Hell is Other People

Apparently the scariest thing this year is the rainfall warning. Montreal actually postponed Halloween until Friday. Postponed. Halloween. A couple of people floated that in Ottawa, and while I thought it was not the best idea, I found the vitriol of the responses a little depressing.

I have trick or treated, and accompanied my kids trick-or-treating, in pretty much all weather. I grew up in Northern Ontario where costumed were always made big enough to go over a snowsuit. Sometimes it rains. Occasionally it's been crazy warm and we could walk around in costumes with no jackets. Once in Ottawa Eve and I went to a party in Greek goddess costumes and had to clean snow off the car when we got home.

And honestly, I think pouring rain is the worst. I feel bad for the kids and parents trudging around out there tonight. I was putting candy in one kid's pillow case and it was soaking wet and felt very unpleasant. I don't think postponing it would fix everything since it's supposed to rain and/or snow tomorrow too and something would just be lost in doing it a day late, but I'm not going to take some poor mom's head off just for suggesting it.

My husband has been travelling an even crazier amount the past few months, and Eve is in grade eleven with a bunch of science courses, so our time for Halloween decorating was minimal. I have carpal tunnel and weak hands and Eve is the good pumpkin designer and had three unit tests this week, but I managed to hollow one giant-ass pumpkin out last night and she carved it tonight just in time to plunk outside minutes in advance of the first trick-or-treater.

We did to go a Halloween party on Saturday. I was a sexy devil:

Just kidding, I was a devilled egg.

Suzie was a "this is your brain on drugs" ad, for those of a certain age who remember that. She's even more of an introvert than I am, so I entice her to come to the party by making us couples costumes.

Eve was Violet Beauregard from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I feel like the real highlight of the Halloween season was our Epic Pumpkin Patch Photo-Shoot:

When I was a teen-ager, we would do goofy poses and call them Sears Catalogue photos.

These kids have never seen a Sears Catalogue, but I feel like they've nailed it pretty well anyway.

It's really sad how I don't have kids that want to get pumpkins and paint them anymore.

Of course, there are fewer butterflies and kitty pumpkins, and more Joker, Youtuber and thong pumpkins. I'm okay with that.

These kids came over to hand out candy tonight. They talked all the way through a really good horror movie, and now they are watching in riveted silence something called Deadly Detention. I honest-to-god just heard a line of dialogue that went "All he wanted was to die hot - and he looks awful".

So there we go. It's 8:30, we have a buttload of candy left, and now we can all stop panicking about Halloween and start panicking about Christmas.

Adjustments

I was feeling especially fed-up with the sleep stuff, and a little aggrieved with the position my doctor has been taking. The thinking is that sleep aids don't go well with sleep apnea, because the last thing you want when you're having breathing stoppages is something that depresses your breathing even further. Which yeah, fair enough, thanks for not wanting my brain further deprived of oxygen, all to the good. The thing is, though, if I can't fall asleep or if I wake up after three hours, I end up taking off my mask, because the only thing more miserable than lying awake for hours is lying awake for hours with something affixed to your face. Eventually I get a few disturbed, gaspy hours, and it all ends up in SEVERE CRANKINESS.

So I decided to try an over-the-counter option and took Gravol for a few nights, and managed to sleep through with the machine working. I don't do it every night, but it's nice to have the option. 

I did realize that I've been working and walking pretty steadily since the beginning of September and my feet are still fairly functional. Considering that last year at this time I was just starting to feel the bone spur that made every step for eight months varying degrees of agony, this is a really nice thing that I should take a moment to feel grateful for. I bought a mid-range foot massager and I do stretches fairly religiously, and I have the good, close-by chiropodist as back-up. So maybe my stupid ill-made discount trash-ass feet will carry the rest of me around for a little longer after all. 

I have developed a small, fairly obvious kitchen hack that has made me very happy. Usually when baking cookies or biscuits or scones I want to make more than one batch. Trying to double a recipe, though, means I usually overload my mixer bowl, resulting in batter slopping over onto the counter and things getting unwieldy and stressful. Making one recipe after another seems cumbersome and makes me resentful, I want to just MAKE BISCUITS, not MAKE BISCUITS MULTIPLE TIMES when there are turgid medical dramas that aren't going to watch themselves, you know? My solution has usually been to make a one-and-a-half recipe instead, but I'm sure if you think about me doing mental math on the fly you can see what frequently goes wrong with this type of operation.

So the first time I made pumpkin scones this fall, I just got out double the bowls and measured everything out for a double batch at the same time but in different bowls. Then I combined the first two bowls, rolled out and baked, combined the next two bowls, rolled and baked and it felt easy and efficient and I put in the right amount of eggs AND baking soda. I wonder if Nicole (HI NICOLE) the Super Boss Baker already does this. Nicole, do you do this? Does everybody do this? I feel like everybody either already does this or will think it's insane, because I'm neurotic, BUT I'm also older and less insecure, so I don't actually care anymore, I feel like it's a genius solution for me. 

Finally -- pants. In addition to my many, many other issues, I have major sensory issues around clothing. The first time I put a turtleneck on little Angus and he made a choking noise, I knew beyond a doubt that he was my kid (not that I'd had any real doubts previously, but I was unconscious when he came out, so...) I stopped wearing jeans for years because they felt like they were strangling my waist. I started again when they started making them with stretch fabric, but I only buy them big enough so I can pull them on without undoing the zipper or buttons. This works if I get the size exactly right, so they're loose but not too loose, you know? Because I also don't like belts - what's the point if your pants don't strangle your waist but some piece of leather is digging into your flesh? 

Then I bought a new pair of jeans and wore them when we were visiting Angus at Elmira. I went down the hallway to get some ice, and on the way back to the room had a major wardrobe malfunction while both hands were holding the ice bucket. Fortunately the hallway was empty, but clearly things could not continue in this manner. 

I revisited the belt issue. I considered that it was possibly less that all belts were evil than that, perhaps, I had bought a belt at Army-Navy Surplus that wasn't quite long enough and didn't have enough holes in it but looked cool and then tried to make it work. 

So I bought a nice long belt with double holes punched all the way to the end. And I did it up just tight enough that my pants didn't fall down but the belt didn't dig into my back when I sat down. Much. 

Or maybe I'll just stick with leggings. There's a limit to how many tricks an old dog can learn. 

Surly Thursday Reboot

It's been a while since I did a Surly Thursday post, which would be great if it meant I was turning out a whole bunch of NON-Surly Thursday posts. Which I have not been.

SLEEP: I can't fucking sleep. I will be reading my book and my eyes will be literally closing, and I put the book down, put on my CPAP mask, turn off the light and ..... twitchy legs, too hot, too cold, need socks on, need socks off, ad infinitem. It is wretched. I am terrified to take anything before bed if I have a headache or any other kind of pain in case it makes the restless leg thing worse. I am taking magnesium and iron, which are supposed to help, but I suspect this may just be a case of peri-menopausitis, in which case let me reiterate, fuck perimenopause in its raggedy punk ass.

RAIN: It's been gross the last couple of days, which is not a big deal, I have an umbrella, but I swear to god, four drops of rain and everybody in this city loses the ability to not drive like an asshole. Four-way stop? Fairly straightforward, except if it's raining apparently all the normal rules cease to apply and we're all supposed to rock-paper-scissors it or something. Some entitled jackass parked on the side of the street blocking the crosswalk across from Eve's school waiting for his kid. When I tried to go around him to park on the side street where the non-entitled people go to wait for their kids, he honked at me. I think I nearly ruptured my throat yelling expletives at him.

GERMS: Generally I conceded that teachers have a way rougher job than I do - most kids like coming to the library and will behave just to not lose the privilege, and I get more variety. However, the teachers only hang out with one or two classes' worth of germs a day. I get ALL of them. Nothing like having a kid sneeze on a book just before handing it to you to check out. This makes me appreciate Hannah (HI HANNAH) all the more.

I'm reading an entry in a British mystery series that I follow lackadaisically. It takes place in Spilling in England. Along with Flushing, I have to ask - are these not terrible, terrible things to name a place? They make me just think everything there must be... damp. Every time the place is named in the book, I cringe.

Today I got to substitute in the library at the elementary school my kids attended. Some of their old teachers came in to say hi. I knew where everything went. It's four minutes from my house. It was wonderful. Wait, I've lost my surliness. Oh, actually they didn't have a proper time sheet so I had to use the wrong one and hope it would go through all right, and I probably won't get paid, which is BULLSHIT.

There. I feel better.

Look All Around, Nothing but Blue Sky

That is a picture of Zarah's daughter Sophie at Bluesfest, taken by Zarah who was napping on a blanket and wanted to take a picture of the blue sky. I don't really know what to blog about this week and I came across this picture.

We weren't crazy about the Bluesfest lineup this year - there was really no one that we were dying to see, but we were still fine going out to listen to music in the outside. Plus, since there was no one we were fanatical about, we could chill on chairs and blankets and not get beat up in the crowd. Plus, there is always the grilled cheese food truck.

This reminds me of another funny food story, which takes us all the way away from Bluesfest but whatever, I'll circle back around later. This was in August when Collette and I were going to our friends' cottage for the week-end. We were driving one of the owners because the other owner was picking up her son at work and coming a little later. The cottage is about two hours away, and there's a Wendy's an hour and a half away that we often stop at - their dog actually wakes up and looks around for french fries at that point in the drive.

So Collette and I went in and she ordered a bacon deluxe with no ketchup and I ordered a single with cheese, no tomato and onion. The young guy working at the counter was really nice, we both commented on it - when he put Collette's burger down she said "no ketchup, right?" and he said "you got it". We got back in the car and our friend was now driving so we could eat. 

Collette unwrapped her burger and said "oh for god's sake, did I not say no ketchup TWICE?" I said "yep. Wouldn't it be funny if my burger had tomato and onion on it?" and then I unwrapped it and SURE ENOUGH. And we huffed and puffed and expletived and demanded that the car be turned around so we could go fuck some shit up (we were joking, we were not going to ruin some poor high school kids' day over a botched hamburger order, settle down). Then I looked down and said "oh, uh.... does your hamburger have bacon on it? Because, uh, mine does, and it wasn't supposed to...."

And then we howled with laughter and I had to eat the bacon deluxe because Collette was already halfway through my single with cheese. It could have used some ketchup.