Hallowtide, a New Venture, and Van Repair

 Late again y'all, sorry. 

Halloween - 

We went to my sister in law's house to spend the day, because Little Boy had no school and it seemed like a good chance to get in some cousin time. 

They played while my SIL and I visited, and while I embroidered completely unnecessary embellishment on a hood for my very generic costume. (I told Chris I was a "level 1 Dungeons and Dragons adventurer." Basically a vaugely medieval outfit I threw together with stuff from my closet). 

We got the kids dressed in costumes (a two hour ordeal. My niece let me dye her hair red for her costume with some wash out dye I bought, so that was kinda fun...it was the only "makeup" that survived the night intact) and headed to my other sister in law's house for trick or treating. 

I'm pretty sure that Halloween is a much bigger deal, at least in our area, than it was pre-covid. We've been trick or treating in that neighborhood for four years, and this was the most busy I've ever seen it. We canvassed only two streets and came back with full buckets. In the past, that took us tramping around half the neighborhood. 

I think people have realized just how precious human interaction is and are actively pursuing it. I hope that realization sticks.

All Saints Day- 

 I did a separate post explaining our family tradition on this day here. 

Here's a photo of this year's cookies...

"St. Katherine Drexel, St. Therese, and St. Thomas the Apostle" 

Kinda hard to get the details right with candy, and the one (red) tube of decorating icing I had in the house. 

Mass that day ended up being a bit of a disaster. Little Girl got sick and the window repair people (long story, I'll get to that in a moment) cancelled on us by giving us a phone call at six in the morning. That, combined with good ol' fashioned forgetfulness, pretty much scuttled our plans to go first thing in the morning at the parish by my son's school. (We saw a lot of school kids coming out as we drove by later that morning though, which was kind of neat). 

Chris went at the parish by the school he works at before punching in, so we made a plan to have him watch Little Girl and I would take Little Boy and Bitty Baby at yet another parish (none of these our home parish by the way, they decided to have their masses at 7pm Halloween night and at noon). Our RE coordinator  had texted out an info graphic of mass times at other area parishes, and we saw a mass listed for 6:30. We decided to aim for that one. 

We got there at 6:20, along with a couple other families, only to find they were halfway through the homily. Turns out our RE had the times wrong. 

So we sat through the second half of mass and then went home. I'm aware that doesn't technically count since we didn't hear the gospel, but I'm hoping for partial credit. 

An effort was made. 

All Souls' Day- 

I made a little display of our dead loved ones by raiding our photo albums. 

I think I'm going to keep it up through November. 

Little Girl was feeling better, and the glass people cancelled on us again, so I decided to try and take the girls to noon daily mass. Every year I want to go to mass on this day, and every year I can't seem to make it happen. I had a general sense of foreboding about the whole thing, but I muscled past it and loaded the kids in the truck. 

It didn't happen this year either. For some reason, the parish parking lot was empty and the church was locked. I don't know if Father moved the mass to an evening time slot or what. 

So, having skipped lunch and with the girls dressed and in the car, we went grocery shopping. 

When I picked Little Boy up, we went directly from the school to a cemetery (where I completely forgot to take pictures) and visited our family graves (some great grandparents, a grandparent, some aunts and uncles). We prayed (short, very short) prayers by certain graves and pulled up some grass that was overgrown on the sidewalk. 

We went to a Taqueria that night for supper, and then Little Girl had a fever again that evening. 

Thursday - 

I think we stayed home and I cleaned the kitchen and pantry out while sick Little Girl slept and Bitty Baby miraculously took a long nap at the same time. 

It's a rare thing that I'm "alone" in the house. I take advantage of it when it happens. 

Friday - 

Brought Little Girl to the doctor. Turns out, she has strep throat. The nurse practitioner (who is an absolutely wonderful and kind human being, btw) prescribed antibiotics, so we also had to go to the grocery store pharmacy. 

On our way home, the glass people called. 

Late last week, a child who shall not be named threw a rock and shattered the glass in the van door. We'd been making do with the pick-up truck for more than a week at this point. 

So I was glad to hear that they were finally able to come by and fix it. The guy was actually sitting there waiting for me when I turned into our driveway. 

It ended up costing us more than $500. 

Gah. 

But you know what, it's ok, this happens to most people sooner or later, and I think the kid in question learned a lesson. 

I hope. 

A New Project - 

I started a Substack. 

I'm going to keep up with my writing here, but I think this is going to become a place solely for these day-to-day journal type posts. I still enjoy doing "serious" essay writing, but I've noticed that's not what people read here on the rare occasions I write them. It seems to make sense to transfer that sort of writing to a new venue, and I really like Substack's format. 

So I'm trying something new. If you're one of my readers who do like that sort of writing, feel free to subscribe. If you're not, I'm still going to be writing here regularly too. 

And that's what I've been up to.