i miss halloween

and i have to say that i find that fact a bit strange since i have never really ever lived anywhere that got a lot of trick-or-treaters.  i grew up in the woods in a lovely private neighborhood where there were no other children my age.  my folks would indulge me as i went out the back door, walked around the house with my little plastic pumpkin and rang my own front door bell to get some candy from my own bowl.  just a little pathetic.

when i moved to los angeles i guess the “razor blade in candy” urban myth sent the tiny costumed beggars to the malls.  i always had candy ready and waiting by the front door…just in case.

when i got married and moved to a house in a neighborhood with other young families, i finally got my chance to hand out free candy.  so much fun being the giver of such simple happiness.  call me old fashioned, but i loved oohing and aahing over the sweet little costumes…oooh, what a nice neck wound, that almost looks fatal..here’s your chocolate.  wow, you really do look like a gang member, have 2 kit kats.

now my gemma is asking to trick or treat.  good thing i know that little back door/front door system from my childhood…in australia at halloween, she might as well be growing up in the woods.  so…we decided to throw a little party.  we brought halloween to our little corner of australia.

pushing lollipops

it was a great fun.  we met new friends and gemma had a chance to have her new school buddies come play.  maybe this will be a new tradition for us.  and as much as i was missing the holiday,  what i really think i was missing is the sense of community that goes along with begging your neighbors for candy.  now that i analyze things, i never had the storybook halloween experience anyway and the kid dressed up like a gang member quite probably was a gang member.

sinking in

this morning while driving home from dropping gemma at school, i stopped at a traffic light on our little shopping street.  i looked to my left and for a second my heart skipped a beat.  there on the sidewalk was a woman with her 2 daughters.  a four year old lanky girl with pigtails, in a sundress and running shoes… her one year old sister clad in overalls happily chatting in a maclaren stroller.  the mom with her short brown ponytail had her back to me, but my mind put the simple scene with strangers through a filter of memories and missing and i thought it was my friend and her kids.  and i smiled.

then it hit me.

my friends don’t live here.  there was no way it could be them.

but you know what?  i wanted to honk and wave anyway, just in case the sheer power of my wishing could make it so.

red wine hour

you know it.  the one that sneaks up on you even though it happens every. freaking. night.  the hour where your children take over the house and hold everyone hostage until the impatient rulers finally pass out from the effort.

clover suggests i get my glass ready...

today, the bottle made it out of the cabinet and onto the counter, but i never had the energy to actually unscrew the lid.  oh well.  there is always tomorrow.  always.

because

that is my answer to why i will not go friends and family on flickr.

after the latest discovery of my photos being used with out my permission, people have asked why i keep my images public.  i keep them public because i want to.  because i can.  because if i go friends and family, “they” win.  “jolene” does not get to win just because she is creepy.

the creepies don’t scare me.  i just think they are creepy.  the gangs that tagged our garage door in LA scared me.

so if we all hide our lives, what the hell am i going to look at while i am procrastinating?

and for everyone who thinks i should go friends and family, here is a photo of a flower.  that is all you would be able to see in my stream.

boring, no?

oh and jolene, feel free to pretend that it is yours.

taking creepy to the next level…

first there was Orkut.  i’m huge in brazil.  well, gemma is at least.  that i get.  no, i don’t actually get the fake profile phenomenon, but i can follow the logic on how my photos of gemma got all over the site.  cute kid (if i do say so myself) + tons of public (not royalty free, just public) photos to choose from + bored teenagers = gemma renamed things like “luna” and “mellody”, covered in stupid hearts and rainbows.

really, it is tragic what they do to my photos.

but this.  well, this just turns the creepy up to 11.

a flickr contact found a person using my photos and my kids’ names and pretending to be their mom while answering questions with her years of parenting advice!  hey, she even has a blog!  why, apparently this 10 years younger other me loves camping.

after scanning her questions and answers, there is one thing i know.   jolene, no colleen, no jolene (can’t get the lies straight right from the start) needs to learn the definition of irony or stop using the word.

summer

this morning, it smells like summer outside.  i am pulling our bathing suits off the line.  they are cool and fresh.  we will go swimming again today and maybe we will have another ice cream.

i have never loved summer.  growing up without siblings close to my age left long hot summer days feeling bright but a little lonely. i would live for the week we would spend on the outer banks of north carolina.  my brothers and sister would all bring their spouses and kids to the beach cottage and from saturday to saturday it was all sand, afternoon thunderstorms and my big family.  if i had 3 wishes, i would not hesitate to spend one on another week at the beach with my entire family.

we moved from los angeles just as winter was drawing to a close.  we arrived here as autumn was cooling things down so a new winter could arrive.  two winters in a row.  now we may not have had snow, but i have been cold for so long.  today as i sit at the kitchen counter next to my daughter who is clad in nothing but her ariel bathing suit, i can finally say that summer is welcome here.

i may not have my mom or my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews…  but because of them, i have memories of those weeks at the beach.  gemma has already started her collection of sea glass just as i did every year with my father.  each time we find a new piece we think of her grand dad.  a way to get to know him even though he died many years before her birth.  i have my own little family now and i am ready to make summer sweet.

here is to, lemonade days of sunscreen and bubbles and swimming pools and jumping the tiny waves of the bay.

oh and… ben folds has a new album.  life is good.