Happy Halloween!

Leaves are Falling...

Time seems to be flying. Mikro will be 18 months old in just a few days. It's already getting chilly, and the leaves are changing. Mikro loves the bright yellow ones.

We are not ready for winter here. The fence is still not up, and the ground will soon be too frozen to dig postholes. The electrician never came back to finish the garage portion of the job (which involves trenching), and now it will probably have to wait for spring, like so many other things we had hoped to have finished by now. The Great Flea War (which we seem to have won by literally emptying the house and bombing multiple times) stole a month of prime work time from us, and it looks like we are stuck at this point.

I'm thinking about digging around for Mikro's halloween costume, which I bought last November and packed away, and which got further misplaced in the emptying out of the house process...) If I find it, he will be a purple and green dragon.

I'm sleep deprived, and feeling stupid tired, so this will be an exceedingly short entry...

Updating Mikro's Baby Book

There is a new entry up in Mikro's Baby Book with lots of photos...

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

A family member is in critical condition, and not expected to pull through... What makes this even sadder is that the person in question has led a very limited life, you might even say, hasn't ever really lived at all. She's a year older than me, and there is nothing that can be done for her. I feel powerless, and very sad at how much she will have missed out on.

That is something I really hope is never my epitaph. And with the PTSD thing, and how much time I have already lost to it, it might apply, though to a lesser degree.

There's a poem by Dawna Markova that seems particularly significant to me today:


I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
Of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
To allow my living to open me,
To make me less afraid,
More accessible,
To loosen my heart
Until it becomes a wing,
A torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
To live so that which came to me as seed
Goes to the next as blossom,
Goes on as fruit.

--Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life. Maybe that's my new mantra.

Photographic Odyssey

From Mikro's recent train travels...

Riding the rails with Dad:



Nursing on Metro North:



Easily amused with shredded napkin confetti:



And from last month's jaunt to my parents' place:

Swinging Fool:



Cavorting: