It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like... Rain, Honestly

Well if it ain't the second half of fall (i.e. that part we think is winter and kind of is but also isn't)! The first half was all prim and idyllic. Crimson and orange popping everywhere. Sunlight hitting at all those perfectly chiaroscuro angles!

Then the rain switch slipped, the time fell back all over itself, and the sun took a vacay to Bermuda. Somewhere far far away. I kind of dig it, though. It's cozy. Mostly. Also cold. And sometimes very bright, but more often crepuscular. 

Did I mention cold? This is actually seen positively here. Child loves snow. Seattle doesn't get a ton of snow. Last year I don't think we got any. This year had better snow. Or else! It will get emotional in here. 

At this point, we're well into the holiday season. Two down. Several to go. 

I am authorized to disclose that Halloween was pretty awesome. It was dishing out rain like a minor hurricane. Ordinarily, the young'un refuses to go outside if there's even a gentle mist, but Halloween rules are different. 

She was ready to spend all night out there in her formal Princess Peach gown and complete lack of seasonal gear. Her parents were a little less enthused, so it was fortunate that (1) I had bought her a much smaller treat bag than the cloth shopping bag I gave her last year, and (2) the people handing out candy were exceptionally generous. We rounded out our evening after one lady took her treat bucket and emptied it straight into Allan's bag. 

She's set for dessert for a good long while!

Did you know these are a thing? They are! And they get two grubby sticky thumbs up from the only one who matters!

Following Halloween, there was a bit of a lull, while November played itself out as best it could. Loved ones who hadn't seen Agatha All Along gradually were inducted as I pushed up the rewatch count to ever more obsessive highs. Over time, I somewhat pulled back from the fandom as the ADHD part of my uniquely qired brain hit. It decided rather immediately a few weeks after the finale that the dopamine hits from repeated viewings and fielding the same several questions and theories again and again and again were not significant enough to keep me functioning

And thus, we had to move on. I read through a blur of Young Avengers comics. Feasted abstemiously on some Hearstopper, both in Netflix and comic form. Dove my hyperfocus into Alice Oseman's oeuvre and will soon be wrapping up a read of her last YA novel. I also decided that Ms Marvel touches on enough cultural and historical themes to fold into the homeschool agenda. So, rewatched this with Allan during transitional moments. 

December is a promising month for tv obsessions, so I am excited and almost overwhelmed at the offerings coming up. We already started off the Skeleton Crew, and there's much more to come!

But before I get ahead of myself, there was yet another holiday!

Thanksgiving was a faintly gustatory affair as the holiday gods demanded. Sort of. By which I mean, Allan had a grilled cheese sandwich with extra ketchup and we made some exceptionally indulgent "home made poptarts" to binge on afterwards. 

Allan? Yeah. For the first time in recorded history, Allan made good on her threat to stay home instead of heading out on her semi-annual pilgrimage to San Francisco. I was a little shocked, as she expressed far less hesitancy about this trip than any of the trips she's taken in the last two years. But we hit some extremely gruesome traffic on the drive out. She developed a bad headache sitting in the stop-and-go on a high-glare day. And by the time we finally made it through, she just couldn't. No worries. We're ready for this, with refundable tickets as the norm. And of course I don't travel, so I'm always home. 

 

I had mixed feelings, really. On the one hand, I get almost no time to myself and so I live for those travel breaks, where I get to do what I want when I want. It's liberating.

 On the other, it's awfully lonely being left at home for the holidays, even those holidays that are actively antithetical to pretty much everything that accommodates my disability. I have limited safe foods, and need to eat small meals at regular times. I get overstimulated by smells, lights, noises, and conversation. I am allergic to a ton of things that people regularly consume/bathe/wash/wear. I tend to feel the need to mask around people who aren't a very limited number of closer intimates. It's exhausting and I only ever really loved Thanksgiving when it was me and my dad making up recipes based on whatever we could find at the grocery store and then eating it off the fancy china. But, well, that's not an option anymore. And you can still feel like you're being left out of things that you know you couldn't handle. 

Anyways, it was kind of cozy to have somebody willing to "celebrate" at my speed. We watched Is It Cake? We made cinnamon sugar poptarts. We watched a few strange Thanksgiving movies. Turkey Hollow is a trip involving muppets, Ludacriss in a knit sweater reading cue cards, and that chick from Back to the Future Three. Free Birds is actually a pretty decent animated film. We read a lot. 

So... mixed. But fun. 

And now, holey moley, it's almost Christmas! And Hannukah! On the same day!

And we have family visiting one or two days before the big event, so not the usual quiet ramp up. Should be eventful!

And and and and... well

If it doesn't snow this year, I'm afraid there will be riots. The odds are decent. We got our first freezing days earlier this week. But we seem to be in the cycle of "dry and cold" and "warmer and rainy"

Does this count? 

Happy Holidaze all! Hope it's lovely!