so nice to not feel dread or dispair

After the election, that is. So unlike the last two presidential elections. Hooray! It was so exciting to go vote, though my vote did not so much matter in terms of our state's electoral votes. I had some small hope that Kansas might Barack the boat and go in slight favor of Obama, but my hopes were way off. Stupid KAKE 10 gave me false hope for a bit: The first time local news came on after I turned on the tv, Susan and whoever reported and had a corresponding graphic giving Obama 72% and McCain 28%. I promptly let out a "Holy shit!" I calmed myself a bit by acknowledging that only 1% of precincts were reporting, but Holy shit! 72% for Obama! Only to have such excitement dashed when at the end of their reporting on local races, Susan and whoever came back to tell me, "Correction: We had our graphics switched. That's 72% for McCain and 28% for Obama."

The evening was only full of good news for the presidential race, and it was so exciting to watch this time. Unfortunately I was in the bathroom when it was announced that McCain had called Obama to concede, so I kind of missed the big moment, but oh well. McCain's concession speech brought tears to my eyes. There was the guy I respected back in 2003. I have long wished McCain had won the Republican nomination in 2000. I think the Republicans still would have won over Gore, but I believe we would have had a much better past eight years. As long as he hadn't found some other wack job to be his running mate... That aside, anyone think there's any chance of McCain being awarded a cabinet position?

Though it's been difficult to think much about anything besides the election and my strong, strong hope that Obama would win, in other news, I've had a couple of recent food successes. One: At an open house of a downtown business a while back, I sampled a very tasty mango curry dip. I bought a packet of the dry mix. This week I mixed it up to use — instead of a dip — as a spread, and have been eating turkey breast, alfalfa sprouts, and mango curry spread wraps for lunches. Two: I used a cup of my ill-fated pumpkin puree (I can copy the tale of that from a comment I left on someone else's blog if anyone's interested) to make penne with fresh pumpkin white wine cream sauce. I read a few recipes for cream sauces and merged a few to come up with this one. It was a tasty success.

Look, ma, no cats.

look who was a bat for halloween

omg, i'm a crazy cat lady.

nibbert!

Whenever I refill Nibbert's food container in her room from the large bag of food, I like to let her eat right out of it (she does usually eat from a regular bowl) because she gets so excited by the fresh smell of a just-opened bag of food and the sheer quantity of food that is poured in front of her eyes.

Just look at that scrumptious cat belly. It's so perfect for [gently] roughing up every now and then when she's being held in the infant position.

oh boy.

How did I get into this? I know. I know how I got into it. My mom was going to sing at my great-aunt's funeral, but then she didn't have anyone to accompany her, but then she asked Brian to accompany her on guitar, which is kind of perfect because my great-aunt liked to play the guitar, and then when they were practicing last night mom says to Brian, "Why don't you sing with me on some verses?" and Brian says, "Erin will too," and I consider that Brian is already doing a sweet favor of playing and that I know he's not too keen on singing in public, so I sort of agree. Sort of as in actually. I am not a singer. You all know this. I'm ok at singing melodies. Or I was ok at singing melodies. But I can no longer sing high enough to sing most melodies, so I try to pick out the alto. My ear is usually good enough at knowing when I'm not right, so I'm not really belting out wrong notes (more like just dropping out), but I'm not good at fixing it and making it right. Luckily my good husband is helping me try to learn it. It turns out since mom didn't have an accompanist at first and wasn't sure she would, she was taken off the funeral program, and we'll be singing during the sharing at the meal, which is good. (I think?) Oh, also good, this is one hymn that almost never fails to make me tear up. Good. This could be one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. Or maybe I'll just "lose my voice" tomorrow...

what i look like when i go to sleep

This is it. Right here. It is not freezing in our house; I just really easily feel cold. In fact, right now I am so. cold. So I've been wearing a stocking cap when I go to sleep. Sometime in the night I do actually finally warm up and end up taking off the hat, my socks (thank goodness, I loathe wearing socks when I sleep), and sometimes even the long-sleeved shirt I have over a t-shirt. I think Brian is quite amused by this. As he should be.

sunday, sept. 28

This is reaching back in time a bit, but I want to post about it. As part of our church's 50th anniversary celebration, it was decided we didn't want to purely focus on ourselves and how great we are (though there was plenty of that type of celebrating too), so a service day in the community was planned. What a great idea. It was set up as a morning session of service, an afternoon session of service, and then faspa followed by a worship service in the late afternoon/early evening. We actually missed church on the sign-up days but were called to fill open slots. We spent the afternoon at Kidron Bethel visiting people who don't get many visitors. The first three people I tried to visit sent me away! And then the next person wasn't in her room! I was beginning to feel like a real failure. When I got to the fifth person's room, she was there and was someone who couldn't really hold a conversation but who liked to talk, so I mostly sat there and tried to decipher what she was saying and respond appropriately. A few times she seemed to respond directly to what I had said, which made me happy. Since it was a low pressure interaction and since I had struck out so many times previously, I stayed with her quite a while. The last person on my list was a man, but only his wife was in the room. Instead of telling her, "Oh, I'm supposed to visit your husband," (which seemed rude), I stayed to talk with her; it was a blessing. She was one of my grandma's friends when she and her husband still lived in assisted living and seemed so happy that I was there to visit with her. Neither she nor her husband nor I could see why they had to be living in healthcare now: they can walk, dress themselves, feed themselves, seem of very sound mind. It's kind of sad. And she said it's sad to have to live there and see so many people who need so much help with everything.

That got a lot longer than I intended. So that's where we spent our service day. Other projects included painting the entire public swimming pool, painting basketball court lines at public parks, planting/landscaping for several outreach organizations, working at MCC, cutting out supplies for public schools, and probably other services I'm forgetting. The faspa was good, and the service was probably the most meaningful of any I've been to in a long time.

I hope we do more service days. Quarterly would be nice. The church wants to figure out how to attract more young people? I think this is a great way. Tangible works that help others. Plus, you build community within the church too by working alongside people you may not otherwise talk with often.

EDIT: I meant to also include that 144 people participated. I believe our membership is 300-something, and our "regular attenders" number around 220? 250? So pretty great participation. Good job, Faith!

debate, wedding, phones, cleaning, pizza

It was a full and fulfilling weekend.

Friday, we went out to La Campanita with Melanie and Jason and then enjoyed watching the debate at our house. And enjoyed the liquid treats they provided. We are greatly anticipating the VP debate this week.

Saturday morning we went to my uncle's outdoor wedding. The weather was beautiful for it. This is my uncle who was married to my dad's younger sister who passed away two years ago. We are very happy for him, but it feels a bit bittersweet, not knowing how much we'll see of him in future years. It was so nice to be included in this celebration for him.

I'm currently frustrated with cell phone providers. Let me get the phone I want and the plan I want. Grr.

This was a banner weekend for us for cleaning. We got some of the basics done Friday before we had company (floors, dishes, bathroom). Sunday we tackled our pile-o-mail. We have a pretty bad habit of piling all of our mail on our couch and never doing anything with it. This pile was super huge. I finally got some organizational tools to help us with our mail (I hope), and we sorted our humongous pile. It's a three-drawer shelf thing -- want to give your input as to what the third drawer should be for? One is for "Needs Immediate Attention" and one is for "Burn" (some people shred, we burn in our backyard). What's the third? I don't want "File" because then it will just never get done; I think filing should happen right away (if we had a filing cabinet, that is. So we're kind of stalled out on that, but we have a box of "To Be Filed," so we don't need a drawer.) There's also a smaller two-drawer system above it -- one drawer for Brian's receipts (I generally throw all of mine away) and one for my medical receipts so they're gathered for turning in for my flex fund.

Saturday night we made pizza again finally. I really like making pizza. This time, into the dough I added sundried tomato paste, oregano, basil, and minced garlic. It sure was yummy. We topped with pesto, canadian bacon, olives, mushrooms, baby roma tomatoes, and a bit of fresh mozzarella and shredded Parmesan. Mmm. Next time I will add even more of the sundried tomato paste and garlic into the crust. This was my first time to try adding anything into a yeast dough, and I had no idea if it mattered when you do it or if there's anything to know about adding things, and I was afraid it wouldn't rise. But it did. Now I'm really looking forward to the leftovers for supper.