the week is getting on...

Had a bad headache again today, though I made it to and through work. Today was an all time record high temperature, and it was so humid water droplets were forming in the air as you walked around. Everyone was outside with short sleeves today - unheard of for this late in November. Tomorrow the thunderstorms will move in and the temperatures will drop. Friday the snowstorm moves in. Got to love insane Michigan weather! The weekend will stay cold and will have snow flurries. So the loveliest Indian summer everyone I have talked to can remember will be over, and winter will have us in its grip! But when the crazy weather steadies, my head will be a lot better.

Today I spent more time decorating the tree. It is an act of love and remembrance for me. So many of the ornaments are gifts from family and friends, and so many of them have memories attached to them. Some of them are gifts from friends now lost to me through death or distance. Others were ones Dan and I bought to mark special things in our lives - for the children's first Christmases, cardinals for the year those beautiful cardinals built a nest right outside the bathroom window in our old house. There are bulbs for Red Wings, UM, and Pistons national championships. There are ornaments made of satin thread in bright colors that remind me of my mother (in a positive way, which given how abusive she was, is great to have). Some of them - the most precious - are ones that the children and I made together with beads and wire - and equally precious are the ones the children made in school to give me as gifts. So many good memories - so much love. This year the one that got me the most was the red bulb with a picture of a loon and the word "Ontario". Dan got that for me many years ago. Before the children came we would go to Toronto and Niagara Falls - and most especially Stratford for the theater festival. He got me that bulb when Bill was born. Looking back - I now see it as the promise that it was. That someday the dirty diapers and exhaustion and stress would be over and that we would have romance again, and that he would one day be my lover again, and not just a husband and father. Someday we will have Ontario again, two middle aged people rediscovering each other and holding hands as we walk in the beautiful parks.