Oh, you are lovely. You are. Thank you for your kindness, and for offering me the comfort of being known. How sweet that is. It is indeed a sad and reflective time.

Which may explain the French fries over at family.com. For some people, comfort food is oatmeal and scrambled eggs. For others, it is salty grease. Hello!

And meanwhile--the crackers! Who knew? I read other people's food blogs, and it's all, "These look great!" And "Thanks for another super-duper recipe!" But if you think that for one second I would trade your frank crankiness, merciless teasing, or grumpy skepticism, then you really don't know me. I do love you. (Not that I don't love you when you're appreciative too, of course!)

xo

[Edited to add: That's a sad Birdy after she did her own crown tattoo and didn't realize she was putting it in her hair. I just thought that picture so perfectly conveyed the way I feel sometimes.]

We have a cord of wood waiting in the driveway. We will stack it and then we will burn it. Every year, at this moment, the wood strikes me as a metaphor, even though it just is what it is. "It's like a cord of wood in your driveway," I say to Michael, metaphorically, and he laughs. It's work and it's warmth and it's the season changing. It's wood in the driveway.

A childhood friend died suddenly--a person who was vital in every sense of the word: he was healthy, a community activist, the father of a 6-year-old and a 1-month-old, a husband, son, brother, friend, wildly beloved by everyone who knew him. I had the opportunity to grieve with old friends, to be inspired, to let gratitude and sadness and fear wash over me in alternating waves. I wish I'd understood better that knowing him was the opportunity of a lifetime. I wish that loss were not so firmly barnacled to love. I wish that time would pass more slowly. I wish, I wish, I wish. But I want for nothing.

I am at it again, this heartbreak of mine. And now there's this kitten in the mix. "He's getting so big!" I said last night, with tears in my eyes, and Michael kissed me.

There he is. With his brother Ben, who turns ten on Friday. What the?

Meanwhile, there are recipes up at family.com: The Soup of 1000 Vegetables, which offers some of my old-school self-flagellating melancholy along with a really good pot of soup. Hurray! And Homemade Fancy Crackers. Yes, it's crazy to make your own crackers, but you'll never go back.

Sending love to you, here from this cold and golden world.

Menace to (Clothespin) Society

Dear ones!

Please do visit over at family.com, where there are a couple of useful recipes. One for my dad's spaghetti sauce, which is out of this world, and the other for granola bars, which solves the problem of making granola into a portable substance.

Also, and I know this is bribery of the most grotesque sort: both columns offer actual, clear photographs of the baby featured below.

And by below, I mean here, in these photographs of the clothespin dolls sent to Ben and Birdy by Erin K., a stranger! A stranger who is a reader and feels like a friends. Erin, thank you. A million times, thank you. They are even more lovely in person, but I present you with:


The Woodland Gnome, A Casual Person, The Mermaid Ballet Girl, and Rapunzel. As Birdy has named them. They are perfectly beautiful and cherished by our entire family. Even that whiskery shadow back there.

Or maybe *especially* that whiskery shadow. Look out, Rapunzel! This is not the rescue you've been dreaming of!


Oh dear.