Friday favorites

1. Favorite month. November marks the start of real fall: no more silly warm days, brilliantine skies and frivolous scarlet leaves. Time to think about mortality and the ultimate random nature of all things: my favorite month. At least while I am in it. Plus there is the little reprieve at the end that reminds us that molecular disassociation aside, the real purpose of life is a full turkey dinner eaten after a long day of skiing in the company of family and friends (even if not all the family and all the friends.) That reminds me: it's time to book a condo for Thanksgiving.

2. Favorite holiday. Er, not Halloween. I am intrigued by the Day of the Dead (more on this here), but it is not really mine to celebrate.

Aside: Pros and cons of instituting new holidays/ traditions

Pros: Step outside your comfort zone
         Find rituals that address needs not covered in current holiday plan
         Feel pioneering and multicultural
         The creation of new traditions is a beautiful thing (according to parenting magazines, anyway)

Cons: The artificial quality emphasizes the absurdity of all holidays
          Feel like a dork
          Feel like an impostor
          The kids keep asking why are we doing this?
          So do I.

3. Favorite meal this week: the delicious pork and pepper stew my Mom made when Si and I flew out to visit them last weekend, or possibly the accompaniment, pasta and mushrooms made with the succulent fresh oyster mushrooms they picked on the walk we took. Man, oyster mushrooms are good. They make me revise my previous stance on mushrooms as food (which, succinctly: eh). On the same walk we stepped down to the muddy shore of a pond where there were hundreds - well, scores - of dime-sized froggies.

Second aside: I have mentioned before that there is a woeful lack of frogs in the lives of my kids. The frogs probably don't mind this, but it makes me ache a little that we don't live in a place where the perennial absurdity that is a frog can be a common experience. It's partly a climate thing: the high plains is not kind to amphibians. But it's more a situational state: it's because we live in the suburbs, near a creek and a marsh. Our waterways are frogless. And, possibly not coincidentally, largely kidless as well.

4. Favorite book I'm reading this week: The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Short, clever, damning yet generous and manages to open a drafty window on a different world before it slams shut at the end. Close runnerup: A Visit from the Goon Squad. I'm often leery of obvious experimentation - okay, we get it, you're brilliant - but here it is funny and it works.

5. Favorite powerpoint. The one in A Visit from the Goon Squad. Obviously. When else is a powerpoint presentation even going to be mentioned, actually. Which makes me wonder about the realism of using powerpoint for personal expression the way she does here - unless you think of it as a revived technology, some remnant from the past dragged up and put to new and vastly better use. That does happen.

8. Favorite work thing: that niggling nervous tummy feeling of always being late and behind the ball. Oh, wait. Different list.

Another holiday down

I'm feeling a bit gloaty on this morning after election day--all six of the statewide races/ initiatives that I really, really cared about went my way, and most important, we don't have a racist buffoon for a governor (so there, officemate-who-insists-on-talking-loudly-on-the-phone-about politics-while-I-am-trying-to-quietly-mind-my-own-business). Perhaps M's job in publicly funded higher ed is safe after all.

Of course, my gloating is tempered, as it always is, by the lingering existence of actual problems. Some of them are potentially solvable. Some aren't. I still kind of believe that there isn't much that the people in office can do, most of the time. Still: cheers. I raise my glass, from the comfort of home.

Which means: yes, we're finally home. (Hurray.)

Better Late Than Never

A fairy and the hideous ghoul she loves. Not, perhaps, as cute as a bat and a ballerina would have been, but still cute. Also, easy.

You know what was cute, though? The kids we trick-or-treated with. Si's 3rd-grade friend from up the street went as a gangster, complete with machine gun and cigar, and his little sister was his little gangster moll (so cute you could DIE, with a little flapper hairpiece, shiny black shoes, and a pink feather boa as big as she was). The two of them were unbearably cute and the whole evening was enjoyable--if a leetle awkward. We went with Si's friend, as I mentioned, and his dad, who was nice enough but I'd only just met him, which made it that much more awkward when other parents assumed we were together and that the adorable gangster moll was mine.

Alone in the house

Last night I got home and the only one there to greet me was the dog. The others were all out picking up Hubs' replacement cell phone from the FedEx office (reason #54 not to work: so you can be at home that one time each year you have to sign for a damn package). In other words: I was ALONE IN THE HOUSE. It was wonderful, in its own way. I could proceed from task to task calmly, without getting interrupted or distracted. I could finish what I started without ever having to take a break to find something for somebody, or remind someone not to leave their shoes in the middle of hallway, or make somebody an emergency snack. There was a minimum of yelling.

So, what did I do during this miraculous break? Made dinner, of course. And loaded the dishwasher. Small pleasures, people.

After dinner was made I did get to sit for about ten minutes with a glass of wine and a book. And then when the kids did get home they were busy keeping a secret so they bustled away into the back room with a lot of whispering, so I got to keep reading. Until I got scared out of my pants from the ghoulish thing from Scream, with a giggling Silas inside. And then a fairy ballerina wearing a familiar heart-spotted T-shirt came out. I guess they stopped at Target, too, and picked up costumes. After I was done screaming and appreciating the Scariness of the costume, I did ask Si a little wistfully--"So, no bat?" Last week he said he wanted to be a bat for Halloween, and even though I'm not really a costume-making kind of person, I jumped up and offered to make him one, since I loved the idea so much. I'm not sad not to have to make a bat costume (because when was I going to do that, exactly?). But I do miss the bat.

"You can still make a bat costume," Si said helpfully. "For yourself."