Do you have any Sun Chips?

So I went in the living room to work out over lunch, and I found these guys.

They must've been really cold, because they were wearing her sweaters.

This morning I woke up thinking about falling in love. I'm not sure if it was the end notes of a dream or the cozy feeling of coming off three nights spent alone with Beloved and no little angel, but I woke up with that feeling in my throat of the first time someone says, "I think I love you."

A few minutes ago, I read Schmutzie's post on happiness, and I thought about waking up to thinking about love. My husband and I ran into a college kid on our recent trip, and the kid asked if we were married. "Almost twelve years," I said. And this kid, who up to this point had been bragging about getting 98 percent in a class without ever having cracked the book's spine and getting laid the night before glanced over with utter sincerity and said, "That's cool. That really makes me happy, that you guys have been together so long."

Well, son, I'm glad I restored your faith in humanity. Because let me tell you, being in love -- long-term love -- is awesome. It usually feels a little different than the falling-in-love, though, and that's a tough one to swallow. Falling in love lasts, what, a few months at best? Being in love -- now that's a different story. That can last forever.

There are ways to tap into that first-few-months feeling, though. I spent years thinking about that feeling while I was single and realized part of falling in love is getting to know a new person, but if I'm honest with myself, part of falling in love is finding a new audience for your tired old stories, a new person to feel new around. Part of falling in love is feeling interesting again.

Part of falling in love is falling in love with yourself.

Maybe that's part of why artists and performers and writers are so crazy about our work. Creating something new is like getting to tell your stories again, maybe even stories you just learned yesterday, stories you didn't even know you knew. Or maybe they are old stories but nobody yet has received them quite the way you were hoping for.

Falling in love, I think, has little to do with falling in love in the conventional sense.

Falling in love, I think, is being able to tap into the part of you that finds yourself still interesting after all these years.

Turn it up. Relax into it. Happy Thanksgiving.

Today the Strangers in my Inbox brought me this video. I was struck by how this photographer worries he'll get too jaded to see the beauty walking by him on the street. My dad told me once anything is interesting if you know the details, and my writing professor told me the whole subject is here: (                          ), but your article is here: ().

Art is in the details, but getting down to the details takes quite a bit of time, and there are always things buzzing around my head trying to distract me. This next week I'm going to take a blog hiatus and focus on the details.

Happy American Thanksgiving to all of you and yours, and I'll see you again on November 26.

I rounded the corner of the path, trailing a tarp of yellow leaves and two tweens, thinking about how this seventy-five degree day was perhaps it, perhaps the last perfect day of autumn.

And I saw this.

I dropped the tarp, and the three of us stared at it without saying anything for a few seconds. We'd been in the woods before, but not this deep. The neighbor asked us to go deeper so the leaves wouldn't blow back in his yard.

It is the perfect tree in every way. It has sturdy, low branches for climbing, hedge apples for decor and obsession and thorns for an element of danger. The girls named it Hedgepoint.

They stayed in the woods for four hours. I'd long since hung up my rake and washed my car and was reading a book when it was finally time to go get them.

When I was growing up, we used to play Narnia in the thicket next to my parents' house. There was a special fallen tree and a lane and a creek with a bridge over it. Every child needs a perfect tree in her life, and now my girl has one. I'm relieved, as the age for properly respecting a tree like Hedgepoint has nearly passed her by.

I'm not sure I'd ever really seen a hedge apple before I moved to Kansas City, but I read these trees were planted to prevent soil erosion after the Great Depression.

Whereas I played Narnia, they played Boxcar Children. It doesn't matter. Doesn't every child pretend to live in the woods without parents at some point?

The most amazing tree ever in the history of the earth.

I came downstairs this morning to find no room at the breakfast table because, well, this.

But who is missing? The Bear in Charge, Ski Bear. Where could he be?

Happy Halloween! The little angel was a monster trainer. And Tiny (remember Tiny?) was her monster. I made the costume. Took me five hours. It took her five minutes to take half of it off.

After about two blocks, Beloved got tired of doing this when she rang the doorbell.

We just got back. When I went upstairs, I walked in on this. WTF?

Last month, the Arens family won an iPad in a sweepstakes put on by ClassWish. (They are awesome, go buy some books and the school of your choice gets part of the proceeds.) Since then, we have been using the FaceTime feature on it to talk to family back in Iowa.

We've noticed something. If the camera adds ten pounds, the pixelated oranges of FaceTime adds ten years, as well as sunspots, shine and huge pores (for white people, at least).

It's so bad that my mother commented once on how unflattering the view is of oneself, especially considering you're almost always looking DOWN on the iPad in your lap, thus adding double chins to the effect.

Seriously. Here is me right now, normal, head-on, not-great-lowlight-cell-phone pic.

We see a few fine lines and wrinkles, but otherwise, hey, I'm 38! I don't appear to be on the edge of death.

Now let's check out FaceTime on the iPad. (Note: It is crazy super hard to take a picture of yourself on FaceTime because you're in the picture holding the phone over your face and blocking yourself. I had to hold the phone like upside down and backwards, then rotate the whole thing to show you. You're welcome.)

Sunken eyes, shiny NECK? And OMG ARE THOSE JOWLS?

It gets worse from the lap angle.

Now I also have several odd slopes on my face and a comb-over.

Please tell me I am not the only person experiencing this phenomenon?