On Tuesday, I took Hawaii and Ace to Goodwill, along with my friend, her daughter, and another teen.
I did not buy that album.
I DID buy these shoes:
for Pokey.
Look, green soles!
They were rad, but they were not at goodwill. That’s a more curated, trendy thrift store in town.
I loved these shoes:
but they were too small.
I didn’t document all the stuff Ace, Hawaii and I got. We did quite well for ourselves.
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Then – still Tuesday – I took all the kids to the dentist.
While Pokey and Hawaii were having their teeth cleaned, Rascal and Ace were doing this complicated hand-clap game.
The dental hygienist was trying to suppress how much she enjoyed it.
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And THEN I took Rascal to this new playground that just got built.
with a bunch of his friends. It was a long day.
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The kids went back on Wednesday.
Hawaii is taking phlebotomy this semester.
they learned how to make a tourniquet on the first day!
“Springy and bouncy veins!” she keeps saying, poking them once the tourniquet is in place. “Springy and bouncy!”
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Triangle of yellow.
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I took this photo of Pokey’s breakfast, but I forgot to include anything for scale.
Like, that’s not a sandwich-sized bag. It’s a giant bag of goldfish – maybe a quart? That’s a big apple, and a big slice of this cake called La Rosca, which tastes kind of like a concha. Somehow the photo diminished the scale.
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I felt fairly guilty that we postponed Rascal’s birthday for so long, but here we are! Saturday was party day.
Rascal, decorating the first layer of the strawberry cake.
Very nice!
And then here’s the finished product:
Rascal ended up getting a huge turnout for his party, which he wanted to hold at Peter Piper Pizza. Maybe because early January is slow? There was like 15 kids there. It was a little crazy.
I didn’t get any photos of anyone playing games, sadly.
The last time we were here, they used tokens and the games spit out tickets.
Now you get a card, and the games just put points on your cards. It’s a little less dramatic than these ridiculous stacks of tickets spilling out of kids’ pockets and falling everywhere.
Hawaii used her points to acquire that Stitch tote. A very useful prize!
Then seven of the kids came over for a slumber party. It was too much chaos. 5th grade boys really have no common sense when they get into big packs. They were LOUD and constantly just wanted to mess with everything.
We generally don’t do seven person sleepovers, but I think I just felt guilty here and agreed to anything.
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OJ is hiding under the covers from the chaos.
Fluffy and OJ don’t realize they’re cuddling.
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My semester starts on Wednesday.
It’s still up in the air whether or not they’re going to cancel one of my classes, and I’m uncomfortable with it.
Like, they should definitely cancel it – there are only two people registered – but the guy who should do the cancellation has been made the interim guy for two entire fulltime positions, and he’s in way over his head, and dropping lots of spinning plates.
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This pretty egret just up and flew off, while I was watching.
It flew across the river.
and landed on the other side:
so I guess it just didn’t like me, personally
but I really like its reflection in these last five photos.
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Apparently this is what I look like:
when I’m on my new walking pad, watching Somebody Somewhere on my new computer, with my old weighted vest.
Look, I’m not trying to be a parody of a middle-aged lady, but here we are.
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I’m full of apprehension about the new semester.
which starts on Wednesday, whether I like it or not.
I thought these roots looked sort of like a hand, fingers gripping the soil.
With, uh, an extra bone protruding from the back of the hand, and maybe something gnarly tangled in the fingers.
Twas Tuesday the 23rd when we kicked off to Gainesville.
with its trademark scenic bayous.
I did not feel well-rested. I felt harried and tired. I submitted grades on Monday morning, and busily packed, and then Monday evening got a panicked text from the department chair about how I hadn’t submitted grades for one class.
(The drive felt more wintery and leaf-free than usual.)
Anyway, the grades were all computed and ready to go. I just literally hadn’t hit “submit” for one class.
It was easy to fix, but felt emblematic of everything being too much.
Actually, Monday night was chill. We even went over to a friends house and all watched Gremlins together. (Bright lights! Bright lights!)
Our kids didn’t find the gory deaths of gremlins quite as gleeful as we remembered it being? And they were a little taken aback at Phoebe Cates’ dark monologues about how her dad died and slitting your wrists?
But otherwise, a good time was had, etc.
I am convinced that Louisiana has the weirdest truck stops, like that time we saw the Wall of Dildoes, on a previous trip. (I’m too lazy to locate the blog post now.)
At one rest stop, I lounged outside this Wall of Last Suppers in bas-relief, while waiting for the bathroom.
It was the kind of place with a lot of hologram art, like these bears,
but holograms never photograph very well.
you get a billboard, and you get a billboard, and you get a billboard…
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Somehow with these two, the rough-housing doesn’t deteriorate into fighting quite the way it does with other combinations of kids.
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We actually made great time, and got in by 11:30 pm. That’s probably the fastest we’ve ever made it to Gainesville.
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And then we were there! The other home.
Hawaii and Grandma Collie, participating in synchonous napping.
For the first two days, it was only Geeblets.
A week before, my parents’ ceiling started dripping, over my mom’s art studio.
It turns out that there’d been a dime size hole in the solder between pipes, for god knows how long. It had been running across the ceiling and down one wall, and the ceiling was close to collapsing.
They had to pull up the parquet, and pull of the side wall, and they couldn’t shower upstairs in their house. They had to go to a friend’s house, or to the gym.
(My brother: “Why didn’t you go to the SECOND APARTMENT YOU OWN in the retirement home?!”
My dad: Didn’t think of it.
My mom: [retching sounds] I would never.
Which is why they don’t live there. (My dad would move there immediately if something happened to my mom, though.))
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My mom does like Christmas decorations.
And I do like the bubble lights.
The kids opened presents on xmas morning.
It was entirely presents from Jammies’ side of the family, which Jammies had wrapped and hoofed over in the top of the minivan.
(Not entirely true – my parents gifted everyone some cash. But I still found it funny that me and my parents were sitting around watching the kids open gifts from Jammies’ parents and siblings.)
It was just us and my parents.
I found it lovely to have a few slow days to laze around, although the kids maybe got a little bored.
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My parents had a couple of DVDs checked out when Netflix ended their DVD mail service:
and so now they don’t know what to do with them. They’re just tucked off to the side, near the TV.
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The extended family started to trickle in on Friday!
To my grandkids: of course there are tons of photos of all the people involved! But you do have to go look up December 26th, 2025 in whatever photo storage situation we’ve got going on in 30 years.
Maybe I could have made this blog public all along, and shared photos of other people much more freely, all along. Maybe I could have reckoned with that in my 20s, and now I’d just check with people and make sure they don’t mind being featured.
Or maybe the weight of having family eyes reading along would have just caused me to abandon the whole project altogether. Who knows.
This is a parking garage! Isn’t that crazy? It takes your car on a little ferris wheel ride, while you go to class.
These are ibises, I’m told.
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There were a ton of family members in town.
First off, six Geebies, obviously.
Next is my aunt, my two cousins, my cousin-in-law, and two nephews.
They all stayed at the rental house with us.
Next, five of one brother’s family
and four of the other brother’s family.
(The brothers and their families stayed at a hotel, though, and just came over during the day.)
Next up, my favorite first cousin-once-removed. He is the one who famously likes to explain to everyone how to properly label extended families. We are all super clear on the difference between second cousins and first-cousins-once-removed.
(I’m not kidding when I say he’s my favorite. He’s totally delightful.)
He drove up for the day on Saturday with his son, my second cousin, and the second cousin’s wife and children. I’d never met the wife and kids, but everyone fit right in and had a good time.
And then on Monday, the favorite first-cousin-once-removed drove up a second time, this time with his wife, and a different one of his kids, and her husband.
And finally, of course,
my darling parents.
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So it was a lot of chaos!
Pretty much the only activity anyone ever did was go on walks, play games, hang out, watch movies, and eat.
I think those options are fantastic.
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One morning, my cousin, my other cousin-in-law, and my aunt and I all went over to my parents’ house. The cousin-in-law had never been there before, and it’s a bit of a wild ride.
At one point, someone asked about this poster, over the stairs.
First off, I love this poster and intend to inherit it.
My dad said, “Oh yes! My parents played in that tournament. They used to pay professional bridge players to be their partners.”
My brother and I laughed and laughed when I recounted that line. It’s just so funny – yes, they were good at bridge, but they also were happy to pay professionals to partner up so they could rise above their level.
Although: I just googled that tournament. Second place is “Stayman”, who is Sam Stayman, and also their brother-in-law. He was a very famous bridge player, so they were at least very close to people with chops.
Now I feel like I’m being mean. My grandparents were very good at bridge!
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My mom has a lot of things, in a very big house, with two people. Me and Jammies also have a lot of things, in a house about half as big as theirs, with three times as many people in it.
So a common thing is where she asks me if I want something that she’s getting rid of? And I feel terribly sentimental and I really, really want the thing.
Like this stationary:
My mom designed that stationary. I love it. I also would feel too sentimental to actually use it, and so I declined.
(I kind of regret this. Maybe I’ll see if she still has it.)
Also this painting:
There are hundreds of paintings, which makes it very hard to know which ones to keep.
I have that red table that the doll is sitting on.
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Hawaii got sick near the end of the trip. She was feeling awful, and I told her to go take Dayquil.
She came back and said, “Found it. You made it sound like it was a pill, though, not a liquid.”
I said, “It is a pill! The liquid is Nyquil, not Dayquil. You took Nyquil.”
She said nervously, “What’s going to happen?”
I said, “Well, you’re about to take a long nap.”
Poor thing! She was actually on her way to being quite wretched. When we got back to Texas, Jammies took her to the clinic, and she had both the flu and pink eye.
The pink eye soon became pink eyes. Once she was feeling a little better, Hawaii thought it was very funny to say, “I have pink eyes.”
I thought it was very funny too. I told her she should start a garage band, and their name should be “The Pink Eyes”.
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We drove home on Tuesday, December 30th.
I think this is the edge of the cold front that was heading towards Gainesville, right as we were driving away.
For the next few days, it felt more like winter.
and less like the creepy, unseasonably warm weather we’ve all been having.
Pokey: “Look! Our drinks are proportional to us!”
Take a picture! Take a picture!
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And then we got home!
My lily bloomed to greet us.
My African violet bloomed to greet us, too! Ignore the yellow leaves.
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These double-entries are always so ridiculously long. If you’ve made it this far, you have my deepest respect.
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IT’S NEW YEAR’S EVE!
Our friend’s kid’s birthday is 12/31, and every year they have a Noon Year celebration. It was very cute when the kids were all four and five and six years old, and then we’ve just never stopped doing it. It’s still cute.
Not sure what I’m doing with my mouth there, but otherwise I like this photo.
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I told Pokey, “Hey, I’m going to the same New Year’s Eve party as you, but don’t worry, I won’t cramp your style.”
He squawked, “CRAMP MY STYLE?! Who says that? What does that even mean?”
I laughed and laughed and now I’m using the phrase as much as possible. I like to do a little dance, and sing, “Cramp your style! Cramp, cramp your style!”
The party was very small.
I think this is the first time Pokey’s ever tried a sparkler.
He absolutely did not enjoy it, and was glad to go back inside.
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Jammies wanted to acquire some trees to hang ornaments on, for years when we don’t have a real tree.
I chose these. I don’t know why, but I love a sparse tree. Maybe they just look more realistic to me?
The kids opened presents from Jammies and me.
Heh. He really is reading this novelty book, too.
We got Ace this patch loom kit that I saw on Instagram:
It’s actually super cool and Ace has been busily patching things up:
and I’m so delighted.
Pokey got this little robot:
which is probably intended for playing with your pet when you’re not home.
but Pokey is having fun just sending it around the house.
We decided it’s perfect for when his friends are having a slumber party and their parents aren’t comfortable with a boy being there. He can leave the little robot at the friend’s house, and hang out and chat, from afar!
I didn’t get a photo of Hawaii with her new headphones, but instead, here’s the first pink eye:
before they became pink eyes, plural. (She’s on the mend.)
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I got presents, too! We bought me a new laptop AND a walking pad:
I really like walking after I eat dinner, but I don’t really like going out at night.
Tonight I put a TV show on my laptop, and walked on the walking pad, and the whole operation made me very happy.
And my new computer is so FAST. When I open it up, I can use it right away! It doesn’t sit there and wheeze at me. (Literally, the fan is bizarrely loud and it took forever to decide it was ready for you to use it, when you open it.)
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Mostly I’ve moved very slowly since we got home.
There’s a lot of things on my to-do list, and I absolutely refuse to rush through it.
I truly don’t mind having a to-do list! I just hate rushed transitions. I want to lolly-gag and dawdle and get maybe three things done each day.
I feel like life has been a mad rush since about mid-October. I hate that time-scarcity feeling.
So I am savoring this week.
Lots of time lounging around. Lots of long walks.
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I took Hawaii and Ace to Goodwill. This made me laugh:
Your brand is… hot? cotton? Is that like Hot Topic? Or more like hot chocolate? Or like Tom Cotton? What are we going for, here.
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Fluffy!
Look at your little paws!
Just so cute, over the edge of the loft!
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These two are not actually getting along – they just both love being on our bed.
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Full confession: I just texted my mother and asked if I could have the cat stationary, after all.
I am not yet done with the semester! Isn’t that terrible? (It’s ok.)
I gave my last finals on Tuesday and Wednesday, which seemed very late, and then Thursday and Friday were monopolized with zoom interviews.
Saturday was mostly city council stuff. Today I finished grading the finals.
Tomorrow I’ll submit grades. Yeesh.
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From my real analysis final exam:
You honestly don’t know with the WHAT?!
(She means “cont” as in continuity. I just thought it was funny.)
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Look ma, I’m an artiste!
Twas a cube, containing a tube.
so beautiful.
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I bet you had lots of performances this week? Yessir.
Kicking things off at Tuesday with Ace, at their acro recital:
We only have one kid taking one single dance class at a studio this year. It was almost anticlimactic.
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Wednesday is for orchestra concerts:
The middle schools were performing in one big show with the high schools.
The high school orchestra pulled in some of the band kids, so we also watched Pokey:
Our grad school friend M joined us. She’s the student that we met on the train, when Pokey, Rascal and I went to Austin to watch the eclipse. She joins us a few times throughout the semester for kid stuff or dinner.
After the show, I was paying for a coffee gift basket that I won in an auction. The dad taking my money started talking to M. He recognized her from the university.
She definitely could not quite place him. After a bit, she politely admitted it, and asked for his name? “Diego,” he answered. She feigned placing him, and talked a little more.
As we left, she was saying that she just couldn’t figure out who he was. I said, “If you want to google him, his last name is V_______.” She stopped dead in her tracks and clapped her forehead: “THAT’S DEAN V______?!! I’m such an idiot!”
(It was all very charming and I’m sure he did not actually fault her. We had a good laugh.)
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Thursdays are for choir concerts!
This still photo does not capture the joy of this concert, because Rascal was full on dancing while singing his heart out, and everyone else was mostly just standing still. Hips swinging, elbows pumping, just having a blast.
Multiple parents told me afterwards that Rascal ran away with the show. He was just great.
They also had some very nice harmonizing! I was impressed.
BUT WE MUST HURRY OVER TO THE HIGH SCHOOL! Simultaneous concerts with band!
Pokey’s wind ensemble is outstanding.
Jammies bid on a grill, and won. Now we have two grills.
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And then finally it was the last day of public school. The kids all took in gift cards for the teachers.
Rascal:
Dear Mr. Torres,
You’re welcome for being amazing. I’m sorry you had to put up with the hyperactive, spoiled, messy behavior, my classmates truly are evil, aren’t they?
– Your favorite
Dear Mr. Guchi, [Short for Gutierrez]
Let’s cut to the chase: I’m your favorite, we all know it, you’re welcome. But, I suppose I must say thank you for all I have learned. (90% of which is off-topic don quixote stuff.)
As far as I can tell, Mr. T and Mr. G are both eating up Rascal’s brand of pre-teen sassiness.
Mr. T sent me these photos:
so apparently there was a whole Christmas Santa thing at school?
I thanked him for the photos, and he wrote, “Yes, it was a great week. Rascal makes it so much fun.”
So Rascal’s reading the teachers correctly when it comes to these shenanigans.
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Fridays are for This Is Spinal Tap, which we all watched together.
Or mostly together. Angelic boy.
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Doodles:
by Rascal.
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Sundays are for the LAST PERFORMANCE!
Pokey plays piano at the old folks’ home.
Rascal plays piano at the old folks’ home.
This was a different old folks’ home than usual, with different old folks than usual.
Pokey and Rascal getting to relax after they’d done their part.
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I forgot to record what the birthday boys wanted for their birthday dinners, because it all got so delayed.
Rascal had P. Terry’s, back in his actual birthday week. Pokey wanted Olive Garden, and we could not fit that in until tonight. So we went out for Olive Garden tonight. What red-blooded Americans we are!
We ended up planning Rascal’s birthday party for January. This is probably the most delinquent we’ve ever run on a party.
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Stately OJ
in profile and looking forwards.
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I have no nonograms this week!
I do have this panorama of a controversial local dam, though. Technically it’s a weir, and it’s badly damaged, and should probably be removed. (The removal is the heart of the controversey.)
It’s like a scrap book with a lot of paper remnants especially, and it is amazing.
Hawaii started it last January and has remained devoted all year long. She documents any life event that she finds interesting or worth mentioning.
Ah, um, the tree, the apple, the distance of the fall being small.
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God I’m really enjoying the construction on one corner of my commute.
This particular excavator kept chipping away at the ground around him.
making these steep scoops,
and then depositing the dirt elsewhere.
Kind of a reverse Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel Mary Anne.
Like, where’s the exit ramp? Is she going to be converted to a boiler up there?
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Thursday is for Jazz concerts:
that’s a weird fish eye angle, because Pokey was in the foreground on the piano.
They sounded so great!
Ace had an orchestra concert at Sights & Sounds, but I wasn’t able to make that, so I can’t provide documentation. They play again this week, though.
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But anyway, back to the construction:
This thing is pretty cool, right?
I wonder what it does.
It’s easy to take all these photos while I’m stopped at the red light, but hard to take them once I turn the corner and I’m driving under the overpass.
On a different day, there was a vertical post with a massive drill bit, beginning to twirl into the cement.
I would have loved to grab a photo. But I was driving at that point, sadly.
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Thank god Ace is competent, because the dance team is insane. Their secret santa exchange involved:
Tuesday: favorite drink Wednesday: favorite candy Thursday: favorite snack Friday: gift in the dancer’s favorite color, plus a big reveal party.
Ace is good friends with their recipient, and had a running gag spelling the dancer’s name in increasingly unhinged ways.
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Hey kids, remember when they were building the new band hall, back in ’25?
This is the first wall going up!
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Friday is for iridotomies.
I had to get a little laser hole burned in my iris. Apparently I have narrow angle glaucoma, where my eyes aren’t draining, and the pressure builds up, and you can have an acute episode where you suddenly have a lot of eye damage and severe headaches.
Post-procedure, you can see that my left pupil is constricted:
It stayed like that all day.
Narrow-angle closure is rarer but better than wide angle closure, I think. You don’t have the emergency risk with the other, but it’s harder to treat. All the wide angle treatments last for a little while, and then they each stop working after a few years. You have to play a whack-a-mole game while you run out the clock.
Whereas I just need to be monitored after this, but otherwise should be fine.
(I get the other eye done this coming Friday.)
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See we do eventually have fall trees here, too:
It’s been very pretty here.
and it makes me happy that I can see the big burr oak once more, from our bedroom:
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Friday is for Sights & Sounds (yet) again:
Three Geeblets watching, and once Geeblet singing:
He was so funny, dancing around while he sang.
Afterwards, we let the kids raid the rides:
Pokey rode maybe one, and then went to hang out at the band booth, selling fried oreos and french fries.
the kids all bumped into all these other kids they knew, what with it being a small town and all.
Those tea cups remind me a little of ones we had when I was little.
Rascal, in red, in that cage thing:
Rascal, somewhere high up in that cage:
We let them each play one game.
Whoever runs the games for this year was more shameless than usual about how transactional they were. As in, they were all: $10 for a toy, $20 for a bigger toy, with a side activity where winning was ambiguous and not very game like.
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G’bye sights & sounds!
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Saturday is for One Act Plays.
Ace had a terrible feeling about this play. It’s their competition play.
It was very cute, and Ace did great, but they were correct in their foreboding.
Lines were forgotten, things were chaotic, pages of script were skipped.
They did not place, nor get much in the way of recognitions.
“I honestly thought we’d do even worse, so I’m a little relieved,” says Ace.
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Rascal was playing at a soccer tournament – his second maybe? – very close to Ace’s play.
but the times did not work out for me to cheer him on.
They did great, though! They won two, tied one, and made it to the final (of their group of six). (But then lost the final and kind of broke their own hearts.)
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Pokey had a bowling birthday party with a few friends, and then we came back to the house for cake and presents.
The kids were all very funny and cute. Pokey got a lot of earrings and cozy, pink things. (His bowling moniker was PinkPonyBoi.)
I thought this was particularly great:
bedazzled by one of his friends.
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If you look carefully, you’ll see that the on-coming car is in front of the traffic-arm, not behind it.
I found this very freaky, enough to video the train coming.
What good would a video do, if they actually collided and hurt someone?! I have no idea, but it was my only idea, so I did it.
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And then some of this:
The latkes were not great this year.
They never did brown properly, and the whole house got ridiculously smoky.
I fried some and baked some others. I think I didn’t put enough eggs in the batter, because I was kinda winging it.
chag sameach. One more week in full-blur-mode, and then maybe life slows down a teeny bit?
Ace always sits like that. Often even more exaggeratedly so.
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Doesn’t OJ look dashing with his orange fur against the green of the jacket?
What flair.
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Hi little dude!
He almost looks like a tiny brown koala to me.
That’s the 2nd story window to my office.
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Before and after:
Taken about 10 days apart. Honestly, it could have been worse. (We’ll take a bigger hit during winter break, when all six of us are in the car, with the roof rack.)
On the drive to Phoenix, Jammies was so exasperated by all my loose change that he bought this:
at a gas station in New Mexico.
It’s so cute! I love it. It’s really more of a mustard yellow than it looks in that photo.
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Also, Kamar peaking out from under the bed:
That’s the seal that belonged to my brother growing up.
What a cutie little face. Rascal named him Kamar, because that’s the brand on the label.
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Rascal and I were cracking eggs for omelettes:
We got FOUR double-yolks in a row!
We kept cracking:
SIX DOUBLE YOLKS IN A ROW! (I think. I think one is smushed there.) That was the end of the carton.
We told Jammies this, and he said the first half of the carton was also all double-yolks!
What a chicken.
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Rascal’s class is doing a gift exchange. They each filled out a slide in a slide show with their likes and dislikes, for each other’s perusal.
Thank you, but I would not want: posters/magazines or clothes.
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It’s Sights & Sounds time, the hokey small-town Christmas festival!
Last year there were no rides. There was some problem with vendors getting too expensive.
Rides are back this year:
yay? I was not sad that they were gone, but I guess the kids love ’em.
Friday was Pokey’s first high school jazz concert, at the festival:
They sounded so great!
It was lots of fun and even moderately chilly.
Ace carrying Rascal, at a distance.
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Afterwards Ace and I found the novelty photos area:
and then a friend offered to take our photo together:
and then Ace kept harassing me to jump on their back, until I relented:
It was very ridiculous fun.
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This year our friend group christmas party had a theme: “Dress Your Drink”.
It’s kind of a dumb theme, but we’re all fond of the person who got really excited about it, so we went with it. It means like you could go alliteration: “Tracksuits & Tequila!” or just some visual pun or whatever.
Jammies and I threw down hard:
Crown Royale, obviously.
and I was a White Russian.
I loved my costume, but it was extremely hot, and even when the party moved outdoors, it was not cold.
That’s the crown that Ace made for Jammies years ago, and he loves it so much.
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We told the kids to figure out dinner. They decided to get Taco Cabana.
Jammies was parking Hawaii in:
Rather than move Jammies’ car, Hawaii did like a 72-point turn to get out. And then wedged herself back in again, when she got back with tacos!
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The next morning we all got up to go to Book People, for our annual pre-Hanukkah trip:
I was dead-tired, running on maybe four hours of sleep, due to city council.
Jammies was extremely hungover, and ended up puking his brains out on the car ride home. He had brought a barf bag with him, which is nice at least. The noise and smell were not so nice.
But the kids all happily spent our money and can’t wait to open their books next weekend.
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The trees are turning colors here, just like they did in Philadelphia:
although it was a warm weekend.
I do have a funny story from visiting my brother’s family in New Jersey.
They ordered Indian food, and I was enjoying a big bowl of soup. Except I somehow ended up with an extremely tiny spoon, and just kept going with it.
It was borderline baby-spoon size.
Eventually I went to see if they had any larger spoons, and they’d all gotten used as serving utensils.
So I just kept eating with this very tiny, silly spoon. Eventually I gave up. THE END!
This entry is an absolute behemoth. So much has happened. All good things! but so much of it.
Twas nearly two weeks ago: Monday, 11/17.
I noticed that these little dipping bowls were in rainbow order:
It turns out that whenever Ace unloads the dishwasher, they put all the little ramekins in rainbow order.
I then use them to give the cats wet cat food, in rainbow order.
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This little determined acorn stayed on my car for nearly a block:
Very good work!
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A friend (not Rosie’s mom) was in the middle school cafeteria, and sent me this photo:
Ace wrote that – things they’re thankful for – to hang it on the middle school Tree of Thanks.
My friend said, “I’m sending this to your mom!” Ace said defiantly, “Go for it. She’ll think it’s funny.” My friend said, “I know! That’s why I’m sending it to her!”
(I feel so seen.)
…
Later I asked Ace about it and Ace told me that the teachers refused to hang it up. “They said they wouldn’t hang it up, because it was a joke.”
“It’s not a joke!” I exclaimed, indignantly. “You are appreciative of those things!” “That’s what I said!” said Ace. “It’s not a joke! But they said that other kids might think it was a joke.” “Then they need to deal with the other kids! That’s their problem, not yours!” I was (mildly) outraged.
Ace agreed. But such is the power imbalance of childhood. What are you gonna do?
…
Twas also the eve of Rascal’s ELEVENTH birthday! We just gave him cash, so I made him a card to accompany it:
…
And then it was his actual birthday! Tuesday 11/18:
There he is, being all 11 years old:
But it was also Ace’s winter dance show:
Ace was in two consecutive shows, at 5:45 and 7:30, and then we raced over to pick up Rascal from the high school rehearsal of Music Man.
and opened presents, even though it was 10 pm and we are all delicate flowers who do NOT like to stay up that late.
…
BUT THE WEEK MUST CONTINUE! Barreling on to Wednesday 11/19.
Rascal, learning how signatures are supposed to be binding contracts:
aww, our little con artist.
A new plant, courtesy of our abuela-housekeeper:
She is just so kind.
Honestly, this one Wednesday was pretty chill.
Ace and Rascal had rehearsal until 9 pm, and were exhausted, but aside from that? Fine.
…
Thursday, 11/20/25
I cannot tell you how squirmy and nervous I was all day. I have seen Ace act and dance before, and was perfectly confident that they’d do great.
But I’ve never seen Rascal act before, and he’s in a lot of scenes, in a full-sized theater, with a lot of high school students. Would he shrink and mumble, or play it big? Would he inhabit his character? Would mess up his lines and have an awful time?
I was so nervous and excited. Just a ball of anxious energy.
You guys: he was amazing.
The audience loved him, I loved him, he had everyone eating out of his hand.
I loved everything about this show. I could watch it all day long.
I’m very sad that it’s over.
It was just so good.
This is the final scene, when the kids’ band materializes and they sound like a cacophonous mess, and everyone is so proud.
They used instruments from the band hall, so they didn’t let the actors use the mouth pieces. But of course, a tuba without a mouth piece looks very strange. Ace just blew and blew, cheeks puffed out.
We all died laughing, and I was worried Ace would feel self-conscious and would draw back the next night. But they embraced the humor and hammed it up, and I was so proud of them. It was exactly the right note.
…
Also this week!
Hawaii had her test for Competitive Home Health Care. First off, yes, this is hysterical. It conjures up images of careening down a hallway with an octogenarian in a wheel chair, throwing them dramatically towards the bed, while you snap the sheets precisely under their looming shadow, only to spin them and check for bed sores, smooth their hair, and race off to the next patient.
But other than that, it’s a big thing!
Hawaii was selected to compete for the school because she’s great at CNA skills. But she can only compete on the skills portion if she places in the top ten on the written portion of the entire Austin-San Antonio region. (I don’t actually know how many students take the exam, but it seems impressive to me.)
Anyway, she got 7th! So she qualifies! She’ll go on to the skills portion, and we’re all very excited.
Hawaii says, “It’s just so easy. Everything is just keeping track of what’s been contaminated and what hasn’t been. It’s like I’ve been training for this my entire life.” Indeed.
ALSO this same week, Pokey had regionals for flute. He got 10th place, which is excellent for a freshman. I was very proud of him.
…
MORE! MORE! Saturday, 11/22
I watched the Music man on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday matinee. Rascal was Winthrop on Thursday and Saturday matinee, and ensemble for Friday and Saturday night. (I personally think Rascal’s cast was much better than the non-Rascal cast.)
I missed the last Music Man performance in order to go watch:
Pokey at the quinceañera! Each pair of kids in the court had a little walk out number.
Then the kids in the court all had a scripted dance that felt vaguely square-dancey. It was very cute.
Here’s the birthday girl:
At one point she was sitting on the floor, skirt sprawled around her in all directions, and a little two year old came and sat on the skirt with her, as though it was story time. It was very cute.
I never had to give a speech as a teenager where I said big, heartfelt thank yous to everyone in my life, and tell them how much I love them and why. I’m not sure I would’ve had the capacity to do so. Maybe it would have been good for me to have an occasion where it was expected of me? Would have been able to be vulnerable in front of everyone, the way this girl was? I’m not at all sure. Her speech was lovely and heartfelt.
…
Pokey and I got back from the quince Saturday night, and found Ace and Rascal just utter wrecks. They were so exhausted from the week. It was so late.
Rascal was traumatized because he’d collected all these signatures in his program – all the high school seniors, the directors, the orchestra pit.
Then his buddy scribbled over the cover in permanent marker. Rascal, in a fit of pique, threw the program in the trash. But then he didn’t tell anyone he’d thrown it out, and just burst into tears at 11 pm.
I was agonized by this. The whole week felt like it was a precarious card-house of wonder, and now it was destabilizing. I emailed the directors to see if they could pass around another program at the cast party on Sunday. (Rascal and Ace were going to miss the cast party.)
I never heard back from the directors. It felt like an unresolved tab in my head.
Then yesterday, I found out that one of the director’s mom died during the last show. So my internal narrative has been up-ended, and I (mentally) apologized to him for being (mentally) short-tempered. Poor guy – that’s just awful.
Nevertheless, I loved the show weekend so much. I kinda just want to watch the recording over and over again.
…
(It was also a city council week. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.)
…
And then Hawaii and I woke up at 4 am on Sunday 11/23, and Jammies drove us to the airport, and we flew to Newark.
Hawaii was electrified by the cold air and dazzled by the fall leaves.
I realized that we’ve never traveled with the kids in the fall! We’ve traveled in winter and seen snow, and we sort of have a fall in Texas. (I like to say we have a beautiful fall, stretching from November to March.) But we’ve never gone north during the fall.
We spent the afternoon with my brother and his family. The cousins all doted on Hawaii and made her feel very special.
Then we drove over to Philadelphia, singing Music Man on and off, the whole time. Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! Pick a lot talk a little.
Lida Rose, my Lida Rose
At the least suggestion I’ll <snap> pop the question. Lida Rose, I’m home again, Rose
…
Jammies also hit the road on Sunday, to drive to Phoenix with the other three Geeblets.
Here’s the mpg I handed him:
We’ll see what we get back!
…
He sent me this pair of sad photos.
His favorite hotel, in Las Cruces:
is becoming this:
Awful. Why would you do that!
…
On Monday, 11/24, we first had breakfast with my beloved cousin, in her wonderful old eccentric house.
Then we went to Drexel University. It was very Downtown Philadelphia.
Our tour guide asked us where we were from, and we sheepishly said “Texas”. She exclaimed, “I love Texas! I just transferred from Heebieville U!” She missed it dramatically and wanted to talk all about it. It was lovely to hear our podunk town be so beloved.
Drexel itself was great!
They have a 5-3 program, where you take 5 years to graduate, but along the way, you do 3 six-month stints with companies, or hospitals, or whatever external opportunities they can connect you with. It was very intriguing.
I thought the side of this building looked like it was made out of RVs:
I think it may be a dorm?
After the tour, we doubled back to find our Rainbow Tree:
It was fun being Southern Mice, dazzled by the northern trees.
Hawaii, searching for the perfect leaf to save for her journal:
which she then pressed.
Hawaii liked Drexel, but was lukewarm about how urban and downtown it felt. It did not feel much like a college campus. Probably worth applying to, though.
…
Then we zipped west of Philly, to go to Villanova.
I really picked these names out of a hat. I felt completely unqualified to plan a college tour.
My criteria was:
Hawaii wants four seasons
What are some cities with major airports, where we’d be able to get direct flights?
What are some cool cities that I’d enjoy visiting?
That’s how we settled on Philadelphia and Richmond. Beyond that, I just went with schools on the Tuition Exchange List, which is how we ended up a Villanova.
It was extremely religious. And did not seem to have much of a pre-med track.
This was two seconds into the tour:
We did not really hang close on the tour.
This is the same tree, from two different angles:
The campus was very pretty. But in a rolling hills way, not a forest way.
…
I liked the visible mechanism on this napkin dispenser, though:
…
After that was the most poorly-planned part of our trip: the drive from Philadelphia to Richmond.
I’d been so indecisive that once I picked cities, I didn’t want to deviate from that. But somehow these cities were further apart than I realized? We had a four hour drive Monday night, down through Pennsylvannia, Delaware, DC, and into Virginia. I was exhausted and cranky.
…
Tuesday, we hit a walk-in clinic for a quick strep test – negative! – and missed our morning college tour, so we rescheduled for the afternoon, and explored downtown Richmond.
What an incredibly charming city. I could live there.
We got lunch at a very cute diner that was probably cheap in the ’90s.
and is not cheap at all now, but it is still cute.
…
Then we toured University of Richmond.
It seemed great! Aside from it being very white. Hawaii said, “During the video, every time they had a crowd shot, it was all white people. Then whenever they interviewed students, it was all people of color.”
Mm-hmm. I noticed that, too.
The campus was gorgeous, though, and the school had lots of neat details. They almost went bankrupt in 1950, and then some guy gave them $50 million, which was the largest gift to a university at that point. He was the inventor of chapstick and Robitussin, allegedly. We ourselves use chapstick!
The tour was full of students exactly like Hawaii. She’d like to go somewhere with people unlike herself, so this is not her first choice, but if everything else fell through and she ended up there, it would be okay.
….
So here’s what we learned:
yes on beautiful campuses full of trees
yes on diversity
yes on pre-med tracks
yes on cold weather
We’re making progress!
…
After the tour, we were exhausted. We got some dinner and went back to our hotel room, to read in bed.
I texted Pokey, “Goodnight my 14 year old!” because the next day was his birthday.
He texted back, “IT’S 5 pm!!”
I thought that was very funny. In the morning, we woke up at 4 am to catch our flight, and I texted him, “Good morning, my 15 year old!”
He eventually texted back, “u texted me at 2 am.”
Indeed. My sleep was very disrupted this week.
…
Wednesday, 11/26
It was a long, miserable flight for boring antisocial reasons, but eventually we got to Phoenix!
HAPPY 15th BIRTHDAY, POKEY!
He temporarily lost his curls, post-haircut, but they’ve since sprung back.
Ace made Pokey this duck:
which is just adorable.
Pokey asked for a Hulusi:
which is a chinese flute that can play chords. It’s very pretty.
…
The flute section posted these photos on IG:
to commemorate his birthday.
(The flutes all came over to our house on the Friday before break, to celebrate Flutegiving, but this entry is already long enough, and plus I was at work.)
…
…
Thursday 11/27: We ran a Turkey Trot!
I was terribly slow, even for me.
However, my 5K time was faster than Pokey’s 10K time, so that’s nice.
…
Look, I spend about 30 hours in Phoenix. I was already working on this post, and I already knew is was massive and long. But for some reason I went and took two billion photos of Phoenix.
I don’t know what possessed me to take so many photos.
I just fell in love with these green trees, which I learned are Palo Verdes.
They look so Elphaba-fleshy.
The original plan was for us all to drive home from Phoenix together, on Saturday.
Then the high school football team won their area championship. Pokey missed that game, due to the quinceañera.
So they were due to go to the regional semifinals, at the Alamodome.
Doesn’t this dead cactus look like a meerkat?
Anyway, for some godforsaken reason, they scheduled this football game for Friday, a day after Thanksgiving.
But it’s also pretty neat to play in the Alamodome!
So we offered Pokey the option of flying back to go play the halftime show. Pokey said yes.
Jammies has built up a lot of miles on his Southwest credit card, so it was kind of free-ish for Rascal and I to fly back.
It did mean that I packed up and left at 4 am yet again.
Heebie, seriously, all of these photos are needed?
What were you thinking?
Do we need this knotty nest of limbs?
or this deep dill green against the blue sky?
This nest, pinched in the elbow of a saguaro?
They almost look like coral, underwater.
This is probably my favorite photo of the whole batch:
pareidolia!
Maybe I’ll just start talking about Friday, 11/28.
since these photos clearly aren’t stopping any time soon.
(I mean, I find that trunk just arresting. It looks so corporeal!)
Anyway, Friday night was the big game!
My friend S drove down to the Alamodome with me.
Afterwards, Pokey wanted to take the bus home, but a different friend asked if we could take her daughter home.
While I was waiting on the daughter, Pokey called, in a panic. The dancer bus had left without his friend.
The dancer friend had lost her cell phone, and had gone back to look for it, and the bus left without her.
It was really very terrible! There are so many protocols to prevent this sort of thing.
We had a merry little adventure trying to locate both girls, one without a phone, as the Alamodome security tried to kick us out.
The girl’s mother was furious (at the dance coach) and much drama ensued.
(Interjecting to say that these little Gambels Quail with the headfeathers are so cute.)
Back to the Alamodome. It was raining, so my pants legs got soaked, traipsing around to locate everyone.
All the kids got delivered eventually, and I went to bed around 1 am. It was a very long day.
…
Before the drama, there was a game at the Alamodome!
Our crowd was about 3x larger than the other teams, probably because they all knew it wasn’t going to be their last game.
It was a much smaller band, and we just did a shortened song or two.
But still exciting!
…
SATURDAY, 11/29!
No one cares at this point, but I read an enormous number of applications for the Heebie U math department.
Jammies and everyone else got home around midnight.
We’re all home, safe and sound!
I love you madly, madly Madam Librarian, Marian.
…
What a crazy two weeks, right?
Very nice peacocks. It reminds me of my mother’s peacock napkin rings.
I do not feel well-rested and prepared for the next three weeks, but it’s coming anyway.
Ace’s fashion lewk. They were not thrilled to be documented.
And Pokey:
Okay, doesn’t that leg behind him look like a disembodied second person?? I liked it.
And Hawaii:
decked out the care package we put together for my niece.
A few days later, I remembered I also have a nephew who started college, and felt bad for the asymmetry, and scrambled to put together a care package for him, too.
(I assembled his today, but did not document it.)
…
Look at this ridiculousness:
Fairly typical breakfast routine. This is: – Pokey with a bowl of honeynut cheerios – Ace with a bowl of icy noodles, (ie ramen sans seasoning but avec ice cubes) – Rascal with two sausage wraps.
Hawaii has the good sense to make her own breakfast away from my documenting lens, but most likely also ate honeynut cheerios.
…
God I love it when the zoom does this:
That’s from the P&Z committee meeting, this past week.
It’s so satisfying to see it ripple out in real time.
…
The shows have begun! The middle school play was this past weekend.
Ace was a cheerleader named Buffy.
It was a horror-comedy called “Don’t Try to Wake Him, Hand Me the Shovel” (which oddly enough does not really refer to any plot point whatsoever).
The show was funny and moved at a good pace.
The cheerleaders turn out to be gun-wielding detectives in the final scene:
There was a dead body in one scene. On Thursday night, the escaped convicts flopped the dummy on the couch, and the feet splayed out like so:
It looked so creepy!
On Friday night, the dummy feet splayed out like so:
Much less harrowing.
Rascal and his friend, post-show:
Hawaii: “You guys look like m&m’s.” I thought that was very funny.
…
More assorted minutia:
I love these four spools of wire.
I feel like a more gifted photographer than me could compose a really great photo of them.
what with the blue sky, the trees and cross wires, and Tacqueria Atotonilco in the background.
(If you’re ever near Heebie University, they have pretty great tacos.)
…
They repainted the street parking space lines, near my gym:
It seems they did a surprisingly terrible job!
Like, someone must have missed a critical step. It seems very silly for your paint to disintegrate into dust immediately after painting. Very counterproductive.
…
Jammies’ car center console:
That would be two teeth there, just hanging out. Probably both Rascal’s. Ace lost a molar recently, but I tossed it in the trash.
…
Fluffy is one of those cats that likes to be petted aggressively:
She likes to grip in.
…
We finally purged a bunch of old medicine cabinet type junk. It was left over from 1.5 years ago, when we re-did the bathroom.
The only thing of note:
Awww, our old snot-sucker and nose-Frida!
Literally, Rascal turns 11 on Tuesday. We threw these out.
…
We have more productions coming up this week!
We had to source our own costumes for Music Man. They’re being supplied with the band uniforms, though, for the band scene.
They also had headshots taken:
They both hate their headshots, but I think they can’t help but look very cute.
We also have a middle school dance recital on Tuesday.
…
Hawaii’s AP physics teacher got everyone some of his favorite candy from India:
The consensus from the kids in her physics class: the texture is like sharp cotton candy, a little bit maybe like fiberglass. The taste is Fruity Pebbles, but a little nuttier.
I think that’s basically right. I expected it to have a sandy texture, like those mexican candies, but it was definitely more lightly fibrous.
It was WAY too sweet for me, though. Unpalatable.
…
Shiner:
From a bouncy house.
Rascal stated, in a panic on Thursday, that he had to get together with his friend Sam, to work on a big project this weekend.
Sam’s dad invited Rascal to spend the night on Saturday, but the dude is pretty fucking flaky, and they did not work on the project at all.
Rascal was extremely stressed out today. He had a giant vision of a play that he wanted to put on with Sam, involving all the different wars between the Comanches and Texas, and time-travel, and interviews. He and I went to the library, and he spent five hours working on the script until the library closed.
After dinner, he made some props:
The little remote control is a translator, and the lightbulb is an idea stick, for when you have an idea.
The script is about 13 pages long. I’m not sure what the teacher is expecting, but he’s in for a kinda long play.
…
Rascal was asking me questions about the Bible and Jesus. He kept calling it “The Final Dinner” instead of “The Last Supper”, which amused me greatly.
Pokey was studying for AP Human Geography, and was shocked to learn that there are more Protestants in the US than any other religion.
“It’s not Catholics?” he exclaimed. “How could it not be Catholics?”
“It’s Catholics around here!” I said, “But not nationally.”
“Who are the Protestant?” Pokey asked. “Do we know any?!”
“They’re white people! It’s the background religion when you’re just rando Christian. It’s like a Disney show.” I was very entertained by the question of whether or not we know any Protestants.
(I realize now that I should have said Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, etc are all Protestants, and most of them just refer to themselves by their sub-genre. But I didn’t think of that at the time.)
…
This coming week is a wee bit insane.
Tuesday: Rascal’s 11th birthday and Ace’s middle school dance show. Ace performs in both the 5:45 show and the 7 pm show.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday: Four performances of The Music Man. This is terribly exciting.
Saturday night: Pokey and I are going to the quinceañera, the one he’s had six weeks of rehearsals for. I’ve never been to a quinceañera, and I’m terribly curious.
Also I’m covering for a colleague whose dad is in the hospital.
Also it is a City Council week. I might lose my mind.
Sunday morning: Hawaii and I fly up to New Jersey, for our college visit road trip. Everyone else drives to Phoenix.
…
A nice autumnal titmouse! For this tiresomely hot October.
Jammies spent $300 on tickets this morning, all to see our kids perform in stuff before Thanksgiving.
Ace has two performances next week
Ace has a dance show the following Tuesday
Then four performances of the Music Man (at $10 per ticket).
There are between 2-5 of us seeing any given show. It added up.
Furthermore, Rascal’s birthday is next Tuesday, and Pokey’s is the week after that, and when will we even have parties for them? we’re honestly not sure. Maybe not till January.
Furthermore, Rascal will be eleven?!! And Pokey will be 15?! Stop.
…
Hawaii, with claw clips for eye brows:
TikTok swears it will help your headaches. I mean hey, gate theory of pain, right?
…
Rascal is in full-fledged Winthrop mode now, for the Music Man next week. (Ace is in it, as well, but not with a speaking part.)
He told me that I absolutely had to come see the funniest thing, in the high school hallway:
The tiny signs on black just say Performing Arts Center.
I don’t know if I got the joke exactly, but I love that he loved it.
…
They sell the sideways giant rolls of toilet paper at Target:
Those are three stacked rolls, but I like how it looks like a gallon bucket of toilet paper. For a brief moment, I imagined it to be like a roll of butcher paper that sat on your bathroom floor, and you just tore off a corner as needed.
Also at Target, you know their wall of gift cards?
Ace spied the sad stack of JoAnn’s gift cards, at the very bottom. Never to be spent on fabric and crafts.
…
Look! Look what our amazing abuela-stand-in gave us:
She was the night nurse for the grandmother of a wealthy family that owns a medium chain of hardware stores. They loved our housekeeper-abuela a lot, and when the grandmother finally died, they’ve passed on a lot of things, and Maria passed this on to us.
It is like, painfully hand-stitched and has mostly sat in storage.
We’re at least going to use it for a little bit, on the premise that things deserve to be loved and used.
(But if the using itself ends up being too much work, I think we’ll sideline it. There’s something to be said for the old sparkly plastic tablecloth that we just wiped down.)
…
Rascal’s pumpkin came home:
so we can appreciate the full framed glory.
…
After speech:
Rascal officially has his “ar” sound, but we’re still working on “or” and “er”. Apparently “ar” is the easiest of the three.
I’m just relieved that he doesn’t need the whole myofunctional intensive thing that Ace needed. I loved that speech therapist a lot, but I did not love the drive into Austin.
…
Ace’s costume for The Music Man:
Goodwill plus Amazon for the pinafore.
…
This is usually a small pond:
So this drought is really kinda intense:
…
Pokey, in proper uniform:
They marched in the Veteran’s Day parade through town.
Afterward, the flute section came over to our house. They were all extremely cute. They told Pokey that our house was so aesthetic. I was flattered.
…
…
This enormous proposal scene was being set in the park. Friends and family were hiding.
(I did not run up and say, “Me? Do you think we’re right for each other?”)
As I walked away, I passed four women in full on bridesmaids’ outfits. So maybe it was a surprise proposal plus wedding?!
Sadly, I couldn’t stay and be part of the curious crowd.
…
But y’know, they had perfect autumn light for a proposal.
…
A little cat mask that Rascal made:
A little DNA sculpture that Pokey made:
Now I can’t remember where Hawaii’s ended up.
…
My ipad started to die, so I transferred all the old photos off it.
Have some greatest hits:
Those are all from 2014. EVERYONE IS SO CUTE.
This is from 2020:
Also so goddamn cute.
…
Library cat:
…
This weekend wasn’t exactly relaxing. I got a lot done. But there’s still a lot to do.
She was Travis Kelce, so that she could say, “Because I love Taylor Swift!”
Jammies was working on Pokey’s costume, mostly without Pokey because he either had marching band or a backlog of homework:
Pokey was going as the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.
Jammies ordered this headpiece:
but it didn’t arrive in time.
…
Nobody worked on Ace’s costume, because they had the good sense to give us all of the links to order the items weeks ago. They were sitting pretty this week.
…
I sewed a lot, but it was the hot gluing gave me this sad blister:
which was my own fault.
Progress on the jersey!
Progress on Primarina’s flippers!
Progress discovering oddball sewing notions that were purchased by my grandmother maybe 60 years ago:
and then finally, by the end of Thursday evening, I declared it complete:
Those little pink fins looked like noses to us.
Rascal ran off and fetched this page from on of his shark books:
We thought it was funny to point at the noses and say “Not a shark!”
That is probably the hardest I’ve ever worked on a costume!
…
The whole week was one of dress up days, for Red Ribbon Week.
Like Mad Scientist day.
Fortunately, all the kids can source these sorts of costumes themselves at this point.
Or Rainbow day:
And then on Halloween itself:
Rascal put on Pokey’s old Calvin & Hobbes costume, as he did not want to have to explain Primarina to everyone at school.
…
What about the non-Halloween things?
Like my student who writes in this:
which I believe is the Star Wars language.
…
I was captivated by these green tubes against the blue sky:
Just striking, right?
Whatever extender hydraulic lift thing that is, it has simply exquisite taste.
…
Fluffy, doing the chilly tail wrap:
OJ, doing the chilly tail wrap:
Neon just being catlike.
…
This house on my commute acquired two oil rigs – at some point – and put them on either side of their front gate:
They seem much smaller than I ever knew oil rigs could be.
…
…
And then eventually it was actually Halloween!
I like these photos that Jammies took at school better than the ones I took at home. She had little homemade shoulder pads and everything. The shirt was plain red, and all the rest is ironing and tape.
Details:
Pokey, being a caterpillar:
He was very cute. There was a plan to add little caterpillar feet to the sides of the kiddie tunnel he’s wearing. But neither Jammies nor Pokey had the motivation, and I lacked the time.
There were about five other friends in this group costume – Queen of Hearts, White Rabbit, Alice, Cheshire Cat, etc. One mom took them all down to the next little town to work a haunted house there.
Here is Ace:
being a minion!
Theirs was also a group costume. Apparently in the car, the group was already planning next year’s costume. Maybe the Scoopy Gang?
(Pokey and Ace are in the same living room in those photos, but the friend groups headed out in different directions.)
…
And finally, I present you:
Primarina!
The headpiece/mask/wig set up was a LOT to balance on one head. So it made a great first impression when he greeted his friends, and then got ditched pretty quickly during trick-or-treating.
Ace made the pearl hair ties, and then Hawaii repaired one, when I broke it in a frenzy of trying to make everything just right.
But wait! what about me?
I was Rumi, from KPop Demon Hunters.
But wait, what about Jammies?? I think he went as a little piggy again, at school, but I don’t actually know for sure. I don’t think I saw him all day!
Good work, all!
…
Then we all woke up at 6 fucking am on November 1st, like crazy people!
Jammies, Hawaii, and Pokey all went to work at the soccer fields. (Pokey is reffing again, now that band is winding down.) I collected Ace and Rascal from sleepovers and drove Rascal to Bastrop:
They did not win.
But then they had a make-up game on Sunday, and they did win this game, which was very exciting. This is definitely their first win of the season.
…
Little scrappy soccer flower:
You got this, little November mud crocus!
…
I really love October and November and December, and I get a little sad that they’re flying by so quickly.
I mean, I wish things were a touch less busy. That would also make it easier to savor. But mostly everything is really, really good.
(Everything personally, obviously. Clearly the larger world is on fire.)
heebie-geebie 
