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.