It's all about the candy!

Last week I went ahead and bought Halloween candy while on a big monthly shopping trip to Sam's. I decided on a large bag of assorted chocolate "fun size" bars.

Today at work I decided I should have some non-chocolate candy to offer, so I stopped at a Dollar Store on the way home and bought Nerds Gummies (they didn't have the regular ones, which I would have preferred), Laffy Taffy, Sunburst chewies, and miniature Chick-O-Sticks. Remember those?

Then I made up about a dozen treat bags full of a little of everything for the children I know, including four at school. My little best buddies. :)  Tomorrow night Marla will bring Carsen and a friend of hers, and our neighbors across the street will be coming by with their toddler and three nieces and nephews. I have treat bags made for all of them, plus plenty of leftover candy for any other trick-or-treaters that may show up. We always have a few!

Not so little anymore

Last Friday morning I got a text from my friend Judon, mom of Little P. She told me he had a city league football game the next afternoon and would love it if I could make it out to see him play. I don't know (or care) anything about football, but I love Judon and P., so I went. 

It was a crisp, beautiful fall day, and I got to see this young man and his team win the game!

Look how much he's grown! I guess I should stop calling him "little". The three of us went to lunch afterwards, and as we were leaving the restaurant, I was shocked to realize he's as tall as I am now. He'll be 13 in March. Unbelievable.

Still good friends all these years later!

Show your friends some love

This is the old ice cream bucket where we store peanuts for the squirrels that visit our back yard. We leave them on top of the compost bin and then enjoy watching them have their afternoon peanut feasts.

Whenever we go out to the back porch, after a few minutes two or three squirrels will present themselves for feeding along the back fence. As soon as one of us walks out there and leaves a handful of peanuts, they rush over and help themselves. It's cheap fun.

Speaking of fun...my book club met this past Wednesday night. The book wasn't very good, but it was great to see my friends. As we were getting ready to leave I saw Karen H. preparing to take a selfie and said, "Hey! Can I get in on that?" and she said, "Sure!" The next day she sent me this montage. 

Last but not least, I finally put up a little bit of autumn decoration on our front porch. While I was out there arranging the wreath just so, my sweet Georgie showed up and watched me. I sure love that old boy.

Back to the grind

Well, I got a new phone late last week after dropping mine in the goldfish container pond. What a hassle! None of my contacts (or photos, which hurts) were recoverable from the drowned phone, no matter what the nice young guy at the Verizon store tried. On the bright side, I was still able to trade it in for a good discount on the new phone. Gregg went ahead and traded his in for a new model, too. He'd been having charging issues for a while, so when I killed mine off it seemed like the logical time to replace them both. It seems like a luxury to have the very latest model of our phones. We're not given to buying stuff for ourselves just purely for enjoyment. 

I had a dental appointment yesterday. I need a crown (and possibly a root canal) asap. I knew it was coming, but I still hate it. I had to put down a hefty deposit to book the initial appointment, which will be November 3 (if the tooth doesn't fall apart before then). It had a huge filling from long ago that got decay underneath, and while it doesn't hurt, apparently it's pretty fragile. Sigh. I've had so much dental work, and it never seems to last long term, no matter what. The woman cleaning my teeth made me feel so much worse when she informed me that even zero sugar sodas (the only kind I drink) have citric acid that wears away tooth enamel and contributes to cavities and decay. Sugar, of course, is a non-starter. And then it was with the high-fluoride toothpastes...and mouth rinses...and always rinsing/brushing after every soda or coffee... and on and on and on.  It was so discouraging when I'm already upset about the uncomfortable work to come plus an $800 out of pocket expense after my dental insurance pays. I hate the dentist and I hate their bills even more.

Work has been super busy. Our annual fall festival and costume parade is coming up next week, and that means loads of money coming in for tickets, requisitions to pay for all the supplies and vendors, contacting payroll to arrange for overtime for custodians, arranging for transportation for the high school bands and cheerleaders that lead the parade, plus all my other regular duties. This first week back from fall break has been hectic and I'm already tired. 

Thankfully, today's Friday and I have the weekend to look forward to.

Book club, corn dollies, and a phone fail

On Sunday I hosted a book club party for my friends Marla and Martina. I'd been planning this little get together for months now, and it wasn't anything like I expected, but still fun. 

The book I chose was Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. It's an American folk horror novel from the early 70s that I stumbled across as a pre-teen in my small town's limited public library. It's appropriately creepy for this time of year. 

In addition to chicken corn chowder, I served a charcuterie board for my friends to enjoy.

I also attempted to bake an apple pie and pumpkin bars with brown sugar icing. Both ended in failure. I got the spices in the pie wrong, and it was all but inedible. As for the pumpkin bars...I meant to double the recipe because of the large can of pumpkin puree I wanted to use up, but I failed to double the amount of baking soda and sugar and what I ended up with was a flat, bland mess. I threw it in the garbage along with the pie and went to the grocery store at the last minute and bought desserts to share instead. Oh, well.

When Marla showed up, she was not happy with her husband. He was out of town helping a friend with something, and he didn't make it back in time to watch their daughter, so Carsen had to come along. Fortunately, I'd had the idea to do a craft related to the book, and Carsen really had a good time participating. We made traditional corn husk dolls! Carsen put googly eyes on hers, and I thought it turned out really cute!

Martina's doll turned out really pretty, with rosebuds and marigold flowers hot-glued on.

I didn't get a separate picture of the doll I made (and couldn't for reasons I'll explain in a minute) but here's the four dolls arranged all together out on the back porch. Mine is on the far right.

And here's mine and Martina's after Marla and Carsen had left.

Right after I took these photos, I accidently dropped my phone into the container pond on the back porch. Arrrgggh!!!!!!!!!!! I also dropped a massive F-bomb in front of Carsen when I did it. 

I snatched the phone out of the water, and for a while everything seemed to work normally, which is how I got these photos saved, but by the next morning my phone was dead. No amount of rice is working, either. That's everyone's first suggestion, to cover it in rice to absorb the moisture, but it's been no good. I have to get a new phone. Luckily, I'm on fall break this week and I plan to take care of that tomorrow. It's really weird to be without a phone, though, even if it's just for a few days. On the bright side, my phone was really old and getting glitchy, so I guess this is a perfect excuse to upgrade. 

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So that's how my fall break is going! 

Eighteen!

 This beautiful boy turned 18 years old last month. How time does fly.

Fall Bucket List

 

Personal day

Last Wednesday was a really nice day for me. 

I took a personal day off work and drove to Aiken, SC (about two hours west of Florence) to have lunch with my aunt Linda. Aunt Linda is my dad's older sister, and his only living sibling. 

I really didn't have much contact with my dad's family growing up. My mother hated and resented them her whole life and made sure no one could have relationships with them. It was all very toxic and awful, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Anyway, now that my dad is dead, and my mother and I have cut ties, I've reached out to my aunt once or twice and she seemed genuinely happy to hear from me. Back in the summer I'd found some information about my Polish great grandparents online that I wanted to share with her, so we started planning to meet. It turned out that she has all sorts of family history documents, one of which is the ship manifest from 1906 when my great grandfather, Pawel Czmiel, came to Ellis Island at the age of 17. She made me copies of everything: the ship manifest, naturalization applications, family baptism records, my grandfather's WWII military documents, and on and on. It was wonderful! We met up at a restaurant with outdoor seating (the weather was nice) and sat and talked for over four hours. My aunt was so kind to me, and so welcoming, and I look forward to building a relationship with her going forward. It's nice to feel like I still have some family left in this world, and learning more about my dad's relatives means a lot to me.