Holden and I are deep in the midst of Halloween festivities. It has been so lovely out lately...in the 60s and that deep Weber-eye blue
you see only in Texas (or parts of NM;). Speaking of NM...Chris, Holden and I had the most amazing time ever in Ruidoso! The parents all got along, Chris and I got to lounge in the jacuzzi and drink Jack Daniels indiscriminately, and we also got an entire solo day/night date in Santa Fe! Which is incredible, btw. The colors, adobe, and way the sunlight falls on all of it is breathtaking. A few days after we got back Holden got a new cousin! Baby Connor was born 10/4 and Holden won't shut up about meeting him!
Chris left on Friday for 12 days. 12 PEOPLE! That is insane. Poor man will be basically gone until December. Bomb and I were sad but being the strong little pack we are decided to make the day nice and went to the park and walked. Afterwards we sat amidst the trees and ate carrots:
Carrots are by far Holden's favorite food yet. They make his poo biohazard orange, however.
We also read some spooky tales:
And the boy played with his new favorite toy (he's starting to love things with wheels let the
boydom commence)
Yesterday I managed to complete my 3000 loads of laundry and Holden made me misty-eyed as I watched him figuring out water displacement. He would pick up the
scoopy toy, fill with water then dump it out. Seems simple but it's a pretty advanced concept. He also is really really trying to crawl. He gets up with his arms straight then tries to wiggle his legs to move.
I use the animals as bait. He just loves the animals, second to his ma and pa of course. I also made some ridiculously good brownies and we took at drive to Nameless, TX.
"
Settled in 1869, the citizens of the fledgling committee ran up against the postal authorities in Washington. No one recalls what names were submitted, but they were rejected six times. The expressed their frustration by writing back (which may have been just what the buereaucrats wanted) "Let the post office be nameless and be damned!"
The postal authorities had a laugh - and then granted their wish. The post office was registered as Nameless, Texas in 1880. The community had fifty people, two churches, a store and school in the mid-1850s. "They had a Nameless
Cemetery and other cute little stores. It was along a gorgeous hill country road. There was a scary truck behind me so I thought maybe I wasn't allowed in their bitter town and was being chased, but I escaped. I tried to enter into Nameless
Cemetery to see some of the names there but it was locked up behind a gate and a beautiful stream:
Though the whole cemetery thing did serve a purpose for my next Halloween adventure: visiting a
cemetery and finding a lonely deflowered grave to give a sunflower to. So today Holden and I went to Oak Grove
Cemetery on
Spicewood Springs Rd. This is by far on my top 5 favorite roads in Austin. It is such a gorgeous stretch of winding road flanked by horse farms and beautiful old houses. It was actually a beautiful place. It was right alongside the spring/creek which was raging from the rains and there was a ton of wildlife. I can't say I have seen so much concentrated wildlife in all my time in Texas. Usually it's pretty sparse. I don't know if it was the bodies all pushing up daisies or just that there is such peace and nature there, but I saw a huge deer run through, tons of butterflies and dragonflies, and the weirdest of all....a bunch of salamander-like lizards! I never see lizards here, and if I do happen upon one they are those huge desert lizards with the thick tails. These were slick and cute. There was supposedly a
Tuttle buried somewhere in there, which is a name associated with a fictional grandmother Stacey and I created, but I couldn't find them. Every single grave was decorate
ornately with heartfelt and weird little Texas additions, like cowboy hats and this outhouse!
Creepy
enh? I gave a flower to the only undecorated stone I could find...I didn't realize until later that there was no death date so the person is probably still alive! So then I felt bad like I was all like kick the bucket Vera
Lue!
The graves all had fresh dirt on top of them. This really really really
creeped me out. Total Thriller flashbacks. I kept expecting a hand to pop through.
So that might have been why I was hasty in placing my flower! However, I did try to take a moment to be reverent and reflect on life and all that jazz. Holden was naturally curious and looking about quietly and observing. We sat on a bench while cars drove by with weirded out
looky-
lous and I told him that one day he was going to ask me about what happens when we die and hopefully I will have a belief at that point that resonates with me other than just the vague "heaven" most parents give their kids. I told him life was short and oftentimes difficult but it is also beautiful and fraught with love. I promised to be good to him my entire life. I also assured him that his generation would solve the problem of death so he doesn't have to worry about it. It's so odd, I remember being pregnant with him and marveling that even though he wasn't yet born he already had a ticking heart and thus an expiration date. This probably all sounds a bit macabre but I try to view life and its cycle as miraculous in its temporal fragility, and I think its wrong to conducts one's life in a blind, unappreciative manner.
In addition to the fresh dirt, (which I was thinking was to keep the bodies underground despite all the rain and flooding we've had!) there was a mess of castaway flowers and toys outside the chained link fence surrounding the cemetery.
It made me sad.
Anyway, it was an odd combination of a peaceful yet creepy as hell place. I have an overly active imagination...and it didn't help that on the way home I heard "Where Do Bad Folks Go When They Die" covered by Nirvana and "Superstitious" by Stevie Wonder on the radio!
Haha.
Grr. Maybe I need to use a smudge stick and cleanse any
spirits that may have piggybacked home like in the Haunted Mansion in Disney World:) It is quite interesting though how cemeteries are everywhere and commonplace but just going into one can kind of alter your reality a bit and throw you off kilter. Which might not be a bad thing.
Anyway, as you can see Halloween is in full swing around these parts. We have some glowing peeping eyes in the front bushes. I can't wait to carve a jack o
lantern.
Haha oh that reminds me so much of Ellen but I won't explain why. Oh Ellen how I miss thee!
Later in the day we were playing and he was grabbing for the towel and then going ROOOOAR like a dinosaur and attacking it and trying to eat it. It might be one of the cutest things I've ever experienced...
Kelly aka Kelvira
