I'm taking this day.

Every so often, the perfect kind of day comes along.  The house is clean, the laundry is caught up and I have nothing on the calendar.  I take those days.  It is my day to stay in sweatpants (because it is wicked cold outside) and do projects to my little heart's content while Hazel sits on the couch and watches Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as long as her little brain can stand it, come in for a snuggle and a snack and move on to something else.  Here is what the goal for today is:

Finish stockings (I am so tired of our cheapy little felt stockings that I made a few years ago...it's time for the real deal.)

Christmas cards.  Printed.  Ready to be assembled, stuffed into envelopes and sent on their merry way.
What I didn't take a picture of is my leftover Pei Wei in the fridge...I can't wait for lunch, or maybe even a late morning snack.

And what I also didn't take a picture of is the offending headlamp for which I am about to tell you a most disturbing story. (Headlamp: think coal miner.)
So a couple of nights ago I woke up at about 3am, because that's what I do.  I look around to make sure that nothing in particular woke me up and then go back to sleep.  However, this particular morning I looked over to the dresser and was suddenly staring into the glaring light of Clark's headlamp...why a headlamp on the dresser you ask? I really have no idea.  Probably for the same reasons that I have a sock on top of the TV and a rock tumbler on the fridge.  Don't ask me those kinds of questions, you are interrupting the story.
The main question that I would like to ask, naturally is, who turned on the headlamp at 3am?  There were no children in our room and Clark was sleeping like a rock...though he confessed the next morning to also having woken up and seeing it on.  And it definitely was NOT on when we went to bed.
Please, I am begging you for an explanation.  It doesn't even have to be a real one...just one that is somewhat plausible.  Otherwise I will be sleeping between as many people as I can fit in my bed until further notice.  Once, I made the mistake of watching a show on the paranormal (I can't even watch commercials for that kind of thing without being freaked out for a month) and saw a story about a house with ghosts that apparently liked to make all their picture frames crooked.  MY PICTURE FRAMES ARE CROOKED TOO!!! And as likely as it is that the pounding of little feet on the floor and the regular slamming of doors both in fun and anger (by kids, not adults) is the culprit, I still worry that maybe we have ghosts that just want to irritate and scare me.
The headlamp has been hidden in Clark's nightstand until further explanation.

Oh, hold on....Mickey Mouse is over and Hazel needs her snuggle and some bunny snacks.....and while I'm at it, I might as well break for some dark chocolate covered pomegranate.

 I also had to take a picture of us and squeeze her face, obviously.
 There.  All better.

And now I would like to transition into "Why Clark and I have decided to hate Fall until further notice" which could also be called "I used to like oak trees" or "$#&*((*"...all titles of which Clark threw out for me to use while we were working and he saw me taking pictures and knew that it was blog worthy...as soon as the soreness wore off and I could use my limbs again.
Last Saturday we spent 6, SIX hours raking and clearing leaves.  I was sore for three days following.  I seem to recall expressing a love of our trees a couple of months ago.  I take it back...I take it all back.  At least until Spring.

You see, people that live in areas with lots of trees (ie VA) have awesome tools that they lend their neighbors who aren't prepared with that kind of thing.  Though we had the backpack blower and this amazing industrial blower thing, we still carted about 20 tarps FULL of leaves back into the woods.  Which is also what people here do.  There are waaaay too  many leaves to bag them.  WAY too many.  Did you catch that? THERE ARE A LOT OF FREAKING LEAVES PEOPLE!! But the good news is we can see the ground again in most of the yard and we have ruled out dead squirrel to explain the smell that we sometimes detect when walking up the front walk.  There apparently was nothing dead in the front bed (at least nothing where we could see.) And because the back yard is so big, we only did the front half because the second half was daunting, and we never go there, and there was too much, and it was getting dark, and I couldn't move my arms anymore.
The End.