Here's our distribution station

I honestly don't want to complain about the COVID and Halloween tonight, but I may anyway. Sydney went over to her friend's house for trick or treating so it was a quiet evening at our house. I put our candy bowl out on one of our dining room chairs outside the front door. The chair itself has a cool spider decoration on it, which is pretty special.

But, even with all those safety precautions, we didn't have a single trick or treater. Granted, I wasn't sitting outside the whole time, but Brian and I went for a walk around the neighborhood and we saw no one. Not a single kiddo, which, while safe, was incredibly boring.

Sydney reports that there were a couple people out, and not many giving out candy, but the last two houses they visited dumped the rest of the bowls of candy into hers and her friend's bags. So there's that, I guess. I usually take a bunch of candy to work the day after Halloween, and my coworkers are already looking forward to the haul I bring in Monday.

I love seeing the littles dressed up, and I'm super bummed to not get to see any this year. And it's such a jovial and fun holiday, and demanding of imagination and creativity, and I miss seeing how people step up to the plate in that creativity department. Also, I didn't dress up myself for the first time in several years.

So this holiday was a bust. Time to start planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas! ... Just kidding! I've got stuff planned for both those holidays already!!

I just need to get my nose into a store

So I'm at that weird place in a person's life when it is time to find a new fragrance. My current perfume is almost gone, and the scent itself has been discontinued. I have a very difficult time finding a smell I like, and I tend to wear only that smell until its gone, so this is a serious commitment I'm looking to make. 

I tend to appreciate a good body mist, a la Bath and Body Works, but if I find a good "parfum" I'm not afraid to roll that way. I have a ton of plumeria body spray, but it's not Brian's favorite, so I use that as my last resort. So yes, if I don't discover something new, I do have a scent to wear, but it's not ideal.

I actually spent quite a bit of time on the Nordstrom app the other day reading scent descriptions and screenshotting what sounded good for an eventual trip to the store to smell them. So you can appreciate my pain, I like a citrusy smell, but also a floral, and somewhat sweet. I had a an Escada perfume for a few years that smelled like strawberries, and I loved that, but it also was discontinued. I guess I pick the random stuff that doesn't draw the masses, making my smells quite temporary.

So here I am, staring at pictures of bottles, imagining them through the flowery descriptive verbiage, and still spraying the last bits and drops I can get out of the bottle I'm still using like some weird addict.

No turkeys, but elves and reindeer early

As a rule, I'm very particular about my holiday decorations. They go up on the first of the month of that holiday. October 1 is when Halloween goes up. Thanksgiving on November 1. Valentine's Day? February 1.

This year, though, because of the ridiculousness of the pandemic and its horribleness as well, I am considering a very special change to the decoration schedule. And with the permission of both mine and my mother's neuroses, I believe that I will not decorate for Thanksgiving, and instead go straight to Christmas in a week or two. This is, to put it lightly, unprecedented.

And I'm actually pretty excited about it. I love all my Christmas decor, and I always love those precious few days between my putting out the decor and the day that Brian insists on buying the tree. You see, to me, the tree is a huge inconvenience and dirt magnet, and more responsibility than I like in my inside forest foliage. Like, why do they have to drop needles and require water every day?

So with this new schedule, I'll get a couple weeks to enjoy my Christmas goodness before the house is soiled by the large tree. Honestly, I'd have a three-foot-tall tree every single year if I could get away with it. I still prefer a living tree to a fake one for the smell. So if I was in charge, I'd buy a teeny one for just the smell and put it on a stool or table or something. Decorated, of course, but tiny. As neither Brian nor Sydney would allow such a thing, I'll instead revel in my couple/few weeks with the pretty decor, before the tree.

So yes, I'm making a significant change to my process this year. My fear is that I'll have to fight this precedent every year now because early Christmas will spoil my husband and my kid. But I'm stubborn, and I really like my Thanksgiving stuff, and I'm the only one that does the decorating, so it's a fight that I will win when I want, and lose when I want. I actually am in charge.

A meal full of apps and small plates

We've got a restaurant near us that we love. It has a number of delicious appetizers and small plates, but, as wonderful as that is, we have not had a memorable entree. We hadn't been to the restaurant in several months, but the company has opened a new location closer to us.

We've since been to the new location twice. Both times, Brian and I have each tried a different entree. Brian had pizza last time, and a prime rib dip today. I had the grilled chicken club last time, and a pizza today. Not a single one of those entrees was remarkable.

This is disappointing in a couple ways. First, the place isn't cheap, so it's an expensive lunch of meh. Second, my husband is not the kind of guy who keeps going somewhere that disappoints him. I figure I have one or two more visits to get a complete, good meal in his stomach before he decides that he isn't going there anymore.

Luckily, like I said, the restaurant's appetizers and small plates are the best part of the menu. Thankfully, it will be the draw of those small plates that will entice Brian back, time and time again.

I love that place, you guys, and I'll eat apps and small plates ALL DAY LONG!!

"Papillon" the movie, not the dog breed

It's not normal for my movie knowledge to fail me. In fact, I can probably count on a couple for more hands how many times I've been truly stumped by a film. I was proud of that. And then came "Papillon."

I'd never seen the movie, and remember vividly that I didn't want to when it was in theaters. But for whatever reason, it intrigued me enough to sit through (almost) the entirety of it this afternoon. It was playing on one of my movie channels that happened to be on when I stopped watching a show on the DVR.

I don't know what interested me enough to stop, but I did, and I watched the rest of it. According to the info button, I had missed about 20 minutes of the beginning.

But what did I know. I did remember some of the peripheries of the movie. I remembered that Rami Malek was in it. I remembered that it was about a prison on an island, and that bad things happen to the people that were held there. I remembered that it was relatively well received and maybe even an Oscar nomination? I remembered that the story itself was pretty sad and hopeless.

Here's where my knowledge failed me. I did not know that Charlie Hunnam was in it. I did not know that the end, in fact, was uplifting. I didn't know that the story was a super good one, and even based on a true story and a real guy.

And here's the kicker. I didn't realize that even though I only remembered that Rami Malek was in the movie, he was NOT the main character. Charlie Hunnam played the part of Papillon! I was halfway through the movie before anyone called any character by name, and it was then that I discovered that Malek's Dega was a supporting role to Hunnam's Papillon.

Obviously, by missing the first 20 minutes, I missed the basic introductions of the characters. But this whole flip-flop (in my head) of which actor played who made me stop the film for a moment, rearrange the basic outline of the movie (in my head), and then start anew with a brighter perspective, and other plot holes that I thought I'd found now fully closed up.

Totally not THAT cold!

So it was cold out today. It hasn't been cold in several months. In fact, we haven't had a high temperature below 80 since, oh I don't know, March? Maybe a day or two in April? It was a treat to put on a sweater this morning, but then came the realization that some of my sweaters need to be replaced, because they're very old and really, really showing it. Luckily, I have Old Navy Super Cash, so I'll see what kind of trouble I can get into there.

As I sit here with my windows open in my bedroom, I find that I'm excited to put the extra blanket on my bed tonight. I'm looking forward to wearing something warm tomorrow, too, and then I believe it will get warmer as the week goes on. So it'll probably still be warm for Halloween this weekend.

It's so weird how caught up a desert-dwelling person can get in the weather. Weather of all kinds, for sure. It's hot; gotta complain about it. It's raining; gotta revel in it. It's cold; gotta celebrate it, and then complain, too.

Get Shit Done 2021

So what's up today?

* I've voted; happily and excitedly.

* My football team is a hot mess, and I'd rather watch any other games but mine, so the money I'm spending on NFL Sunday Ticket is officially being wasted every month.

* Sydney is officially in school, which has been a bit of a blessing for the general environment in my house. She's getting out and being a student, and more importantly, she's more engaged, so everything seems to be better now. Lack of boredom equals better kid attitude.

* Cooper and Elliot are well, and not finding all the scorpions in the house. That responsibility has fallen to me, and Brian now regularly patrols the backyard and kills all the glowing little dudes he sees.

* Brian's busy; I'm busy.

* My dear friend, Leslie, has come back to work in my office on her terms and temporarily, and it makes me so happy to know that I'll be seeing her every day for as long as that lasts.

* Everyone else in my circle is good, and all else is moving along.

* It's impossible to reconcile that October is almost over, and even worse that the year is so close to being over. I had dubbed this year "Get Shit Done 2020," in January, but I have the impression that my mantra may have to slide into 2021.