It’s not only Friday, it’s the first Friday in November. I am not ready for the pell-mell can’t-catch-my-breath of the last two months of the year (and I don’t even want to THINK about the holidays; I am pretending they don’t exist), but ready or not, they’re here. 

• We had our first snowfall of the season! I love snow and it was such a pure delight to see big flakes falling from the night sky, and then to wake up to a good two inches of snow on all the exterior surfaces. Especially because the roads were blissfully bare and dry. I did realize that a) I’d purged Carla’s snow clothing prior to the move, because she’d been wearing them for two years straight and they were sprouting holes and showed an inch or two of ankle and b) I’d never replaced them. Fortunately, Lands End is having a sale so I was able to order her new things. And new snow boots. 

• Speaking of Carla, and snow, and clothing: she has extremely specific fashion tastes these days. And those fashion tastes are not always compatible with the weather. But she’s TEN, and I’ve grown weary of negotiating with her about whether shorts over tights counts as appropriate winter wear. Also, at what age does a child realize that it might be wise to put on a sweatshirt if you are cold rather than complaining plaintively about it to your mother? It’s not age ten, that’s for sure.

• Halloween was fine. There was a neighborhood gathering, at which I felt completely overwhelmed. People were nice but not friendly, and there were so very many of them. I brought the wrong thing and used the wrong container (this group seems to lean quite Fancy), but at least I know better for next time. On the good side, Carla seemed to have a BLAST. There were tons of kids. Twenty? Fifty? I couldn’t keep track of them because they didn’t stay still, and sometimes they had masks on, and sometimes they didn’t. But Carla got to run from house to house in a pack of children and that made me feel very happy and relieved. We bought WAY too much candy and now have an entire grocery bag full of leftovers (on top of Carla’s haul), which I am itching to donate as soon as Carla’s school accepts donations. I wasn’t missing candy – so why am I unable to ignore the siren song of a fun size Snickers? None of my favorites showed up this year, either in the candy we bought or the candy Carla brought home; I’m partial to Milky Way Midnights and Sour Patch Kids. But I’m making up for it with the aforementioned Snickerses and a fairly obscene number of Reese’s peanut butter cups. 

• Do you put outgoing mail in your mailbox, or do you take it to the post office? I am having a bit of a disagreement with someone about the appropriate course of action. Some context: One of us grew up in a country area that wasn’t served by the postal service; mail was delivered to a post office box in town. One of us grew up in the suburbs of a large city and had access to a mailbox at the end of the driveway. One of us believes that you put outgoing mail in the mailbox, and, in fact, this is part of the purpose of a mailbox; why else would there be a little red flag on the side of the mailbox meant to alert the postal worker to the presence of outgoing mail? One of us thinks that outgoing mail should be handled at the post office only, or perhaps at one of those once-ubiquitous blue mailboxes that used to be on every street corner but have all but disappeared in the wake of 9/11. Who is right? Where does outgoing mail go? If a person wants to utilize the home mailbox, do they have to call the post office to make sure it’s okay, or is lifting the little red flag alert enough?

• I recently read the newest Robert Galbraith book, The Running Grave. It was truly gripping, despite the fact that it seemed like no one had really edited the thing, and despite the fact that the will they/won’t they storyline has been grating on me for about three books by now. In fact, reading it made me want to reread the series from the beginning, so I waited until we had unpacked all the book boxes to find the first book… and it wasn’t there. Neither were the second and third books in the series. My husband thinks that I may have started reading the series on my kindle, which sounds plausible. But for various reasons, I don’t want to read it on kindle again, so I am contemplating buying a copy. But then I will want to own ALL the books in the series, and that feels like a commitment I’m not ready to make. So. Here I dither, not reading the book I want to read, not buying books I want to buy, and not complaining about it on the book blog, but here instead. What would you do? I suppose I could check it out from the library, which would address a whole host of issues, some of which I started to discuss here but then deleted. However, for some unknown reason the library option isn’t appealing to me. What would you do? Have you ever bought a book you’ve already read just to own the complete series? What if I DO buy the rest of the series and the hardbacks are no longer available so half the series is in hardback and the other half is in paperback? Will that drive me book bonkers?

That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope your Friday is sunny and that your weekend starts early!

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join in the fun, check out San’s blog here.