Oh how I love autumn.  And pumpkins.  Lots and lots of orange pumpkins.  Pinterest suggests a coat of mercury glass paint would look fab.  And it would.  Daughter reminds me that, "It's just not right for this house. It's not you."  Whether that is a good thing or not it is true.  I have a well known, deep seated affection for all things orange and spicy and warm, so every corner is full of that right now.

The mums my husband brought home early in the month are still going strong.  The pot is just slipped into the planter so when they have run their course, we can pull it back out with no hassle. 

The pillows are out.  I have shared before about upcycling thrifted placemats into throw pillows.  I am no expert seamstress but can sew a straight line around and stuff them well.  

And seasonal hand towels.  I can't pass them up at the thrift store. Scarecrows, jack o lanterns, and acorns are waiting at each counter.

Printed muffin liners? Naturally. 

And seasonal kitchen mitts.  Because…88 cents, yall.  It's not magazine worthy, but it is worth every one of those 88 pennies to make them smile when they dry their hands or reach for cornbread or rest their heads. 

"Parents, your children are worth more to you than the unrealities so many of you follow. See to it that you give to your young children a home worthy of the name.  Giving them that, you give them all.    

There have been many as choice Homes.  There have been many as true Parents. In many a soul their memory shines, like a star, and in many a heart they have lit an undying sunshine of gratitude."

Harriot Kesia Hunt

In the aftermath of the canyon fire, the county set up dumpsters in our community to encourage homeowners to clear their property of debris and undergrowth which can ignite and fuel damaging fires under the right conditions.  We were talking with the neighbors about just how MUCH crud there is to clear out once you start to dig – stuff we lived with pretty obliviously. It is a such a self-discipline thing to get out there and roll up your sleeves especially when you aren't actually finishing a thing but rather just keeping a little bit ahead of the game. 

This may be one of the biggest revelations of adulting for me – just how much pruning and weeding all of life requires.  I have always been more focused on planning and envisioning, planting and harvesting. Reality is those are brief lovely beginning and endings.  Celebratory.  The real meat of any project is the maintaining. It's not terribly glam, no matter what you are maintaining.  

We won't finish this job this year but we have hauled off a lot of weeds and brush and broken branches. It's much better than when we started. I'm trusting that steady effort is cumulative.  I am looking around at what else could use some digging out. One project here and there.  Garbage hauled out is always an improvement.

The date I tentatively expected to wrap up my Facebook fast has come and gone. A funny thing has happened this time.  I am in no hurry to rejoin the conversation, which does not appear to have become less abrasive nor more edifying in the time that has passed. Perhaps it isn't quite accurate to say I am 'away' since I still pop over to share something in our little family group or to leave a birthday wish.  There was an actual feeling of withdrawal when I first deleted the app.   The same thoughts flitted through my head as I have heard so many others voice:

How will I keep up with the news?

Who will I talk to?  (bigger question if you are home based)

What about morale?  Stimulation? Rapport? 

Well, the best way to find out is to just press on.  Worse case scenario you just jump back in.  

What have I noticed?  First, it's true.  You'll be out of the loop.  I was already pretty close to the edge anyway lol. You won't hear about who did what – either on your small screen or on the big ones – until it is old news.  Or maybe not at all.  It is true that if you turn off the TV (which happened years ago) and you also sign off social media you will have to make a concerted effort to follow the news.  Or maybe you will go whole days without following it.  You might forget to be upset about things you can do absolutely nothing about.  If you have an engaged circle of curious and thoughtful people around you, however, you will be hard pressed not to be abreast of the breaking news and can readily investigate whatever seems to require your attention. 

Will your world then go silent?  On the contrary.  I have enjoyed some wonderful private conversations the past several weeks.  While the Facebook feed has been increasingly draining, the Facebook messenger app has been such a blessing. 

Did I get bored?  Oh my word, no.  We have had such successful school days, days so full we have a backlog of home/art/food/book/music  ideas.  Even with those hours reclaimed from social media there  is still not enough time in each day to do all we would like.  There is more than there was, though.  More importantly, each activity is leaving me energized and motivated to do other interesting things.  As a friend said, we do math (and all the other challenging tasks we do here) because there are solutions to those problems.  Few things boost morale like actually solving problems, even if they are small. 

Some of the online time I had has been rerouted to reading longer articles and revisiting favorite blogs. It turns out many of us have come to that same conclusions.  Slow reading and slow writing, as my friend Susan says. (Consider replacing some random scrolling with one of Susan's essays.  It is SO good to have her back.)  

I have gathered up a few of the articles about all this:

7Ways to Honor God by Limiting Social Media

Social Media Pro/Con

Why I Deleted the Facebook App don't miss her "what I did instead"

Why I Deleted All My Facebook Friends

10 Reasons I Deleted My Facebook

Since we aren't suggesting anyone go full-on Luddite here, here are some helpful considerations before hitting the share button:

4 Questions to Ask Before Posting on Social Media

Does it even need to go on social media…..

and when to embrace silence entirely:

because this might just be true….

"Don’t let ennui keep you digitally distracted. Fight the good fight."  more on that  here

“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Colossians 3:2

“That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”   – Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

I began to put out the autumn decor a bit prematurely, when we cleaned the storage room after the fire evacuation.  It was still in the 90's then.  It was a few weeks before that I snapped this photo of the baby acorns.  Then, very suddenly, last weekend, it became fall.  Autumn, when it came, descended very definitely and without hesitation. It is now chilly, cold actually.  We are scrambling to find our sweaters and socks after a summer in sandals.  

It is sort of wonderful, this new season.  A time of gathering – new titles to explore, (see above) new texts begun, new seasonal recipes, the promise of Christmas at the end of this glorious indulgent semester.  My favorite time of all is autumn.  So full of promise.  Perhaps because my life has long revolved around the academic year, September is our new year.

Here is where we start fresh.  

"Do you know what this old man who has spent his life for his dear boys, wants from you? One thing only:

that, due allowances being made, the happy days…may return;

the days of affection and Christian confidence;

the days of affability and mutual forbearance for the love of Jesus Christ;

the days when hearts were open in all simplicity and candor,

the days of charity and true happiness for all."

St John Bosco

He knew better than most that holiness is intrinsically tied up with laughter and joy.  And oh these kids bring lots of both.  

PS: Want a silly way to show affection?  Print a few of these and tuck them away for your loved ones to find.  So fun.  

We were not in the totality of the eclipse yesterday but we did make the most of the 93% experience in our neck of the woods.  It was last minute chaos-as-usual, not for lack of preparation.  My party food ingredients, purchased on Friday, were consumed in bits and pieces throughout the weekend.  After shopping I had spent the weekend looking up serial numbers on the backs of our glasses and determining how many seconds of direct exposure were required for irreversible retina damage, how permanent retina damage presents itself, and devising various ways for affixing said glasses onto my kids' heads.  I am nothing if not spontaneously fun lol.

Monday morning I sent the boys to replace the party food they had eaten that was missing.  The three youngest worked on their pinhole viewers.  That whole thing was pretty darned fascinating.  If you still have yours lying around, or you are into photography, you might want to check out this link for more information about the camera obscura. 

teaser from the article…

Here is Dad explaining how to embed the paper glasses onto your face so your mother doesn't freak out. 

….as much

Here is what 93% shadows look like….

That part was amazing to me.  The next image shows about what it looked like around us at its peak.  Mostly the sky dimmed considerably and the shadows deepened.  Our temperature dropped and the crickets began to sing.  Birds started to fuss about the trees.  

When it began to pass we celebrated with our eclipse lunch.  Corny I know.  But hey, learning should be a blast right?  I am a sucker for a great theme. 

That right there is my baby girl whose computer and phone and icloud all crashed or deleted just before the eclipse (unrelated, just bad timing) and who lost a great deal of data and personal memories.  This is her who, having wiped her tears, said, "Mom I'm really, really upset but let's not ruin the party.  We will go look at it after." These are the moon pie esclipses she made for the littles.  THAT is more self control and goodwill than I am usually capable of in the midst of heartache.  

(follow up is today after many tears and prayers she was able to recover most though not all of her data.  Heading to the Genius Bar tomorrow.  Say a prayer, y'all.) 

In usual form, we reserved these books which look promising and will be read retrospectively:

Eclipse Miracle

Cowee Sam 

Eddie's Eclipse

How was your eclipse day?  Did you read any fabulous books or do projects you'd recommend?  Do let us know!  We will be exploring for a while yet.  

It's often very warm after dinner.  We move slowly, as a rule, gathering the dishes and putting the leftovers away.  I am happy for my window over the sink.  It faces out over the valley where the sun sets.  Right out there the other night a family of quail cautiously crept out of the woods and made a rather bold trek across the yard.  It was a success. The dogs snoozed nearby unaware.  Only we humans noticed.  First the girls, who then whispered through the open window, "Mom!  Your birds!"  I dropped my dish cloth and we walked outside to watch them together.

The mother bird eventually led the way northward, followed by a mostly orderly line of little chicks.  If you've ever crossed the street with a gaggle of kids you know there are always a couple who wander further abroad, making their mother crazy.  The male, on crossing guard duty, stayed mid-yard on lookout until the last chicks passed.  When the planks of the deck creaked he hurried them all along into the brush and out of sight.  

There was something wonderful about the whole journey, both of the pair with their jobs to do. Single minded. Each instinctively knowing how critical their role was.  Happy little chicks exploring eagerly with no idea how vulnerable they are, trusting the older birds to get them where they were going.  

This one, standing as a sentinel afterwards, until they were well hidden and down the hill.  The dogs would have gone after him if he had been noticed.  I suppose that was his purpose for remaining out in the open so long.  I found that heartachingly beautiful.  

 "Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity. Perfect love is perfect self-forgetfulness. Hence where there is love in a home, unselfishness is the law. Each forgets self and lives for others."    JRR Miller

This week has seen a lot of action for the three youngest here. We sent that young man (above) off to camp. Then the girls have been preparing their projects to submit to a local gallery for our city's monthly art stroll exhibit.  I will be honest.  That was one of those ideas that sounds awesome when you first hear it.  Then as the time draws near, if you are an introvert anyway, you start thinking of how swamped you already are, how you need to find out where the art work is supposed to get dropped off, that you must plug all that stuff in the GPS and figure out how to get it there on the same day the boy child needs to meet his camp ride.  And it's his first time away from home and both of you are a little wigged out about all that. And paint and finding newspaper to cover the table, and cleanup and stuff.

This is GOYBP at its finest y'all.  Get Off Yer Butt Parenting. It's a critical piece of the discipline puzzle.  You know, when you are trying to finish your chapter/blog post/phone call/work deadline/whatever but Child 1 reports that Child 4 is pouring that new organic shampoo into the toilet, then you need to GOYB and go parent right then.  When you're sitting on the couch calling the child and child keeps saying, "In a minute," over and over?  You've gotta GOYB and go retrieve the child.  

Well, it is every bit as important to GOYB when the kids are being awesome.  These kids have been awesome and since they can't drive and want to participate I pushed past my foot dragging and we got 'er done. I'm so pleased with the finished products.  Both girls have been working so hard and trying many different mediums. We have learned so much – both what worked and how we will do some things differently next time.  

OK so we did actually go to the wrong place initially but we recovered, got to the right venue and found their work.  Then we crossed the street to the cupcake shop to finish off the evening. Lemondrop , Chocolate Marshmallow, and a caramel chocolate macaroon thankyoukindly. So much fun.  Now we are scanning our Pinterest feeds for the next project.