The dark times are upon us! At least it is lighter in the morning but of course, my internal clock is messed up. On Sunday I woke at 4 and today, I woke around 4:40. For the most part, I don’t mind. It’s when I am asleep by 9 that is the problem.

Anyway, the weekend. I tried to leave school by about 3:05 but since it had been Halloween and all, there was just other stuff to tie up, so it was close to 3:15. Below, the costumes my fellow English teachers and I wore; we are all from Shakespeare.

Went home with the intention of making something to eat, knowing Ash had already eaten lunch. Elliot was with his girlfriend, Isaac was working, so it was just Dakota home. Ended up picking up Chipotle and Ash and I watched Poltergeist and a Charles Bronson Western called Noon Til Three. It was a nice relaxing evening and I was happy after the two weeks before, that felt like they had been kind of rough!

The next day was reserved for house cleaning. Well, we did some, but I swear there is always something else needs to be tended to! I even went up into storage to put a box away and look for Ash’s old Captain America costume. Hit up the grocery store but we mostly just made sandwiches. I also bottled my beautyberry wine. Got more from that one gallon than I expected! It has to mellow for a couple months so we’ll see how it turns out. It was a true experiment.

The boys had Halloween plans and Dakota did too, though she stayed in the neighborhood. We killed time until about 3:30 because we had a party at 4. I took no photos, if you can believe it. These days, I am finding myself trying to just live in the moment. OK, I lied; I took one picture:

It was a fun event, even though I kind of, last minute, didn’t want to go. We canceled on our other friend because it was warm and humid out and Ash didn’t want to sit outside. We compromised and said we’d only go for about 2 hours. In the end, that kind of worked out. Another couple and their daughters arrived right after us and after introducing themselves, we ended up talking to them for a while. Then when they were going to leave, we saw that as an opportunity to bail. Went home and watched…something, though I was tired and don’t remember what!

As noted, I woke super early on Sunday, but that was nice. I wrote a little, listened to music, then got out to do my run. It was gray and misty out but didn’t make for an awful run. There was a cool breeze but the humidity was high and made for a sweaty workout. But it was done and I was happier for it. I almost always cook a lot on the weekends but something about my feelings on Sunday were entirely anti-cooking. I wanted someone to cook for ME! We agreed to get pizza because, if we’re being honest, we really do not eat it often anymore. But I only wanted to get Momo’s because it’s actually good. In fact, we ordered the 30 inch, which comes in a box so big it doesn’t fit through normal doors. I had to bring it in through the sliding glass door! Oh, but before that, we went out to work on the big root we unearthed when we dug for our firepit. It’s still hanging in there and while we did make a good bit of progress with the chainsaw and a pry bar, it is still a thing we need to work on!

We mostly just watched football in the afternoon. I took Dakota and her friends up to the church for Trunk or Treat. Because they do the youth group there, they had to get there early to set up the bus decorations. (They use one of their church buses as an extra “room” for walking through to get candy.) I am struggling to remember what else we did…oh, Elliot’s girlfriend was over and that huge pizza was enough to feed all of us, her, and still have 4 huge slices left. I think we call that value! Due to the early rising, I was asleep on the couch by probably 9:30.

This morning, I am thinking about a million things: put away Halloween decor, cut some overgrowth, go to the grocery store, do I want to make chili?, I am sad, I don’t know why, will I win at least ONE fantasy football league?, I hope Elliot takes me up on my offer to go with me to vote tomorrow, what the heck am I doing in 5th period?, I need to take this nail polish off, and I should make a list! That was my stream of consciousness spew; and there you have it!