These Unprecedented Times

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Halloween Report

Today we have a wind advisory and hail, with snow coming over night. I absolutely HATE wind, but I suppose the swirling leaves and unsettled skies — plus the queasy feeling they give me, as I imagine the tree crashing through our roof — are a good metaphor for how I’m feeling about the impending election.

Fortunately, yesterday was PERFECT for outdoor entertaining. High 40s, and, best of all, SUNSHINE. The big yellow maple which leans over our backyard from our neighbor’s was practically glowing in all the sun. (Its branches, already today, are nearly bare, and the big yellow leaves are scattered all over our yard.) The sky was blue, the air was fresh and only slightly breezy. Our yard was squashy from all the rain we’ve been getting, but the kids all wore rainboots. Their costumes got very muddy indeed, but they had a lot of fun.

I am willing to admit this looks more like a moldy cherry than a jack-o-lantern, but we do our best with the gifts and number of cups we possess.

The Poke a Prize game I created was a big hit. (It would be really fun to do for almost any birthday party or holiday – you’d just adjust the colors and shape you create accordingly.) It was also a LOT of work. First, I bought a bunch of little treats: candy, of course, but also spider rings and pumpkin erasers, and mini notebooks and hair clips and other little things I thought the girls would like. These LOL mini surprise balls were the biggest hit. Filling the cups was easy. Assembling the board, less so. I misunderstood the directions and bought crepe paper instead of orange napkins to disguise the cups and the prizes within, and it took me a million years to wrap each cup in crepe paper. A million. Years. Then our hot glue gun didn’t work, so I had to Gorilla Glue the cups to the poster board. And then a few cups refused to accept the Gorilla Glue, so I had to duct tape those on. It was a lot of work. Fortunately, since I didn’t have a birthday party to stress about this year, I had lots of pent-up craftiness to put toward this project. Carla helped me cut out letters, a stem, and a leaf to glue to the board.

My plan had been to just have the kids take turns poking the cups and extracting the prizes, but my husband suggested that we make the game a little more challenging to make it more FUN. So Carla and I cut up little pieces of paper and wrote on them either “TREAT! Poke a prize!” or “TRICK!” and then a little activity they had to do before they could poke a prize. Things like, “Hop like a bunny!” and “Yell the ABCs!” and “Go down the slide!” The kids drew a slip of paper from a trick-or-treat pumpkin bucket, read the instruction, and collected their prizes. They had a really good time. 

They also enjoyed their “treasure hunt,” which was just running around the yard collecting the 15 little goodie bags I’d filled with candy, barrettes, and Halloween-themed erasers. 

The food was good. Our kitchen table is right next to the sliding doors that lead to the porch, so I just set up the crockpot and other food on the table, and people could just barely enter our house to fill their plates. Usually, I feel like I make way too much food. But there was practically nothing left by the time our friends went home, so I think everything went over well.

This chicken, mushroom, and wild rice soup won a lot of praise from my friends, which was very gratifying. The recipe makes a TON of soup, and it was all gone by the end of the evening. The six of us GOBBLED it up. If you need a warm, hearty fall/winter soup that you can cook in the crockpot, I cannot recommend this enough. The hardest part of this soup is chopping the veggies for the mirepoix and the mushrooms. Also, near the end you make a quick roux and add milk and half and half to thicken the soup, and that’s a teeny bit of a pain. Otherwise, it is super easy. Despite some comments on the recipe saying that the rice gets mushy after eight hours in the crockpot, I use Lundberg wild rice, and just dump it in at the beginning like the recipe says, and it has always come out perfectly. Also, the recipe suggests putting the mushrooms in 30 minutes before the end of cooking, and I do NOT do that — I just put them in with everything else right at the beginning — and it has always turned out beautifully. 

The daughters of our friends BOTH ate the soup, which seems miraculous to me. I think I’ve been able to cajole Carla to try a bite of tomato soup ONCE EVER and certainly she would never, ever even THINK of trying a soup with a bunch of stuff in it. 

The tried-and-true miracle no-knead bread was also a crowd pleaser. If you like bread, and if you like appearing to be a person who makes very fancy gourmet bread, then you MUST try this recipe. It is the easiest thing ever. Seriously, NO KNEADING. The only hard part is that you have to prep the dough twelve to eighteen hours before you want to cook it. And by “prep,” I mean mix flour, salt, yeast, and water together in a bowl, cover it, and let it sit. Aside from having to plan ahead, this bread is impossible to mess up and the result is soft and crusty and delicious.

My favorite fall salad remains a favorite. I buy these sweet and spicy pecans from Trader Joe’s, rather than making my own. The dressing is delicious and easy to prepare in advance, and really the worst part of making the whole thing is chopping the shallot. 

To make things harder on myself, as is my tendency, I searched for fancy fall cocktails to make for our guests. I found an apple and gin autumn cocktail that sounded kind of weird but workable. Weird in the sense that I’ve never once thought that gin and apple cider would go together. However, I love gin, and I love apple cider, and I wanted a fall drink that didn’t require me to buy bourbon or a bunch of other liquors/liqueurs that I don’t normally use. So I tried it. And it was DELCIOUS. It’s lightly apple-y and not too sweet and goes down very easy. 

Why are all these hot dogs rolling their eyes at me?

The kids seemed to find the mummy hot dogs really charming, and making them was a fun project that Carla and I did together. Carla even ate half of her mummy, which was surprising. I am now realizing that I didn’t cut her hot dog for her, which probably made it hard for her to eat. Whoops. (Although it’s equally possible she just ate her weight in candy and had no room for hotdog, a food she is lukewarm on anyway.) (By the way, per the recipe, I did end up “gluing” candy eyes, leftover from the monster cookies, to the mummy dogs with ketchup, despite the whole thing making me very nauseated. I mean, ketchup with hot dogs?!?! Ew. Plus, candy eyeballs with hotdogs?!?!?!?! DOUBLE ew. But the kids did not care.)

My husband describes the flavor of these cookies as “overwhelmingly sweet.”

I think the biggest disappointment of the evening was the monster cookies. Well, and I would rate them only HALF a disappointment, because a) they were very fun to make together with Carla and b) they were really cute. But they were not the most delicious cookies I’ve ever had. They mainly tasted like white cake mix, to me. (Which is because they are made with a box of white cake mix.) But the kids liked them, so I think overall they were worth trying. Plus, now we have a million candy eyeballs.

This was very likely the last entertaining of any sort we will do for the season, so I am really glad it went so well. We only needed to turn on our heater and put on winter coats once the sun went down behind our neighbors’ houses, no one froze to death, everyone had a good time, mud washes off, and the kids did not seem to miss trick-or-treating at all. 

I didn’t look to see whether there were a lot of trick-or-treaters on our street. My husband did remark that he saw a big group of kids and adults, and none of them were wearing masks, but that was it. After our friends left, and we’d washed the dishes and put the covers back on the deck furniture, I watched Interview with the Vampire on Hulu and then went to bed. 

Now I need to get up the energy to put away the Halloween decorations. And start thinking about Christmas, I guess. 

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First Time in Target Since Early March; Not Trick-or-Treating

Man, I really hate my current blog background.

While I have gotten back into “normal” grocery shopping, and have visited Costco a couple of times over the past seven months, I have not been inside Target since the pandemic began. This is thanks to their super awesome curbside pickup offering, where you order stuff and drive to the store and someone is walking out to meet you practically the instant you arrive. (And if something you ordered isn’t actually available in the store, Target will ship it to you for free.) It’s excellent and contact free and I love it.

But.

Not EVERYTHING is available via curbside pickup. And I have begun to really need some of those things, including cleaning spray and hand soap. At one point, I was able to get hand soap via curbside, but it was only once; it has been unavailable ever since. And for some reason, I can’t order it online to be delivered. Well. They have their reasons.

So I have been thinking about making a trip TO Target for awhile now. What’s been holding me back is a) a desire to avoid most places, as per my pandemic usual and b) the last time I went there, it was such a dystopian nightmare, it really turned me off. That was back in the height of early paper towel hoarding, when the paper goods aisles were picked clean and there was no soap or Purell anywhere to be found and I was trying very hard to fill my cart with measured and reasonable amounts of cereal and pasta and wine despite the doom and dread coursing through my veins. 

A friend of mine has been inside Target several times, and, as she is still uncomfortable in the grocery store, I felt like maybe a trip to Target was workable. (Plus, she once got me two! bottles! of bleach spray on a trip to Target, and I have heard whisperings about a supply of antibacterial wipes, so… the temptation is strong.)

So I girded my… loins is the only word I am coming up with here, but that seems wholly inaccurate and also I don’t really like the word “loins.” 

Let’s try something else. I steeled my nerves and drove to Target after I dropped Carla off. 

Immediately I ran into a sticking point. There was a big sign out front that said something like, “Line starts here for our most vulnerable customers.”

It was an odd and oddly worded sign. There were no hours posted, and no one was in line… so I just… went in. But I felt oddly guilty about it. Was I intruding on Vulnerable Customers Time? I don’t know! I suppose I could have looked it up on my phone but I was a) flustered by the sign and b) dealing with partially fogged eyeglasses and b) STEELED, so I just powered through. 

A staff member pointed to a row of carts and told me they were sanitized, so I took one. There were footstep stickers on the floor in the main aisle – the one that abuts the checkout lanes – but no stickers elsewhere. 

The kids’ clothing section looked and felt normal. But then I got into the cleaning aisles and… well. It still looks like a dystopian nightmare. The soap aisle only had a handful of soap products, and what was available was more in the dish soap category than in the hand soap arena, which was very limited. I was able to get a refill of the soap I prefer in the kitchen, and a refill of a lesser-preferred soap. I am kicking myself for not getting a couple of smaller bottles of hand soap, but we do have some bottles already, and now I can refill them. 

The cleansing spray aisle was VERY sparse. Sure, there were some sprays here and there on the shelves, but I felt panicky and unsure about the items that were left. Like… there seemed to be plenty of Method and Seventh Generation products, but I’m not familiar with those as cleaning agents. And they were so abundant (“abundant”) compared to things like Lysol and Clorox that I looked at them askance; why were so many left behind? Does that mean that they aren’t actually as good at CLEANING? What do all the other Target shoppers know that I do not? And, while it may not be obvious based on my comment awhile back, there wasn’t a Lysol or a Clorox product to be found. No bleach spray, although the actual pourable bleach seemed to be well stocked. (I have plenty of that, but I really dislike and lack confidence in my ability to make my own bleach spray, so I want someone else [CLOROX] to package it for me.) 

There was a section of antibacterial wipes, although none of the brands I am familiar with. I grabbed a container of the Up & Up brand for fake legitimacy reasons; I have been skittish about buying off-brand wipes, even though they pop up pretty frequently these days. While I can look at a hand sanitizer and see that is has the correct percentage of alcohol, wipes are different. I have no idea what chemicals to look for in wipes to know that they are legit. 

The toilet cleaning options were next to nil; again, all that remained were the “fancy” cleansers that I don’t know and so don’t yet trust. I want bleach in my toilets, you know? Not citric acid.  

The paper towel aisle was empty but for one tiny corner. I grabbed a package even though I keep TELLING myself that paper towels are NOT a necessity; we have reusable paper towels and plenty of microfiber cloths and we can MAKE DO. But it is hard not to be swept up in paper towel mania. (Even when the paper towels cost SEVENTEEN AMERICAN DOLLARS OMG.) I did not look at the toilet paper situation.

There was a brand new aisle of ONLY hand sanitizer. The only brand name I recognized was Suave. The shelves carried all different brands and a variety of sizes of containers. Purell was not among them.

Most concerning – moreso than the empty shelves – was the return of signs saying that customers were limited to one item apiece. I mean, maybe Target has had those signs all along (although my friend buying me two entire bottles of bleach spray would indicate otherwise), but my grocery store eliminated those signs weeks ago. But at Target, only one canister (how does canister only have one N?) of wipes, one package of paper towels, one bottle of cleaning spray, etc.

The Halloween section was, understandably, very picked-over and messy. It’s like that every year, but it felt different this year. 

There is still no Hormel pepperoni. 

The food aisles seemed fairly well stocked: flour and yeast and sugar and olive oil and cereal and tea. They had very limited options for boxed cake mix, which seemed odd. I didn’t go into the pasta or canned goods aisles, so I can’t speak to them. I’ve heard there’s a shortage of aluminum, but there seemed to be plenty of soda. (And if you buy $20 worth of soda, you get a $5 gift card! Of course the 12-packs are conveniently $4.89.)

There were maybe ten other customers in Target at the same time. Perhaps it was always that empty at 8:15 on a Wednesday morning, but it added to my feeling of foreboding.

When I checked out, I had to wait six feet away from the register, and then wait for the staff person to call me before I could put my items on the belt. I stood there, as I usually do, to watch the prices scan on the computer screen… but I was flustered, and had just realized that I’d forgotten to scan my items through my Target Circle app (I am out of practice!), and plus I didn’t want to get too close to the checker, even though she was behind plexiglass panels. So who knows if they overcharged me. I guess I can look at my receipt, genius. But at the time I was just eager to get OUT of Target. And possibly never return. 

AFTER Target, I had to go to the grocery store. We are having a Halloween Party (ha! Not really. We are having one of the three families we have socialized with during the pandemic over for an outdoor candy hunt and dinner on our back porch. We feel that this family has been very risk-averse, and have gotten together with them twice already: once for a hike and once for lunch in their backyard. There will be seven of us total, wearing masks until we are eating, and I have configured our back porch with three tables so the adults can sit six feet apart at the big table and the kids who are siblings can sit at one small table near their parents and my kid can sit six feet away at her own table.) and I needed to get some supplies. My grocery store has really seemed to be back to normal (we can even bring our own reusable bags again!), but I checked the cleanser aisle today (I got some 409 there the other day and was hopeful for toilet-bowl cleaner) and it was nearly empty, PLUS there was a sign saying that all cleansers were only one-per-person. So. Make of that what you may. 

Plus, the pasta aisle seemed to be a little light on the pasta. Maybe it’s just a normal low before restocking, but everything feels so portentous these days.

I need more gin, but I will order that for curbside pickup from the grocery store that offers this option.

Just for completeness: For our Halloween party dinner, we are serving chicken, wild rice and mushroom soup, bread, and my favorite fall salad for dinner to the grown ups. For the kids, who are of course welcome but unlikely to eat those things, I am making mummy hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. Carla and I will make monster cookies for dessert. Since the kids aren’t trick-or-treating this year, I made up some gift bags with little treats in them, and plan to hide them around the yard. I also set up this elaborate contraption that is a bunch of plastic cups wrapped in orange crepe paper and arranged on a poster board to look like a pumpkin; the cups each have a little treat in them: candy, erasers, stickers, barrettes with colorful hair, hair ties, spider rings, glow sticks. Yes I have gone completely overboard, and yes this is basically two separate and very time consuming methods for the kids to get the same exact junk, but also I am having Feelings about not letting Carla trick-or-treat. (She has accepted this ruling without argument, by the way.) 

Oh, okay, I guess I want to talk about this, too. 

We have a lovely little cul-de-sac with wonderful neighbors who all know and adore Carla (mainly because she knows and adores their dogs). They all want to know if she is trick-or-treating this year, and I have been hedging. But she is NOT, and I feel good if sad about that plan.

A parent of one of Carla’s friends is doing the opposite. She feels that trick-or-treating is very low-risk, being outside and all, and that so many things have been taken from our kids that we shouldn’t take this holiday from them.

I see her point. And I even AGREE that I am being overly cautious here. It’s probably FINE to let your kids go trick-or-treating! No one in our county has said that people can’t do it. I haven’t read (or, to be fair, seen) any articles about whether it’s a good or bad idea. It takes place outside; the risk of contracting Covid from a physical object seems to be pretty low; the contact with other people would be fairly limited. It’s probably FINE.

And maybe it seems contradictory or weird that we are okay having dinner with another family while we are not okay with trick-or-treating. And I get that! You may be looking at me askance — I go into Target AND the grocery store in a single day, plus I am having people over for dinner? And yet I am squicky about trick-or-treating? Trying to assess individual risk is full of contradictions.

The end result is that we are still, out of an over-abundance of caution, keeping Carla home. (And we are not handing out candy. Carla and I may, if we have the energy, try to create a Halloween-y chalk obstacle course on our sidewalk, just to give kids a little something fun to do/make fun of. But we may not, also.) 

I guess what it comes down to, for me, is three things: 1) If lots of people decide to allow their kids to trick-or-treat, there will be crowds of kids on our street. Hundreds of people come to our neighborhood each year, and this year Halloween is on a Saturday AND we expect to have decent weather, so it could be MANY MORE than normal. I don’t know. The thought of Carla walking through a crush of children, hopefully wearing masks but who knows, gives me palpitations. 2) Carla’s school has been very explicit about how limiting infections is a school-community responsibility; it does not feel to me like we would be honoring that responsibility if we allowed her to trick-or-treat. Obviously, other people will have a different read. And the school has not come out and said, “Please don’t trick-or-treat.” But I am trying to take our membership in the school community seriously. 3) I do not think I can count on our lovely, kind, generous neighbors to all wear masks. Some of them have voiced opinions that imply that they do not believe Covid is being accurately represented by our media, i.e. that it will be over as soon as the election concludes, and some of them have also shared with me social plans that involved many people, which implies that they may not have the same risk assessment of the situation that I do. So having Carla go door to door where these kind, lovely people (I feel like my attempt to be really clear that they ARE kind and lovely people is now making it sound like I believe the opposite) will undoubtedly want to talk to her makes me nervous. 4) I guess there is a fourth reason, and that is that if Carla DOES get Covid after/because of Halloween, the contact tracing might be impossible.

ANYWAY. That is all to say that I am overdoing it in terms of trying to make the evening special for her and the two little friends who will be with us this weekend. I know — I KNOW — that they would have been fine if we hid a few Snickers bars around the yard and called it a day. But I think a lot of my own sadness about this year — no birthday party for Carla! no trick-or-treating! no family at Christmas or Thanksgiving! — is finding an outlet in putting a bunch of silly gift bags together for these three children.

How are YOU handling Halloween? Have YOU ventured into Target? Are you just SO SICK of all of this?

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Pandemic Randomosity: More of Narrative Than a Bulleted List But Still Pretty Random

I had to double check that it truly is SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH SOMEHOW. This has long been a refrain of my life, the “where has time gone?!?!?!” theme, and yet it never ceases to astound me because WHERE has the time GONE?

Time has taken on even new depths of slippery-ness now that Carla is back in school. (She is SO HAPPY, internet. I know it could go remote at any moment, but for now she is SO HAPPY.) I keep jolting out of whatever I’m doing and thinking, “Where’s Carla?!” as though she’s still in the house somewhere and I’ve forgotten about her. Or I will look at the clock and think, “Oh my god! I need to go get Carla!” even though I may, in fact, have four hours yet before I need to pick her up. 

We have all these new things to do each day – make sure she doesn’t have a fever, answer some “do you have Covid or Covid symptoms?”-style questions via an app before 7:30, make sure she has a selection of masks to take to school with her – and it’s making me jumpy. I will be prepping her breakfast and think, “Oh no! I didn’t take her temperature yet!” Or we’ll be in the car line and I’ll yelp, “Shoot! I didn’t fill out the online form!” Or we’ll be just ready to step out the door and I’ll feel that sick sensation of having forgotten to wash her masks. When, in fact, I have plenty of time to take her temperature and I already filled out the form and she has plenty of clean masks.

And then there’s the new pickup time. The kids all have staggered arrival and departure times, and I need to pick Carla up at 2:45. Which is exactly the time I used to leave the house to pick her up. You are seeing the issue, right? Even though I have set my alarm for 2:30, so that I can leave the house right then to go get her, my brain is always going, “Pshaw, you have plenty of time!” because it still thinks I don’t need to LEAVE until 2:45. And then I’ll be puttering around doing lord knows what until I see that the clock says 2:37 and then I FLIP OUT. I have even included a little note that shows up when the alarm goes off, that says “PICKUP AT 2:45.” Still, my brain is convinced I have more time than I do. We live very close to Carla’s school, so I haven’t been late yet. But it’s been very very close. (I don’t know what would happen if I were late. Nothing, probably. But I like to FOLLOW the RULES.)

This is all part of adjusting to a new routine. I have set myself all sorts of alarms and reminders on my phone so I won’t forget any of the steps. Plus, we have purchased new whiteboards and listed out all the things Carla needs to remember each day (she can’t bring a backpack, but she does need masks and a water bottle) (she also has to take a shower immediately upon arriving home; I don’t know if this will help at all with germ containment, but it definitely helps move bedtime along more smoothly). We don’t have any after-school activities; our only commitment is one day a week, every other week, which helps significantly.  I think we have some good systems in place to help keep us on track. But it’s still early days, so I am feeling off-balance and afraid of making a mistake. 

When I was writing this post, I could not for the life of me remember the word for “commitment.” I was WRACKING my brain and coming up with nothing. Well, not NOTHING. The brain is very helpful, and was serving up all manner of wrong and not-even-remotely correct words. I am going to hope this isn’t a sign of aging but rather a keto-related brain fog, yes I have just started keto again and I don’t want to talk about it. Because I was in the car and unable to Google, I texted my husband. I am sure he lives for these urgent interruptions in helping seriously ill people. Obviously he knew the exact word I needed. He is a brilliant, wonderful man. This is the kind of thing that keeps a marriage fresh.

To change topics rather abruptly, Carla is very into LEGO right now. She’s always liked LEGO; she and her dad love to build scenes from Frozen and the like from sets. A few years ago, her grandmother even made her a big table-top sheet of LEGO that she can build on; it lives in our living room as a permanent part of our décor. But this summer, she’s gotten really into it. She used her allowance to buy a big tub of LEGO, rather than one of the build-something-specific kits, and she’s been busy building things and breaking things down and incorporating her creations into her imaginative play. I love that she finds it so absorbing. The other day, my husband and I watched football and Carla just… played with LEGO. The entire time. 

Aside from the important fact that CARLA enjoys LEGO, I like it because I feel like I can get points for playing with her while not actually playing. Listen, I love my child with the fire of all the stars in the universe, but I do not like playing with her. I do play with her. We play Barbies and we play restaurant and we play pet store and we play all sorts of things. But I do not enjoy it. I enjoy crafting and reading and going for walks with her. I enjoy doing things by myself. Playing, not so much. 

But with LEGO, I have carved out a very clear role for myself: that of Piece Finder. The way it works is that Carla will decide she wants to build something – a park or a hotel or a triceratops or whatever – and then she will tell me, “Find me all the green pieces.” Or, “I need all the 2×2 bricks.” Or, “I need this eye that looks like it’s closed so I can make my alligator wink.” And then I will sift through her giant tub of LEGO pieces and find what she needs. It is soothing and I am spending Quality Time with her and – most important of all! – she counts it as playing.

(“You never play with me!” has been a frequent tearful complaint these past six months, because creating lesson plans and taking her to the dog park and walking along as she rides her bike and watching her swing on the swingset and playing board games with her and taking her on hikes and teaching her how to bake banana bread and designing elaborate chalk obstacle courses with her and searching for bugs and watching Full House with her do not count as “playing.” Omfg.) 

We watched LEGO Masters starring Will Arnett (who normally annoys me, but whom I found rather endearing on this show??? even as he simultaneously sort of annoyed me????) together as a family. When it was airing live, earlier this year, I rolled my eyes at it. Carla kept wanting to watch the previews and I kept discouraging her from wanting to watch it. So lame, I thought. Grown ups playing with LEGOs? Ugh. But it turned out to be a really sweet, charming show featuring extraordinarily talented (and sometimes DEEPLY annoying) contestants and truly mind-blowing creations. The things these people can do with LEGO!!!! It makes me eager for Carla to pursue a LEGO-oriented career, like as a LEGO designer or builder or whatever you call them. How COOL would that be?????? (My husband and I agreed that the prize for winning LEGO Masters should be that you get to design something for LEGO. Or maybe get, like, an internship at LEGO or something. Because the contestants were SO creative and skilled with LEGO, it seems like the $100,000 prize was just not enough.) 

One thing that I found charming about LEGO Masters was that there is all this LEGO specific terminology. Like, I had no idea that LEGO is a plural noun. It’s not LEGOs, which I still have to correct myself from saying; it’s just LEGO. (I feel like kind of a dumbass saying LEGO as a plural. The same way I feel like a dumbass if I try to pronounce a foreign word correctly. Which, in both cases, is a stupid way to feel.) And the little LEGO pieces are called bricks. And they have ALL this lingo for different types of brick usage. It was super fun to learn.

One thing we did NOT learn, which would be intensely helpful: how to easily unpair bricks from one another. I spend a LOT of time breaking my thumbnails trying to get bricks apart for Carla’s various building needs. (We have a little orange thing that’s supposed purpose is for getting LEGO apart, but I do not know how to make it work. Most often, it slips and stabs me.) 

This post is not leading anywhere, so instead of leaving you in as completely abrupt a way as I switched subject matter earlier, I will say that we are now contemplating buying Carla a LEGO dragon. She requested one specifically, and I think it would be an excellent Christmas gift. She also wants 1,000 2×3 black bricks, but perhaps she will need to save up her allowance for that particular purchase.

We did get her a LEGO Advent calendar. There are several options in this category – like a Harry Potter version and a Star Wars one. We got her this one because it seemed a) the most Christmassy and b) it had the most options for actually building things; some of the others seemed to feature a lot of figures and not as many things you can put together. 

I can’t believe we’re thinking about Christmas already, but there you are. Well, I guess this post is ending where it began, with time slipping and sliding away. Before you know it, we’ll all be filling trash bags with scraps of wrapping paper and wondering how 2021 is right around the corner.