A witch and her flying monkey

Here I am, sans cape, freshly dressed in "ordinary clothes" the one day of the year when I'm not cleverly disguised as an typical small town mom. Hehe. I'm not sure if you can see them very well, try clicking on the photo to enlarge it, but these are the shoes I found on sale months ago. I saw them and instantly thought "witch shoes". Even though this was the first time I'd worn them, they were 100% comfortable all day and well into the night, even through hard pavement carrying a heavy load - more about that load in a minute.

And here's a second photo that more clearly, hopefully, again, click to enlarge, shows Rosie's wonderful wings. I'd have a better photo to show you but right after this not one, but BOTH of my cameras decided to sputter, take a few last photos with great effort, and then DIE. One refuses to open the shutter. The other one insists that any and all batteries I insert into it are "exhausted". ARGH!!!






And right after the mass demise of cameras, the phone rang, and things really started hopping.

It was Noel on the phone. I was halfway through telling her I was still a tad bummed out that she hadn't been able to come up for a visit when she interupted me to say "But I am coming up. In fact I'm driving up at this very moment!"

Happy happy joy joy!

And then she added "I haven't had time to get the kids any costumes. Would you mind running out and...."

And so that's what I did. I hung up and ran about town - in my wonderful shoes and my wonderful hat - and found costumes for the grandkids.

William got out of football practice right after sunset and I just had time to squeeze in taking him and his buddy James to a local haunted house (which was even better this year then last) before Noel arrived. I came home to find Noel the witch, Joshua the lion, Garret the tiger, and Nonny the baby witchling all waiting anxiously, treat buckets in hand, to go out trick-or-treating. All those wee trick-or-treaters were the aforementioned "heavy loads". Thank goodness William and James, strong, fit, football playing teens, came along to help carry the slowpokes.

Noel is planning on staying until Sunday morning, which is wonderful. It's always hard to spend quality time with the grandkids when the visit coincides with other family and a holiday. It's nice to be able to relax and just hang out with the kids. Although one doesn't actually "hang out" with three children 27, 18, and 6 months, respectively, old. One runs after, juggles, grabs, balances, hops over, heads off, cuddles, pulls out of assorted dangers, and decodes children of that age. Hanging out is far too passive an activity to be included in the activity list.

And if that wasn't enough wee folk energy for you, my friend Kristen came up for a visit today with her two little hobbits, Irene and Rhys, in tow. Throw in a chihuahua, rain, a cat in every corner, and an obstacle course of blocks, toys, other child paraphenalia, and it was enough to keep a dozen mothers/grandmothers busy.

Despite the chaos, it was a lovely day. It's fun to have so many different ages and developmental stages together to contrast and enjoy. I wish I had had a working camera so I could show you just what it all looked like. Although I don't know when I would have had a free hand to take a photo..... unfortunately you'll just have to imagine it. Or maybe fortunately. As I swore to Kristen, and I wasn't even making it up, I had vacuumed just the day before - I swear!

The one complication to all this happy confusion is that November 1st is the start of Nanowrimo. But hey, by cutting out a few unnecessary hours (snort!) of sleep, I managed to write a few words tonight. Er, this morning. To further slow me down, somehow I managed to misplace the notebook full of plot outlines, character names, and other important and helpful tidbits of information I've been gathering for weeks. So I not only battled writing in the brain-dead-zone of deepest night, but I'm working with only the roughest memory of all the pre-planning I'd worked so hard to collect in order to help the writing flow along smoothly.

Thursday and Friday hubby is home from work so I'll be able to slip away for a few hours of writing time in the middle of the day. I'm not sure that will be enough time to catch up, but at least I won't slip farther behind in the pack. Knock on wood.

I'm sooooo gonna need caffeine in multiple dosages tomorrow....today.