Blue November

For once, blue is the happiest color in the world. I think almost everyone is relieved about the results of last Tuesday's elections, with the exception of some (all) MAGA people. But I hope they'll come around. The current administration is just so messed up, so corrupt. Some really great people got elected in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, etc. I am so excited for Mississippi to get a Black Democratic senator!

I was very worried about Colorado's own elections, but they turned out pretty well (we *think* we've gotten rid of Lauren Boebert -- fingers crossed). None of the conservative amendments passed, just the liberal one that we wanted to have pass. Unfortunately, the three anti-trans propositions (that our neighbor had a sign supporting) passed, but since they are propositions, not constitutional amendments, they may not be enforced the way their backers want them to be. We shall see.  

Watching the news this week has been so much fun. Instead of the NewsHour just being misery on top of misery, it's been so cheerful. 

I did go to the Faculty Tuesday concert at CU on Tuesday night, because I just couldn't bear to stay home and watch the early results of the election, in case they were bad. The concert consisted of two middle-aged women playing Debussy, Saint-Saens, and Rachmaninoff on two pianos. They were simply wonderful. I was sitting on the right, my preferred spot, and usually from there I can't see the pianist's fingers, because the piano is usually facing the other way. But in this case the pianos were facing each other so that the pianists could see each other, and that meant that I could see one pianist's fingers. The pianist that I could see was rather dumpy (like me), had kind of a big butt and gray hair. And what flowed from her fingers was divine. I absolutely loved it.

During the intermission I checked my phone and OMG, South Carolina went blue. Then I kind of wanted the concert to hurry up and be over, so I could go home and watch, but the second half of the concert was just as divine as the first, so I was glad I stayed.

Rocket Boy and I stayed up until midnight watching the results. So amazing. 

Everything else that happened this week was overshadowed by the election results, but it was an OK week overall. Cooking was somewhat meh. On Monday I made the Caramelized Onion, Bacon, Fig and Gorgonzola Cheese Pizza that I meant to make the week before. It was... interesting. Rocket Boy hated it. It was better the next day, not so strong, and I ate the leftovers for lunch all week. Wednesday I was lazy and we just had canned tomato soup (Progresso, not Campbell's) and toasted cheese sandwiches. Thursday, though, I made Senate Bean Soup, and that was both appropriate and delicious. We had the leftovers on Friday, and Rocket Boy ate two bowls both nights, despite the fact that it had ham in it.

I also made a pumpkin pie (eaten very quickly by Teen A and Rocket Boy) and oatmeal scotchie cookies (with butterscotch chips).

This week I think I am going to make one or more recipes with dates, since I bought a little package of Medjool dates. I found two vegetarian dinner recipes in the NY Times Cooking section that involve dates, but they both also involve cauliflower. I wonder if Rocket Boy would notice if I made two dishes with dates and cauliflower in the same week. Maybe I should spread them out a little!

One slightly sad thing that happened this week is we lost our phone number. Back in August I had gotten a letter from our phone company, CenturyLink, telling us that our home phone service would be disconnected in two weeks and we should call them if we wanted to switch to another phone service which is really a cell phone but which would run through our old landline phone. It sounded stupid, so I didn't do anything, and right after that I had knee surgery and kind of forgot about it. Meanwhile, they didn't cut off our phone. September went by, October went by, and then suddenly on Thursday our phone went dead. Oops. 

I thought, oh well, nobody but us has a landline anymore (we didn't even have a landline -- our landline became a VOIP phone some years back), might as well let it go. But Rocket Boy was truly sad, so on Friday during his lunch break he called CenturyLink and set up the new home phone service with the cell phone-landline, etc. If he'd called them on Wednesday, we could have saved our phone number, but he didn't, so we've lost it. The new number is just terrible, involving multiple 8's and a 7 and a 9 and a 0. Our old number had three 4's and two 3's. The new number doesn't have any 4's or 3's. I hate it.

On the plus side, we're thinking maybe some of our spam caller friends won't know our new number and will leave us alone. The day the phone got cut off, at noon, we received EIGHT spam calls that morning. I didn't answer any of them, I just know they were spam from the numbers on the caller ID.

Also, it will mean Rocket Boy's brother still won't have my cell phone number, which gives me a little bit of protection from his endless calls. I still talk to him almost every day (he always wants to know what we're having for dinner), but I'll be able to keep him just a little bit at arm's length.

So it'll be fine. And while I thought we'd lost our old voicemails (the CenturyLink lady said there was no way to get them back), Rocket Boy somehow managed to retrieve them and save them to his computer. We had voicemails from his father (who died in 2002), and from my mother (who died in 2008). There was one from his aunt telling him his uncle had died (in 2003 I think). We had always meant to save them permanently and never did it, but they are saved now.

Life goes on, even though technology moves so much faster than I want it to. 

It was a decent writing week too. I managed to do 700 words on at least four of the days, maybe five (can't remember). The goal is to have a draft of the novel done by November 20th (Teen B probably comes home on the 21st). I have three more chapters to write. That's, let's see, 10 writing days, could be 7000 words. It's doable. We'll see.

So, nothing special planned for the coming week, just more cooking and writing and that sort of thing. I need to finish putting Halloween away -- that was supposed to happen today, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Yesterday Rocket Boy and I bought new furnace filters for our house and the rental, and of course we bought the wrong size for the rental. I knew it was wrong -- he found a size written on a folder and I knew it wasn't right, must have been for an older furnace, pre-flood-of-2013, but I couldn't find a more recent note, so we bought that size. Today Rocket Boy went down in the crawl space and guess what! Wrong size (it should have been 14 x 20 x 1). So in a little bit we're going back to Home Depot to get another one. The joys of home ownership (especially multiple home ownership) are without number. Have a good week!

Farewell October, hello November

And just like that, the best month of the year is over. But it was a good one! And Halloween itself was outstanding. We had so much fun last night. 

Let's see, last Monday the book group came here and I was pleased and surprised to find that everyone enjoyed the book I'd suggested, Tana French's The Searcher. Next month we're going to read some historical fiction that I'm a little iffy about, The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis, but the Goodreads people seem to have liked it pretty well, so it will probably be fine. 

I made inauthentic Irish soda bread from a NY Times recipe, and it turned out pretty well. Teen A didn't like it, because of all the caraway seeds, but Rocket Boy and I have been eating it. I need to bake something else this week. I also bought several cheeses, some Irish and some English, and made a cheese tray surrounded by dried fruit (apricots, prunes, figs, orange slices), and we now have SO MUCH leftover cheese in the refrigerator. I made macaroni & cheese with some of the leftovers on Wednesday, but there's still so much. I guess there could be worse predicaments to be in. I'll make more cheese things this coming week.

On Tuesday I had PT and I told my therapist the sad story about falling down at the haunted house the previous Saturday. She spent about half the time massaging my leg, which was painful but seemed to be effective, because afterwards she had me do some exercises and the leg/knee performed better than usual.

That night I went to the Faculty Tuesday concert as usual, and it was marvelous. An elderly piano-cello duo, the Fischer Duo, performed along with other faculty members and students. I just thought it was marvelous. The pianist, who I think is 77, was so good. Probably the cellist was too -- I just couldn't tell in the same way. Anyway, a very enjoyable evening. This Tuesday the concert will be two pianists, and I am planning to go even though it is election night. It makes me so nervous to watch the results coming in. Despite claims of this "blue wave" that's supposed to materialize, I keep thinking about 2016 when Hillary was supposed to win and all sorts of states were supposed to go blue, and none of that happened and Trump won big.

I managed to get a lot of writing done this week. I had wanted to complete a draft of my next mystery novel by the end of October, but it totally didn't happen. However, I got to the end of Chapter 10 (out of 15 planned) by Friday. And since the story takes place in November, it will be fine to go on working on it through November (or at least the first three weeks -- probably won't get much done during Thanksgiving break). I set a goal of 600 words a day (later upped to 700 words) and that helped move things along.  

On Friday, Teen A and I had to take his car back to Boulder Hybrids to have his front brakes redone (and some other stuff). After dropping off the car, I drove us to Munson Farms because we STILL didn't have any pumpkins! Teen A at first didn't want to get out of the car, but I pointed out that I would need help lifting the heavy pumpkins. There was almost no one there, at 12:30 pm on a Friday, the day before Halloween. But they still had plenty of pumpkins, and we chose four. Actually, I chose two, and then Teen A insisted on adding a huge one that I had rejected, and then I added a pale yellow pumpkin (to be the Baby Kitty pumpkin).

As we were driving away, I got a text, but of course I couldn't look at it until we got home. It was from Teen B, who announced "I'm gonna stay the weekend. Halloweekend." 

I thought that meant he was going to stay in Fort Collins, so I said, "Sounds good! (We finally went to Munson's and got pumpkins today.)" and included a photo. 

He responded, "I wanted to go (with a sad face emoji). Didn't even offer." 

I replied, thinking he was referring to the previous weekend, "We didn't really have time, with the ABCD study and eating out and the haunted house." 

He responded, politely, "Today dummy." 

In confusion, I said, "But you aren't here." 

He said, "But I will be soon." 

I said, "You just said you weren't coming!!!" 

And he said, "Stay the weekend in boulder**. U have no brain."

And that was how I learned that Teen B was coming for the weekend! 

We ate out Friday night at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, because I wanted to have plov (aka osh, the Tajik national dish, mentioned repeatedly in a book I read in October, Cold Kitchen by Caroline Eden). Plov is a rice-based dish with dried fruit and other additions, but the Teahouse version also had chunks of grilled beef in it. I can't even remember the last time I ate beef. It was so good I almost cried. But I also kept remembering something we saw on the NewsHour some weeks/months back, about the beef industry. At one point in the piece the reporter said something like "The cows walk in (to the processing plant) but they don't walk out." I chewed along on the delicious beef and I kept thinking, "The cows walk in, but they don't walk out." At one point I thought I might throw up, thinking about the cows, but I didn't. I ate every bite of the meat and brought most of the rice home (I had it for lunch the next day, with the addition of more dried fruit and some feta). I don't think I'll be having beef again for a while, though. If I cook plov, it will be vegetarian plov.

Saturday was a busy day. I had a Zoom call with my old Michigan friends at 10:30, so that was nice. I had been planning to get off after an hour, but the conversation was so interesting that I stayed on for 90 minutes. We're going to meet again in a few weeks, talk about the election and the aftermath, regardless of how it turns out.

Then I had to go to King Soopers, get some food to make dinner with, because we couldn't go out that night, on account of it being Halloween.

Finally it was time to carve our four pumpkins. We had gotten the idea to carve one with the CSU Rams logo and another with the MSU Roadrunners logo. And of course I wanted to do the little yellow one as a cat. I figured we would leave the gigantic pumpkin uncut, but Teen A had other ideas. 

For the Ram logo, we used a dremel (which I had seen recommended on a YouTube video, and of course Rocket Boy actually HAD a dremel). It was extremely complicated and took hours. While RB worked away with the dremel (we set him up outside on a card table), we could hear the dreadful church on the other side of our fence having a Bible knowledge contest, where the pastor would ask "Which prophet did such and such?" and kids would have to answer. At the end of it they went on a hayride down our street (pulled by a truck, I think, not a horse). I guess it was sort of an anti-Halloween activity. Very weird.

I carved the cat pumpkin and then did a so-so job of carving the roadrunner head (top right pumpkin). I wasn't sure how to attach the cat's ears or the roadrunner's eye, but Teen B told me to use unbent paper clips, and that worked well. When we were done with all three pumpkins, Teen A and his girlfriend came home and took the giant pumpkin into the bedroom where they transformed it into the funny guy on the lower left, with arms and legs and a tongue. We put the pumpkins out and lit their candles, and we got a lot of compliments from the MASS of trick-or-treaters who came to the door. 

After dinner (Brenda's sticky tofu, Teen B's request), we (minus Teen A and his girlfriend) settled down in the living room to make a holiday themed puzzle. I thought I had made it before, but it was unopened. I think I might have bought it at McGuckin's after Halloween last year or the year before, with the idea that we would make it some other Halloween. 

We watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" courtesy of the Apple+ channel, which I need to remember to cancel, and then "Coraline," which was free on the Roku channel. We also worked on the puzzle. Knocks on the door kept coming. I think the last one was at about 8:30 pm. We almost ran out of candy, but not quite -- had probably half a bag left at the end (I had bought 7 bags, 5 of Tootsie Pops, 1 of KitKats, and 1 of Twix bars, plus Rocket Boy contributed a box of granola bars). When "Coraline" ended, we concentrated on finishing the puzzle. Which we did! A very very very satisfying Halloween.

These days, with the boys growing up and Rocket Boy and me getting older, I feel as though any time we have a good day or evening or meal or activity together, it's a huge win. We have all our memories of fun (and less fun) times through the years, when they were little, and now they're growing up and going their own ways, and there are no guarantees of any more fun times ahead. Rocket Boy and I are no longer in charge. We can invite the boys to do things, we can respond positively to their suggestions of things to do, but gone are the days when we could say, "Today we are going to do X," with no arguments. I couldn't have forced Teen B to come for the weekend. I couldn't have forced him to carve pumpkins or make a puzzle. He happened to want to do all those things, and so we had a wonderful time. And Teen A, while doing his own thing mostly, also wanted to carve a pumpkin -- with his girlfriend, so she was involved too (I like his girlfriend a lot). Just such a nice day and night. 

Teen B stayed the night, of course, and we all slept really late. Thank goodness for the time change. Today was a slow day. We went to Starbucks around 12:30 and they told us they were really backed up and it would be at least a 20 minute wait for our drinks. So we went to the Starbucks on 30th St, but there an entire volleyball team had arrived just before us. So we decided to go home and Teen B and I tried again at about 2pm. I got a Pecan Crunch Latte. My feeling is that when October is over, so is pumpkin spice.

And now, November... 

Reading post: October

In October I planned to read entirely fun books, spooky books, mysteries, etc. Nothing serious! And I was pretty successful in that attempt. I had hoped to finish one more by tonight, but it's not going to happen, so I'll have to fit it into much-more-serious November. Happy Halloween!

Spooky, fun books

The Family Vault by Charlotte MacLeod (1979). OK, not actually a spooky book, but rather a cozy mystery. MacLeod is a new author for me, and although I don't, in general, like cozy mysteries, I thought this one was fun and I would read more of her. The book introduces the two main characters in a 12-book series: Sarah Kelling, a Boston Brahmin with a huge weird inbred family, and Max Bittersohn, a Jewish art-fraud investigator. They were fun, and I was very worried for Sarah for most of the book, so it wasn't really all that cozy. But it all ended impossibly well, so yeah, cozy.

My Dark Places by James Ellroy (1996). I chose this as my second book of the month because I didn't think it would be too scary. Ha. The book is divided into four sections. Part 1 is a description of the initial investigation into Ellroy's mother's murder in 1958, and that was the most interesting. Part 2 is a memoir of Ellroy's childhood and young adulthood, truly harrowing. Part 3 concerns the detective he ended up working with, Bill Stoner, and his work on horrific murder cases, and it scared me so much I couldn't sleep. Part 4 is a description of Ellroy's and Stoner's re-investigation of Ellroy's mother's murder, and it's mostly frustrating. Overall, a fascinating book.

Eva Moves the Furniture by Margot Livesey (2001). Last October I read Livesey's novel about her great-grandmother, Lizzie; this one is about her mother, Eva, who died when Livesey was only two years old (both Lizzie and Eva were supposedly psychic). Like The Road from Belhaven, this book isn't spooky, even though there are two ghosts who show up quite often and mess with Eva's life (sometimes for good, sometimes perhaps for their own purposes). I suppose the book is about how she learns to live with them but also live her own life. Not your typical novel, nor your typical ghost story. It's slow-moving, thoughtful, very sad at the end. I liked it.

The Devil's Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, translated from the Japanese by Jim Rion (serialized in Japan 1951-53/this translation 2023). Every time I read a Yokomizo mystery, I think that's my last, but then, hmm, I somehow find myself reading another. This is a "locked-room mystery," and I hate those, but the locked-room aspect is just a tiny part of it. Mostly it's a creepy, perverted mystery, which got more and more perverted as it went along. Plus it's set in 1947 Japan, so there's a lot of talk about how the trains don't run on time and there's no food and houses have been destroyed by bombs and fire. So it ended up being pretty interesting. I'm sure I'll go on reading Yokomizo.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach (2005). Kind of an anti-spooky book, although she swears in the intro that it's not. 

"Skeptics and debunkers provide a needed service in this area, but their work more or less assumes an outcome. I'm trying hard not to make assumptions, not to have an agenda." 

And I would say she more or less succeeds, while being funny. Also, though she spends too much time on already debunked hoaxes, such as ectoplasm, she included some things I hadn't read about before, like nutty attempts to weigh the soul. By the end of the book, I was nervous, always the goal when reading spooky books.

The Searcher by Tana French (2020). I convinced my book group to read this as our October book. I love Tana French, but this isn't much like one of her Dublin Murder Squad books. The main character, Cal, is a retired Chicago cop who has moved to Ireland for peace and quiet, but then a 13-year-old named Trey shows up on his doorstep, wanting him to find someone who's gone missing. I'd say the first 2/3 of the book was pretty slow and then it finally sped up. But it was very easy to read, even during the slow parts. Also, it had a happy-ish ending, which surprised me. The book group liked it a lot, and Sally has already gone on and read the two sequels. I will have to read them too. Maybe next October!

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (2024). Everyone was reading this last year and I couldn't get it from the library. Now there are plenty of copies available, so I checked one out. The 13-year-old daughter of a wealthy family goes missing from a summer camp, 14 years after her brother went missing in the same area. It's not spooky, but it is creepy, and the writing got more and more propulsive, so that by the end I could barely put it down. The theme of people with too much money didn't interest me, but there were a lot of other good characters. I read on another blog that the book was over-hyped, but I don't think so. It's good! Recommended.

The Echo of Crows by Phil Rickman (2025). The last book in the Merrily Watkins series, because Phil Rickman died in October 2024, having submitted this manuscript to his publishers a few weeks earlier. His previous Merrily Watkins book, The Fever of the World, was really bad, mainly because Phil was sick and his wife Carol didn't have time to edit it because she was doing "absolutely everything else," as he said in the Acknowledgements. This one was edited by Carol, so it wasn't a mess, but just like Fever it felt more like an outline than a real book. Phil Rickman was so good at creating atmosphere, pacing a scene just right. This book has none of that. It's just -- this happens and then this happens and then this happens. No atmosphere, no spooky pacing. So strange. On the plus side, he managed to tie up several loose ends, so we know his characters will live happily ever after, and I appreciated that.

The Carrow Haunt by Darcy Coates (2018). I saved this for last because I thought it would be super scary. What a disappointment! I read another book by her, Gallows Hill, in 2023, and that was spooky, so I thought this one would be too. It wasn't. It was about a haunted house, but it was just so over the top that I started laughing at it. Like, oh, come on, give me a break. The Haunting of Hill House it was not. The pacing was off, I think. She crammed so much spookiness into one book that there was no time for a reader to get scared. And here I thought I had a great spooky author to read (she's written a gazillion books). Oh well. 

Books from the New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" reviews

Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child by Laura Cumming (2019). I've wanted to read this ever since I first heard about it, so this seemed like a good month to do it. Laura Cumming's mom was taken from a beach near her home in England when she was three years old and found five days later, safe and sound. The mystery behind this is complicated, and Cumming describes how she and her family gradually unraveled it, plus what her mother's life was like, growing up not knowing anything about her origins. Very unusual, interesting.

Other reading

Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels by Caroline Eden (2024). I think I heard about this book when I was reading Spilling the Beans by Sarah Moss last month. Either she mentions it in that book or I read about it when I was reading about that book, I DON'T KNOW, but anyway, I requested it from the library and it popped up in October, when I didn't really want to read it. I read it anyway and it is delightful. It was about eating interesting foods in unusual places, like Uzbekistan, Turkey, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine. And now I want to go to Uzbekistan and eat winter melons. That's never going to happen. But I enjoyed the book, and I do plan to try a couple of her recipes.

Haunted happenings

The main thing I don't like about October is that it goes too fast! I try to squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of it, and it's just impossible. Here we are, October 25th, less than a week left. I've read a bunch of spooky books, I've watched a spooky show, I've decorated the house, I've bought lots of Halloween candy, I've gone on walks to look at the fall color... and yesterday, Rocket Boy, Teen B, and I went to the haunted house at Boulder High.

And I fell down. Oof. They have signs all over warning you that the floor in the haunted house is uneven, there are stairs going up and down and not enough railings, if you have mobility problems you shouldn't risk it... Probably what's implied is that if you had knee surgery two months ago, you shouldn't risk it. That's what a "mobility problem" is. Duh.

But I risked it -- because how could I miss the "Cirque du Slain" haunted house?!?! And I fell down. Not on my well-padded bottom, but forward, down a little flight of stairs and onto my knees. Of course. I felt as though more of my weight landed on the right knee, but both knees hurt today. And my left shoulder and arm. Oh well. I didn't break anything and I can't even find any bruises. I'll heal. But it was sad. After I fell, I just crouched there, in the dark, and when I tried to get up, I couldn't. Rocket Boy had to drag me up. I don't know what was happening in the haunted house at that moment -- I don't remember any actors near us, nor any other visitors behind us. Both Teen B and Rocket Boy couldn't stop laughing about it -- I think out of nervousness. I laughed too. And we were almost at the end, so I staggered on, and soon we were done. 

Will I go next year? I'll see. In the meantime, I have to focus on my physical therapy exercises, but I couldn't do one of them properly today -- the knee hurts too much. Sigh.

It was a fairly quiet week otherwise, no appointments for me except physical therapy. I was talking to my little sister one day about retirement and volunteer work and all that. She's inches away from retirement, probably just one more day to work, and like me, she is thinking about what she will do with all her time. Volunteer work is an obvious choice, but then you start to think, oh! but that's MY time! I want that time for myself -- to do what, exactly? I'm not sure. But it's hard to commit to volunteer work for that reason. 

And of course, I still have a lot of housework to do because Rocket Boy isn't retired, cooking and cleaning and whatnot, and the boys still need me for various things (for instance, Teen A's car needed an oil change on Friday, and I drove him there and back). Also, I like to spend a chunk of my free time on reading and writing (got through a couple of chapters of my novel this week). And then there's genealogy, which I haven't been doing recently but would like to get back into.

At the same time, I think I would like to do some volunteer work, make myself useful, as it were. It feels good to be out in the world, helping somebody or something. So what's it going to be? Do I want to walk dogs at the Humane Society? Volunteer in the schools? Help out in some way at the hospital? Tutor English-language learners at the library? Offer myself as a free babysitter? I don't know who would want me or what I would want to do.

Cooking did not go well this week. Rocket Boy decided to make his French onion soup last Sunday, so we had that on Monday as well (he got a very good do on it -- it was delicious). On Tuesday, of course I was going to a concert, so he bought some fish at Sprouts on his way home and fixed that for himself and Teen A, with rice and spinach. 

On Wednesday I made the first of my planned meals -- "Roasted Eggplant with Jammy Onions and Ricotta" from the NY Times cooking section. The jammy onions smelled so good, and the ricotta mixed with grated halloumi and garlic was also tasty, as were the toasted walnuts on top. But the roasted eggplant looked like octopus (that is, the strings of seeds looked weirdly like octopus legs). And I remembered that I don't like eggplant. It was just so awful. Teen A ate some and dumped the rest in the compost. Rocket Boy worked away at his with a knife and fork, eating every bite. I tried to eat it, I really did. But then I also made use of the compost bin. 

I think there might still be one serving in the fridge. Horrors. 

On Thursday I made "Walnut Sauce Pasta," also from the NY Times. The recipe said to blanch the walnuts, but I roasted them instead, and that may have been part of the problem. Another part may have been that you were supposed to make it in a food processor, but I don't have one, so I used a hand blender. It wasn't bad, exactly, it was just sort of like eating pasta coated with peanut butter. Bleah. Teen A ate some and then asked me if I'd like the rest of his plate (in lieu of dumping it in the compost again). I said sure, it's my fault, I'll eat it. I chewed away, wishing I hadn't made it.

There's still a ton left. I ate it for lunch on Friday but have otherwise avoided it. Maybe tomorrow I'll toss the rest. 

Teen A said, "Why can't you ever make GOOD pasta?" Rocket Boy said, "In St. Louis I used to make pasta using tomato sauce from a jar. You could make that." Hmmph!

On Friday I was supposed to make "Pizza with Caramelized Onions, Figs, Bacon and Blue Cheese," again from the NY Times, and I just couldn't. I didn't have any bacon, and nobody but me likes blue cheese, and I just didn't know about those figs. So Rocket Boy and Teen A went to the Himalayan restaurant and I stayed home and had a yogurt.

I could still make that pizza this week. I'll think about it. On Monday, my book group is coming, so Rocket Boy and Teen A will probably eat out, and then after that I don't know.  

The Tuesday night concert was disappointing this week. It was a classical guitar professor playing, naturally, classical guitar pieces, and I really didn't like any of them. I was under the impression I liked classical guitar, so I don't know what went wrong. At least I didn't fall asleep. This coming week the concert is called "The Art of Collaboration," and it features a cello-piano duo, with various additional people playing chamber music. I'll probably go to it. We'll see.

Yesterday afternoon, Saturday, the kids and I were scheduled to participate in the ABCD (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development) study at CU, our TENTH year. It was very different this year. For one thing, the kids didn't want to do it. They each earned $145, and Teen A earned a bit more because he agreed to give blood, etc. (Teen B never wants to do any of the extra things). But that wasn't enough of an incentive, because now that they've experienced real money (their social security money), this didn't seem worth it to them (even though Teen A has already blown through all of his SS money and really could use more). The study is probably going to be extended another five years, and I don't know if the kids are going to be willing to be part of it.

I earned $100, $50 per kid. But my part was so small. I had to fill out a few surveys, but they were NOTHING like in years past. It took me maybe an hour to do them all, while Teen B took maybe two and a half hours and Teen A took the full three hours. After this year, I won't be involved, because the kids are adults now and the study designers figure my answers will be less and less useful. For instance, they asked me about the kids' use of marijuana, alcohol, and nicotine. How could I really know?

While Teen B and I were waiting for Teen A to finish up, I took some pictures of the room where I sit to fill out forms (see above). It's not interesting, but I realized it was probably the last time I would ever be in that room, and I've been in it so many times through the last ten years.

When we got home, it was almost 5 pm, so we decided to have an early dinner before going to the haunted house. We first tried BJ's, but there was absolutely no parking within half a mile (probably because the CU game at Oklahoma State had just started), so we went to Murphy's in Louisville, which was quiet and peaceful (even though they too were showing the CU game on big screens). 

On the way there, for some reason Rocket Boy started reminiscing about the time we held the twins' birthday party at our rental house (which wasn't being rented at the time -- we were still trying to dry out the floors after the 2013 flood). My guess was that it was in 2015, and I looked at my blog and sure enough, that was right. They were seven years old that March. So I started reading the blog post about the party. At the end of the post I wrote this:

It frightens me to look ahead -- how will we be coping seven years from now, ten years from now, fourteen years from now, etc. When I'm in a worried mood I think about how old I'll be then, how fat. How confused Rocket Boy will be. How little money we'll have. Stuff like that. But what I try to remind myself is that people survive all kinds of awful things and we will probably survive the twins' adolescence too.

Reading that made me laugh! Yes, I am old, but I am less fat, not more, due to Mounjaro -- didn't see that one coming, back in 2015. Rocket Boy is no more confused than he was 11 and a half years ago (when I apparently thought he was developing Alzheimer's). He's still really smart, and now, at age 72, he has a good job. And thus we have far more money than we had in 2015 when we were living off my part-time teaching. When he eventually retires, we will probably still be OK, because he didn't take social security until he turned 70 and I'm expecting to wait until at least 67 (full retirement age for me) and we haven't even touched our TSP funds yet. And the twins? We have so far survived their adolescence (supposedly it ends at age 19, lol), they are both adults, they both have driver's licenses, they are both registered to vote, and they are both in college.

Of course, things don't always turn out for the best. But worrying about stuff is pointless, because You Just Don't Know how things will turn out. You have to wait for time to pass and deal with whatever happens then. I know I was worried about the kids back in 2015 because they didn't seem quite "normal," but neither of them had a diagnosis yet. Kid B, for example, spent most of the birthday party wrapped in a sleeping bag. I knew that wasn't "normal." And maybe my concerns helped push us to get their diagnoses. But still. I think there's a difference between noticing a problem and doing something about it -- and just worrying worrying worrying about things like how fat am I going to be in ten years.

I do know that as time goes on we're going to get older and more frail (falling down in haunted houses, hmm?) and sicker and eventually we'll die. But yeah, it happens to everyone and I don't think it's worth worrying about, seriously. You can make plans for it, or try to, but worry? What's the point?

Just some thoughts on mortality, as we approach All Hallows' Eve. 

And now for the last week of October! My book group comes tomorrow, I'll probably go to the concert on Tuesday plus physical therapy, I'll help Teen A take his car back to the shop on Friday to have the brakes fixed, and there's a Zoom call with my old Michigan friends on Saturday morning. Teen B told us we probably won't see him next weekend because he wants to be in Fort Collins for Halloween! I thought that was lovely. Teen A will probably be out with friends, so Rocket Boy and I will stay home and watch a movie or something, while waiting for trick-or-treaters to knock on our door. Should be fun. See you in November.

October is a busy month

Yes, October is SUCH a busy month, especially when you take advantage of all the fun things to do. We had some cold, rainy days this week, and I appreciated the chance to sit around reading and just chilling out. Wednesday night it got very cold, so we put our comforter on the bed, and oh, I slept so well that night, cold air and warm blankets. But on Thursday night (so cold that we covered my flowers and brought the basil inside), Rocket Boy turned on the furnace. We haven't gotten a new filter or anything, and I woke up on Friday with terrible sinus issues, plus very sweaty. So I turned the furnace off. Later, Rocket Boy turned it back on. Last night, I turned it DOWN (but not off).

It's that time of year: furnace on, furnace off, comforter on, comforter off. When it gets truly cold I'll appreciate having both the furnace and the comforter, but until then, we argue.

This week I cooked recipes from Moosewood Restaurant's Simple Suppers: Fresh Ideas for the Weeknight Table, which I got at the Bookworm some years back. It's not my favorite cookbook, but the recipes tend to be easy, so I find myself going back to it from time to time. On Monday I made Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea Soup with Cranberry Chutney, both of which I thought were very good, especially the next day. On Wednesday I made Two Potato Gratin (with white and sweet potatoes), plus broccoli, and on Thursday I fixed brussels sprouts to go with the leftover gratin. I love brussels sprouts -- Rocket Boy doesn't, really, but these were so tender, and I made a sauce out of butter and Dijon mustard that was so delicious, that we ate all 34 of them (except for six that RB set aside to take to work for his lunch the next day). And then on Friday I made Tortilla Melts, which involved portabella mushrooms, red onion, cream cheese, pesto, tomato slices, and provolone cheese -- they sound complicated, but they really weren't. 

And I made brownies. I think on Thursday.

A few times this week I caught myself thinking that I'm actually enjoying cooking dinner these days. I think it's because I'm only doing it three times a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays (and Saturdays and Sundays) I do not have to think about dinner. That really helps.

This week I'm going back to the NY Times cooking section, and I am going to make recipes that involve walnuts and figs. That sounded fall-like. We'll see how it goes.

I went to the Faculty Concert again on Tuesday, but this time I didn't get as much out of it. I think part of the problem was that I had physical therapy that day and I was sore and tired from it. PT is a workout! Also, I guess I hadn't slept well the night before. Anyway, I actually FELL ASLEEP during the concert. It was called "A Trio of Trios," three piano trios played by a violinist, a cellist, and a pianist. The first two were good, but the third one, after the intermission, was the Brahms Trio No. 2 in C Major, Opus 87, and although the cellist really talked it up, what a wonderful piece it was, I found it boring and fell asleep. I'm not sure I have ever done that. Of course, I woke up quickly, but how embarrassing. Channeling my poor mother, who fell asleep in everything.

This coming week, the concert is guitar music, so I think I have a better chance of staying awake. We shall see.

I managed to write, I think three days this week, which is not as many as I had hoped for, but it's not bad. I'm trying to work the new mystery I came up with into the old draft, and that's harder than it sounds, but I'm trying. I've made it through the first seven chapters so far, and I will try to work on Chapter 8 tomorrow. There are still some chapters that aren't even drafted -- maybe I'll get to some of those this week. 

Yesterday, Saturday, there was another No Kings protest downtown, the first since I think March? It's been a long time. And I wasn't really into it, but at the same time, how could I not go? I didn't have any good ideas for a sign, so I just used my old one ("Cats Against Trump") and it got a few laughs. Rocket Boy was much more ambitious and made two signs having to do with voting. That's what I should have done. It was really a pro-voting event, and lots of people's signs referenced voting. (By the way, I did manage to get Teen A to vote this week, so we're all done.)

Teen B arrived from Fort Collins about an hour before the protest was supposed to start at 12, and we tried to get him to go with us, but nuh uh, he wasn't having any of that. He pointed out that Teen A (and his girlfriend) were still sound asleep in the twins' bedroom. We dropped the subject. He wanted me to take him to Starbucks, but there wasn't really time. I did, however, treat and wash his hoodie -- he'd had a nosebleed on the bus and bled all over it. "And I just washed it!" he complained. It did look very clean, except for the blood. I showed him how to treat stains, and offered him an extra bottle of stain remover, but he said no, that was too complicated. Baby steps. 

It was a beautiful warm day, in the 70s, and we stood near the bus stop near Broadway & Canyon and waved our signs. Lots of people honked. It wasn't a huge crowd -- actually, I have no idea how big the crowd was. We got there late and just found a place to stand and stayed there. Later, I guess a portion of the crowd marched over to a polling place, but we didn't notice them leaving, so we stayed. 

At 2 pm we were hot and tired, so we packed it in and walked back to our car. We'd parked at Boulder High -- they charge on Saturdays because of the Farmer's Market across the street, and I gave them $10 instead of the required $5, because it supports something at the school, sports or music or whatever. But as we were walking back afterwards, I noticed a mentally ill woman screaming. We tried to avoid her, but she kept coming closer. RB stopped to buy some pretzels at the Farmer's Market, and I saw the woman kicking a sign. If she comes after us, I'll hit her with my sign, I planned. It seemed so ridiculous to be dealing with someone like that on a beautiful sunny day with normal people all over doing normal things. Where are the police when you need them? But maybe they wouldn't have done anything. 

Anyway, we managed to get back to our car without directly engaging with her -- at one point she just seemed to vanish -- so I didn't have to hit anybody with my sign.

I took Teen B to Starbucks when we got home, and then we just hung out for a few hours, not doing anything, just being together. 

At six, we decided to have dinner at Red Robin, so we dragged Teen A away from his video game and he drove us there. Teen B had to catch his bus back to Fort Collins at 8:10, so we were in a bit of a hurry. Red Robin was crowded and slow, but once our meals came, we all ate quickly, except Rocket Boy, who is the slowest eater I know, but he obligingly scooped up half his meal into one of our take-out containers (we always bring our own and reuse them), and we made it home by 7:40. 

There was a CU football game starting at 8:15, so I took Teen B to a different bus stop, not the one on campus. The stop was close to Target, so after letting Teen B off (and driving around the block a few times to be sure he got on the bus), I decided to go there and look for Halloween things (that I had meant to look for a few weeks ago). They didn't have anything I wanted, but I got a card and some candy, and wandered the store happily, completely forgetting that Rocket Boy at home would be worrying. 

He is often very late coming home from things, and I feel as though I have spent half our marriage worrying about him because he's late, so it seemed fair. But he really was worried. He thought Teen B had missed his bus and I was driving him to Fort Collins. No, just wandering the aisles of Target.

After I finally got home, we watched the last episode of "Widow's Bay," which we've been working our way through for a couple of weeks now. We both found the last episode a bit underwhelming. My verdict on the show: the second episode, in the haunted inn, was REALLY scary, but the rest of them, maybe not so much. There were good bits here and there, but I think the problem with the show, for me, is that it's in the "horror" genre, and I prefer the "ghost story" genre. Sometimes I think most people don't even understand the difference, and that includes writers and filmmakers.

Well, so, that was our week, or whatever I can remember of it. This coming week, as I said, there is a guitar concert and I will try to cook recipes with walnuts and figs. Rocket Boy is kind of messing up my plans by deciding to make onion soup tonight, but I must not fuss about that, because it is NICE to have him cook. He hardly ever cooks anymore, too tired. I will work out the rest of the meals. It will be fine.

The main thing I need to do this week is clean the house, because the book group is coming a week from tomorrow. So that will be my project. I got the Halloween cards mailed today (the few that I still send -- I remember the days when I'd send out at least 20), and the house is pretty well decorated. I can't say I'm looking forward to cleaning the house, but it will be OK. And now I must go for my walk. Happy second half of October! 

Spookiness continues

I am having fun with October, although some days are easier/harder than others. I'm still having some trouble going for walks, with a lot of pain by the end and even somewhat at the beginning of the walk. But, fortunately, I had my first physical therapy appointment this week. I got the referral on Tuesday, called the recommended PT place on Wednesday, and they had a cancellation for Thursday afternoon, so I said what the heck, and took the spot. 

They are in the same building as my old orthodontist, very close to where we live, so very convenient. (I could walk there if it didn't hurt so much.) After working with me for a while, the therapist decided that I should come once a week for 8 weeks, and we made all the future appointments right then. I will see her some of the time and another therapist the rest of the time.

She gave me exercises to do at home and I've done them three times (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). And my hips ache terribly. But it's for a good cause. I was remembering my Uncle Bob's memoir, "Now We Ex-er-CIZE," about how he needed to do exercises after back surgery but didn't want to because they were so painful, and how a woman he helped with her English got him to do the exercises and thus he learned to walk again. I'm not in such bad shape, and my exercises aren't so painful -- but they aren't fun, either! "Now we ex-er-CIZE," I say to myself, lifting my legs and balancing on one leg and all that. It's coming along.

Cooking went reasonably well this week. On Monday I made black bean veggie enchiladas, a new recipe that included a new recipe for the sauce. I usually buy a can of pre-made enchilada sauce, and it's horrible. Making my own was a revelation. It was very easy and I will absolutely do that from now on. On Wednesday I made another new recipe, a sort of macaroni & cheese, only the sauce had a can of pumpkin in it, and the macaroni was cooked with a bag of chopped up kale. Healthy-ish, in other words. I didn't like it very much, and the refrigerator is still full of the leftovers. On Friday we had pizza grilled cheese sandwiches and those are always good.

For baking this week, on Tuesday I made Trader Joe's pumpkin bread, which is always good, and on Thursday I made oatmeal raisin cookies. We still have plenty, so I don't know if I will bake this week (or we could just eat candy). We'll see.

The election is taking up a lot of our mental energy, of course. Rocket Boy is heavily involved in getting people to walk the streets and get out the vote. The first step is to leave little flyers on people's front porches that just urge them to vote. Later on, the volunteers will actually knock on the doors of people who haven't voted yet, nagging them. Our house is full of voting stuff. 

Yesterday I pulled myself together and actually filled out my ballot, all four pages of it. It's just crazy this year. Some of it was easy -- Senate, House, governor -- just fill in the oval by the name that says "Democratic." All the Boulder County races didn't even have a Republican candidate. 

Then there were the 13 judges. In Colorado you have to vote on whether judges should be reappointed. I went to the website where you can look up how the judges were evaluated this year. All 13 of them were given high recommendations (this is not always the case), so I voted to reappoint all of them.

But then came City Council, and the Mayor. Those elections used to be in odd years, but a while back we voted to combine them with the main elections in even years. Big mistake, in my opinion. There are six people running for mayor. Two are clearly insane (based on the autobiographical statements they submitted), and one is a CU student. So, really there are three candidates. I voted for two of them (it's ranked choice voting). There are 13 people running for five seats on City Council. In a lot of ways it was eeny meeny miney mo, but I filled in five ovals. 

Around the time I finished (and let's not even get into all the proposed constitutional amendments and the ballot propositions for state, county, city, and region), Teen B showed up. We went to Starbucks, of course, and then we sat down to work on his ballot. First he asked me if I could fill it out for him (No). Then he asked if he could just copy my ballot (No). I made him sit there while I presented all the pros and cons of everything (as I understand them). It took a long time.

I still have to get Teen A to fill out his. 

But three of us have our ballots finished, and we can drop off Teen B's and Rocket Boy's this week (I'll keep mine until I get Teen A to do his, so I can refer to it). And once we finished Teen B's ballot, we put up a lot of Halloween decorations, so that was fun. Teen B rummaged through the Halloween boxes, looking for things that might enliven his dorm room. "Take anything you like," I urged him, but in the end he only took a little stuffed pumpkin (not the ones in the picture). What he wanted was a string of Halloween lights. I'm going to see if I can't buy one for him this week and mail it to him.

Now I need to finish this up, because Rocket Boy and I are going to Longmont to a concert at 4 pm. Our next-door neighbor/tenant offered us free tickets, so we thought that would be fun. I also went to the CU Faculty Tuesday concert this week. It was billed as "French Chamber Music," so I was expecting a lot of tiresome violins, but there weren't any. Piano (including one piece for two pianos), clarinet, French horn, and a vocalist who ended the show with a gorgeous rendition of "La vie en rose." I enjoyed it all, but especially the clarinet & piano, let's see, "Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano" by Pierre Gabaye, kind of a modern piece. The clarinet was wonderful.

This coming week, all I have on the agenda is another Tuesday concert and my physical therapy appointment, also on Tuesday. But we have lots of things planned for the coming weekends. Next Saturday there is finally another "No Kings" protest downtown, so we will go to that. The following Saturday, the 24th, Teen B and I (and maybe Teen A) will participate in the ABCD study for the 9th or 10th time, something like that, and in the evening Teen B and I plan to go to the Haunted House at Boulder High. And the following Saturday of course is Halloween. Should continue to be a fun month. 

October begins!

Yes! It is October and the spooky season is here. The leaves are changing color like mad, and thank goodness my knee has heeled enough that I can start taking walks again so I can see the beautiful trees in our neighborhood. The color is subdued, compared to previous years -- some trees are just going from green to brown -- but some trees and bushes are still pretty. I also can't take very long walks yet, but I worked on it this week and managed to take one walk that was .85 mile. It will be a big deal when I can get to one full mile again, and then 1.5 miles and so on. I see the orthopedics person again on Tuesday.

I took last week's list seriously this week, and started in on several of my planned activities (including, of course, taking walks). For fall cooking, I made sweet potato black bean chili on Wednesday (there's still some in the fridge) and that was quite delicious. On Friday I made caramelized onion, apple, and goat cheese melts, and those were less successful. But I tried -- sweet potato and apple dishes, yum. I also made an apple cake with raisins and nuts (see photo) and molasses sugar cookies (I overbaked them and they're too crisp, but still delicious). 

This coming week, after we finish the apple cake, I think I will make Trader Joe's pumpkin bread (I got a box of the mix). And Rocket Boy requested the pesto pizza grilled cheese sandwiches for Friday, no more goat cheese. But I have to think of something for Monday and Wednesday. I'm getting into the rhythm of making two sizable meals each week, which provide leftovers the next day, and then something simple (like melts) on Fridays. Can I say it -- cooking is getting a little less onerous.

Last week I didn't cook on Monday because it was book group night (Rocket Boy fixed salmon for himself and Teen A). We read Dona Flor and her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado and Lecia made some Brazilian treats to go with it. On Tuesday I went to the Faculty Tuesday concert at CU and it was very interesting -- percussion pieces by the new CU percussion specialist. You can't see it very well in the picture, but the stage was covered with marimbas, plus some drums. My favorite piece was the first one, "Itsuki Fantasy for Six Mallets" by Keiko Abe, which was played on a marimba that looked different from the others (over on the right, he explained it but I forget what was special about it). Watching someone hold six mallets in two hands and play beautiful music was kind of amazing. The next piece was "Prim" by Askell Masson and it was played entirely on the snare drum. Just this one guy, playing the snare drum. I find percussion instruments and music fascinating.

Next week it's going to be French chamber music, which definitely doesn't sound that interesting, but I will be there!

Of course, I also started my spooky reading this week. I have 16 books set aside for this purpose. Some are just mysteries, some are thrillers, some are actual ghost stories. Some are library books, some are from the Bookworm, some I've been collecting from here and there, and I had to order a few from Amazon. I've already read one and am deep into a second. I keep reminding myself that this month's reading is supposed to be FUN, I must not hurry along and try to read 16 books as fast as I can, I must take my time and ENJOY what I'm reading. 

I'm trying to start out with less scary books, but right now I'm reading James Ellroy's My Dark Places, which is kind of a memoir, and reading part 3 before bed last night meant that I couldn't fall asleep. That's the trouble with spooky books, although it's also what makes them fun.

I also signed us up for a month of Apple+ TV, so that I can watch the spooky new show, "Widow's Bay." We watched the first episode last night and hmm. It was OK. I don't think Rocket Boy was impressed. I didn't watch it tonight, but I might watch another episode tomorrow. I have four weeks to watch 10 episodes, so it's fine. 

I did buy a new vacuum cleaner, a Tineco Pet vacuum (there was more to the name than that, but I forget). I didn't take a picture of it. I bought it on Thursday, at Walmart, and on Friday I took it out of the box and turned it on, thinking it wouldn't come on because I'd need to charge it first, but it came on, so I did a little vacuuming. And it's so lightweight and easy to use, that I went on vacuuming for quite a while. This is definitely not a top of the line vacuum, but I think all vacuums are better than they used to be. I just vacuumed and vacuumed, picking up cat hair and kitty litter and spider webs and general dirt, and it was so wonderful. So I'm going to try to do a little vacuuming every weekday until I get the house back into better shape.

And I did some writing, but not very much, because I was spending so much time launching my other plans. So this week I hope to delve into the November novel more seriously. I think I've got the mystery figured out, at least enough to go on working, and I've got the organization straightened out, at least somewhat. We shall see how this week goes.

I realized that I totally forgot what October ALSO means -- the run-up to Election Day. So Rocket Boy is busy calling people to get them to help with "get out the vote" and we all got emails saying our ballots had been mailed. They should arrive sometime this week. Teen B got the message on Saturday, asked if his ballot had arrived yet, I said no, it was just mailed yesterday, and then he asked me if I could vote for him. NO, I said, that's illegal. I'm sure you'll be down here sometime between now and Election Day, probably multiple times, and we can fill it out then. 

Our ballots will be terribly complicated this year -- the election information guide that they send out has been described as similar to a phonebook in size. It's because Republicans can't win state offices in Colorado anymore, so instead they get propositions on the ballot to make our constitution more conservative. There are supposedly 11 propositions (out of 14) on the ballot from conservative organizations. Our dear next-door neighbor put a sign in her yard encouraging people to vote for the three anti-trans ones.

Sigh. We considered getting a counter-sign that would tell people NOT to vote for those propositions, but instead I just hung up our Pride flag again (it had fallen down) and put up our generic "Vote" sign. I don't think she realizes that our new tenants to the west of us are both trans.

Probably the goofiest thing that happened this week had to do with Teen A. I had been bugging Rocket Boy to look at his bank account for months (he has access to it, I don't, but I have access to Teen B's). We finally did, when he was out somewhere, and oh my. He has spent almost all of his $14,000 or whatever it was, his social security money, his graduation money, his recent refund from Metro, everything. Actually, it's not quite as bad as we first thought -- we thought he only had about $150 left, but he actually has about $600. So he'll be OK for another month or two. But what then? 

We realized that we really hadn't thought through whether we should give him any sort of an allowance in college. He needs gas money, because he's driving back and forth to Denver four times a week. That's a round trip of at least 54 miles, depending on the route he takes. Gas is now about $4.50/gallon. I'm not sure what kind of mileage the Prius V gets. I should probably calculate a reasonable amount to give him for gas (this could even come out of the college funds). 

But what about just running around money? He likes to go out to eat, in fact, he gets himself some kind of meal or snack almost every day. Is that something I should be paying for? Teen B, up in Fort Collins, is on a meal plan where he gets two "swipes" a day, two meals or snacks (we started out at three a day, but he said we should go down to two because he'll never eat three meals a day). He also has "ram cash" for extras, but I don't think he typically spends any of it. Teen A, of course, is living at home, so he could just eat at home, but he often disapproves of what I cook. It's very difficult to compare the two kids and very difficult to figure out what would be the right thing to do. I have been puzzling over this ever since we found out about Teen A's money.

Rocket Boy and I went to Denver to the Colorado History Museum (aka History Colorado) this afternoon, to see an exhibit of American history called "Moments That Made Us." It consisted of 50 artifacts of American history and explanatory pictures and text. It was very interesting, but also incredibly depressing, made even more so by the sad music that was playing in the background. Rocket Boy and I both kept thinking about how much DJT would hate the exhibit, because for every great thing described, it would also explain about how that great thing was damaging (or at least not helpful) to Black people, or Indians, or whoever. I didn't learn anything new, really -- maybe a little -- but our history is just so sad, in so many ways. We need to do better (not brush everything bad under the rug, as DJT would prefer to do).

The cats are still driving us crazy, with Baby Kitty's asthma getting worse (he sees the vet this week) and Sillers peeing on everything. Every morning I sniff the bedding (because she likes to climb up and sleep between us, after we fall asleep, and sometimes she pees). If it smells bad, I strip the bed as far down as I need to, and wash everything. If not, I just make the bed. Then I cover it with pee pads, and when I sit down on the bed to read, the cats join me, cuddled up together on a disposable pee bad (which is on top of a reusable pee pad. It's so annoying, and at the same time so stinking cute. I keep taking pictures of them. So darling. And so impossible. 

OK, here comes the first full week of October. Hope it's a good one!