A Scrum of Bobbleheads

This afternoon DS & DIL1 and her mom and dad are coming for soup for supper tonight. I decided last week that I wanted to have some sort of table favors, so I went to the dollar store and found some Halloween bobbleheads with bubblegum in them. Last night Durwood and I peeled the tape off of them, tossed out the gum (ick), and cleaned off the tape goo. I found a recipe for two-layer fudge that I made. This morning I cut it into tiny squares and put it into there. They are so cute! And the fudge is good too. It's nothing but chocolate chips melted in the microwave with sweetened condensed milk, and the orange is white chocolate chips with orange flavor and food color, but it hits the spot when you need a chocolate fix. I made some white bean garlic dip and bought some mango salsa to dip crudites in for appetizers. Durwood's getting his Italian Wedding Soup going right now so it'll have the afternoon to meld flavors. I'm going to drag the dustrag around and then vacuum, and that'll be that. They're coming to see us, not give us the white glove treatment, AND I just learned that Porter's coming too so nobody's going to be looking for dust. (Which means I went outside to sink the tie-down I use to keep the Christmas flamingo in place, as I was screwing it into the ground an earthworm came screaming up out of there and zoomed [well, zoomed for a worm] off to quieter dirt.) And I was out there for the 4-fighter flyover. Yippee! They were ear-splitting, but I love them. Love. Them. Once I get the dust chased I'll start making my contribution, Creamy Mushroom-Barley Soup. Mmm, "soup for lunch" this week is going to be GREAT.

October 15--Possibly Constantinople, Byzantine, The Fieschi Morgan Staurotheke. Jana wrapped the metal box in a square of silk that used to like Great-aunt Tillie's kimono and slid the little package into the space behind the Cr-Da volume of the encyclopedia. No one used the old set of books except her. Well, Great-aunt Tille had her little silver flask behind the 1937 yearbook but no one else hid things there. No one seemed to miss the little cloisonne box with its lineup of saints around the edges and the Nativity on the top. Jana kept her pink crystal rosary in the box and the Christopher medal her grandpa gave her when she went to sleep-away camp the first time. It had made her sad when the Pope had demoted St. Christopher back to a regular dead guy. A lot of people had little plastic statues of St. Christopher on their dashboards to keep them safe on their travels. Jana wondered if Mr. Christopher kept a person as safe as he had when he was a saint.

Just now I looked up "staurotheke" to discover that it's a reliquary of the true cross. It's a very odd word, isn't it? The other day the Sharp-shinned Hawk landed on top of the fence, flew into the garden to perch on top of one of the tomato stakes, and then moved to the iron dragonfly sculpture, where I finally managed to snap a photo, and then took off. We love seeing them.
--Barbara