1. We spent Saturday in and around Alexandria/Maxville. We took Lady Jane, the 30″ Schacht-Reeves wheel, back to Bonnie and had a lovely visit with her, Rod, Darroch, and Carolyn. The boy quite enjoyed petting Kitten, their full-grown black and white cat, who responded with head bumps and purrs and entertained him by climbing into boxes. HRH scavenged some shutters from Darroch and Carolyn’s pile of water-damaged building supplies, and Carolyn led us to a place that had had shutters at a yard sale last week just in case they still had them, but they’d sold. We had a visit with Jan afterward, which was lovely, too. t! was absent at a meeting, but we met Whiskey, the lovely orange and white barn cat they’ve adopted, and the boy got to play with Carter, too. Not outside, alas; it was rainy, and we hadn’t packed the boy’s boots or rain slicker.
2. It snowed Saturday night, big fluffy Christmas-like flakes. There were about five centimetres on the ground Sunday morning, which prompted the boy to cry, “Come up and see! It’s January outside!” Most of it melted in the sun we had earlier in the day, but there were still snowy patches on the shady sides of roofs this morning.
3. Sunday morning we had our first family sabbat celebration with the Preston-LeBlancs. This is a direct result of dropping the pagan playgroup that we variously left because of travel time, conflict with choir, too many kids making concentration and discipline hard, and a general sense of losing the focus of the group’s initial mandate. We decided to do our own thing, and I think the first one was very successful. We did a brief talk on what Samhain was about, I led a very simplified version of an ancestral visualization that HRH wrote years ago, Paze read two poems and a storybook, we did a craft, and ended with a song. Without consulting one another overmuch we managed to use very similar themes in our units, and the kids seemed to enjoy it very much. Then we got to sit down and share a lovely lunch. I’d made vegetable cheese soup and biscuits, and Paze brought apple dumplings. It was all really lovely.
4. We headed over to HRH’s parents’ house for Halloween prep. The boy decided the pumpkin should have lightning eyes, a lightning nose, and a lightning mouth, so HRH carved it that way and it looked great. Despite being so thick it really glowed because the light bounced off the surprisingly pale interior. We were using a pumpkin from Jan and t!’s farm, and the flesh was very white. HRH left most of it in instead of scraping a lot of it out, as he would usually do to facilitate carving, so that I can hack it apart and cook it for pie fillings and soup.
5. This year, the boy finally got what Halloween was all about. I painted his face to look like two big dark eyes and paler feathers, but the detail was lost in the dark and he just looked like he had splotches around his eyes. He loved it, though, and enthusiastically trick-or-treated around his grandparents’ neighbourhood, chirping “Trick or treat!” or “Bonne l’halloween!” in his muddled fashion. The last couple of houses he waved at HRH, who had been walking up to the doors with him while I waited at the bottom of the driveways, and said, “You both stay here, I can go alone.” Back home he helped his grandfather hand out candy and got to see all the cool costumes (the undisputed winner was the guy who came as a bedside table, complete with lampshade on his head and a tabletop around his neck decorated with a tablecloth, book, glass of water, and pair of glasses on top). One parent cooed at him and said “Are you a dog?” “No!” he said, “I’m a owl!” and spread his wings, then turned around and did the most hilarious tail waggle at her.
He had an odd breakdown at bedtime last night, crying because he didn’t want the weather to get colder. “Well, there’s Christmas,” I said, and he sobbed that he liked Christmas, but not winter. And no, he didn’t like making snow forts and snowballs and snowmen any more, he never wanted to go outside again, he wanted to stay inside where it was warm all winter. I can’t blame him, really. I suspect this came about because he was tired and overtired, really, from a long intense day with lots of excitement.
And now I get to have a bowl of that incredibly delicious leftover soup. I’m on my third pot of tea, trying to cut through the yuck in my sore throat, but the cold I woke up with today has left my head blessedly clear, thank goodness. I’ve been handling my to-do list quite capably this morning, and all that’s left is work on the repurposing project and some celloing this afternoon.