Haloweeeeeeeeee

Last year we almost missed Halloween. Next to Thanksgiving, a holiday to celebrate family and eating Halloween is my favorite because it is about scaring children and candy.
This year though, my wife is a Halloween superhero!! We have handmade spooky tombstones in the front yard that light up with red fiery lights, and then there is this...

BB Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!!
Kids love him, dogs love him, and I LLLLLOOOOOVE him.

My wonderful wife has been hand painting these two pumpkins and engineering the details for 5 days, pretty much straight. Look! Look how wonderful!!

We will have two kids over this year and get to take them trick-or-treating and then we will watch scary children's movies while they bounce off the wall on a sugar high that may last most of the year.

I love Halloween. Gimmie is going to wear his wookie costume even though he says it hurts his peeper because we all have to make sacrifices for this kind of thing. My wife has been slaving over pumpkins for days, there is no way a little dog gets to complain about his awesome wookie coat.

Happy Halloween my sunshine. I love you.
Apparently so does the creepy little wookie sniffing your hair.

Any place with you

Recently my folks have offered us a little acre of very rocky, hilly land near lake Sinclair in Georgia. It has started me thinking about building a future with my wonderful wife. We have been building our lives together for ten years, but at this stage, we are spending a lot of time working to get ahead, maintain our health and build a home that we can open to our family's in the future.

The lake lot makes me think more about what we would do if the sky was the limit for us. Satu is a cave dweller, and I like to have all the lights on all the time, so I have been thinking of building a home into the side of that rocky, dense hillside.

In my mind, Satu's would be a cave, blasted under the biggest rock in the hillside. She would have nice little square shrubs leading up to a hidden, thick wooden door. Maybe a stone fireplace in the center of the cave  and a hidden little spot in back where the rounded brick wall would open up to the sky. I imagine a natural waterfall trickling constantly down a cut out in that brick wall surrounded by plants. You could look up from your underground garden to see the clear night sky over the lake.

I imagine a rustic, gourmet kitchen in her little cave where cheeses and fresh fruit will feel right at home. The walls of the cave will be insulated hay bale and carved into round, elegant curves. I imagine an open, flattened rock staircase leading up to my airy rooms.

My rooms would have giant windows and be open to the view of the trees and the sky. For me, I imagine dark wood floors, and breezes flowing across. There are more windows than walls. I don't have a kitchen, I have the garden instead. The topside has an open courtyard in the middle where we grow our own herbs and have a walkway surrounded by flowers. on cool nights, we can sleep there, surrounded by nature and stars, yet still protected by the walls of our home.

Between the cave and the glass house is a hideaway room that is just ours. Not fancy, but a cozy bedroom where we can get away. Right now, my favorite time of day is bedtime. I love just sitting next to my wife as she reads. I like having coffee together in our bed and having the quiet time together. Sometimes she will reach over the dog and pat me on the leg or the hand. I feel very settled there with her.

Though I have been enjoying this daydream lately, the main reason I like it is because I like to think of a future where I could make Satu feel happy and fulfilled. I'd love a little hideaway that we felt totally relaxed in. I imagine her in her studio figuring out the next project and smelling the Georgia red clay after a storm. I will be happy anywhere we end up as long as she is with me.

Hi baby. Hi hi hi. Hi honey.

Sometimes when I am at work, I just look at my phone and wish for a text from Satu. Most of our phone contact is really just about letting each other know that we are thinking about being together. There is no moment in my day when I would not prefer to be with my lovely wife, not a single second that wouldn't be better in her company.

Right now she is sitting next to me while I am typing and she is touching up her well staged pictures of tobacco pipes. We spent most of the day working outside together getting sawdust in our noses and dirt on our hands, and whenever we hadn't talked in a little while, one of us would pipe up and say "hi baby. " It is kind of our bird call.

Sometimes I imagine what alien observers would think of us. We must touch each other more often than most couples. She is always smoothing out my shirt or patting me on the leg. I am usually looking for an opportunity to walk into a hug. I think aliens would assume that we are one thing that can split itself. I often feel like she and I are really just one thing with two different laughs, two different singing voices and four hands that are always trying to settle somewhere on the body.

This weekend, Satu has put out all of our orange things and readied the house for fall. There are tiny pumpkins and colorful leaves everywhere. I really love having a house that belongs to both of us together that we chose and care for. It seems like the perfect place for our odd little family. It is usually filled with the smell of nice candles and small enough that I can hear my wife call her bird call from any room.

As the weather gets cooler, I feel even more lucky to have this warm home and beautiful wife to come home to. These days we linger in bed to have our morning coffee and she tucks her cold hands into my body. I know this is just a trick for warmth that she has learned from the cat, but never mind that. As she tucks little head against my shoulder, I'll wrap my arms around her and whisper "hey baby, hi sweet girl, hi honey. I love you."