M.I.A.

Do I have any readers left? Sigh. I really wanted to make a concerted effort to keep up this blog a little more regularly than once a season but this j-o-b is really interfering with my blogging. Maybe I should reconsider. Especially if I could stay at home and blog and just live off of someone else's wealth. But I'll save my political rants for another day. Maybe Tuesday....

I was in Ohio this past week. Left on Monday. Arrived in Columbus to snow. SNOW, y'all. This southern girl nearly froze to death. One morning I walked outside to get in my car and it was covered in ice. So I jumped in the car, shivering, turned the heat up, rubbed my hands together and turned the wipers on. Because the kind of ice we get around these parts (once every other year) comes off with a couple of swipes. But nothing was happening. In fact, the wipers were frozen stiff. So I picked up that thing that looked like a hair pick the rental car man handed me when I'd picked up the car and realized he wasn't insulting my plane head but was preparing me for the elements. It took me fifteen minutes to chisel away a little peephole in the front windshield. And it's only October. What do those people do in January??? If Ohio votes for you know who my guess it's because they want to quit their jobs and stay inside where it's warm and just collect from those of us in the South who are out working. But again...I'll save that for later....

So we had Halloween. And because I was going to be gone all week, last weekend I felt the need to create a memory with the kids. So I took William to the Pumpkin Patch (ok...maybe it said Winn Dixie over the door but I told him it was the pumpkin patch) and picked out a beauty and then we got some ingredients to make caramel apples. He was so excited....and all the way home I was picturing the tender moments we would share as we made caramel apples together and pumpkin bread...it was only 75 degrees so I felt like it was cool enough to dig out my LL Bean cable knit sweater and light a fire just so we'd have the full effect in pictures....and then we pulled up in the driveway and he saw his best friend across the street. He jumped out of the car and hollered "Hey mama...you go make the apples and just call me when they're ready." And he was off.

So I made them myself. And after dinner we enjoyed them. Some of us more than others. Stuart didn't care for his. Catherine licked all the caramel off and left the apple and William ate a few bites and decided it was too stringy. So then I finished off the leftovers, including all the unused caramel.

Here are a few pictures from that project...there are none of me because I was passed out from heatstroke and in a sugar coma.