It Has Begun

As soon as I got home from school today, I went through the kitchen and cleaned and put everything I could get my hands on into plastic containers. K was good enough to man the front door for all the trick or treaters, so I got it all done. That leaves the whole weekend, pretty much, for my closet.

A word about the valerian, since a couple of people commented on it. My doctor had specifically told me to get Valerian Root Oil capsules, and said I could get them at Whole Foods, but I didn't get there until yesterday. Before that, I had picked up a bottle at CVS of just Valerian capsules, which were filled with powder, not oil, and let me tell you, these capsules did indeed make me step back whenever I opened the bottle. A most powerful smell. The oil capsules don't seem to have it, though. I did sleep pretty well last night, but it's too soon to tell if that's why, since I sleep well or not pretty much at random. I'll see where it takes me.

We actually had very nice weather today, so of course I dressed rather warmly, expecting it to be cold in the library. But when they told us yesterday that they had turned on the heat, it was apparently real this time, and I had to have my fan on all day. Halloween can be crazy at school, and I wasn't wearing a costume or anything, but I wore my big, warm Alcatraz sweatshirt. If anybody asked, I was going to say "Halloween? I thought it was Wear-Your-College-Sweatshirt Day." When I went out to the post office around 4:30, I took the sweatshirt off and just wore a denim work shirt. A bit chillier now.

K just set off to meet R for a movie, so I had to get up and answer the door for a group of little ones. It's dark now, and our lights aren't on, so I don't expect too many more, if any. And the one kid I did want to see, our adorable little next door neighbor, came when I was at the post office. She is cute as a button. She doesn't know my name, but she knows who I am -- she thinks -- because I guess when she's outside she chats away with her friend "Johnny" and so when she sees me, she's likely to say "Hi, Johnny's Mom!" Johnny's Mom, of course, is my mother-in-law, who is also the last person alive to get away with calling the Hubs "Johnny."

I've been looking for all the pictures I have of my kids in the various costumes I made them for Halloween over the years, and was surprised that I couldn't find a lot of them. They're somewhere still waiting to be scanned, I guess. I always made my kids' costumes because I always wore those awful Ben Cooper costumes that were more like plastic aprons that said on the front who you were, along with a plastic mask that always hurt to wear. I hated those. But I was once the lead baby robin in a play in first grade, and Shirl made me a kick-ass costume out of crepe paper and stuff. Sadly, the picture is not in color:



(This picture was taken in front of our apartment building, which was very much like the one across the street, behind me in the picture. There was a whole complex of these two-story buildings, which we call "Garden Apartment" here in New Jersey. I don't know if they're called the same thing everywhere else, or if they even exist anywhere else.)

I'm going to go work on the living room.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1895
READING: How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond