LV: Water Damage / Running

October ran over me like a truck. November finds me still under its wheels.

I suppose I could have found time to check in here in the past month. as it is, my last post is more recent than I thought it was, so at least Thanksgiving is covered. We had a whole other Thanksgiving at mom's (she made a prime rib). There wasn't much to that, though. 

The following weekend was the much-anticipated Bark and the Moon Howl-O-Ween Market. We had had our plan in place to go as the Scooby Gang. Originally I had pitched myself as Shaggy and Mel as Velma, but we couldn't find anything sufficiently Velma-ish in her size at Value Village and she had her "Shaggy" costume (brown pants, green top) ready to go. So I went as Fred, finding a grayish/off-white v-neck (Mel: "Hmm, is that white enough?" Scott: "I knew you were gonna say that!") and buying an orange shirt from Michael's to cut into an ascot (although it wound up way smaller than I thought.) Basti was to be a ghost, so we just needed to cut some felt out in the shape of ghost eyes and mouth and glue them onto a white tee shirt. Hank as Scooby was a bit trickier. The only appropriate brown shirt I could find was huuuge, but Mel expertly cut out Scooby patterns in the black felt. We left it half-done on Saturday, meaning I had to rush to finish it off -- with a teal "collar" around the neck of the t-shirt, and a yellow bristol board (NOT construction paper, per Mel's directive) tag. It was honestly a HUGE success and we got a ton of heads turned. Unfortunately, we were not named the winners of the family costume contest, we lost to "clowns," because I guess their store-bought costumes and make-up were a bit more... whatever. I guess it's not about the effort, it's about the result and they were... ok. I'm only a bit salty about it.

Anyway, that was that. The following weekend was of course Halloween, on Saturday, which gave us another chance to put on the costumes. We sat outside, because we figured the frequent disruptions would upset the dogs if we were trying to hang out inside. That turned out to be a good call, because we ended up getting a whopping thirty-seven kids, largely in groups of three to five. Last year we got 16. I had only made grab bags for about 25, but luckily, being my mother's son, I overbought, so the last few got handfuls of loose candy. I also was carving the jack-o-lantern up to about 5 PM.

We weren't the only ones sitting outside, and our across-the-street neighbors Dave & Dave's Wife were out in their garage, with Dave dressed as Pennywise, and his wife dressed as the wife of a guy dressed as Pennywise. Our next-door neighbor was also sitting in her alcove, probably for the same reason we were. Lots of oohs and ahs from the kids over Hank and Basti's costumes. There wasn't really a trend I noticed, other than "Coat over costume."

After all the stuff we had done through the month, we took a sick day on Sunday from going to my dad's for Eric's birthday and stayed home to clean. The week was the week, and I've been writing in between lots of running around. 

Wednesday, we were invited out to the Keg with Mom for another Eric Birthday. Mel was in the city for a dinner with her co-workers, so I went alone. It was a'ight. I went home and waited to hear from Mel, as she had gotten into a good conversation at stayed a bit late (although, as always seems to happen, she was let down by the food. this after over-microwaving her fish for lunch.) Then something happened to her on the train that I won't divulge, but really fucked us up for the rest of the week. She's physically unharmed, but it's something that, mentally, just wasn't good. It's something that fucked with her head and her anxiety and just left a lingering feeling of unease. And I cursed the bad luck that she happened to be in the city and happened to stay late at that dinner, and happened to be on that train in that spot when it went down.

This left her feeling unwell and not keen to get back on the train soon after, which sucked because we had tickets to a musical, Operation Mincemeat, the following Saturday. I was willing to just cancel the whole thing -- the tickets were paid for by her old job's Do What You Love credit -- but she didn't want it to go to waste. So we did what we did last time, when we wanted to go but the trains happened not to be running. We drove out to Kipling Station and rode the subway downtown. This caused us to have to get an early start and eat a relatively quick breakfast, which led to a bit of a scramble as I tried to secure Bastian behind the makeshift wall of tubs and boxes (soon to purchase: a playpen I can leave up) but between all of that, we got to the theatre in time for a quick bathroom break before the show. (Wasn't able to get snacks until intermission, although I probably could have taken the initiative while waiting for her.)

The show was a lot of fun. We went in cold, not really knowing anything about it other than that it was supposed to be funny. I always say, I've never had a bad time in the theatre, even if some shows are better than others. This one had a great madcap energy and strong performances as actors took on different roles, particularly crossplaying gents and ladies. And we learned a bit about history! I didn't really come out singing the songs, though.

We didn't really have a plan for dinner, though. Our overall ideas was to go home and order Chinese, but without much of a lunch we figured it would probably be a while before we were able to eat that, so we just went to the Elephant and Castle down the street for an early dinner. Hey, British show, British food. We had steak and mushroom pie, which was pretty good, I considered it well seasoned, Mel didn't always like how chewy some of the meat was but overall we had a good time. We went home, released the boys, and pretty much flopped.

Over dinner, we had a conversation about a book she was reading, about roles in marriage, about how women are so often expected to carry so much of the household load even when they are high earners, and just kind of went like, "Yeah, thankfully we're not like that." I mean, am I perfect, or even really on top of everything here? No, not at all, but I try to keep things stapled together while she contributes, even when I am working, the lion's share of income. I mean, it's the least I can do, since I don't even aspire to make as much money as she does. It made my efforts feel seen and appreciated, which I don't always, at all times of the day and week. But it's because of me that we can have two dogs (or even one dog) and food in the fridge and clean clothes to wear. So the house is cluttery and the floors have almost never been cleaned. We're all doing our best.

Sunday was relatively lazy, after a bit of breakie, mostly just watching Daredevil, and Mel doing some work. We also called Nonna and took the dogs for a walk together.

I've got some runaround to do today, so who knows what else might get done, if anything. Hank is currently having his semi-usual freakout session, so I might have to look into that soon. and that takes us to the present.

Ta, and keep on rockin

-SAW

Addendum Nov 10: I forgot to mention amidst all of this, we also went to a wedding, which was another chaotic thing because in addition to mending Mel's dress, I had to figure out what I was going to wear. I had intended to wear my gray suit, end of story, but Mel determined it was too summery -- it's a light gray, you see. Mel was a bit miffed that we were having this problem the week of, and not that I blame her but I really thought it was fine. All my other options were either similarly out of season or ones I had outgrown. But, I always have my trusty black jacket. So I went and found some dark pants to pair it with, and voila, I have a dark suit. I did, however, also need to buy some appropriate footwear, which caused Mel to balk when she saw that a decent pair of shoes costs upward of $100, not a disagreement I was happy to have the morning of the wedding when there was no time to do anything else. In the end, we made peace and I wore the shoes and life went on. 

The wedding... well that was a bunch of other stuff. Had fun with our friends, except for the part where they were all enthusiastically gabbing about which AI clients they like. The long ceremony left us hungry, partly our own fault for not eating any kind of lunch, and the passarounds didn't really make it to us (they only went yea-far into the room before the trays were picked clean. Makes me glad we did antipasto for ours.) We danced much and got home late to rowdy dogs. It was... a time. 

Just wanted to get that on the page. That's all.

KOR-SAW