It’s only Tuesday and my nerves are shot and we are ready for the husband to come home. Actually, the little man was asking for him the night before last. We’re both feeling a bit under the weather, and more than a little cranky. Last night I sat on the couch in the living room, chilled, wearing my car coat (as Grandma Viv called them) and wrapped in a blanket, dreading the arrival of yet more trick-or-treaters, on Halloween, my favorite of all holidays! But wanting them to come on and get it over with so I could unload the ridiculous amount of candy I’d purchased (I’ve never been able to get the formula right either). But they started coming too damned early. I’d left work early yet wasn’t even set up with jack-o-lanterns glowing or candy bowl positioned near the front door. By 5:40 we’d had over 30 kids come calling. Then we didn’t have any for another half hour or so. Or maybe we did. I was attempting to get dinner ready, while also listening for the door, but none of the kids seemed to notice that we have a doorbell and I caught some knocking delicately on the door, oh so softly, with their be-gloved little hands. The intervals were unpredictable between rugrats, but I tried to be somewhat productive with these gaps. Thought I’d do some NaNoWriMo prep, for one thing. The husband mentioned he’d found the power adapter for my trusty old laptop last week and had plugged it in. I figured it would be fully charged. It wasn’t. In fact, it is D-E-A-D. The little green light blinks, and the startup chime chimes, but then it makes this sad little whine like a car whose engine wants to turn over but can’t quite. Great thing to find out on NaNoWriMo eve. I could have cried if I hadn’t been so tired. The little man, on the other hand, was over-excited. He’d whoop it up each time a costumed crew came by. And those kids came in bunches, for some reason, though often they didn’t seem to actually know one another. After the fact I figured out that my boy had been sneaking candy nearly every time I was doling it out so he was riding the waves of a sugar high. No wonder that by 7:30 he was laid up with one of the worst bellyaches he’s ever had. And I was exhausted, by illness, and a marathon weekend of staying up past my own bedtime, and, in my old age, that blasted daylight savings time transition always throws me off. So Halloween be damned, I blew out the candles in our jack-o-lanterns earlier than usual, turned out all our lights, and we turned in for the night, before 8pm. And more than once, while drifting off, I heard a much louder thump thump thump of the bigger kids banging on my door. All I could think was nevermore.
Bonus: A sliver of sunshine amid the bleak…at long last, Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Chosen Collection. Yes, seasons 1-7: finally being released in one box set on November 15th. Why I didn’t know about this sooner, I have no idea. And naturally I missed out on the pre-order special when it was going for $129.99 on Amazon. Now it’s up to $169.99. But still, I’m drooling.