Behold my little race car driver. Yes, the costume was completed on time. Although I do confess to a couple sewing newbie mistakes, all in all I'm quite proud of the work. Note the Nascar stickers. My boy's father was adament that his son would be a Formula 1 driver, none of this Nascar hooey. Well, we do not live in Monaco but rather in central Virginia where it is somewhat difficult to escape the Nascar hegemony so Nascar it had to be. In fact, the local auto place only had a handful of appropriate stickers in the first place, reducing our choices to #20 (Tony Stewart's number, I have been informed) or nothing. So #20 it was.


The important thing, though, was that the boy was utterly thrilled with his costume and over the moon that the grown ups on the trick-or-treating route knew what he was supposed to be (well, except for one woman who thought he was an astronaut, but I believe this is a forgivable error). As mom-moments go, this Halloween was exceptional. Plus, I got to feel like Martha Stewart without the indictment. Can't ask for much more than that.


I've recovered somewhat from my voting angst. Actually, I've managed to distract myself with various domestic/nesty activities. Specifically, I've turned our uncarved pumpkins into pumpkin mush for the freezer to be made into pancakes, waffles, bread, muffins and other goodies throughout the winter. I also roasted the seeds, which turned out to be the best I've ever done. What did I do, you ask? We had four or five cups of seeds so put them all in a bowl and poured about half a cup of melted salted butter on top, added 4 or 5 tablespoons of soy sauce and a couple sprinkles of garlic powder (in fact, roasted pumpkin seeds are the only reason I keep garlic powder around). Mix well and spread on a buttered or sprayed rimmed cookie sheet and place in a 350 degree oven. Stir every 15-20 minutes or so until the seeds are golden/brownish and dry. Let cool on the sheet and store in a sealed container.


I also managed to start wrapping Christmas presents so that I don't have to rush around at the last minute. Since most of our presents go out of town I am trying to have those for Philadelphia ready before Thanksgiving so they can be delivered in person and those for both Buffalo and Grand Rapids ready to ship in earliest December. Then I'll have only our household presents left, to be wrapped at my leisure. Other early holiday projects found me getting the paperwhite bulbs into forcing position in the hopes that they'll be ready for our mantel come Christmas. And this afternoon I'm off to buy cards. All of this early work should leave me with lots of time to bake cookies with the boy in December. He's also asked for a gingerbread house for us to make together - I can't imagine a better way to spend an afternoon.

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In preparation for election day I recently picked up a voting guide published by the League of Women Voters. The guide outlines each of the races on my local ballot and features profiles and Q&A of each of the candidates who chose to participate. Charlottesville strikes me as a kind of strange place politically - it's very crunchy granola in a lot of ways but also maintains this strict very conservative spine that seems at odds with the very granola-ness.

For example, Charlottesville and Albemarle county boast one of the greatest park systems I've ever seen. The parks are beautifully maintained and offer everything from tennis courts to bike trails to swimming holes. The county and cite parks departments offer swimming lessons, crafts, all kinds of hiking tours and are staffed by some of the most dedicated outdoorspeople I've ever met. The playgrounds are, to a one, clean, bright and safe and I've never seen such well built and outfitted picnic pavillions. Really, it's just great. On the other hand, there is no longer recycling for county residents. That's right, if you don't live in Charlottesville proper then you pretty much throw away all of your trash - even things like soda cans and newspapers that are allowable in even the most limited recycling programs. Apparently, recycling doesn't "pay" in the sense that the county can make money off it and might even have to occasionally fork over money to do it, so the county supervisors put a stop to it.

Anyway, a glance through the voters' guide shows an incredible number of Independent candidates running for local offices (state offices feature only one Independent in nine races and there are no federal office races in Virginia this year). One reason there are so many Independents is that party endorsement entails a kind of cost-share deal. A candidate who raises money in $25 increments through weiner roasts is likely to take a dim view of sending any of that money "upstate" (as we say in New York) to assist candidates in the inner ring D.C. suburbs. So in a sense, all the Independents are keeping Albemarle money in Albemarle. However admirable I find this, it does tend to obscure the essential shorthand that voters may rely on to tell them who's who. I've never believed in voting a party line but it seems to me that learning that someone is a Green, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat or whatever gives you a jumping off point for understanding where he or she is coming from, who they hang with and what they've bought into in order to win office. Even if, say, a Republican candidate is pro-choice you would still get a feel for a general worldview and system of priorities.

All these people seem the same to me and trying to suss out any one person (in the races that are even contested - nine of them are not) to vote for without the shorthand of party affiliation is proving difficult.

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