Throughout November, I’ve been working on scrapbook layouts about Thanksgiving. I printed about seven years’ worth of the very best Thanksgiving photos and set to work. It’s been interesting scrapping Thanksgiving like this. I’ve noticed patterns and discovered several last-ofs and first-ofs that I don’t think I’d have noticed otherwise. I also realized that I don’t really take a lot of photos on Thanksgiving.

I decided to rectify that this year. I was going to take some very specific photos. I wanted a picture of my mom holding an apple pie, because she usually makes them. (I made ours this year because she broke her hand a few weeks ago and wasn’t able to cook very much at all.)

I wanted a photo of Becky with her sweet potato dish (or is it yams?) because she introduced it into our family traditions and now it’s something many of us look forward to, even though we didn’t grow up with it.

Maybe, if I hadn’t been too embarrassed to ask someone, I wanted a picture of me holding a basket of Thanksgiving rolls.

I wanted a picture of me with my mom, sisters, daughter, nieces, and great nieces.

If I could get them to cooperate, one of all of the husbands, because marrying and putting up with Allman girls (however far descended from the “Allman” part) is an adventure they’ve all so far survived.

One of all of the cousins with my mom.

One of the food table, especially because I planned on bringing my Hall’s Jewel Autumn Leaf bowl that belonged to my grandma, and I knew it would feel like I had a little part of her with us there.

One of the dining table, with everyone eating.

And some candids.

Instead, I got photos like this:

Which is a fun, albeit a little blurry, one of my mom, me, and Haley in our boots. (Actually…Haley’s wearing my boots in that photo, so 2/3rds of the boots are mine!)

And this one of Haley being the little-girl whisperer (in a non-creepy way):(she was holding Suzette's cat, which is the friendliest cat I've ever met, and her little cousins Josie and Oakley couldn't resist.)

Kaleb eating with his cousin Oakley

An awkward one of me and Jake, wherein my head and face look enormous:

More cousins:

And a cute, irresistible baby:

And, yes, one of everyone at the table:

(And exactly zero of Nathan, who left before we cut the pies to go stand in line with his dad at Target, a choice I was not happy about, btw.)

All of them pretty awful cell phone pictures. I didn’t get any of the photos I wanted because I optimistically took my camera in to be repaired less than a week before Thanksgiving. Of course it wasn’t fixed in time! So I only had my cell phone to take pictures with, and I confess: those of you who only take pictures with your cell phones are a curiosity to me. It drives me nuts. I’m not sure anything frustrates me more! I know that, for a cell phone, they are OK. Much better than other, older cell phone pictures. But, call me a camera snob if you must: I’m used to the flexibility of my DSLR. I can make it do what I want.

So, I got exactly none of the photos I wanted.

(And Becky: that isn’t a guilt trip. It’s my own fault. I could’ve taken my camera in for repairs at the beginning of October.)

I know: there will be other Thanksgivings. But never this Thanksgiving, with all of my kids at home with me. With this family make up, the way it is right now. I’m terrified that it was my last Thanksgiving with my mom. Terrified. With everyone healthy and happy (as we ever are) and together.

So much could happen in two years.

So, since I don’t have images, some words about this year’s Thanksgiving:

• One of my favorite little moments: Haley came home the night before Thanksgiving, and she & Kaleb watched How to Train your Dragon 2 together on his bed. I loved hearing their combined laughter while I cooked. He misses her so much and wants to spend every second with her that he can.
• I was sick with a cold this Thanksgiving, and it made me realize something: a big part of the happiness in Thanksgiving is the smells. I couldn’t smell anything (I especially missed the scent of the cranberry sauce cooking) and it made me feel so much less connected to the day. Still, this will linger in my memory as the Thanksgiving I had a cold and couldn’t breathe without coughing, and somehow that is a good connection in a weird way.
• The dishes I brought: apple pie, crescent rolls, cranberry mousse, pecan bars. I also made a berry pie but it was pretty small so I kept it at home.
• Jake peeled all of the apples for the apple pie. Once I get him in the kitchen, he is a good worker. He literally whistles while he works, and if that doesn’t make a parent happy I don’t know anything that will.
• I made my pie crusts totally with my Bosch. Instructions coming, but let’s say this: they were the easiest and best all-butter pie crusts I’ve ever, ever made.
• While I was making the rolls, I dropped the cup of just-melted butter. A whole half-cube of butter splashed all over me and the kitchen. It made me laugh. I was covered in butter!
• A little while after I cleaned up the butter, my sister-in-law stopped by our house…with a pan of stuffing! Kendell loved his mom’s stuffing (which is different from my mom’s in very specific ways that don’t make him very happy…I love both of them) and was sad it wouldn’t be part of his Thanksgiving. (I’ve tried but I can’t quite make it like she did.) So Cindy bringing Beth’s stuffing to share…well, of course it made me tear up. It was like a little piece of Beth right there with us.
• The kids all hung out in the kitchen with me while I finished the rolls and put the apple pie together. They were eating berry pie (it didn’t last very long!) and laughing together (their cousin Nicki was there with her mom) and doing their running-joke/pun thing that they do, and I was just so happy to have them all there together.
• I had another one of those I-love-you-so-much moments with Jake and Nathan in my sister Suzette’s kitchen. I was standing in between them while they joked with each other, and I looked up at them and just felt it…life is amazing. I hugged them simultaneously and tried to tell them what I was feeling but I’m pretty sure they just thought I was crazy.
• It made me so happy (how many times can I write happy in this post?) that Suzette also had out some of her Hall’s pieces. More Grandma with us!
• Becky brought a corn casserole that was divine!
• Eating together. I sat between Haley and Kendell, with Jake and Nathan across from us and the rest of the grown-ups near. (Kaleb had already eaten and gone back outside to throw the football with his cousins.) There was joking, stories, memories. Of course, we eventually got to Aunt Suzette’s drying-pot-in-the-microwave story, but we usually devolve to that. The stories, laughing, and talking are the best part for me, even better than the food, because it reminds me that while we have some pretty crazy experiences and have maybe made some awful decisions, we are OK.
• I sat on the couch and talked to my niece Lyndsay about her upcoming ultrasound. I’m not sure she’ll tell me what she’s having, but I’m dying to know!
• Kaleb has been talking nearly all month about how bad he wanted a “real turkey. The kind with legs.” (Last year, when I cooked at my house, I just made a turkey breast because there were only seven of us. And because I’m a little bit afraid of cooking a whole turkey.) He, Jake, and Nathan polished off all four legs (Suzette cooked two turkeys) on their own. Kaleb was so happy he got a turkey leg to himself!
• After the meal was over, I met up with Kendell at Target. (My opinions on the Thursday-edition-of-Black-“Friday” coming soon!) He’d gotten the door buster things I was hoping he’d get, but then we wandered around some more. (We=Haley, Nathan, Kendell, and me.) I was so tired and feeling so sick, I kept nearly falling asleep with my head on the shopping cart.
• When we got home from Target, it was to discover that Jake had cleaned the entire kitchen by himself. Detailed it, and it was a fairly big mess. It was so nice to come home to!

I just searched so I could answer my own question: 8. I used the word “happy” eight times in this post (not counting that last use). I think it’s a good way to sum it up: despite the pictures I didn’t take, it really was a happy Thanksgiving. I hope yours was, too!

When I drove Nathan to school this morning (he usually rides his board, but he had a ton of extra stuff today so I drove him instead), I was thinking about the day after he was born. November 19, 1999—his birthday—was one of those gorgeous autumn days we get here sometimes, an anomaly of a day when you only need a sweater outside, and the light manages to find the last bits of glow left in the leaves still on the trees.

But in the late morning on the day after he was born, it started snowing. Kendell had just left with Haley and Jake, and the nurses left me alone, too. So I opened the blinds and sat in the hospital bed, holding Nathan and watching it snow. It was one of the most peaceful and sweet moments of my life. It was the time when I finally got to start building our relationship, independent of everyone else wanting to hold him and admire his incredibly long hands and feet. (When he was born, his feet were already too big for those newborn baby socks, which was a hint at the rest of his life: enormous feet.)

You have a baby and you can’t help wondering…who will he be? How will he turn out? And I am starting to see it. From that incredibly sweet baby he has grown—oh my, has he grown, 6’ 2” tall already!—into a teenager, with all the accompanying stuff. Braces and homework irritations and interesting girls. He loves eating and can put down an extraordinary amount of food for someone so skinny. He likes going to the gym and lifting weights. He is an artist and spends hours drawing, with pencils and his new discovery, black fine-tip pens. He’s #25 on the basketball team. He gets really good grades and is in Honors history and English. He loves knives (this is his oldest affection…one of the first things he did when he could walk was try to get into the kitchen knife drawer) and has some impressive butterfly-knife skills. He likes skinny jeans and cotton shirts and looking nice. And right now his hair looks exactly the way he wants it.

But all of those things don’t exactly capture why I am grateful for Nathan. He was one of my life’s biggest surprises, a joyous surprise. From the second I found out I was pregnant with him (three months in already!), I had this sense of him as someone who is both fierce and gentle, and that is exactly who he is turning out to be. Fierce in his affections and dedications, sometimes in his anger. Gentle and good. He is a loyal friend and he doesn’t like when the people he cares about are upset. He inherited Kendell’s penchant for getting stuff done—if something needs to be done, he’ll do it without much complaining. He’s polite and happy and funny, and again...none of these words are really capturing it. He’s not a perfect kid of course—who would want perfection? But he is an awesome kid, and I love him so much, and I am entirely, thoroughly grateful I get to be his mom.

This year, I decided I would participate in NaNoWriMo, which is a thing that aspiring writers decide to participate in all the time. I’ve never done it—tried to write a novel in a month—and I didn’t feel quite ready to tackle an actual novel. Instead, I decided that my NaNoWriMo “word count” goal would be 28. Twenty eight days of writing, to be specific. Real writing. I didn’t care about word counts, I just wanted to get down a few of those stories that have been weaving around in my head. Polish up some of my essays. Work harder on my Persephone sequence. I wanted to use the month as a way to work out a writing schedule. To make a writing habit.

So far, seventeen days into November, my word count is one.

Yep. One day of writing. On November 1, Kendell had to go to Salt Lake, so I went with him. I sat in the Salt Lake City library with my laptop, and I wrote away. I several times found myself in that happy place when words are doing exactly what you want them to do. And the writing itself wasn’t bad. It wasn’t marvelous, but it was working.

I think it was those moments that made me not keep trying to write. It felt…precipitous. Like walking along a cliff, somehow, and if I fell—or, when I fell, by finding myself back in the unhappy writing place I’ve been in—I might never get back. Of course, not trying means not being there, too, so being afraid because I was enjoying the process is downright silly. But there you  have it.

I think if I could go to the Salt Lake City library every day, and sit by a window, and look over at the fluttering artwork hanging from the ceiling, and write, then I could write.

I also know this is an excuse.

My first NaNoWriMo is a bust I think.

It’s also just the hectic-ness of my life. I want to make it work but I haven’t figured out the way yet.

Actually what I haven’t done is figure out how to overcome my addiction. My little scrapbooking problem. Because, yeah. One day of writing this month. Roughly 1500 words. But I have made eight scrapbook layouts.

I know that if I want to pursue my writing ambitions, I need to scrapbook less. I can’t give it up altogether, of course. Because I will always believe in the power of stories mixed with pictures and something visually appealing. I will always feel like I have a responsibility to do this craft. I’ll always love it.

I just need to find a way to make it my second-favorite response to the creative itch.

While I was planning my NaNoWriMo, I was also thinking about doing what I think of as a one-topic month. This is when I pick a topic, usually something that goes with the time of year, and scrapbook as many photos of it as I can. I’ve done this twice in Octobers (Halloween), and several times in January (Christmas, although this year I’m thinking about actually doing it in December), and once in May (birthdays). It’s a good way to use up a lot of stuff and get a lot of stories down on paper.

It also uses a lot of creative energy.

I sort of set myself up for a NaNoWriMo fail by printing all of the best Thanksgiving photos from the past ten years or so. I couldn’t just ignore that tempting sack of photos.
And the little pile of new supplies I’d rounded up in October. So instead of writing very much at all, I’ve been scrapbooking. But also thinking about scrapbooking, and why I enjoy it so much, and what it fills for me. Why do I turn to pretty paper when I’m feeling creative? I think it’s partly because it’s easy. In The War of Art there’s a discussion (several in fact) about resistance, and how what you want to do but resist doing is the very thing you should be doing. I want to be writing but I resist writing. I want to be scrapbooking…so I scrapbook. There is absolutely no resistance. It’s like sinking into a warm bath.

Plus, with scrapbooking there isn’t really the nearly-guaranteed threat of rejection. Even if I were trying to achieve some scrapbooking notoriety, the most important thing (for me) has always been my main audience, which is my family. It’s a sure thing that they will like them. Or at least not reject them!

(Based on THIS sketch.)

Still, as I’ve been scrapbooking and thinking about scrapbooking, I’ve also been thinking about writing. About what I want to do, about why, after having this ambition for so long, I still want to be a writer when I grow up. It is partly, of course, that crazy dream that I’d write something that people loved, and purchased—the hope of supporting myself financially with words. But it isn’t only that. It is going to writing conventions as a presenter instead of an audience member. It is the thought of having a shelf in my house with my own books on it. It is the long-awaited answer to the 17-year-old I used to be. But even more than all of those, it is that feeling. That being in a moment when words flow, when story creates itself, when time passes without me noticing because I was caught up in that process. (“At the point where language falls away/from the hot bones, at the point/where the rock breaks open and darkness/flows out of it like blood, at/the melting point of granite/when the bones know/they are hollow & the word/splits & doubles & speaks/the truth & the body/itself becomes a mouth” is how Atwood puts it.)

I have been in that moment, which is a sort of a place. One that is so exhilarating that it is terrifying; the place I want to be so badly I won’t let myself enter.

I will always be grateful for scrapbooking. I will always be a scrapbooker. But I am, today, despite my NaNoWriMo failure, grateful for the building I feel going on within myself. A sort of…burgeoning, like lava (or, I suppose, like Atwood’s melting granite). And for the feeling I have within myself that it is coming to the surface, my ability to find that place and then stay there, making something new.

Even though my mom is an excellent cook, I can’t say I learned all I know from her. She taught me how to make chocolate chip cookies, and pizza dough. She taught me to serve vegetables with every meal (even though I don’t always follow her example). She taught me spaghetti sauce and beef stroganoff and cheese potatoes, but I don’t think she ever really taught me how to cook. Instead, she taught me to cook. Which is a fine distinction. What I mean is that I learned from my mother that moms cook for their family, and so it is something I do for mine as well.

Something I enjoy doing for them.

My sisters are good cooks, too. From Michelle I learned chocolate zucchini cake. From Suzette I learned chicken noodle soup and chili and meat loaf. From Becky, guacamole salsa and *.

Books taught me, too. Not just cookbooks, but novels. Every time I eat avocado, I think about the scene in The Bell Jar with the avocado pears stuffed with crab salad and I am a little bit more careful with my cooking methods. Heidi’s grandfather taught me the redemptive power of cheesy toast. And I cannot read (or watch, for that matter) anything set at Hogwarts without immediately baking something delicious.

If you pay attention, you can pick up cooking tips and tricks from almost anyone who cooks. My library friend Julie taught me about All-Clad pans (I’m still saving up!). My friend Sophia taught me about how food, really good and memorable but never fancy-in-that-expensive-way food does more than meet just nutritional needs. One of my co-workers from twenty years ago taught me a cheesecake trick that I still use, and just last week my sister’s sister-in-law taught me how to make perfect hot fudge sauce. Because it’s not just technique or motivation—recipes are so good to share. Family recipes are the best ones, I think, tried and made true by years of repetition. Tweaked to perfection.

I don’t really watch a lot of TV, but I like the Food Channel to be on sometimes if the house is feeling too quite. It’s good background noise because whenever I stop to pay attention, I learn something new.

I’m not an especially inventive cook. I think I have the basics down, but I don’t have that creative spark that allows a person with a bag of frozen lima beans, some corn meal and a fresh piece of fish to turn out a gourmet meal. But if I know what I’m cooking, I can generally do it well. (Albeit fairly slow. In fact, I might be the world’s slowest chef!) I love to bake, and if you need a dessert, I am generally your go-to girl.

It is a skill I’m grateful for.

Especially as my kids are getting older, I am finding that I cannot always have an answer or a solution for them. We don’t always get along or see things the same way. But there is something restorative in eating together. I feel a little bit like I sprinkle into spaghetti sauce and whisk into broccoli soup the things I cannot say or they cannot hear, so that when they are eating they are consuming my advice or knowledge or love. I have baked I’m-sorry-for-throwing-a-piece-of-cheese-at-you macaroni and cheese for Jake, I-miss-you red bean burritos for Haley, thank-you-for-knowing-I-needed-your-help chicken curry for Nathan. I scramble every ounce of love I have into every pan of scrambled eggs I make for Kaleb.

Food binds us together. We eat to celebrate, to have a reason to get together, to have an excuse to be in the same room at the same time. But cooking binds in a different way. It’s one thing to eat at a restaurant but an entirely different thing to eat at the dinner table. We might squabble over food and I might get frustrated over everyone’s pickiness. But I am grateful that I learned from my mother that being a mom is partly being a cook. I’m grateful I can cook things that at least one of them loves, things that nourish their bodies and hopefully their spirits. I’m grateful that cooking helps me feel, in a small way, creative. I’m grateful for all the people—from celebrity TV chefs to the lady at the grocery store who helped me pick out a better spaghetti squash—who have taught me what I know. I’m grateful every day brings another chance to try again.

And I’m grateful for how food unites us.

Last night, we had Nathan’s 15^th birthday dinner, which is our family tradition: the birthday kid gets to pick the meal, and the grandparents come. We eat with a tablecloth and pretty dishes (because that is part of it, too…the food, but also how the food is served, and whose hands have also used those dishes); we tell stories while we eat. Nathan chose Shanghai Buffalo Wings for dinner and cheesecake for dessert.

Baking: one of my skills. Cake decoration: not so much.

As I made the cheesecake, I thought about that long-ago coworker, Pat, whose secret to good cheesecake is to put some cornstarch in the filling, to help it set well. I remembered making the same cheesecake for Christmas last year, and the first time I made a cheesecake (I set off the smoke alarm in my kitchen because I didn’t know the butter from the crust would seep out from the sides of the pan), and how much Jake and Haley also love cheesecake. That is part of the pleasure of cooking as well, how it is wrapped up in memory and tradition. The cheesecake cracked and it was slightly runny in the middle, but it didn’t matter to Nathan, who was happy to eat it anyway. It didn’t matter to anyone, actually, except for my own little inner Alton Brown cooking critic, but I hushed him with a little chocolate fudge sauce.

I’m just grateful I could try to make a cheesecake!

Pecan Pie Cheesecake
(modified from this recipe)

Crust:

 1 ¾  cups gingersnap crumbs
 ¼ cup firmly packed brown sugar
 1/3 cup butter, melted
¼ tsp nutmeg
¾ tsp cinnamon

 Pecan Filling:

 1 cup sugar
2/3 cup dark corn syrup
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 eggs
1 ½ cups chopped pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 tsp cinnamon
dash nutmeg

 Cheesecake Filling:

 3 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 ¼ cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tsp corn starch
4 eggs
2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix the crust ingredients and press into the bottom and sides of a spring form pan. Bake at 350 for 8 minutes.

Make the pecan filling while the crust is cooling. Combine the sugar, corn syrup, and butter in a pan, and bring just to a boil, stirring often. Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl. Temper the eggs by whisking in about 1/3 cup of the sugar mixture, then whisk them into the rest of the filling. Add the pecans and cook, stirring constantly, until thick, about five-six minutes.

Let cool while making the filling. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil.

Beat the cream cheese, brown sugar, flour, and corn starch together until smooth and entirely lump-free. Whisk the eggs, cream, and vanilla together in a separate bowl. Pour into the cream cheese mixture and mix again, until all of the ingredients are incorporated.

Spread the pecan filling on top of the crust, the pour the cheesecake filling on top. Smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Wrap the pan with tinfoil.

Pour the boiling water into a 9x13 glass casserole dish, and put that on the bottom rack of the oven. Change the heat to 325. Put the cheesecake in the oven, and cook for 70 minutes. Turn the oven off and let the cake continue to sit in the oven for one hour. Then, slide a knife around the edge, and put it in the fridge to chill.  At the very least, give yourself four hours for chilling, but it’s really better if you serve it the next day.

Sometime Tuesday night (or early Wednesday morning) I sat up in bed, entirely awake. (As opposed to the times I sit up only half awake, like last night when I nearly fell out of bed after sitting up and shouting "Taco Bell!") It hit me that I had gone to sleep without praying, which I confess I do more often than not, but which I should not have done that night, as something I had been praying for had happened: Nathan made the basketball team. I wanted and hoped and wished and prayed for this not because I'm a sports fanatic (or even really like basketball) but because he wanted it. He wanted it so badly, and so I wanted it for him. Wanted him to have a team, and the experience of being an athlete, and to find his Thing, the certain something that everyone needs to define themselves with in high school.

(I would've wanted it just as badly if it were a non-athletic goal he had.)

Plus, he'd worked so hard on improving his skills, going to almost every open gym, even the ones at 6:00 a.m. So I hoped. I encouraged. I helped him nurse along his minor injuries. And when he told me on Tuesday night that he'd made the team (after teasing me with snuffling and slamming doors when he came home), I was so, so happy. I rejoiced with him.

But I didn't express my gratitude in prayer that night. Even though I'd been eager to express my want in prayer.

So, that late night or early morning, after I'd prayed, I snuggled in my bed and thought about gratitude. I thought about how so many people I know are doing the daily gratitude post on Facebook or the photo on Instagram, or by writing about it on their blogs. I've done that in the past, too. This year, it sort of felt like a book I'd already read. Like a thing I didn't need to do because I'd already done it before, and what would I even write about, having already hit the major things in my previous posts?

Then I thought about the story in Luke, when Christ cleanses the ten lepers, and one comes back to thank him. "But where are the nine?" Christ asks. But they were not to be found. "Go thy way," Christ says to the thankful man. "Thy faith hath made thee whole." I pondered on those other nine healed lepers. Did their leprosy return because of their ingratitude? I don't think it did, and I almost don't think it matters what happened to them. What matters is what happens to the thankful man, who is made whole through his faith.​ I think this is different than the cleanliness that the nine had—the kind that just happened, miracle or not. The faithful man's effort made him whole, and the illustration of his faithfulness was gratitude.

We cannot, I think, be whole without gratitude. And I don't think that stops being true if you are not a person of faith. Everyone, believer or not, feels better—happier, more fulfilled, more aware—with gratitude.

Lying in my bed in the dark, I chided myself, because even if I wrote about the same things I wrote about before, they are things (people, experiences, blessings) that I am still thankful for. I still have them. Can we ever just stop being grateful? Just have already filled up our gratitude quotient? Even without any startlingly new blessings, I don't think so. The consistent blessings might just be the sweetest.

So here I am, writing about being thankful. Full of thanks.​ I don't want to fall into the group of the nine any more. I want to be grateful because I know I have been blessed. And because I want to feel it, more keenly, the happiness those blessings bring. I am grateful, today, for gratitude itself. For being reminded of how important it is, for the act of watching and for the richness that brings to the world.

The only way this year's Halloween could've been better is if Jake didn't have to work so he could hang out with us and if Haley had appeared, magically, for a visit home.

Otherwise it was pretty much Halloween perfection.

My usual cheetah costume, along with the kids' usual joke about me being a cougar. ha ha.

When my bigs were little, our Halloween tradition was to trick or treat in our neighborhood, and then go to my sister Suzette’s house. My parents would be there, and my nieces and nephews. We’d eat something good and then the kids would trick or treat some more.

I loved that part of Halloween. That it was wrapped up in family, in cousins and aunts and grandparents. So many other people to see and admire costumes, and tell funny stories to, and just be with.

But when my Bigs actually grew up a little bit, this sort of got phased out, because my sisters’ youngest kids were the age of my oldest, so they grew out of Halloween before mine did.

I miss those Halloweens when we felt like a part of a tribe. We had a few lonely Halloweens of just trick or treating in our neighborhood and just hanging out at our house.

It was definitely a lot less fun.

Nathan went as the Hulk, but everyone thought he was a mutant turtle. Mom fail on the last-minute costume!

But then my sister-in-law, whose kids are nearly identical in ages to mine, moved back. And slowly we’ve started a new tradition: trick or treating in our neighborhood, and then going to Cindy’s house for dinner and more trick or treating. It is starting to feel like a new tradition, but not one I am always sure will happen, because I can’t assume she’ll want us to come every year.  So near the middle of October, I start hoping. Kaleb starts asking me, and I have to tell him, “I don’t know, we’ll have to see if Cindy invites us.” Three years in, she always has.

And I love being with family again on Halloween.

This year, my other sister-in-law, Melissa, also joined us. Everyone met at my house, and we walked around our neighborhood, trick or treating. I thought about those long-ago Halloweens while I watched Melissa’s kids, who are one and three, remembering how that felt. Having little ones on Halloween was pretty fun, but pretty exhausting, too. Being afraid that they’ll fall, or run out into the street, or get lost. This was my favorite moment this Halloween: walking on my street, seeing my neighbors and their kids, laughing with my sisters-in-law while Kaleb raced around with his cousin and friend, gathering candy. Talking to Nathan who was pushing the stroller and teasing him about whether or not he’s too tall to go trick or treating. (He decided he is.) It was the warmest Halloween I can ever remember, without any clouds, and the light was glowing through the yellow trees...sigh.

I still had roses blooming so I made the boys stand by them for a picture.

Halloween nirvana.

After our street, we packed up and drove to Cindy’s. She’d made chili and I brought my garlic bread sticks and some sugar cookies. (Because it is not a holiday meal without a dessert, even with all that candy.) I’m happy to say that I ate only one piece of candy, the Almond Joy that Kaleb gave me (his least-favorite candy happens to be one of my favorites…so convenient!)

I can’t say the same thing about the sugar cookies though. I frosted them with the browned butter pumpkin spice frosting from this recipe, instead of my usual cream cheese frosting, and oh my. They were good.

Kaleb, Jace, and Joe went out right after eating for more trick or treating, and then the adults just hung out and talked.

When I was putting away the Halloween decorations the next day, I wondered (like I always do): where will we be next year? Will anything big have changed? Will we be happier or sadder, better off or worse? I don’t know, of course. But I am certain I will hold on to the memory of this practically-perfect Halloween for many years.

I decided at the end of September that I’d shake up my running routine a little bit. I’d been doing 4-6 miles, three or four times a week, but still doing some running+walking. (My system: run for three songs, walk for two minutes, repeat.) I changed it to running 3.5 miles a day, every day, with no walking breaks. I figured shorter runs with more consistent running would help me build up the ankle strength I need to stop the running+walking thing forever.

happy to wear my favorite long-sleeve again!

The first two weeks of this went so well. I’m surprised to discover that the running+walking has actually increased my running speed, by a good 20-30 seconds per mile. That makes entirely zero sense, but whatever, I’m happy to increase my speed!

I started noticing, though, a slight twinge in my hamstring. Specifically, the semitendinosus. At first I just ignored it because, you know. That’s what runners do. It would hurt right at the start of my run, but as my muscles warmed up the pain would fade. Then it started to be sore the day after running. And it just slowly got worse and worse until, um, I can’t touch my toes. This is simply untenable for me. Not just the pain—which is a nervy, tight pain that’s different from regular soreness. I do not like the inflexibility at all.

I feel like a stranger in my body.

So I took an entire week off from running. I didn’t do much of anything, really. Every day it felt just a little bit better. Still tight, but not a constant pain. That Friday, though, I had a 1-mile fun run fundraiser for Kaleb’s school. I got dressed up and went to the race, thinking that surely seven days without running would be long enough.

And Kendell thought I'd never wear my red sparkly running shoes again!

Apparently not.

The very first running step I took, my hamstring said no. I ran the race—because that’s what runners do!—but it hurt the whole time (even though it felt so fantastic to be running again!) And I haven’t run anymore this month.

I don’t even know what to do. Even just sitting here at the computer, with my leg curled underneath me, my hamstring hurts. I can’t even pinpoint what did it, ultimately, because in October I also tried doing a 30-day burpee challenge, and Kendell and I started going on two-mile walks after dinner. (I think I was the burpees, honestly.)

So yeah: third October in a row I didn’t do much running. Which is awful because you only have so many Octobers in your lifetime, and October is the best running month. I’m sad and frustrated and stuck.

But other good things happened this month!

Haley finally got a job! Well, a job that she trained for. When she was a senior, she took a class after school to get certified as a pharmacy technician, and she finally got a job actually using that certification. She’ll make way more money and I think it will give her a confidence boost.

She came to visit early in the month, so she could get some car stuff done with her dad’s help. There was also some shopping and going to lunch and seeing friends.

I love this photo. I only wish I had moved the garbage can, closed the garage door, and used my big camera instead of my cell phone.

The first term ended, which means that Jake is one-quarter finished with his junior year! He decided to join the Parli team at school again. He also decided to apply for a manager spot at the pizza place where he works. He went on a date (to a corn maze). And he just seems…happier. I finally took him to my dermatologist because his eczema flared up with all of the school stress. He’d been using some other products from Kendell’s dermatologist which just weren’t working very well. The new creams and pills are working so much better! He did a project for French where he and a friend made bacon-covered asparagus (speaking the instructions in French in a video). I never would’ve paired those two items, but they were delicious!

Nathan’s life right now is filled with one thing: basketball. The tryouts for the ninth grade team are next week. He’s been going to before-school practices and after-school practices. When he’s not practicing basketball, he’s lifting weights. Or drawing. (I love that he has a variety of interests!) He read The Help for his English class and brought his biology grade back up to an A! (It was the “make a 3D cell” project that gave him just enough to push him over out of the A- range.) We had a lovely afternoon early in October when we went to the art store together and looked at pens. And bought a few. I loved that day!

Kaleb had his first parent-teacher conference. (It is called a “scholar-led conference” at our school…which is a term I think is sort of silly in its attempts to be progressive, but OK.) His teacher last year loved him so much. This fourth-grade teacher just sort-of likes him. This has been an adjustment for him; it’s probably good for him to not be adored by his teacher, but he’s also a little bit bewildered by it! (I don’t mean that in a my-son-is-perfect way. He’s annoying and obnoxious too. But he has a little friendly spark that people usually love.) At the book fair, we bought the new Jedi Academy book and he’s since read it three times. He joined the running club at school and was so excited to run in the fun run. He came in sixth place overall and first in his class.

We did a lot of yard work this month. Well, “we” meaning, mostly me, but there was some group participation too. Especially with the leaves, which started to fall near the end of the month. Once I can get everyone outside and working, they are all good helpers and we get the leaves picked up quickly.

Of course, there was also a lot of discussion about Halloween costumes, especially for Kaleb. We briefly toyed with the idea of being Zeus:

(In case you ever wondered...what would Kaleb look like as a very hair girl?)

But it was obviously way too big! In the end I went with the plan I made back in May, when I made him a Viking costume for his wax museum at school. (He was Lief Erickson.) I added some fur legwarmers and a new hat, and then I only felt a little bit guilty for not making something new:

On the first Sunday of October, we had a family dinner at my mom’s. My brother-in-law took this picture of me, Becky, and our niece Lyndsay which I think I will love forever and ever:

(Even though it’s fairly goofy!)

I made quite a few layouts, and I wrote seven blog posts at Write. Click. Scrapbook:

• What you Can Learn About Scrapbooking from a Pile of Leaves
• Three Stamping Challenges
• Goodbye October (which is about the photo at the very top of this post!)
• Story Scraps (one of my favorite WCS posts I've ever written)
• Patterned Paper: use both sides
• Patterned Paper: how far can you stretch it?
• A Yellow Challenge

(I didn't realize until I put that list together how many posts I'd written. Our topic was using up your supplies and as that is one of my favorite topics...I got involved!)

And, one last good day: I had to run up to Nordstrom to do a return, and I decided to ask my friend Wendy to go along. It was just a quick run to Salt Lake, but then we also stopped at the Rack and then we went to lunch, and it was exactly, exactly what I needed. I’m grateful for good friends!

How was your October?

For the past few days, I’ve had a tiny little worry gnawing at me:

What if I’m pregnant?

I didn’t really and truly think I was expecting, as I had none of the usual symptoms (for me, the dead give-away are the little red spots, five or six of them, that pop out on the palms of my hands). Except for one: every night for the past seven or eight weeks, I’ve gotten nauseous. No throwing up, but just…a low-grade but persistent feeling of barfiness. When I wake up in the morning, it’s gone, but by seven or eight o’clock, it starts building up again until I have to sleep.

Last Tuesday, I was sitting outside in my back yard. The wind changed and I could suddenly smell the hot tar that the elementary school was having painted on its roof. When I was pregnant with Kaleb and still in the nauseous phase, the high school where I was teaching was having its roof redone, so that smell of hot tar is inextricably bound up with that early-pregnancy feeling for me.

It immediately made me think: Oh. My. What if I am pregnant?

Then the dreams started. Every night since Tuesday, I’ve been pregnant in my dreams. Shopping for baby clothes, holding my hand on my enormous belly, trying to pick out names. Sewing baby quilts. Effortlessly delivering a baby, nursing a baby, trying to find the diapers I forgot to buy for my dream baby.

Even taking pictures of the baby.

I’ve had my yearly exam scheduled with my gynecologist for a while (same office, but never this doctor, and you should read that if you’ve ever had an excruciatingly embarrassing gynecological exam), so my appointment this morning has been a sort of milepost to make it to. Because while I wasn’t dreaming my luscious, perfect, dreamy, peaceful dreams about having another baby, I was worrying about it in real life. There’s the fact that I am just too old to start over—I’d be 62 before this baby left the house! I’m constantly tired anyway—how would I function on newborn hours? There’s the truth, too, that I’m honestly not sure my marriage could even manage another baby. Who would take care of this child while I went to work? Which bedroom in our crowded house would become the nursery? How would it impact my kids? Who would its friends be and who would help me out when I needed a break, since none of my friends are in the baby business anymore either?

And, honestly, this fact: I have finally, after many years of sadness and wishing and regret and no small amount of bitterness, made peace with the idea that there will be no more babies. I am not baby hungry in the least. I don’t have that need to seek out someone’s baby and hold him or her. I don’t long for tiny clothes and the other baby accoutrements. I watch other, younger moms with their babies and I feel a guilty sense of relief that I am finished with that part of my life. (Guilty because I loved having babies. I loved it. I loved being pregnant and I love the delivery process and I loved nursing. I loved my newborns, even the exhaustion and the night feedings and the lack of a proper shower, so much. So much I can’t even explain. So I don’t want anyone, even myself, to think that being glad I’m done with babies means I didn’t enjoy the babies that I had. I loved that part of my life more than possibly any other time.)

So when I went to the doctor this morning, I was waiting for him to ask if I had any questions, and I did, so he had me take a pregnancy test right that second, and it came back negative.

I am not pregnant.

And I am 90% relieved. My life can stay on this track it is on, the one that mostly makes sense and is manageable. I won’t be the ancient mother, the one who might be that kid’s grandmother, at the park. I won’t have to manage the entire-life upheaval a baby would cause. No night feedings, no constant exhaustion, no juggling daycare and guilt and anxiety.

No baby.

But there is that other part of me. The ten percent that’s sad. Because: no baby. No new person to have in my life forever. No pregnancy, with all its attendant, happy drama; no Doppler heartbeat, no ultrasounds or delivery days. No feeling that first tiny flutter or the strong kicks at the end. No shopping trips for tiny, delicate clothes. No sewing baby quilts that I use instead of giving away. No nighttime feedings, the way in the quiet, warm dark when it’s just you and your tiny baby, all of the other worries fall away into that sweetness.

No more peaceful, intimate, tender dreams of babies. Instead, I’m likely to start dreaming about cancer treatments, because I am still nauseous at night. My doctor explained that it is hard to make a diagnosis based only on nausea, especially if I don’t have any other symptoms. So I’m waiting for a little while to see if it goes away before trying to figure out what is going on. Giving me more time to worry over what that might be.

Maybe an unexpected pregnancy at 43 is better than the alternative.