The boys had just a half-day of school today, and after I picked them up and we lazed a bit during a rain shower, we went to the nearest early voting site to cast my ballot. I was pleasantly shocked by the number of people in line- democracy in action, peeps! I love it!

The lead up to leaving home is always so odd. I'm leaving? Going somewhere without my boys and T?

And yet, it's exciting. I'll sleep well, in a whole bed to myself, with no cat mews or boyish knocks or husbandly snores to interrupt my slumber. I won't need to prepare meals or negotiate sibling squabbles, won't need to make sure the teeth were brushed well enough or the fish fed. I won't have to toggle back and forth, in what are sometimes 30-second increments, between conversations, to dos, phone calls, and all the rest.

I've got a 2:00 train to Philadelphia tomorrow, and I am excited. I'll see friends, canvass across South Philly, and simply adult for 48 hours. Gosh, this sounds lovely. Lucky it's me going!

In the meantime, I have some good (and pretty) food to share with you.

For the past two weeks, I have had the most intense yen for an apple pie. A towering one in my fluted pie plate. Yesterday, it happened.

While I love my apple pie recipe, I came across this one for apple almond pie on Food52 recently. I could eat almond paste on dirt, happened to have an unopened tube of it in my pantry, and so took the lead. I followed the recipe exactly except that I used my pie crust rather than the butter one suggested.

Hot damn am I glad I did so. Observe.