Or "a break from campaigning" or " totally unrelated thought streams".

Tonight, I ate a handful of nuts.  It is chilly out, and I actually have a palpable sense of excitement about the coming food holiday season.

Today, we bought tamales in the grocery store parking lot.  Is this normal?  In Tucson, this time of year it is.  I don't care how they are made, how clean their kitchen is or what country these men with a shopping cart of hand made tamales and tortillas call home.  I never even think twice to buy parking lot tamales.  Yum. 

Andra and Phil have taken to the woods.  I hope they are having fun.

I love that Grace eats the way I do.  For dinner last night we had sourdough bread with fontina and hatch chiles  with a cucumber and tomato salad.  This morning, grits and bacon.  Straight to the side dishes.  My kind of girl.

I am really, really, tired of being PTO treasurer.  Saturday, Grace and I counted ridiculous amounts of the worst kind of money.  I like to call them "backpack ones".  One dollar bills that elementary school kids wad up in their sweaty little pockets or crusty little backpacks.  They are hard to count by hand, and they won't even run through the little counter at the bank.  This was my treasurer's swan's song - I have a replacement, at long last.  I give her my greatest appreciation. And condolences.

I am suffering a major frustration, these days, in that I feel like I am spending more time than ever trying to unburden our house of her contents - cleaning, tossing, donating.  And yet, I can't tell a difference when I walk around.  What does a girl have to do to have a house that stays clean?

And finally, in addition to being excited about the food of the coming season, I am also excited to use our holiday decorations.  Which are still up from last year.  No kidding.  I am looking right now at the kissing ball (aka mistletoe you don't take down), the red bead garland over the kitchen window, the Christmas lights still up on the back porch (which, to be fair, I didn't take down on purpose because of the festivity it would bring to the one pool party we had).  The most grievous decorating hangover, which I have become so used to walking by that I almost forget it is a Christmas thing, is the mailbox.  The red and green scrolled mailbox full of all the charming letters you sent us.  Last year.  I left them there so Phil could read them, and he never did, and then I guess I forgot, and then we started hanging the odd ornament we found lying around, and now?  What's the point of putting it away?