Back in the South

Our trip to the North, was as ever, way too short. This is the perfect time of year to be in New Jersey, with all the leaves in several shades of autumnal fire and it being chilly at night and warm enough during the day. *sigh* As per usual, I burst into tears as I crossed the Water Gap entering and leaving my dirty, beloved home state.

We totally lucked out and missed any and all manner of rain as well as managed to visit during an Indian Summer kind of weekend. We barely needed our jackets. I'm still getting situated now that we're back home and fighting off a nasty head cold that decided to take up residency in my sinuses on the second morning of our trip, but I'll sum vacation up with this; it was great to be home. I didn't get to see everyone or everything that I would have wanted to, but I don't regret a moment of our visit one bit.

I finally got to meet my niece, Khloe, who is a master at the arts of smiling and drooling. Like any good aunt, the first thing I did when I walked into the house was wake her up and give her toys. :) She also seemed to have an affinity for throwing up on Joe, poor guy.

Here's my kid sister, her kid and me, the old hag (har-har). What you can sort of see from the photo, is that we all look alike. It's a bit hard to tell with my sun bleached hair, Katherine's dyed hair and Khloe's lack of hair - but if you put our baby pictures together the only way to tell us apart would be to identify the time period of objects found with us in the photo.

The unfortunate side to seeing babies that are related to you however, is the flood of the 'when are you going to have one?' that inevitably follows. Family, if it isn't a cat or a dog, I'm not interested in taking care of it right now. But, I will hop your kid up on sugar and play and give them back to you if they stink, as my sister can attest to.

We also visited our friends in Hoboken, since the last time that I had seen them was over a year ago. We parked in the free parking where I've been parking for the past 4 years and Colleen made us an awesome brunch. We watched a movie and realizing we still had a few hours before we had to be anywhere, decided to go for a walk down by the river.

Now, for those who don't know, the husband loves to mess with me. Fairly often he comes up with stories and tries to pass them off on me as true. Because of this, I usually don't believe anything bad that comes out of his mouth. So, when we were walking past my car and he said 'There's a boot on the car!', I didn't believe him. Why should I? I've never so much as gotten a parking ticket before (because I'm awesome.)

But sure enough, the dude wasn't messing with me and there was a fucking boot on my poor car! Apparently, the side of the road that I always park on is the resident's only side but I somehow managed to never get ticketed in the past few years. Guess the out of state plate was a dead giveaway? So, my home state decided to give me some of their love for out of staters and I made Joe call to have the thing removed because I was ready to give them a piece of this Jersey girl's attitude. In other words, make things worse.

$218 later, we got a code, removed the boot, parked the car on the other side of the street, walked the hunk of metallic hell back to the parking devils and these two lovely people bought a few rounds of 'Screw Hoboken Parking' beers.

We went to a wedding, followed by another wedding. The first wedding was sort of a hit and run for us, which I feel bad about, but I was getting nailed with the onset of the sinus infection and felt like my head was full of cement. At the second wedding I ate my very first bite of haggis while people marveled over the dude's ridiculous beard.

We celebrated our third anniversary, which I will tell you more about later. For now, know it involved this:

some of these:

and collecting ocean water from my favorite place, beneath the full moon at the end of a day celebrating the love of a wonderful bearded dude and myself. If that isn't some super potent stuff, then I don't know what is.

I also became the first person I've ever known to travel 700+ miles for a haircut. We stopped to see my aunt, who has been cutting my hair since I was a wee teeny thing, and on the spur of the moment decided I wanted to chop it all off! So, she did and I was able to donate nearly a foot of hair (11.25") to Locks of Love, who makes wigs for children who have lost their hair due to various medical conditions.

In keeping with our Hallowe'en festivities, we picked our annual pumpkins, watched a movie, drank some pumpkin flavored beers, ate apple cider doughnuts with hot cider, picked up a jar of delicious pumpkin butter (if you haven't ever eaten this, you're missing out!), walked in some crunchy leaves, put my niece in her very first leaf pile which I was remiss and didn't take a photo of and visited the old cemetery where I did grave rubbings as a child and encountered my only ghostly happening. I'll share more about that later, for now I'm off to brew another pot of tea to keep this awful congestion/cough at bay, finish painting the lawn cutouts, break out the Halloween decorations (I'm so far behind!) and begin work on my grimoire. I finally found a suitable piece of oak board to use as my covers and want to get them cut down and hinged so I can begin to compile my pages, even if I haven't decided what will adorn the cover just yet.

What have you been up to, lovelies?