. She gives my children magazine subscriptions and two gifts in one when she takes them shopping for shoes (an adored task). Yesterday she informed me that she wants to give the children the Rosetta Stone for the winter holidays. Her thoughtfulness blows me away.

~ My Home I love every inch of this old home. I look around at the hundred year old wood work, flowing rooms and shady front porch, and I cannot believe that I own this wonderful, historic home.

~ Friends I have been blessed with some incredible people in my life. I do not see myself as that interesting, so it amazes me that other people think I am.

~ Knitting Two sticks and a piece of yarn. Put them into the hands of a knitter and who knows what will result. The product is beautiful, and the process is meditation for me. Follow a simple pattern, let the fingers to their thing and let the mind wander as it will.

~ Baby Radar Every night, no matter how sound asleep Simon is or how long he has been sleeping, he wakes within ten minutes of my slipping into bed. It doesn't matter how close I am to him, how careful I am to not jostle the bed or how quiet am I. Without fail, ten minutes and he is wakes up just enough to nurse. In the morning, the reverse happens. No matter how careful and quiet I am, within ten minutes of my leaving the bed, he is awake and ready for the day. All four of the children have had this Baby Radar. I find it fascinating that Mother Nature programmed babies this way.