The Red Lanterns

This February has been cold, moist, gray, and damp.  Yesterday as we sat in front of a television, I couldn't take it any more.  I needed to be somewhere.  Joseph decided this meant a trip to the garage to work on a project with old scrap wood and nails, but I disagreed.
"Well," he said, "what do you want to do?"
I told him wistfully that I wanted to be somewhere red paper lanterns hang.

So Joseph loaded me into the truck, drove me down the street.  We came to a place just blocks away from our home, though we've never been to this place before.  This was the Asian Super Market.  And the first thing I saw were red paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling.  This was it!

The Red Lanterns greeted us before we were even inside!

There were live fish, frozen fish, and fish with strange faces.

The labels shone from shelves in bright hues.

Familiar faces with bold new looks.

Fruits I have never seen before!

Pink sodas, Orange sodas

Teas of Green!

Orange sodas, fuchsia sodas

Teas of red!

tempting new flavors

Frozen Tentacles!

Curry in yellow, curry in green

Curry in every flavor of the rainbow!

fish sauce: so tangy, yet so pretty in pink!

The jams inspired some future experiments!

There were even celebrities!

 I learned that happiness is truly in your own back yard.  I just have to explore all the corners.

My Big Fat Gay Wedding, part 2: The Little Things

As Martha Stewart once told me, through a television screen, a wedding needed to have a theme to unify elements and make the whole event cohesive.  Joseph agreed with her.  So did I, but I was too filled with ideas of what the day should look like that I couldn't pick a theme.  Joseph bought me a scrap book to mock up different wedding looks, which I did.

 At various times, I wanted to play up different things.  Once I thought I would pay homage to October with a white pumpkin wedding theme.  When I knew we were looking for a cabin, I thought a woodland theme with lots of pine cones and old camping lanterns would be nice.  And of course, I had various ideas about those things I loved like mermaids and butterflies.  

Butterflies and Pine Cones, which Hope, Joseph's Sister sent to us for our special day.

To make matters worse, Joseph thought we should use our Wizards.  To clarify, "Our Wizards" refers to these little funny wizards I drew to represent us and the products that came from our farm life on Vashon Island.  We called our farm "Rustic Charms Farm," and these wizards brought the charm to the farm.  I told Joseph the wizards were not allowed at the wedding, but maybe the save the date cards could feature them.  Well, the save the date cards made me a believer, and I couldn't refuse Joseph's one wish for the wedding theme, so we embraced those silly little guys fully.  

In the end, we kind of threw out the idea of one theme and used all of them.  The Theme was Frank and Joseph, and it thrilled me how well all those separate elements went together when we forgot what looked good in magazines and chose the things we loved.  

These are the little things that helped to make our day special:

Joseph found a website that printed personal mugs and set me to work sketching designs for favors.

As it turns out, white pumpkins, pine cones, butterflies, and lanterns look nice together.  At least I thought so.  

One of Joseph's hand made crocheted rugs represented the home we had already made together as we stood at the altar.  The altar was a simple deck table with a vase to receive roses.  

The wedding attendants (whom we called OWL's, which stood for Outstanding Wedding Ladies) each carried a couple of pink roses to the vase on the altar.  When they had all made it, the vase held 12 pink roses.  Joseph and I carried the thirteenth rose up to represent our thirteen years together.  This rose was the only red rose.  

Joseph had me sketch up more drawings and write a story so that the kids could have personalized coloring books he had printed up especially for our big day.  Of course it featured our Wizards.  Joseph made this book available to the public, click on the picture for details. 

The favors looked good on the entry table.  We also had our wizards on a printed menu to tell people about the turkey dinner they would be eating and the cheesecakes to follow.  The guest book was a photo book we had made with pictures of all our guests so they could sign in year book style.  

The wedding menu

Joseph and I wanted to give our guests tastes of our favorite things.  We stuffed the wizard mugs with our favorite Community Coffee from Louisiana.  And instead of a wedding cake, we had four flavors of Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes.  Yum! 

Not only were the cheesecakes beautiful to look at, they were much easier to take up to the mountains than a wedding cake.  They traveled frozen, then thawed in the refrigerators over the two nights before the wedding.  

Of course my wedding needed blue butterflies and a big wizard star!  Katie and I had sore shoulders taping all of this up, but we loved it.  

Feather butterflies everywhere

everywhere!

My Big Fat Gay Wedding part 1: Location, location, location

Having gone through the process of having a wedding of my very own, I now know, before almost anything else, the one thing you should know is where you are getting married.  The location determined many, many things about the wedding.  Almost everything that we had brought to this place had to be adjusted to accommodate the venue. 

A raven overlooks an impressive vista.

                Joseph and I knew that after thirteen years together, we didn't want a traditional wedding or a traditional location.  We wanted our wedding to take place in  natural scenic beauty.  We enjoy the splendor of western Washington.  And, since we had to be married in our own state, it made sense to us that we made our wedding into a destination treat for those members of our friends and family who were traveling to us.  So instead of a church or a community hall, we wanted to offer our guests a place to stay. 

Mt Daniel in the distance

                With this in mind, Joseph set off in an internet search for a cabin that could accommodate many people and a large gathering.  We found a likely place, scheduled a viewing, and then sort of forgot about it.  We went to visit Joseph’s parents one weekend.  They offered us their house and back yard for our upcoming nuptials.  Well, this would be a perfect solution.  We would have the natural beauty that surrounded their house with only a few tents and space heaters to rent.  We said we would talk about it, and fell to deciding this would be perfect.  But we remembered we had the cabin rental to go and view the following Saturday.  Having nothing better to do, we thought a drive up to Snoqualmie would be fun, so we kept the appointment. 

This is the place!

                And that’s all it took.  This cabin, overlooking Lake Kachess, had to be our wedding site.  After one look, there was no going to a backyard wedding.  This was the place.  

Lake Kachess below

The fire pit

A deck with a view

Autumn Beauty

Best back drop for our vows we could find

Post Wedding Blues

                My wedding was a beautiful weekend in the mountains surrounded by very good friends and family.  It was a small wedding, under forty people, in a big cabin full of love.  My wedding day was fair and bright and painted gold by the autumn sunshine. 

Golden Autumn Splendor

                Joseph and I were trying hard to keep the ceremony short and simple and devoid of emotion.  I wrote the words, Joseph proof read and came up with some points to look over, and then we rewrote the vows and called it good.  Short, simple, a little sweet.  But when it came time to say it, to speak the little words we wrote, I couldn't speak above a squeak.  I tried to harness my voice, but I just couldn't.  So much for getting in, saying I do, and getting out.  We both cried like babies. 

                We had both been looking forward to the Monday after the Sunday ceremony when we would be back in our house with our dogs and our television and our normal life again.  I knew that Monday going home that I was going to feel a little sad.  I knew this was normal, but I didn't know how sad it was about to get. 

                We came home and were greeted by two happy dogs who had stayed home with the dog sitter for the big weekend.  They both seemed so content despite one having a limping leg from being too gung ho with her walks, and the older one having a little trouble with bathroom times.  (To my lovely landlady, Hillary, please note the dogs were never allowed on carpets other than our throw rugs, and the messes that had happened were all very well contained and cleaned easily.)  Dinky, the incontinent dog, seemed fine and happy otherwise. 

Good Old Dinky

                Then Friday came and Dinky couldn't stand up by himself.  We thought it might be some joint pain we had noticed with the cold weather, so we used a towel for a sling and helped him up when he needed to go out.  Saturday, we found him very sick and in so much pain he tried to bite us when we touched his hind legs and lower abdomen, which were all starting to swell.  We began looking for veterinarians who would come to the house, because I refused to put Dinky through a vet visit in his current state.  Those visits were stressful enough for him in good health.  We found a veterinarian who was able to come to us on Monday morning at the earliest.  Sunday we kept him as comfortable as we possibly could.  He refused to mess himself, but trips outside were agonizing for him.  I was so proud of Joseph, he stayed strong. 

                Then the Vet came in with Monday’s gray, cold morning.  She was kind with a small, sweet voice.  She had big, sympathetic eyes and listened to our plight with interest and understanding.  After a brief assessment, she told us that we had a difficult choice to make.  Would we do everything for him to keep him alive despite his pain, agony, and loss of quality of life?  Or would we allow him to pass with what comfort she could provide?  The choice was easy.  Having grown up on the grandparent’s farm, where the animals lay their life down for our hunger, we all knew the responsibility we had towards these animals.  Death must come for us all: dogs, chickens, humans, horses.  But for these animals who shared their life with us, we had a responsibility to make their passing as easy and painless for them as possible.  Prolonging Dinky’s life meant prolonging his suffering for my own selfish need to keep him near me longer.  Joseph agreed wholeheartedly, and the Vet did, too.  Dinky was made very comfortable, and passed away peacefully in our arms.

A surprise!

                Joseph surprised me with Dinky when we had officially moved into the same house together.  He was a skittish ball of black fur and big eyes.  We had him before we had celebrated our first anniversary.  He was a part of our lives from the very beginning.  Joseph and I haven’t known life together without Dinky in it.  And the old guy had made it through our wedding weekend without giving away how very sick he was becoming.  He greeted us back home with a wag of his tale, always politely waiting for us to come to pet him.  My Dinky, the Wolf of Tacoma, has passed away and my home just doesn't feel the same. 

Dinky, the Wolf of Tacoma

                I’m sorry for such a sad blog.  I promise to write more about the little wedding details that made our big day so fantastic.  But for now, I wanted to express my loss.  Life moves on, whether we will or not.  

Green Tomato Pickles

The days seem to slide off, one by one, in a rapid sequence like a string of pearls breaking and scattering on the floor.  Where did the summer go?  Where is August?  Where is July?  It’s almost time to bid farewell to September, and I’m just not ready for it.  I think when you have things that you have to plan for, like a wedding or school, the days become more streamlined and fall away even faster.

The days went too fast for my tomatoes to keep up, too.  They were planted in late May, but I had hoped with lots of plant food they’d make it to the end of summer.  Well, with the equinox, the nights became too cool and moist for ripening tomatoes to finish turning red or gold or orange (I had four different kinds this year).  So I went out yesterday and gathered up all the big green ones and a few with blushes of color.  The coloring tomatoes went on my kitchen shelf to finish what they were doing.  The green ones I made into green tomato pickles. 

When life gives you green tomatoes, make green tomato pickles!

            I love pickles.  They are part science project, part housework, and just a little bit magical.  With the vinegar bubbling and the cheesecloth of spices simmering in the liquid, the process feels like witchcraft with its cauldrons and its potions.  The smell of the spices was warm and salty and made my mouth water.  I had to go to the store to pick up extra ingredients.  The recipe I used came from an old Ball Jar magazine.  It called for spicy peppers to be added to the tomatoes as well as pearl onions and garlic cloves.  I put in some fresh bay leaves for good measure, but not too much, I didn't want to overwhelm the flavor with the astringent taste of a bay leaf.  I substituted most of the spicy peppers with some sweet peppers in bright colors.  Even so, my hands were burning with the vinegar and hot pepper juices clinging to my skin.  It was a small price to pay for eight quart jars of autumn magic. 

            One of the best parts of the whole process was getting to break in my new apron.  Joseph bought it for me from Ikea on our last visit.  It has handy pockets and some pretty flowers on it.  When I was little, I always admired the aprons in Grandma Alice’s kitchen and elsewhere, but could never play with them satisfactorily.  Well, now I have a small apron collection that more than makes up for it.  And yes, I might look a little funny in them, but that is part of the fun.  

I may need to bust out the iron!

eight quarts of autumn magic

Hello Gorgeous!!!!

My tiny garden gave back to me the two things I planted this year: sunflowers and tomatoes.