Candy Headquarters - VandyH20's

Happy Halloween!

I posted this on Halloween, but I'm writing the text the morning after so I can say that we got 78 candy seekers at our door last night. That is the most by a long shot. Can't say why - maybe it's the economy. No one has food and they have to go door to door seeking it, nutritional value be damned!

There are 3 "decorated" houses on our 9 house street, making this a cul-de-sac to definitely go down (in my opinion). The house across the street has lots of smoke coming from somewhere, eyeballs flashing in the bushes, a monster that pops up and loud spooky audio going for the duration (5:30 - 7:30 approx).

The house at the end of the cul de sac has lots of lights, a graveyard, a strobelight going on a dark spooky monster in the upstairs window of their house, and other stuff. Definitely the brightest and most elaborate display.

Then there's our house. A few lights; 2 fiber optic small scrawcow guys, and a small witch and cauldron that sits on a table covered with a black garbage bag by the front door and has flashing lights in the cauldron which puts out smoke. Now the kids have always liked this decoration and many times commented on it. We also have a witch door knocker that is movement activated so that as soon as kids come to the door it's eyes light up and it cackles "Happy Halloween". This does sometime scare kids but not in a bad way.

Frequently I will look out my side windows as the kids come to the door (we old people love Halloween; takes us back to when our kids were young and cute). A small brother and sister approached the smoking witch last night and looked at her gravely. Then they both slowly stuck their fingers into the cauldron and carefully lifted same finger, stuck them in their mouths and licked them. When I opened the door, I told them I thought they were pretty brave - what if that witch's cauldron (a word they were too young to even know) had poison in it. They said "yew" to that and agreed with me that then they would have been in trouble.

At any rate, trick=r-treater's are such a study in personality. The chatty, the shy, the polite, the ruthless, , the unhurried and the in-a-hurry, the beauties and the beasts. My son David called around 6:45 in an exhausted frenzy and said he had been hit with about 140 already, was out of candy, had turned off the lights and was hiding in the back of the house. He has a rather large prejudice about handing out candy to older kids who haven't bothered to dress up. Well, no wonder: this from a child who still goes to parties with his group who still love to dress up. When he told me that one year he had gone as the Jolly Green Giant, I sorely wished for a photo of that.

This was Mojo's first Halloween and he was totally in awe. It was a wonderfully mild evening, so Bill finally got a chair and parked himself and the Moj (on the leash) in the driveway since, well to be truthful, they were BOTH very interested to see everything. Bill once worked in a haunted house for the Jaycee's and still wants to jump out at people and yell boo. I told him if he was going to do that they had to be at least 12, effectively eliminating most of his shenanigans.

Oh yes, Bill said that the number of real spider webs we had around out front door was an effective addition to our decorations as well!

I think I'm beginning to see the glass as half full

• Ok, I'm about to write something that I hope doesn't come back to bite me in the hiney. I'm beginning to feel optimistic about the likelihood of the election of the first white/Afro-American President of the United States. And it's not based on the polls which as of today give Obama a 5 or 6 percent point lead.

• What it is based on is the huge numbers of early voters and newscasts photos of the voting lines filled with AfroAmericans. I just can't see that the excitement being generated in this election is being generated by John McCain/Sarah Palin fans. Huge crowds turn out for Obama's campaign stops; Republicans not so much for McCain. Plus Mojo has been stumpin' for Barack as witnessed by his favorite Democrat Donkey 08.

• When I spoke with my mom this a.m., she told me they had driven their absentee ballots to the voting office. She said she didn't want them to be lost in the mail. And voting absentee assures that you won't be standing in any long line to vote, which would be difficult for them.

• My niece Kim who is finishing her education degree is having her 3rd graders practice voting, make their own candidate posters and election buttons, etc.

• I can't wait to see if Ohio will finally turn blue (go Democratic). Only 5 more days. I think I'll miss the campaign. It's going to be much more difficult for Obama (knock wood) to turn this blooming recession around than to travel around the country speechifying. :-)

Ignorance was bliss

On Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, the Stock Market fell 22.6%. In the past 6 days it has fallen some 20%. Down to 8300 right this minute from 14000 a year ago. Now, I have to admit that I don't particularly remember Black Monday with any great icy feeling. The boys were 10 and 8 and I was working on my Masters in Library Science. Bill always put money into his 401k and got the company match. Life was fairly simple (as I look back). They also say this is reminiscent of the deep recession of the early 1970s. Now the only thing I remember about that is when Bill graduated from Univ. of Virginia in 1973 he did not get the number of job offers normally expected due to the recession, a fact that landed in Akron, OH, instead of some more exotic locale. Other than that we went blissfully on our way to enjoying our post-student married life. I don't recall worrying about a recession very much. I do remember that it was rather hard to save enough money for the down payment for your first house, but once you did, you always made money on real estate until 2007 or a little before if you lived in certain parts of the country. That's what took us from our first cozy 2-bedroom-$31,000 house to a couple of 4-bedroom houses and back down to our 3-bedroom retirement home valued at over $400,000 today. It will be paid for in Feb. 2009. Today it's a different story. We're retired. We retired at the ages of 60 and 62. That's early, but we were able to do it based partly on our 401k retirement accounts. Well, they are still there, though some of them have as many wrinkles as we do. Or perhaps the metaphor should be that they look much younger. Obama and McCain are coming up with ideas left and right to end the crisis, as is W (George Bush, President). Thankfully, only about 25 more days until the election. I never thought another subject would become more negative, but the stock market has done it! Today on CNN they said we needed heroes who have stuck it out with the stock market. Maybe someone told them to start talking positively to stem the panic. Whatever - I liked being called a hero.

Beautiful Murals from the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/06/us/20081007MURAL_index.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

A Tale of Two Sofas

A picture is worth a thousand words . . . the only problem is that the picture must have the exact same perspective and lighting which these two pictures do not.

• We have recently owned 2 new sofas. Since comfort, I would venture to say, is most important to Bill, he helped me pick out Sofa A, the one on the left, although not in that exact fabric. It definitely was the most comfortable and came from LazBoy or however the stupid heck they spell it. So I ordered it in a fabric similar to the floral and waited 6 or 7 weeks for it to arrive. When they told me it was in, I quickly sold my old sofa on Craigslist for $50. Craigslist is a free internet classifieds service. At that price I was able to sell it in one day, basically an amusing story in itself. When the sofa arrived, they brought the cushions out of the truck first and I knew it was wrong. I told the delivery guys it looked wrong; they told me the store would make it right and delivered the sofa anyway. But nicely; it was not their mistake. The caramel-colored floral fabric did not go with the sagish/grayish new carpeting we had just bought and I had brought the fabric sample home to coordinate with, but not being 100% sure of anything I do these days, I said to Bill we better head to the store to be sure the other color of fabric existed.

• After arriving at LazBoy and thankfully finding the other floral pattern (called stone, which had more green in it), we were asked if we could basically cool our heels until our saleslady arrived in 20 min. When she did, she apologized, but underneath the exterior veneer lurked the unspoken suspicion that we were nuts. I was in great pain that day, which along with stressful events of the past couple of weeks created "the perfect storm" as the saying goes. When she declared (with a nervy, but Southern smile) that they would not charge us a delivery fee for redelivery of the correct sofa, let's just say it wasn't pretty. I slammed down our credit card and said "no, you're not going to charge us any delivery fee ($89) and you're going to take it off our credit card and that's going to happen right this minute." While she gave me another one of her heretofore "deer in the headlight" looks, the store manager quickly responded, "we can do that."

• To make a long story short, it was a Saturday, and they were going to reorder the sofa for us in the correct fabric, but I decided I wasn't totally crazy with the construction of the one I had just had delivered, so on Sunday, Bill and I went to Haverty's furniture store and picked out Sofa B on the right. It came in Sage and cost $600 less and while I loved my original fabric, I decided I didn't want to go without a sofa for 7 weeks (remember last time I had a sofa on which to sit) and I hated LazBoy at this point, even though my Mother has taught me never to use the word "hate." So I do cringe to even type it.

• From Haverty's I called LazBoy and told them to "just forget about ordering the new sofa ; I needed to find a sofa to sit on sooner than 7 weeks." They weren't pleased. But then I wasn't pleased that they could have ordered the wrong fabric color when it only came in two colors to begin with and I hadn't even looked at the other one!

• But, I write about this to bring up a larger life phenomenon that I have sadly noticed. I have decided that when people speak of being "over the hill" at age 50, they are correct. There really is a Hill. All those other sayings such as "you are only as old as you feel" and "the secret to staying young is to lie about your age" and "aging is not lost youth, but a new stage of opportunity and growth" and Robert Browning's "grow old with me; the best is yet to be." I could go on and on. They glamourize aging, but is it not because we feel the need to?

• As I look back on the decorating dreams of my 20s, how different they are from my 60s. Then, I cut out pictures from Better Homes and Gardens (it's still around!) and romanticized how my home would look. Beauty only was sought; now I find comfort with non-ugly the goal. What truths do I find here? That my aches and pains have become paramount? I need a reclining sofa now that I have crested the Hill? That I no longer have the stamina to pursue beauty + comfort = perfection. That what I now need = good enough? That the macabre truth is that you downsize until the final room you decorate is a pine box or smaller? Perhaps, then, it is true that old age is when you "chose the cereal for the fiber and not the toy." (author unknown). I recently bought Cheerio's that contained a mechanical Batman action figure. I felt very good that day. Just ask Bill; he's already played with it!

It's the economy again, stupid!

The way I see it the Democrats have won the election based on what the stock market did today (went below 10,000 or where it was in 1999 or just about when George Bush took office). If you aren't old enough to know about James Carville's campaign slogan for Bill Clinton's successful 1992 campaign to unseat Daddy Bush, see:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It

Now with the 2nd presidential debate tomorrow coming to Nashville - yes, you read that correctly - and us without a wee chance to commandeer a seat at Belmont College, the small, private Christian school that is paying millions to host this event - even to the point of overriding their rule that says "no liquor on campus" to set up a booze tent for the visiting journalists and whatever Baptists that can manage to stay incognito that evening. So, we shall sit in front of the TV and watch 2 men stumble over unanswerable questions on this unprecedented event in our nation's economy. God bless their hearts as we say in Nashville; I wish them both the best.

Personally, I think it's just a good, old-fashioned recession with that mortgage thing thrown in on the side. Too much lending, not enough saving; too many jobs shipped overseas finally catching up with us as we outsourced most manufactured products to China and we spent a lot of money we didn't have on a war, which should have meant a lot of defense jobs except it wasn't World War II. In terms of wars, it's still a small war; it just costs a ton. And people die for no reason.

No kidding, when the Dow hit 14,000, I said to Bill that if I had a button to push to put everything in a safe spot I would do it because I thought that was really high enough for me. But it was too much work while I was working since I don't just call a broker (which maybe I should). So my new motto is, maybe we weren't all meant to be this rich. Especially those guys on Wall Street. Those pictures above are of Dick Fuld's (CEO of Lehman Bros. the failed Wall St. firm that is causing a lot of this mess) Greenwich CT home. He has others. Like McCain, he probably doesn't know how many.

It's the good life . . .

• Mornings watching the sun rise over the mountains to the east and evenings watching it set under the mountains to the west . . . this will stay with me forever. Watching the stars at night and wishing very hard to see a shooting star. That didn't happen, but all was well anyway. And, of course, I only could catch the sunrise on film knowning that a sweet afternoon nap on a lounge chair in the shade in a wet suit was mine for the taking.

• A wet suit was more than necessary as the temperatures soared to over 100 degrees daily, hitting 108 on two days. If I had a nickel for every time I heard "but it's a dry heat," I wouldn't have to worry about the pathetic stock market. But, it's true. You don't sweat. You're not sticky. But you are still hot, hence the pool and the wet suit. I even got a suntan and surely more basal cells. But swimming laps was good for me and the scar tissue I was beginning to feel in my latest incision. Water is very healing for the mind and the body. And Lord knows everything about me needs healing! Oh yes, and after you have finished swimming your laps, you can relax with the floating noodles. It's a sanctioned water event.

• By the way, we were in Palm Springs to visit Mike and Sean who were nice enough to pick us up at the Ontario airport where are free Southwest tickets had deposited us after an uneventful and non-epicurean flight. But not to despair, what our bodies were denied on the plane was more than made up for at the Palm Springs Spa Casino Buffet where we enjoyed numerous all-you-can-eat breakfast, lunch, and dinners (although not in the same day I am happy to add). We pretty much tanked up for the entire day and then had a sandwich for our second and final meal of the day. Of course, there were nightly refreshing beverages with alcoholic content in case the sun and water and nap hadn't relieved every last ounce of tension from our bodies.

• Good company meant good political discussions (if I had a nickel for every time I heard the word Sarah Palin . . . ) and the sharing of books and "the good old days." And while retirement for all of us means never having to say "gee, I really hate to go home and back to work tomorrow," it's still good to go home, just like it's good to get away from home to be with loved ones. And in this case and at this time it was especially good; and I thank my guardian angel who didn't show me a shooting star, but helped me see that once in awhile dreams really do come true.