Midweek Meandering

Today starts a new month. The year is all but over. The last two months are going to feel like a sprint as we cram in two holidays. Christmas always brings many things to do around town and we like to take advantage of as many as possible. Then we get to January and it seems like the calendar slows to a crawl as Christmas fades and we move into the dead of winter.

Halloween was a bust as expected. Only two kids from the neighborhood braved the weather. I remember one from last year who had a peanut allergy which is why I knew we couldn’t just offer peanut butter cups which are my go to. Stuffed what I could into their bags but now we have a significant amount of candy left over.

Saw a few snowflakes last night – it was that cold. Nothing stuck but it won’t be long before something does. I’ve always said that I don’t mind snow if I can just sit in the house and watch it come down. When you have to go somewhere or shovel it, then I start to hate it.

Having a new pet in the house made me forget how often I end up having conversations with them. Like our dogs, the cat just looks at me. I think the dogs were trying to understand (or maybe they were just listening for the fun words like “out”, “car”, “park” or “food”). The cat just seems indifferent.

Cats do seem more independent than dogs so ours has moments when he finds a place to be away from us. Then, he has the moments when he wants to sit with you. Pretty sure he wants us sitting in chairs all the time so he can choose when he wants to join us. He’ll come into the office from time to time and just flop down beside my chair so I guess there are times he just wants to be near one of us.

I think I mentioned before that we are doing another formation at Showcase. I’ll admit that I’ve hit a wall in terms of prepping for it. The good news is we just have one week left before Showcase so just one last practice to get in.

It has kind of bled over into our routine prep. Had a double lesson yesterday and we did the newest one multiple times and I’m just ready to do it for real and see what happens. I think you reach a point of diminishing returns as you get near an event. But it will be fun.

Oh, I think I forgot to mention that the cat set off our alarm last Saturday. Wasn’t his fault though. We’ve been without pets for so long that my wife got used to setting the alarm for an empty house as opposed to the alarm we use overnight. So we’re shopping and I get a text saying that a hallway motion sensor was triggered. Figured out right away what happened so we could talk to the alarm company before they sent anyone out.

Our leaves are way past peak now. A lot of them are down but it is strange how some still have green leaves and others are essentially bare. By the end of the month, nearly all will be down and the trees will be naked for winter.

The raccoons who live under our deck had spent the early part of the month foraging in the woods which means they know enough not to rely totally on our handouts. Now, they are back and they have seriously packed on the pounds. Guess it is a balance between adding bulk for the winter but not getting so large they can’t squeeze under the deck. I know they don’t fully hibernate but we will go weeks in the winter without seeing them.

And that’s about all that’s on my mind for today.