1.) Trip Hangover
Whenever my family goes on a multiple day trip, as we did this weekend, I spend the next week or so in a state of a weird mix of overwhelm and disorientation. Something similar happens after major holidays.
There's suddenly way more laundry than there has any right to be, the house morphs into a cluttered wreck, and the children seem more hyper and scatterbrained than usual. I also temporarily lose the ability to think straight and do things like make a spontaneous trip to the grocery store without taking a picture of the list and with a baby and three year old in tow (which I regretted almost immediately) and spend the entire afternoon staring at YouTube instead of tackling aforementioned mountain of laundry.
We had some pretty cool adventures on the trip, which I'll get to in a second, but I wanted to lead with that in case I'm a bit odd with my takes this week. There's an explanation- temporary trip induced insanity. It'll hopefully pass by next week.
2.) The Trip
We went to a place in the Texas Hill Country on Thursday and stayed until Sunday morning.
The Hill Country is one of the most beautiful parts of Texas. I always love going there, even though it's a three to four hour drive from where we live. In a way it feels like home, though part of me never wants to live there. When you live in a place you discover it's flaws, and I want it to stay special.
We spent a couple days with my husband's family hiking, swimming in the Sabinal river, playing games, and just enjoying each other's company.
The drive back home got interesting. The others all decided to drive back in the morning and go to mass in the evening at home. We opted to go to the local Church for mass and take our time on the drive back.
We went to mass at the tiny church in the middle of nowhere, and then took a lunch break at Garner state park (beautiful place to spend an afternoon if you're ever in that area of Texas. Go during the week though, it gets crowded on weekends) and walked around for an hour or two before loading back into the van and heading south.
On the way, we passed a long, low sheet metal building with "meat market"on a sign out front. Chris noticed me looking.
"Wanna stop and go look?"
"I'm game if you are."
So that's how we ended up with zebra (yes, you read that right) jerky, quail poppers, and some stuff called paresa, and met a guy from South Africa.
(Paresa is a mixture of raw beef (sometimes deer) mixed with lime juice, serrano or jalapeno chilies, and cheese. You eat it spread on crackers or with chips. It's apparently very local to Central Texas, and it's pretty darn tasty.)
It turns out that the local exotic game ranches nearby (think safari, but on a ranch in Texas instead of the African savannah, and you get to shoot and eat stuff) supply the meat to the meat market/butcher via hunters who drop off their kills and then never come back or just plain don't want the meat. The market isn't allowed to sell it, but they are allowed to give it away as "samples".
And it just so happened that someone working at this particular place was from South Africa. He and Chris chatted about hunting, working with youth in the great outdoors, and accents from around the world.
It was a little surreal, but I think it was well worth the stop.
3.) It REALLY stinks living by train tracks right now
I almost don't want to write another take about this because I've written on this before, but it keeps happening.
Driving to the library for story time with my kids in the car, I pass by two Border Patrol trucks and a line of people sitting on the side of the road. They caught yet another (third or fourth time in the past several months...we've lived here for five years, and it's happened only once or twice before this year) group of people entering the country illegally a stone's throw from my house.
Like I said I've written about this before so I'll limit myself. But please, I'm begging you, make allowing people to more easily enter legally be on the list of things you research for election day. Only giving people incentives to enter illegally, without any decent path towards staying, puts them in a really desperate situation and endangers people living along the border or along the routes they use as well.
It's evil, it's wrong, and it's what our current politicians are doing.
4.) Halloween Costume Prep
Everyone who is dressing up this year in our family is dressing as some sort of bug.
Bitty Baby's ladybug costume is finally done, Little Boy is going as a gentleman bug (ladybug, but with a tie), Little Girl is going as a butterfly. I've made a set of grown-up ladybug wings and a set of dragonfly wings out of cardboard, but it remains to be seen if either will see use by me or Chris. I kinda feel that if one of us goes with the dragonfly costume, I need to figure out how to make big, buggy eyes somehow or it'll look like a fairy costume (which would ruin the whole bug thing).
Little Boy's elementary school is doing a "trunk or treat" this evening in the school parking lot (our district is very rural, so it's kind of awesome they're doing this- this will let a lot of kids actually trick or treat). I'm treating it as dress rehearsal. Both Little Boy and Little Girl's costumes are going to have a pretty hefty makeup component, and I'm glad I'll have a chance to do a rehearsal before we do it "for real" on Sunday (we go into the city and team up with my sister in law and her family every year).
I love Halloween. It's just a fantastic opportunity for unfettered creativity, and it's the only time our culture expects you to give free stuff to total strangers who show up at your house. Even Christmas giving is usually either people you know or a degree or two removed from your property.
5.) Pumpkins
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| Picture taken in the bathroom with the lights turned off, because the pictures of the pumpkins in daylight looked lame. |
We got our pumpkins carved! We ended up with one of those pumpkin carving pattern books with cheapo little saws attached. Little Boy got to choose the design for the big one, and Little Girl chose which design went on the smaller one.
They turned out ok. I'm not a huge fan of the pre-designed patterns, but it made including the kids much easier and probably saved a lot of time and angst. We're going to roast the seeds later today.
6.) All Saints Day
On All Saints Day, we decorate gingerbread or sugar cookie men with frosting and the candy we scored trick-or-treating the night before. I try to talk about symbols associated with saints so they can decorate the cookies with them. I'm thinking this year I might try to print some stuff out about it instead describing...I don't think that worked out too well last time.
A little early to be starting the holiday baking I'll grant you, but it's worked pretty well for our family as a way to observe the day. Little Boy will have school all day, so I'll probably bake the cookies earlier in the day and we'll decorate after supper.
No idea what our diocese is doing as far as mass requirements. This could get a little dicey.
7.) All Souls Day
All Souls Day, we usually visit a cemetery as a family. We're lucky in that we live near to the one a lot of my relatives are buried in.
I really like the idea of the Dia de Los Muertos tradition of sitting in a graveyard all night, picnicking, playing music and telling stories about the dead who have passed, but I think when you have young children that it needs to be
a.) A community tradition where multiple families and generations participate so there's help keeping an eye on the kids (which, even with the rapidly growing acceptance of the holiday in the states, I'm pretty sure that aspect of it hasn't crossed the cultural barrier at this point).
b.) A cemetery that's not right next to the interstate.
I grew up visiting cemeteries as a kid. Whenever we passed through a certain town in Central Texas where my German ancestors originally settled, or when we visited my Dad's extended family in Montana, we'd make a point to stop and pay our respects. We'd go to the gravesite, say a prayer for the repose of their soul, and then wander around reading the other gravestones for awhile. On memorial day, we'd go plant flags on veteran's graves. Every Sunday, my grandmother would stop and say a prayer by the grave of her son.
It never seemed like a morbid or unnatural thing when I was a kid, and it's something I want to pass on to my children as well. I don't necessarily want a vault or an ornate coffin when I die, but I do hope I get a gravestone. I obviously won't care by that point, but I've benefitted so much from other people's gravestones that it's something I want to leave behind for others.
So that's been my week. Happy Halloween, everyone.
Read the rest of this week's takes here.
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