Musings from Marilyn

Posts Tagged ‘fall’

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, one of my very favorite holidays.  One of the more superficial reasons that I like Thanksgiving is, for the most part, it hasn’t been blown to smithereens by nauseating commercialization.  Oh sure, we have to put up with the Black Friday (and now, Brown Thursday) ads and hype, but the holiday itself seems to retain most of its original intent.

I love that the focus is on good food, loved ones, and not only giving thanks but feeling appreciation for all that is in our lives.  Yes, even the “bad” stuff!  I have a lot to be thankful for, and as I’ve gotten older and hopefully wiser, I am learning to give thanks even when things go terribly wrong.  For it is in those times I have gotten deeper spiritually and learned a lot about myself.  Not to get all zen on you, but I’m feeling less resistant and am trying to just go with the flow of things instead of complaining, blaming, and creating drama.  It is a big relief to just “be”.

While I will be gathering with family and friends tomorrow, sharing the repast of Thanksgiving, I will be feeling much gratitude for everything in my life.  Especially the stuffing. 

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you”, that would suffice.  ~Meister Eckhart

~Marilyn Huttunen

Even though Autumn has been quite firmly ensconced for several weeks now, there are always several things that I do with amazing regularity once the autumnal equinox has passed.  On the household side, it is cleaning out the furnace (an utterly thankless task) before turning on the heat for the first time.  I think I made it until October 7th this year before finally giving in and turning it on.  After the low utility bills of summer, frugal me is always loathe to have to spend money on such obscure things as heat.  But being a creature of comfort, I do love to have warmth!

Being an air-dryer, the outdoor clothesline is now pretty much closed for the season (or two, or three…).  My drying racks have pretty much set up permanent shop in my kitchen, with a constant rotation of wet laundry yearning to dry.  It takes a day or two for the laundry to dry indoors…gone are the days of laundry drying in mere hours out on the sunny, breezy clothesline.  But I adjust pretty quickly to seeing the constant array of underwear, towels, and clothes adorning the drying racks 24/7.

On the fashion front, I’ve dug out my vintage cashmere sweaters and have been wearing them every day, and most likely will until next spring.  I adore wearing cashmere, especially the thick vintage sweaters that keep me warm without the tremendous bulk of wool.  Cashmere is about the only natural  fiber that I can wear next to my skin without irritation.  I have gotten into wearing skinny jeans as well.  I like the look of cashmere sweaters and skinny jeans on me, and it is certain that this will be my uniform for the next 8 months or so!

I’ve always been a bookworm, and fall tends to lend itself to reading quite easily.  There is just something about wrapping up in a wool blanket, or my leopard Snuggie , and getting lost in a good book.  I’ve made a concerted effort lately to read more novels, and delve into the classics that I somehow missed reading over the years.  For instance, I just finished reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, and I was engrossed, stunned, and completely engaged in this magnificent book.  How I never managed to read this classic until now is beyond me!  But it was a total delight.  I’ve got a stack of books just waiting to be read, and there is nothing quite so intoxicating.

The leaves are falling, the rains have set in, the wind is blowing;  settle in and enjoy!

“Autumn’s the mellow time.”  ~William Allingham

~Marilyn Huttunen

I’m in a somewhat wistful, moody, sad mood today.  Yes, I’m pretty much the chipper optimist most days, but sometimes the weight of the world becomes too heavy for my shoulders and I just gotta take time out to brood.  And it feels good.

The end of summer/start of the school year time is always a bit poignant and wistful for me.  Add to this, my son will be a senior in high school, and I’m having to deal with all the logistics and tensions about SAT scores, applying for scholarships, applying for financial aid, applying for college, amongst all the other myriad minutia in the daily life of a single parent.

Most of the time I can deal with being a single parent just fine, because I will admit to being somewhat of a control freak.  But having to make all the decisions all the time can be draining.  Especially when money is tight, or nonexistent.  Everything falls on you to deal with.  I was just reading in Isabel Gillies’ memoir, about the reality that single mothers can become ‘islands’; feeling that we can do it all ourselves without help.   Yep, that’s me; I feel like a big ole island most of the time.

I pray, practice yoga, and meditate on a regular basis.  This has helped greatly to keep somewhat of a calm balance in my life.  But I do live in the real world, with all its real stuff to deal with, not in an ashram or monastery.  So when my thinking mind goes into overdrive, pounding me with worry and anxiety, I just gotta let go.  I embrace my moodiness and just go into full-out brood mode.  Feel the brooding!  Love the brooding!

My foul moods never really last too long anymore if I just accept them and go with the flow.  Soon the worrisome contemplation gives way to a peaceful place, where maybe I’m not incredibly happy, but am calm and present.  So, you must excuse me now; I gotta go brood.

~Marilyn Huttunen

When you’re a 100% year-round air dryer/clothesline user like myself,  one must pay much more attention to the ever-changing weather conditions.   Good thing that I’m a bit of a weather geek;  I actually like tracking the weather!  This comes in handy for determining the ideal conditions and placement of drying the laundry outside, or whether to dry it inside.

Autumn weather gets tricky; the days are shorter,and it gets colder and rainier.  Even if it is sunny, it can lull me into a false sense of drying expectation when I hang the clothes on the line.  It just has that nip in the air, the sun is lower, and there is enough humidity (at least here in the Pacific Northwest) to delay the drying a great deal.  I can hang laundry on my backyard line early in the morning, and late in the afternoon it is still damp.  Thus begins the ol’ clothesline switcharoo.  I have to take down all the laundry from the clothesline and then put it on drying racks inside the house.  Which is kind of a hassle, I must admit.

Even though it is a bit more work, one advantage is that the laundry has spent the day soaking up all that deliciously heady autumn air smell outside.  When I place it on the racks inside to finish drying, the poignant smell fills the air.  There is just something so wonderful about the outside-dried smell.  It changes with the seasons too.  Autumn smells different than summer, which smells different than spring or winter.  No man-made chemical scent could ever top Mother Nature’s!

I’m still trying to hold onto outside drying as much as I can, even though the attempt is futile at times.  Soon I will be drying inside full-time for the winter;  drying racks will be filling my kitchen once more.  But that too, is kind of charming in it’s own way.  One must definitely be adaptable to be an air-dryer!

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” – George Eliot

~Marilyn

I tend not to pay attention to my roof gutters most of the time; deliberately ignoring most of the evils that lie within their depths.  But living in a house surrounded by tall trees does eventually force me to face the fact that most of the foliage ends up on the roof and in the gutter.  You see, when plants and weeds start sprouting from the gutter, it is quite difficult to ignore this fact any longer!  I can “la di da – I can’t see it” all I want but when neighbors start commenting on my gutter garden,  I know it’s time to clean.

When the gutters get so full of gunk it also clogs up the downspouts.  Rain, with nowhere to go, just pours over the gutter.  This is also another fact that is difficult to ignore; I live in the very rainy Pacific Northwest.  Dodging and dashing through the gutter deluge becomes an active sport.

Luckily (because I am frugal and hate to hire out), I have a nimble teenage son who loves the chance to go on the roof.  He doesn’t really mind cleaning gutters either – in fact, he scoops out all the muck with his bare hands!  So after borrowing my neighbor’s ladder, and a quick lesson on ladder adjusting, my son was up on the roof.  He deftly bends over the gutter scooping out and then flinging the gunk to the ground.  I had to clean up the ground gunk, but glad I wasn’t up on the roof!  I was doing enough fretting and directing from the ground.

The gutters are now spanking clean, and just in time.  We had massive rainstorms the next couple of days, and all the rain ran into the gutter and down the spout brilliantly!  It was nice to have them working again.  The one slight irritation is the sound of water going down the downspout; I had almost forgotten what that sounded like.  As luck would have it, I have a downspout right outside my bedroom window; so all night long – gurgle, gurgle, whoosh, whoosh! But actually it was kind of soothing… the sound of a job well done.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” –Oscar Wilde

~Marilyn

With the Autumn change to cooler weather and shorter days, I always get a hankering to make soup.  No, not from the can that I usually eat most of the year, but good old-fashioned made-from-scratch soup.  I especially like the heartier bean and legume varieties.   There is just something so satisfying about the process of  washing and soaking the dried beans, then adding all the ingredients and letting it simmer on the stove for hours.

Yesterday was a good crisp soup-making kind of day, so I decided to make split pea soup.  It only took about an hour to cook, maybe because the peas are small.  Anyhow, I was totally amazed at how such a relatively small package of dried peas could make a huge vat of soup.  It turned out really well; even my picky teenage son thought it smelled good while cooking and devoured a huge bowlful!  This always warms my heart.

My tried and true handmade soup is the 15-Bean variety.  This incredible soup absolutely defies any law of physics.  It expands to an immense amount after soaking and cooking, and is the most filling soup you will ever want to eat.  The only problem is that it makes so much!  I end up eating it for weeks afterward and usually get very tired of eating it.  And really, 15 bean varieties?  To me, that is about 13 or 14 bean varieties too many!  I need to find a recipe for a delicious one or two bean soup.  A little bean goes a long way!

Homemade soups are hearty, wholesome, and cheap to make.  It  does take longer to cook, but nothing is more comfy than aromatic soup simmering on the stove on a cold day.  Soup’s on!

“Soup is a lot like a family. Each ingredient enhances the others; each batch has its own characteristics; and it needs time to simmer to reach full flavor.”  -Marge Kennedy

~Marilyn