-- I took this photo out my back door yesterday afternoon. I love the way the scene seems to be hovering on the cusp between Fall and Winter. Our neighbors' trees have lost their leaves, but there are still a few apples clinging to the branches. The golden light of Fall is contrasted with the cloudy mountaintop, dusted with snow.
It's been unseasonably warm here , but then today when I was out doing errands, it snowed. Only for a couple of minutes, but still, it seemed a harbinger of Winter nonetheless.
-- Lucas just informed me that they had a discussion in class today about alcohol abuse. He learned the following statistics:
12% of 10th graders said they had drunk alcohol in the last 30 days.
36% of 9th graders said they had drunk alcohol before they were 10. 10!
I'm not sure why this discussion today, but sobering statistics, right? (no pun intended!)
-- Eva was unusually needy this evening. I swear her nose became completely congested during the last 10 minutes of my piano lessons.
Marc told her he was going out to see a movie and I thought she was going to lose it. I scooped her up to snuggle with her and offer her some medicine, and she told me she wanted to go to bed. At 6:50. And have nose spray. And read only one book. She must really be feeling unwell, because that is all largely unprecedented.
And speaking of unprecedented, she has slept in until 9:30 or 10:00 3 times during the last week! None of my children has ever slept that late, with the possible exception of teenage Max after a Scout campout. They're more the early riser types. Oh, and she also woke up at 4:30 and 5:30 during the last week, wanting to get up. What the?
-- I went to a viewing last night. A friend's mother died in her bed on Thanksgiving night. She wasn't sick, there were no signs other than a little extra tiredness perhaps. Her daughter is in shock, obviously, and will miss her mother terribly. Georgia was a wonderful lady, I quite loved her myself. But don't we all want to go as peacefully when it's our time?
I don't know if I want to have a viewing when I die. The few times I've been to them, I've found it disturbing. The person just looks so very different than he/she did in life, and I don't think I want to remember them that way.
-- Max submitted a photo that he took in Giverny last year for Reflections. (very cool macro shot of raindrops on leaves) His teacher marked him off for some unknown reason. He doesn't think Max crops enough, even though I think he has a very good artistic eye. We found out this week he was a Reflections winner! Take that, Mr. Busby!
-- I've been working on little Christmas gifts for my book club friends, as our Christmas book club is tomorrow night. I feel like I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel for gift ideas, what's up with that? This one was inspired by a project I saw once on Rebecca Sower's blog.
Long-time readers of my blog will know that I do not view myself as a creative type. I really do not have many ideas of my own, sadly. But I am a master at copying and adapting the ideas of others. (When I see ideas online that I like, I save a photo to my desktop and then put it in a folder called "inspirations".) Lest you think I came up with the cute stocking advent calendar on my own, let me direct you to Martha Stewart.
I wasn't kidding about miscellany.
