My brother Count Dracula, party host, keeper of backyard chickens. The other brother, trying to be The Fonz, with his buddy the choo-choo train engineer.

The pretty nieces. Anybody care to guess which little girl goes with which big brother? 😉 The in-laws: Devil Lady, Pink Lady and a friend-in-law whose name I should know but don’t.

Halloween is such a non-event when you’re a grown-up. It’s nice to have a party to get dressed up for and be silly. Speaking of non-events (or of being silly), I have not seen a single trick-or-treater all day, except for a few at the office.

Sure, we got a lot done today….

“When we set the clocks back an hour last night, we told ourselves we were changing time, taking back that hour we spent for longer evenings last April. But the sun rose unchanged this morning, on its own schedule, and the only change was in the position of the hands on those ticking machines by which man meters his own life. We adjusted our own gauge of the hours somehwat closer to the reality of night and day, the sun, the earth and the year.

Time has its own dimensions, and neither the sun nor the clock can emcompass them all. All we can do with the astronomical absolutes of time is note them, divide them as we please, and live by them in our daily routines. Beyond that, our own emotions, our hopes and fears, our worry and our relief, shape not only our days but our hours with only casual regard for absolute or arbitrary time. The busy day can be brief, the suspenseful hour endless. Who can prove, by any clock ever devised, that time on occasion does not stand still? The interval between heartbeats can be a terrifying eternity, and the pause between two spoken words can shape the dimensions of all our tomorrows.

Time is all around us, the time of the hills, the time of the tides, the lifetime of a man or a tree or an insect. We participate in time, try to shape it to our own necessities; but when we change the clocks we aren’t changing time at all. We are playing with figures on a dial that denotes but cannot alter the flow of forever.” – Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

Is everyone feeling as mixed up as I am today? I woke up to a clock that said 11:00 and was pleased that I hadn’t slept all of this blistery Sunday morning away, after all it was actually only 10:00. Stepping into the kitchen and pouring my coffee I was perplexed to see the clock said it was 12:15. Hmmm… the computer and vcr both said 11:15 so my husband must have set some of the clocks back while I slept. Now as I type it’s 6:30 and full dark. All day I’ve felt behind in my routine, but the clock tells me it’s early, there’s still time. So it will be lighter in the morning for a while, but dark so early at the end of the workday. This change is easier for me to adjust to, for some reason, compared with the spring, when I feel cheated of time and groggy for days until I’m used to getting up an hour earlier.

I was feeling a little under the weather today (actually I played hookey, but shhhh, my boss sometimes reads this) so I headed to Cape May thinking the salt air might help me feel better. This weekend is NJ Audubon’s Fall Weekend and Bird Show, so there were lots of birders around and lots of birds. I was practically tripping over yellow-rumps and kinglets all afternoon. More than once while walking through the dunes I had to duck from the path of an oncoming sharpie in pursuit of a meal.

I avoided the hoards of birders as I’m prone to do and instead wandered some of my favorite spots alone, but did stop by the convention center to say hi to Amy from Wildbird on the Fly and Sharon the Birdchick. I missed running into Patrick from The Hawk Owl’s Nest. I’m tired now from so much driving, most of it in the rain, but wanted to share just one favorite pic from today.

This was taken at a place birders call “the beanery” – the property is mostly farmland (lima beans, specifically) and woods. Wet woods, as you see here, where prothonotary warblers can be found in the springtime. NJ Audubon has some sort of agreement with the property owners, under which they *lease* birding rights on the property for their membership. Neat idea, I think. It was quiet today, but for the previously mentioned yellow-rumps and kinglets (golden-crowns, specifically). Lovely until it started to rain and I was startled once too often with shotgun fire that sounded too close for comfort. More pics some other day. ‘Night.

Blogger is behaving badly. Hopefully it will let me make a post this evening.

I couldn’t even visit any of my friend’s blogs.

;-(

My big brother (looking ghoulish above) has had Halloween Costume parties for years. There hasn’t been one in a few years, but this Saturday he’s picking up the tradition again. They’re great fun and my brother and sister-in-law really go all out with decorating the house and having lots of good food. The two of them are also the most creative with coming up with costume ideas and think of the best things. My father was also great with his costumes and seemed to get a real kick out of doing the unexpected. The pic above is from 1990, I think, in the time leading up to the Gulf War. Dad went as a sheik, complete with oil can. Another year he wore the most outrageous wig as Howard Stern. My husband and I have always struggled to come up with a costume – and this year is no different. Neither of us have any idea what to go as. So far the DH’s only suggestion has been that I wear bunny ears and he’ll borrow the dog’s Xmas antlers… we’re badly in need of some creative thinking on this. The pics from the first year we attended (in rented clown suits) have mysteriously gone missing. I thought we looked adorable, but my husband was humiliated by the experience. The following year, in a nod to our common love of coffee (and in tribute to how we met – while I was in college working at a 7-11) we went as coffee with half-n-half. I thought I did a pretty good job of recreating the artwork on both the coffee can and the carton of milk, but we couldn’t sit down or eat easily with the costumes on.
Dad as Arnold Schwarzenegger and my brother Brian as a box of tide. His wife that year did a fine impression of a dirty pile of laundry.
This was an easy costume for us to do. My DH wore his turnout gear (he’s a volunteer fireman) and I went as his dalmation, complete with bone and hydrant.

Each year the stakes seem to be raised in terms of a great costume; my brother is just too creative for the likes of me! I find myself anticipating what they will come up with, yet I’m always surprised. If anyone has any last-minute easy ideas for costumes I would love to hear them.

A friend of mine is very fond of Turkey Vultures; she’s not a birdwatcher, but is someone who loves nature and the out of the doors and all animals. Knowing my love of birds, she often mentions vulture sightings to me. I like to give her a gift at Christmastime and struggle to find something appropriate. Kathy is hard to describe. She’s almost twenty years my senior, a child of the 60’s and a hippie at heart, yet she was raised in a very wealthy family from what I understand. We work together at social services and her pragmatism and forthrightness with our clients is sometimes startling to me. I’ve known her for many years, yet feel that I don’t really know her at all. Suffice it so say that she is not easy to shop for. One year as a *gift* I brought her along on a winter birding trip at Barnegat Light to see Harlequins and Short-Eared Owls. We froze our butts off and the short-ears were a no-show, but Kathy was a trooper standing out on the jetty.

Following a day spent kayaking in the Pine Barrens a few summers ago she told me that she considers Turkey Vultures to be her totem or spirit guide. She sees them often during her meditative walks through the Barrens. Finally knowing that she had a *favorite* bird I then set out to find her the perfect vulture-themed gift. Not! Turkey Vultures, it seems, are not the poster-child for avian beauty or affection. This year, though, I think I may have hit the jackpot with Letters from Eden by Julie Zickefoose. There’s an essay all about tv’s and pencil sketches and even a personalized inscription that Julie wrote special for Kathy.

I did a little digging around on the Web to see what I might find about vultures as totem birds and learned that the vulture is a powerful totem, bringing purification and signaling an end to hardship. I also found a creation story about how the vulture saved the world (which I’ll inlcude below) and a neat American Indian Trickster tale about vultures.

In the earliest of times, the sun lived very close to the earth – so close in fact that life upon the earth was becoming unbearable. The animal world got together and decided to do something about it. They wanted to move the sun further away.

The fox was the first to volunteer, and he grabbed the sun in his mouth and began to run to the heavens. After a short while, the sun became too hot, burning the fox’s mouth, and he stopped. To this day, the inside of the fox’s mouth is black. Then the opossum volunteered. He wrapped his tail around the sun and began running toward the heavens. Before long though, the sun became too hot, burning its tail, and he had to stop. To this day the opossum has no hair upon its tail.

It was then that vulture stepped forward. Vulture was the most beautiful and powerful of birds. Upon its head was a beautiful mantle of rich feathering that all other birds envied. Knowing that the earth would burn up unless someone moved the sun, the vulture placed its head against it and began to fly to the heavens. With powerful strokes of its wings, it pushed and pushed the sun further and further up into the heavens. Though it could feel its crown feathers burning, the vulture continued until the sun was set at a safe distance in the sky away from the earth. Unfortunately, vulture lost its magnificent head of feathers for eternity.

I wonder how common it is for people to think of having an animal or bird as a spirit guide. Totem animals are those that a person feels connected with or particularly drawn to. I don’t know that I feel such a connection to a particular bird or animal, but wonder if you do. 😉