happy halloween!

I've spent the majority of my weekend with paint on my face. There was some of this:

And some of this:

And best of all, some TRICK-OR-TREATING (which has nothing whatsoever to do with paint, but is still best).

The story is long and belabouring (but delightful, so I'm telling it):

I really wanted to go trick-or-treating this year. Like I do EVERY YEAR. But I'm old and tall (the latter being the biggest deterrent, if we're being honest). So I don't go, in order to preserve my dignity and such.

Well this year, the desire for that pillowcase full of Butterfingers and Smarties and Tootsie Rolls (to say nothing of the candy-trading) outweighed the dignity factor. So Paige and Sam (partners in all best ideas) and I decided we were going to go trick-or-treating. And thus began our afternoon concocting (please note ghoulish diction there) strategies for successfully trick-or-treating, despite our age and average height of 6'.

We went through various costume ideas that would mask our height (ET in the bicycle basket, wheelchaired old people, a horse) and various door approaches that would most likely ensure candy. Ultimately, we decided that the only way people would give us candy instead of turning us away with spurning looks would be if we offered some sort of entertainment--a "trick" for the "treat," as it were.

And what we came up with was truly a stroke of genius: three gondoliers, in a cardboard gondola, singing Italian love songs...me with my accordion, Paige with her guitar, Sam with his gondola oar.

We bought striped shirts, we planned our route...

and then tonight, at the last minute, we bailed. Turns out our dignity (but probably more the apathy of being in your mid-20s) won out.

I went home to my house-home-family-home instead, for a haunted dinner.



Which is when the magic happened. After dinner, the youngest of my sibs went trick-or-treating. Being the youngest, she had no one to go with, so she begged us older kids to at least walk with her. She's cute, so we did.

After three houses, she comes back and more or less says that trick-or-treating is lame when you have to go to the door alone.

Say no more, sweet child.

My other sister and I ran back to the house, put on the bird regalia, and were off to trick-or-treat (for our sister's sake, of course) for the evening. We had a ball. I may be sans dignity, but guess what I do have: a stash of Halloween candy.

The stash is small, but oh so perfect.

And we even traded candies after.

Christmas-wish: that it'd be cool for adults to trick-or-treat.

oh, the first snowfall of the winter... {music monday part 2}

 (Further proof that Music Mondays have the power to change the course of events, to change the weather, to change the world! This Monday, on a perfectly beautiful autumnal afternoon, I wrote about Christmas songs. And SHAZAM. Snow! You're welcome.)

***

Few moments bring me back to childhood as quickly and as thrillingly as the first snowfall of the season. After a cold cold get-out-of-bed-at-four-a.m.-to-put-on-a-sweater kind of sleep last night, I opened my blinds to this...a quiet and white and lacy kind of morning.

Today is the sort of day for reading poems in bed.
Today is the sort of day for eating steaming soup from a big red bowl.
Today is the sort of day for wearing cableknit stockings and cableknit sweaters.

Today is the sort of day for starting your Christmas wishlist.

And so I shall.

Wish #1: That Sufjan Stevens (the featured artist on this week's Music Monday) will make a quick stop in the Great Salt Lake (City) on his Christmas tour.

And here's why: His Christmas tour (officially titled "The Sirfjam Stephanapolous Christmas Sing-A-Long Seasonal Affective Disorder Spectacular Music Pageant Variety Show Disaster") is rumored to go something like this (from his label's website):

“All Grinches be forewarned: The show will consist entirely of Christmas music, inviting audience participation. Be prepared to sing along with bawdy bravura! Song sheets will be provided. There should be plenty of low-production props and gags, dollar-store giveaways, inflatable unicorns, cheap confetti, make-shift costumes, and Gloria in excelsis deo.”

Let's break it down:

• consists entirely of Christmas music
• audience participation
• singing along
• song sheets
• giveaways
• unicorns
• confetti
• costumes
• Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

I'm sorry, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a better party to kick off the season.

Plus it's Sufjan Stevens. The man who thus far has produced ten (TEN!) Christmas volumes (plus his new Silver and Gold album to be released in November), all of similar Yuletide joy.

Anyways, the point of all this is that this magical Christmas tour makes many stops, but Utah is not one of them. So me and a couple of friends are trying to change that. We've decided to start a movement: the Bring Sufjan to SLC Movement.

BringSufjantoSLC = us sending him all the Christmas love and wishes we can muster.

One girl had her entire school class make Christmas cards for him. One grown-up boy is recording a Christmas song about how Sufjan made him see Christmas like a kid again, complete with Christmas letter and all. I am making him holiday postcards and possibly holiday cookies, and otherwise tweeting my little #BRINGSUFJANTOSLC heart out.

All told, it's been a ball so far. A Christmas ball.

Now, if you are still reading, you either really like me, really like my blog, really like Sufjan Stevens, really like Christmas, or are in bed with your laptop trying to put off braving the snow and the homework that exists outside of your bedroom. If any of the above reasons are true, will you please join us in the fun?

You can tweet @asthmatickitty with #BRINGSUFJANTOSLC.
You can share this post on facebook.
You can email me a letter to Sufjan, and me & the crew will snail-mail it for you (short letters are just as good as long ones!).
You can join the group on facebook to get more deets.
Best of all, you can leave a comment down south about why a SLC-Sufjan-Christmas would make your holiday season merry and bright!

If you do any of these things, I shall send you a Christmas card with my love.

I want frosted windowpanes, I want a winter wonderland, I want to deck the halls and sing fa-la-la-la-la with those I love! Come, Sufjan, come!

a cabin in the misty mountains

"Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experiences and character."

Henry David Thoreau

"Baker Farm"

Walden

 

I dream of such things.

what i wish for:

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."― Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin

accordion: a love story

(THIS is the answer to the game a couple of days ago.  sam you are the winner!)

I've been looking for an accordion for something like six months now.  I call DI weekly to ask if they have one in, bychance.  The weeks I don't call, I go there myself, comb the shelves.  No accordion.  Last week I kept feeling the urge to go check DI, but I restrained myself and studied instead.  Imagine my crestfallen face when, upon calling on Saturday, I learned that they had, in fact, had one all week and just sold it.  (Whimper.)

Then Tuesday happened.   I had just taken my last class ever of my entire college career ever in all my life ever.  Brain maxxxxed out from too much thesis-ing and so proud of myself for actually finishing the Thing and sending to in for revisions that I, of course, retreated for the sweet solace of DI.  I just had a really good feeling about it this time.

I did a brief walk-through when I first got there, of their collectible shelves.  Nothing.  Alas.

Back to the bookshelves I went, and found "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong," a book that's been on my list for quite some many moons now.  Check!  (Someday I'll write an essay about the uncanny serendipity that attends every of my excursions to DI...the universe somehow always reaches through whatever vortexes and fractals and hyperspaces separate me from Universe and grants me the wish of my heart!  Seriously.  All I have to do is think of a book I want, and it materializes on the shelf before me within seconds.  The universe is a little choosy though--not every book I want comes.  But I have a feeling the one I most need at that moment are the ones that always do appear.  Magical.  If any of you would like to see this gift in action, I'd be more than happy to accompany you on a book-hunt.)

Now, back to my Quest.  On my way to the cash registers, I walked through the clothesracks and found a lovely ruffly sheer lightlightlight blue blouse that has Paris written all over it (not literally).  Perfect.  The DI universe is smiling beneficently.  

I check out, and on my way out.......I happen to see it.  A big black box.  I'd asked the DI guys at the cash register if they knew if they had an accordion anywhere.  They all said no.  But then what was this big box?  I approach.  It says, "Accorgan" on the top of it.  Thanks to my MA degree, I can do things like match root-words.  Like accordion and accorgan---five letters the same.  

!

Is this possible?!

Sure enough, nestled like a pearl in a bed of red velvet, an accordion. In perfect condition.  

It is enough to say that I feel like this every second of the day:

Going to school on Wednesday/Thursday/Friday was the hardest thing I have quite possibly ever done, knowing this baby was at home.  You know all those cute mommy bloggers who are like, "Oh I just had a baby, sorry I haven't blogged lately!  I haven't been out in days because all I want to do is be at home cuddling with her!"  I mean not to make any less of babies or anything, but that is more or less or exactly how I feel.  How can I be at school when I could be at home holding my accordion?!  And yet despite this separation-anxiety I feel, all the last three days have had this lovely rose-colored glow, knowing things like accordions and French chansons and Beirut exist.  I've practically danced my way through these days.  Most days of my life, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Last night I played for three hours straight.  When in my life have I ever practiced anything for three hours straight?!

So if any of ya'll need a little romantic mood music, or a balcony serenade, or someone to busk with, I'm your girl.  My repertoire is currently an amalgamation/conglomeration (IS there a difference?) of scraps of songs I love ...  Any recommendations of songs I should learn?

a game (!!!)

who can guess what happened to me today?

3 hints....

new year wish number {seven}

one accordion

White Picket Fence Town, America

today i daydreamed about becoming a pharmacist and moving to a small town in the midwest, a town without walgreens and little caesars.  i'd drink pulpy orange juice in round cold tumblers and i'd breakfast on bowls of purple berries on the porch in the watery morning breeze, in the fields distilled into a breeze.  i'd walk to the pharmacy, past small green lawns and small white house and small huge elms, know all the customers by name because they're also my neighbors postmen grocers doctors.  i suppose at lunch i'd sit outside, on Quiet Main Street, probably on the bench in front of the big pharmacy store window.  

and i'm sure i'd drive to the lake|pond|dock in the evenings, i'd write in journals and bring picnics and not say anything.  

and my world would be blue and green and white.

and my world would be cerulean and emerald and white.

and spring would be canary

and summer amber,

and all mornings aquamarine.

there may be birdcages,

or better, birdfeeders.

certainly windchimes

and ebony wooden floors

i'd go to the small town because,

well,

that's the only place i could find a job perhaps.

and maybe they need a town pharmacist.

and my friends would say why are you moving there?  aren't you going to get bored?

White Picket Fence Town doesn't have a city theatre,

White Picket Fence Town only has three restaurants--two of which serve fried chicken ifyouknowwhatimean--

what will you do with your time?

and in the first second i'd worry,

but then in seconds two through infinity, i'd realize that is the why: so that i will have time.

, so my world is big enough for me to inhabit all of it,

and for all of it to inhabit me.

(this daydream inspired by Joyce Carol Oates' "Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear," by a childhood of watching The Andy Griffiths Show, and by a recent show on NPR about a cashless and hence cash-register-less society.)

new year wish number {six}

a room with bright sunshine to sit in and read.

 

via via via

new year wish number {five}

that fake mustaches were a socially acceptable accessory for women.

no, i'm not advocating cross-dressing.  i just think they're kind of fun.  sometimes i get tired of my same-old-face.  a little mustache would be just the ticket.  (or a big mustache, depending on my mood and the requirements of the day: formal?  informal?  party?  dali?)

new year wish number {four}:

sub(en)titled: the pains of being romantic at heart

a rooftop dinner party for two,

with evening wear and white lights,

maybe some norah jones in the background.

(sigh)

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new year wish number {three}

that men could wear fedoras again without looking creepy.  in fact, i wish that men wore fedoras everywhere.  and suits.

new year wish number {two}

someone to whisper secrets to

new year wish number {one}

someone to have adventures with, someone with whom to walk to the sea.

birthday wishes

tonight, on this the eve before my 25th, i wish for

rainbows.  obviously.

an orchard

a field of poppies

a carousel

a room of colorful birds

cuddling in blankets and watching lord of the rings and pillsbury cinnamon rolls

someone to let me drive their ice cream truck for a day or two

a bed & breakfast to run for a few years

marcus mumford to fall in love with me

a mustache mug

that wearing fake mustaches could be an acceptable accessory some days

and already, before it's even technically my birthday, three happy things have happened:

1) a package from home covered in stickers that say things like "way to go!" and "super kid!"  thanks for loving me, family.  (no, i haven't opened it yet.)

2) having someone tell me that they like my photo-graphees because "even the pictures without people in them feel like they have people in them."  (thank you, for making my night, sweet friend.)

3) chelsea, liz, camille, andrea, holly, amberly, and cami bursting into the kitchen upon whose counter i was sitting and prancing around the island singing disney's happy birthday to me...  for three minutes.  i haven't laughed that hard in months.

putting off actual blogging

ooookay, this is going on my birthday list.

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