A frightfully looong post

Rain falls....angry on the tin roof. It stops me and steals my breathe...

Just kidding. But seriously, it has been raining A LOT here lately. Which I know is annoying of me to say because duh, I live in Seattle. But is it more annoying than that song? I don't think so. What do I expect? Well, I expected a summer that I never really got but I won't go into that.

What I didn't expect this year was to have Halloween burn-out so early. I think my Halloween lamp went out about a week ago. Rough. I LOVE Halloween. Love, love, love it. Partly because I have such great memories of my Dad making Halloween super awesome and partly because I like some things that others might consider morbid. I love bones and skulls and anatomy and even owls and black cats and spiders (all in moderation of course).

I love dressing up and getting into character and let's face it, I usually win the costume competition - it runs in the blood. I have these AMAZING vintage anatomy posters from 1961, 65 in all, that I got from my old boss at the BYU Law Library years ago. I found them in a box in his office that I snooped in and asked him what he was going to do with them. "Throw them away" he replied. No! I exclaimed. Can I please, please have them I begged? "For what?" he wanted to know. To put them up in my house! "Why would you want to do that? That's gross" he told me. So I told him I thought they were beautiful and I took them home and from then on they have always had a place in my house, wherever that was at the time, and they aren't going anywhere soon. Here is my favorite which will never be rotated out while I go through my catalog:

Isn't she a beaute? I know. And then years later when I married a med student they really came in handy. Only everyone thought they were his. As if. If we were to sign a post-nup they would go to me and only me. Sorry Ricky. I'm not even sorry. I love them that much.

So this year when October rolled around I got all excited about planning a Halloween party for the youth I work with at church. It was pretty labor intensive and I loved every minute of it. Here are some things I made:

Witches fingers with crunchy bones inside:

Spider cupcakes and merengue ghosts:

And I made this mummy head with a styrofoam head and paper towels soaked in coffee and carefully dried for two days accompanied with the witches fingers:

But after that and decorating pumpkins the next week and blah, blah, blah I got tired. Soooo tired. And now we have 1 more festivity to go to on Saturday night and I can't come up with a costume. No joke. I got nothin. And this is usually my forte.

Help. Seriously. My reputation is at sake! I NEED to win that costume contest or I might. just. die.

Circle Up

I have dark circles under my eyes.

Really. I started to notice them about a month ago and couldn't understand why I was suddenly getting them. Then on Saturday Ricky was staring at me intently and then he reached out with his index finger to touch the delicate skin between my eye and nose. "Why is it so dark around your eye?" he said as he poked and prodded.

I'm not old enough for dark circles under my eyes. I have no children to give me dark circles under my eyes. I'm thanking my lucky stars that they aren't bags though, cause those are baa-ad.

But still. So I analyzed why I might possibly be bruising from the inside out. Work has been a little more stressful with the mountains of new responsibilities being piled on me everyday. My church responsibilities take up a lot of my time that could otherwise be spent on the couch with fresh cucumbers on my eyes. I have been wearing some pretty tight pants lately, maybe I've cut off my circulation. I don't get as much sleep as I'd like but who does?

But I think I've figured it out - or at least I hope so. Poor nutrition.

It never ceases to amaze me that what I eat can have such an affect on me. Normally I have a pretty sweet nutritional set-up going on. I've become very good at supplementing my diet to make up for the things I don't eat. And if it wasn't for my wicked sweet tooth I'd probably look like Cindy Crawford (after all her kids, I have to be realistic on this one).

You know what tipped me off? Meat. I don't really like it. We don't really have it in the house. Even when we go out I opt for the veggie option most of the time. But lately I've been scarfing it down when we go out and have some. That's not normal. I can only remember a couple of times that this has happened in my life. And every time it's because I have gotten lazy with my nutrition.

So I pledge to do better. To eat better. To get rid of these hideous dark circles under my eyes. Because heavens knows I need all the help I can get in the picture taking department.