Well well well... It was like early September and school started and and...
and then shiznet happened.
To sum it all up
(deeep breath)
MEGA MASSIVE CONDENSOR APPLIED TO ABOUT A MONTH AND CHANGE OF BIG STUFF: Andrew went to Japan for a couple of weeks. Allan and I had a visit from Fidel. Allan was Allan. And... the entire state was eveloped in unseasonable warmth, a wee lil record setting lack of rain, and all kinds of new variations on smoky weather.
Smoke is now a weather. When I went to my weather app over the last two months I got a lot of "smoky" as the weather descriptor, so there we are.
There's smoke plus fog, which isn't quite smog even though the portmanteau would suggest it. It's just really dingy muddy air, really. There's haze. There's apocalypse smoke. There's smoke aloft and smoke curling up your toes. A lot of different kinds of smoke. And we had them all. They can make for some pretty beautiful sunrises. Also...
GROSS
This is my fault for saying that we'd somehow avoided smoke season back in August. Stupid Stupid stupid.
But, at the risk of jinxing the world again...
No
NO
I won't say it
Just, well...
Look at this...
So one feature of the Pacific Northwest is that we usually have drier and sunnier starts to fall. Usually fall is exceptionally beautiful in September. And then at some point in October or November the "rain switch" gets flipped and the rest of fall is tons of rain with occasionally beautiful sun breaks all the way through until ... I dunno... summer?
We didn't get the first part of fall, but the switch still flipped! Right on track even.
It's awesome! The air is breathable. The fires are out and...
DUDE, it's got 20 degrees to 30 degrees colder like within a day or two. My body is happy, but confused. I seem to be going back and forth between freezing and totally flushed and overheated! Internal clock is resetting very gradually.
Still. Yay.
Blue Skies... in between deluges... nothing but clean air... for a few more months!
Just in time for Halloween! One of our favorite holidays. Easter, of course, remains the all time favorite. But Halloween is up there. For good reason: costumes and candy! Duh! What's not to love?
After three years of being a monarch butterly (in an every shrinking but miraculously still fitting costume) Allan was planning to shake it all up and be a black cat. She decided this on her birthday and has been sticking to it. Hard.
So that was easy!
Except...
... we lost the cat ears!!!
What?? I swear they have been in the little bowl for accessories ever since Allan's birthday (when she discovered the unicorn horn and forsook thecat ears as her main accessory)
I discovered this about 5 minutes before Allan and Andrew were due to leave for a Trunk or Treat at his office late last week. We'd been taking it easy, because the kitty costume was so low maintenance. Watching Pokemon and doing homework and...
... cue the howling and screaming and demands that we start October over again (no thanks, enough smoke for a lifetime already)
Desperately flailing around Allan's room, I remembered the Frozen costume that her Aunt Rachel had bought for her two years ago, which had been pretty crazily oversized for her back then and which is still a bit on the "big" size.
After some pointed resistance, the temptation of glitter and the curiosity of "I just wonder if it fits you yet..." won out. It's still big but also it fits. And Allan was satisfied (for now... she wanted a black cat or nothing for actual Halloween).
And they were all on their way. Fire and Ice!
(note Andrew is dressed as "fire" now, the original concept no longer matters as this is what Allan decreed).
Meanwhile I scoured the house repeatedly in a desperate search for said cat ears and also - because I know how this house really is - ordered two new pairs. Actually on set of a pair of cat ears and an additional cat costume
With paws! And a bell. And ... paws
She's been wearing the cat costume since it arrived on Saturday. There's also a really cute cat dress that I bought her to wear with it, and it's made the three day circuit too. Not sure why the flower hoodie and leggings came along, but they're cute so add those to the several day wear pile! I'm so curious what she'll decide to wear tomorrow for her first original outfit in days.
But for now, it's all cat, all the time
Yes, the paws too. They only come off during kindle time. Not so much during eating time. So it's been... interesting. Bathroom time as well. I'll leave that all to your imagination.
But she had occasion to meow! It was a Halloweentastic weekend!
On Saturday the King County Parks and Rec was hosting a Pumpkin Hunt! It's what it sounds like - basically an egg hunt but it's plastic pumpkins instead of eggs. A lot of waiting. Some confusion. A start up. And then CHAOS! Kids running everywhere scooping up pumpkins left and right! It was an intense few minutes of screamble.
Allan got to exchange each pumpkin she found for a small bag of candy! Win win! She also got her face painted. Being a black cat, she wanted her whole face to be black. We convinced her white whiskers were better. With a heart nose even!
After the event Allan devotedly (still wearing her cat paws) opened and devoured almost all of the mounds of candy she'd won. It was down to only one or two pieces left before she announced she had a stomach ache and she demanded lunch (where she picked all the reese's pieces out of her trail mix because of course she did). The whole venture took about an hour and a half and was very intent. I wish she paid half as much attention to any real food I try to feed her!
Fun Saturday, but that was just the begining!
On Sunday West Seattle threw a big Harvest Festival Halloweenextravaganza.
There was a parade, there were booths with games, there were tons of becostumed people and there was candy!!! So much candy!!! And a marching band. The marching band was my favorite.They were awesome. Lots of and lots of music and they led the parade. We were right there up next to them during the parade rocking out. Tons of fun.
The rain held off for the few hours that we were there anyways. We went for the parade. Played games for about an hour before meeting Allan's bestie Yael and then they wandered the streets for candy and cookies before the long hike back to our cars, which were parked roughly further away from the event than our houses!
But whatever, I can be a bunny too. Bunnies are cute. We helped Andrew transition from "fire" to Flareon with an extra pair of ears from Allan's replacement cat ears. Allan is very particular about halloween costumes. This one worked for her.
This morning she was candied and excitemented out, after having stayed up late last night talking about her new Halloween poster. It was a long series of negotiations getting her to school. For whatever reason I've found that giving her a covid test often helps. It's like it's a divine "school or no school" oracle in her mind. So we swabbed her on the stairs and took the test with us on the way". It was... you're shocked I'm sure... negative. Hopefully she's having fun in her costume at a school that isn't super into Halloween (hence her resistance to going today)
The car strewn with covid tests feels like an emblem of the "post pandemic life".
And that slow tumble into the Holiday Season "Post-Pandemic" Edition is officially underfoot! I imagine it'll be pretty extravagent for most people wanting to catch up with a few years of zoom and isolation. I'm sure it'll be something. I am sure I will hear all about it.
A fun feature of MCAS is that it can get put into hyperdrive by any random thing (med/illness/infection/temperature change) and any of those things can pretty much drop your baseline for a loong long time straight out to forever. It's been a couple months of "things": wildfire smoke (which - awww, nostalgia - precipitated my first flare back in 2017!), doxycycline disasters, covid shot...)
Which is to say, I will be foregoing the holiday travels this year, but we are still trying to brainstorm ways to make the plane safe again (ideas usually involve a pretty high level of PPE in various configurations). Of course attending a heavily populated Thanksgiving banquet in a gas mask still seems to make people uncomfortable so many more plans to figure out!
To be oh so 2020, I will be spending Thanksgiving zooming into a couple of holiday events and generally feeling sniff sniff while presiding over my meal of cabbage, peanut butter and raisins(things that do not currently make my eyelid swell immediately after eating)! Should be a blast! One of these days there will be enough long covid sufferers out there for some serious medications to come out that actually specifically target MCAS. I am looking out about five years and feeling hopeful here!
Perhaps another reason to love Halloween. At least when the smoke is cleared, it's mostly an outdoors fresh-air holiday without a lot of travel or other risks. And i do love Halloween too.
Happy Halloween and onwards into the dark abyss! Where are those christmas lights already??
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