Balance

The crappy-wonderful balance of my insignificant, first-world existence has been thrown off. My Facebook status feed confirms it. Usually Facebook provides a nice perspective on the balance of good and bad, in fact, I have come to rely on the predictability of this balance... a new mom bringing home her baby, a layoff, a birthday celebration filled with friends and family, the loss of a loved one, a beautiful fall family hike, a broken into car. But yesterday was a crappy day for a lot of people, and crappy update after crappy update rolled in on my status feed. Having lived in DC for ten years, the government shutdown affects a lot of my friends and colleagues. So does the sequester. Today will be just as crappy, and tomorrow too. It may be crappy for a long time. 

To balance it out a bit, I am trying to focus on a few little things that have made me happy this week. It's not much, but it does create a picture of warmth and happiness that will have to balance out the crap as best it can.

A child's painting project. I love all the paintbrushes lined up. 

Every year we make an autumn mobile, this year Katherine joined me. I love the colors and the fact that they usually stay up well into May. 

Our first fire in the wood stove. It wasn't quite cold enough, but we were ready.

My first apple pie (usually my baking endeavors involve chocolate, but I'm branching out). I've been asking people for their recipe for weeks, but everyone says, "Oh, I just add a little bit of this and a little bit of that..." , so that is what this is, a little bit of this and that, and it is (was) delicious. But I guess you can't really go wrong with a buttery crust, apples, cinnamon, and allspice.

Sisters getting along, collecting leaves.  

If you have happy, beautiful moments or stories, please link to them in the comments. I know a lot of people could use the balance right now!