womanifest

What. A. Day.

late last night, i baked a Pumpkin Dump Cake. basically, you make pumpkin pie filling, put it in a greased 9x13 pan, sprinkle a box of yellow cake mix on top, sprinkle chopped pecans on top of that, pour two (!) melted sticks of butter over the whole shebang, and pop it in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour or so. it took longer to put together than planned, mostly because i was also trying to watch A Nightmare On Elm Street for the first time (baby Johnny Depp!!! OMG!). by the time the cake was done, it was after 1am, and i had to be at work by 9:45!!!!

E crawled into bed with me around 8am, and i re-set my alarm for 8:45. i then had an extremely vivid dream in which we were at some sort of potluck, and someone had brought a litter of kittens that needed homes. they were tiny, almost too small to leave their mama. i had soothed the little gray-on-gray striped kitten to sleep...it was passed out, paws splayed, on my chest, and i wanted to text a picture of its smooshed-up kitten face to my friend, Maxine Dangerous, so i reached for my phone...

...and very abruptly woke up. not only were there no kittens, but it was 9:08! i had just enough time to make coffee, shower, and run out the door. fortunately, there was no traffic, and i got there in plenty of time. originally i had two clients scheduled, but my 11am cancelled due to illness and i got a head start on the other pressing business of the day:

buying our Halloween pumpkins at Eastern Market! and i got there all by myself for the first time, without getting lost! i also got quite a workout, lol - there were two generously sized pumpkins and only one of me, and i was parked about 1/4 of a mile away. so it took two trips for the pumpkins (which were two for $10!), and two more trips for...well...

i should not be allowed at Eastern Market without supervision.

 it started out innocently enough. i needed to buy a grow-your-own mushroom kit for E, as a belated anniversary present, and we also needed eggs and some sweet Italian sausage. i knew where to go for those, but walked through all three sheds first to see what else was for sale.

this is shed two, i think. pretty busy, but not so jammed that you couldn't get where you needed to go.

i was lucky enough to score the last of the concord grapes ($3) from this vendor. soooooo good! working at an estate winery totally ruined me for supermarket grapes. these little balls of heaven actually taste like GRAPES.

i picked up the eggs (Amish eggs! $3/dozen) and the fresh sausage ($8/2lbs, and put in its casings just yesterday!), the mushroom kit ($20), and also a half-gallon of 100% Honeycrisp apple cider ($4), and wended my way back to the car, admiring other wares along the way:

 

everything is very reasonably priced, but the problem is that there are just SO MANY lovely things that the purchases add up and before you know it, you're loaded down like a pack mule and your wallet is empty.  fruit, veggies, plants, baked goods, organic meats, and so much more, all of it locally grown/sourced/produced. in fact i showed quite a bit of restraint, actually - i didn't even stop at the maple syrup vendor, or the spice people. but after depositing my purchases at the car (and stuffing my mouth with grapes), i walked back along Russell Street in search of an interesting little shop we'd browsed in once before:

this place. Signal Return. they have a great selection of Detroit-themed cards, prints, and posters, plus letter-pressed items, hand-bound journals, and other amusing designs as well. and this is where i spent waaaaaaay more money than i had any business spending. my intent was just to pick up a couple of cards to mail to devout Detroiters now living out of state, and so i got these:

the Fist (of boxing legend Joe Louis) sculpture, and the abandoned Michigan Central Station, two beloved icons of the city, and beautifully rendered. but, see, then i saw this:

and immediately knew that it belonged, framed, in our kitchen. i also bought a new tee shirt (that was the straw that broke the monetary camel's back. i am a shameless tee shirt whore, unable to resist them), but we'll get to that later.

slightly sheepish about my little spending spree, i went back to the car and started to head home. the ramp for southbound I-75 was closed, though, so i took a little detour along the service drive. as long as i'm not pressed for time (and today i wasn't), i really enjoy detours in the city. this was by no means the longest, weirdest, or most around-your-arse-to-get-to-your-elbow, lol - the service drive parallels the freeway - but it was scenic, and included some unexpected off-roading when the service drive suddenly became a couple of hacked-up ditches (dug-up sidewalks?) and a curb (wtf?!) before picking back up in front of/curving around an abandoned, burned-out early-20th-century apartment building. thank Christ my car was made for things like that (and i'm pretty sure the drivers of the SUV's in front of and behind me were muttering the same thing, lolololol).

this is the city i love:

weeds and ruins (and abrupt re-routings) next to professional sports stadiums...

decay and abandonment mixed with revitalization...

 grit and art deco architecture (and stunning works of art - see the whale mural on the center building?)...

 reminders of the great, bustling Detroit of years past...

and good omens for a bright future (the sunbeams, not the truck, lol.)


after a quick stop at my mom's for Real Pants (i'd only packed work scrubs and pajama bottoms for the weekend), my favorite blue soup pot, and the potatoes i forgot to grab last night, i came back to E's. she was wide awake (poor thing!!! tonight's her fourth 12-hour shift in a row), and very excited about the mushroom kit, happy cow print, and pumpkins. i climbed into bed for some serious snuggle time, which turned into way more than snuggling (whee!), and then she tried to go back to sleep and i started making Sausage, Kale, and Potato soup. the full recipe is here, and wowwwwwww, is it good! i'm not a fan of spicy food, so i used sweet Italian sausage instead, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly (ok, and i added a little bit of sage), and we love it. even E loves it, and she is not the world's biggest fan of kale (she thinks it tastes like lawn clippings).

are you wondering what the heck any of this has to do with the post title?

remember that scene in The Karate Kid, where the Kid is trying to get the old man to train him, and the old man is working with his bonsai trees? he hands the Kid a pair of shears and tells him to get to work. the Kid protests, saying he doesn't know how to do it, and the old man tells him to close his eyes and picture how he wants the tree to look.

"Do you see the picture?", the old man asks.

"Yes."

"Good. Now, make it like the picture."

and that, guys, is what we call (wo)manifesting

most of us have at least a general picture in our minds of our ideal, authentic life. where we want to live, what we want to do, the kinds of people and activities and things we want around us. my life this last year has moved leaps and bounds closer to how i've dreamed it could be, and my picture comes into sharper focus every day. it's a work in progress, for sure, and it always will be; there will always be new things to learn, new people and places to love, new goals to strive for. but for me, the big first step was moving home. back to my family, back to the one whom my soul loves. back to the Motor City.

for me, the tee shirt says it all: