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...