Just Write {159}

October 28, 2014

There’s someone who decorated for Halloween by dressing up a home-made, ginormous, stuffed pillow-case-like doll. They put a shirt on it…her? Him?…and then they put underwear on it, but the unders are pulled down to about thigh length and this doll is sitting on a toilet, its jeans around its ankles.

Yes, this toilet is out in the yard. Yes, this doll is on the toilet. Yes, this doll has underwear pulled down.

No, I don’t know what this has to do with Halloween.

Yes, I find it hard to not be disturbed every single time I drive by going to and from home.

To each their own toilet decorations…

I would take a picture and put it in this post, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s tempting, but also, it’s just too….weird.

I like how my friend Christa decorated for Halloween. She put a string of orange lights in her front porch. You can see them glow through the windows when you drive by, and it always makes me smile. Christa is not the sort to have a toilet or dolls in her front yard. She and her husband and daughters did have a house-warming party this past weekend though. There was a trampoline and a campfire in the yard. And people, who brought cozy-making foods like apple crisp and soup. The kids ran through the house and back to the trampoline. Sometimes they stopped to eat the rest of the brownie crumbs out of the bottom of the pan.

Then they came through and ate the rest of the ice cream right out of the container, with a big spoon.

House-warming parties are for the purpose of warming up a house you’ve moved into or built. But it turns out that the people you love, who come over, are the ones who end up getting warmed. By a welcoming, an ease, and the comforts of friendship.  I mean, if the house-warming is at Christa and Josh’s anyway. They are the warm type, and so is their home. I was inside and they were outside, mostly, on the patio and by the fire, but still the credit is due. They are the kind that make you want to stay, and so is their home.

It is a gift, to have warming friends who are honest, open, and welcoming. And then they are creative and smart and generous. This is how life pulls itself together to be good–because of the goodness of homes and hearts.

Let’s run to the safe places, friends. Let’s sit long and eat apple crisp with vanilla bean ice cream, laugh with people, and tell them stories. Then let’s listen to theirs.  Let’s think of this day as one big house-warming party, and give back.

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This is the 159th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {New here? Please see the details.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. (Then link back to this post in your Just Write post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

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