Hey! I made it through 31 days of speaking the truth! That was… a lot of content. And I’m tired and ready for some not-producing, but I started doing this “five for friday” thing, and they’re easy, so I figured I’d keep going.
kid quote
K was being silly, talking about carving the front of our house into a giant jack-o-lantern.
L yells: WELL, WELL, WELL. WE DON’T DO THAT.
And then she promptly started trying to sing Taylor Swift’s “Twenty-Two,” which, for Lilly, is just the word “twenty-two” sung long and tunelessly.
Bonus kid quote:
We were in the car and the big two were Very Seriously trying to organize themselves to be Taylor Swift and her backup singers. Once they sorted out who was singing what and when, they burst out in song: “It feels like a perfect night/to dress up like hamsters/fall in love with our exes…” Over and over. I tried so hard not to let them hear me laugh and also not to get into a wreck.
book
I finished Dracula for book club while painting (audiobook via Librivox). This was a book I specifically intended never to read because ew. Vampires. But this year’s book club theme is classic horror/mystery and Dracula was the book we chose for this month’s discussion, so I gamely picked it up.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Part of it is the audiobook format—it allows me to do funny things with my attention. Sometimes I was totally absorbed, almost meditative, as I mindlessly painted. But when parts were yucky or scary, I could sort of shift to give more attention to my task and less to the details. This sort of customized attention level gave me a chance to enjoy the (really, very good) story while not taking the overwhelming parts in too deeply.
recommendation
Y’all, I’ve been wearing these hair clips for a year and I really, really like them. It feels a little self-serving to recommend them, because I signed up as a consultant (demonstrator? I have no idea… Oh, stylist) because I love them and they’re expensive and I wanted to get them at a discount. (I do this periodically. For instance, Younique makeup. I hate selling MLM stuff, as evidenced by a brief, pre-kid Pampered Chef phase, but I often like buying it.) Anyway, I’m not actually trying to sell to you. I don’t care if you buy them from me or at all, but as I was wracking my brain for a good rec just now, that’s what came to my head. (Ha! See what I did there?)
moment of happiness
You guys. October is over. And, much as I loved the challenge of daily writing (and as much as I loved the satisfaction of actually posting 31—now 32—days in a row), it was a lot of effort to come up with daily content that had any semblance of meaning. Hitting publish on day 31 was a good moment.
bit of nature
I went out yesterday after Classical Conversations to get a good nature photo, knowing this post was coming. A little bit of snow came the other day (so this was not the first Halloween without snow since 1938—the streak continues) and the sun was low and lovely (because noon is still golden hour in Fairbanks for the next 4ish months) and… all that to say, I could hold on to these for future Fridays, but it was too pretty not to share.
grace enough 