Am I really so predictable? Seems like every Blomo finds me doing the same thing. Getting sick, going to the coast, preparing for the holidays, kvetching about blomo. Can’t I just copy and paste from last year?! Can’t I?

Today kicks off the annual Multiple Holiday Event lineup with Thanksgiving celebration 1 of 3. Lucky me, I was able to play the sick card and get out of it. Unlucky me, I played the sick card at work earlier this week, so rather than gather with family I have just finished putting in a few hours of make-up work from home. Overall, I’d call it a win for me as I was able to get some quality work done, with time left over to putz about on the interwebz while the boy and man fulfill my family obligations for me. One down, 6 to go.

Having this nice quiet time has me ruminating over the annual Blomo Achilles Heel. Otherwise known as the “should I pre-write some some posts and give someone my password so they can post them for me just in case I can’t weasel into someones wifi connection while I’m at the beach” quandary. I haven’t done it yet, but each year gets a bit sketchier and I really should have an alternate plan. Vying for my consideration is my annual Video Game Pull, in the form of renewed interest in my PS3 game, which waned sometime around the beginning of summer. And my annual escape game gluttony, which usually peaks while I’m alone at the beach. (I am SO excited about this one, I just love, love, love Amanita Design’s free flash games.)

In any case, my annual Blomo Day 7 obligation is fulfilled. Be back tomorrow with more stuff from today. Or yesterday. Or a month ago. You just never can know, can you?

Turns out Nico freakin’ loves halloween. Or, he still freakin’ loves it. Whatever. It’s always a surprise to meet with his enthusiasm for the holiday. This year he was really into “haunted houses,” defined as any house with any kind of halloween decoration on it, from an uncarved pumpkin to a fully constructed cemetery complete with sound effects and a digital light show. That last type of haunted house can be further defined as The Davis Graveyard, or This Place. This Place is in Milwaukie, a small city close to Portland that I drive into regularly as it has the Best Library Ever and my mom and some other things that suck us over the city boundary. Therefore, we drove by This Cemetery a LOT. Sometimes on the way to our Milwaukie destination, sometimes as a detour on our way to our Milwaukie destination, and sometimes as a destination point all in itself. The key concept here is *a LOT.*

This glorified lawn decoration has grown wildly over the years and is starting to draw quite a crowd. Last year they had the local highschool dancers come out and perform a dance routine to that ghastly dead guy’s song “Thriller.” I believe there is video documentation of this on the web site. This year the home owners were able to acquire permits to have a couple of block parties and to close the road in front of the house to traffic so that people could stroll up and take a good gander at the house.

When Nico learned of this he of course wanted to go and we incorporated the first party into our plans for that day. Busy little bees that we are, our intention to go to the block party when it started at 5 was adjusted throughout the day and we didn’t end up making it over until after 7, which was well after dark. Still, Nico was excited and when he saw that we were parking the car and getting out he was nearly shaking with the anticipation of it all. As we approached the house, it became clear that the night show was a bit more intense than what we’d been driving by on a daily basis. Nico started clutching my hand harder and harder the closer we got, and after taking just a brief glance around decided that he wanted to go home. Ryan took him across the street and held him while I took a couple of pictures of the display and we went home.

Upon arriving home, Nico promptly built this rendition of the cemetery.

He also developed a mild fear of any of the “haunted houses” that he saw, and decided that he would only trick or tread “normal houses, not haunted ones.” After assuring him a few times that sometimes the houses that had halloween decorations up were the ones with good candy, he amended his plan so that we could go to the haunted houses as long as they weren’t “scary.” But this was kind of a moving, subjective definition for him.

The regular schedule of drive-bys continued, in addition to visits to a couple of other haunted favorites, but any time I suggested going there after dark I heard an emphatic NO! Same answer when I asked about trick or treating the Davis GraveYard, or going to the last block party.

Soon enough, Halloween arrived. I got an email from our favorite Japanese restaurant saying that they were offering free warm saki or cocktails to anyone who came in wearing a costume. This sounded like a great deal to us and Nico was game, so we decided to go there for dinner before heading over to trick or treat grandma and make the rounds in our neighborhood. We packed Nico’s real costume in the car so that we could slip him into it when the actual trick or treating commenced, and we went to the restaurant dressed as a witch, a skeleton, and Ryan.

As we approached the restaurant we became aware of just how hungry Nico was. He was getting super emotional, antsy, sweaty, all the signs of a tired and hungry boy. I was getting nervous. We drove around looking for parking before pulling into a dead end street. As we drove in Nico spotted a haunted house to his left, the steps littered with carved pumpkins. We continued to drive towards the end of the road and when Ryan turned around to park on the other side of the street Nico started screaming, “NO! Drive Through! Don’t park here, I want to drive BY the haunted house.” He was worried about having to walk past the house with the pumpkins on it. We parked anyway and I got him out of his seat and carried him past the house, after which he calmed down and we enjoyed our meal.

Note the pile of rejected YUCK fruit flavored candy

Dinner was great. Saki was great. We had a good time.

On the way back, Nico was suddenly overcome with a desire to trick or treat that house that had tormented him so: “I want to go there!” It seemed important to support his newfound courage, so I said ok and asked Ryan to go grab his trick or treat bag. We waited at the bottom of the steps while Ryan tore through the car looking for the bag, but he approached empty handed. We allowed ourselves a little sullenness over this missing component of the trick or treat tradition, but then Ryan had a brilliant idea, the one good thing about his “costume”. Nico could use a knit hat!

This idea was far better than nothing, so Nico mounted the steps with his skeleton mask on, his knit hat out, and his hand raised. After giving it a good knock, Nico stepped back and I heard a small scramble before the sudden waft of pot smoke greeted us at the door. A smiling, friendly looking stoner took a look at Nico and let a quick “awe” and awkward giggle escape. From behind him, a boxer wearing some kind of jacket came rushing to the door and Nico started cracking up with wild, hilarious laughter. The stoner took the dog back tossing back an apology that he didn’t think they had any candy. Just as he was stepping away, a more professional looking stoner came to the door and said “wait! hold on” and then walked away saying, “I didn’t know how many trick or treaters were going to come, so”… His voice trailed off and he disappeared for just a moment before quickly returning with a large pink box, “I got DOUGHNUTS!” He lifted the lid and sure enough, he had doughnuts. One of each kind. He kneeled down so Nico could look inside the box and asked us, “is it ok?” My fear-trained brain scoffed for just a second before I reconsidered and said, “Sure. Nico, do you want to pick one out?” He grabbed what I believe is called an “old-fashioned”, put it into his knit hat, and we headed off into the night.

Score!

And that is how Nico got a doughnut from a stone(r) on Halloween night.

And yes, we let him eat it.

I am wise beyond measure, posting as early as I did yesterday. Since I didn’t have to worry about the blog, I went to bed with the boy at 7pm. SEVEN in the evening. Granted, it took a while to get to sleep, and I was up a few times in the night for various reasons. But all said and done, I was in bed for 10 hours at least. Unthinkable. And I might do it again tonight, though I’m not fevery anymore so who knows. I’m getting this out of the way early just the same.

Also, what is it about blogging that makes my teeth hurt? I hope it’s related to the cold and nothing more.

And finally. Sigh. After posting about our epic, if touch and go, relationship with the Lady Spider… I came home from work today and saw that the entire web had totally disappeared. And in place of our Lady friend, I found this:

A leaf had fallen into her web and blown around and around and around until the only small bit of her web that was left was the piece of thread that held it.

Speechless, I searched for our friend. She was curled up against the sill, in despair I am certain.

Considering I’d never seen her eat anything over the entire course of our relationship, perhaps the ruined web isn’t much of a loss for her. I’m sure glad I snapped those photos yesterday though.

Gratuitous baby spider shot:

I should have known that yesterdays intense grogginess had nothing do to with the grog I’d made the night before. But the coincidence was hard to dismiss. Turns out my annual November cold has already arrived. Maybe even a week early. I was a bit worried about it this year due to the escalating pattern of illness over the last few years coupled with Pandemic Flu being all pandemic and everything. Maybe I’ll get to squeeze in a few head colds before catching the pig virus.

This one is not so bad, but I get the distinct impression that it’s getting worse. So, I’m blogging early today in anticipation of crashing early tonight. And if I somehow manage to stay upright beyond the boys bedtime, I’ll write a pre-post for tomorrow. Or maybe just get it started.

Translation: Yet another craptastical post. About something you really don’t care about, and might even want nothing to do with with.

This lady:

This spider has been on our window for at least 2 months, probably more like three. When she first showed up she was pretty attached to her web. Chilled in the middle all day, all night. She’d do the spider shake when we’d tap on the inside of the window to get her blood going and Nico would laugh and laugh and laugh. After about a month I noticed her curled up on the window sill, not even touching her web. I thought for sure she was a goner. A month is a good life for a spider, isn’t it? We’d tap and tap and she just sat and sat. After days had past, we looked out the window and there she was back in the center of the web again. Nico was ecstatic, and happily resumed his tapping while she resumed her quaking. Again, a week later we found her curled up on the sill. And again, she was totally unresponsive. This time I noticed some splotches of white that I speculated might be eggs, but they seemed too flat. Too scattered. Maybe they were web anchors or something. Anyway, this went on for a couple of months. I thought maybe she was just getting old and tired and needed to take long breaks. More and more breaks, more and more anchors, and then nothing. She completely disappeared. I was surprised to realize that I was sad to see her go. I looked all over the window sill and there was no sign of her at all. Granted, I didn’t go outside to get a real good look, but from our perch inside the window she was as good as gone. Then, the day after halloween, she came back! And today, she put some finishing touches on the center of the web and crawled right back into it. WTF?

And that’s all I have for you. Now you know why I don’t blog much these days.

Nico made a friend while I was at work today. He introduced us as soon as I walked through the door.

MOOOOM!! It's APPLEBOY!!!

Nico: “He can’t talk ’cause he has no mouth. And he can’t see ’cause he has no eyes. LOOK! He’s waving at you!” Nico moves his little apple hand up to simulate a wave.

Mom: “Well how does he know I’m here? He can’t see me ’cause he has no eyes. And I bet he can’t hear me because he has no ears. So how does he know to wave at me?”

Nico: “Weeell, I think he has one eye. It’s in his nose.”

oooh, how did this apple get here? Nice apple, pretty apple.

sweet, delicious, forbidden apple

oh shit

Sorry I ate your mom. You and me are still cool though, right?

bff

This kid is a blog saver.

Whoever decided to make November a writing month sure had me in mind. I have NO IDEA what to write about today, but as luck would have it I have some freshly uploaded Halloween pictures that I can toss up. I also have a funny (to me) story, but that will have to come as a Halloween part II post because I just don’t have the time tonight. I’m just that busy.

Well shit. I forgot how annoying these photo galleries are. I keep getting timeouts and wasn’t able to get the remaining pics up. Maybe tomorrow. Also tomorrow, the Radishly parable, “The Stoner and the Donut”. Don’t miss it.

Things could be worse. It could have been FOUR months since I posted last. My laptop could still be busted and unavailable. It could still be daylight savings time.

But this is bad. Bad bad bad. November finds me in perhaps worst blogging shape of my life. I think every other year I’ve had 2 or 3 posts pre-written, and numerous ideas waiting in the wings. I’ve had at least SOME forward momentum, with at least a post or two every month prior to the mass vomitus of November. I’ve had motime buddies at my side, cheering aloud and stoking the fires of quiet, unspoken competition.

This may be the first year that I’ve actually worried about not making it through ’til the end, though it’s impossible to know for sure. Fear is one of those emotions that kind of snuffs itself out over time, like the pains of childbirth. I do know that the fear of November 2009 is strong in my bones. It seems like I always get a stomach bug, or a 104+ degree temperature, or stitches in November – some physical ailment that results in me pulling myself to the computer with the very last tap of my reserves. Or, a server crash that has me sitting my the computer for hours past the first time I hit “publish” to ensure that when the system comes back I’m right back with it. Do I have that same drive this year? Are the fires of that passion still smoldering under the atrophied pads of my blog neglecting fingers?

I trust that they are. And if they’re not, NaBloPoMo (which I have decided to shorten to BloMo this year) is enough on its own. Where my passions fail, my commitment stands. Where my inner critic says “meh”, BloMo says “you just fucking better.” I’m here. It’s another year. Thanks for coming back.

The Radishly farmstead is going strong. Nico is finally getting into the eating part of vegetable rearing, and we finally have some decent vegetables to eat. Radishes, bok choy, spinach, and a large chunk of the lettuce patch gone (that last one had a lot of help from Nico.) Now on to snap peas, carrots, and beets, as well as the usual suspects – collards, kales, small broccoli, and the remaining lettuces. Onions are showing themselves, as are the tomatoes and peppers. In fact, I think some of the peppers are ready for plucking. Everything else is holding back on fruition, but we’re fine with the wait.

A quick splattering of good news. I’d intended to dedicate a full post once the garden was fully documented, but seeing as there is no foreseeable end to the garden, my good news is becoming old news. Perhaps you remember my irritation over a particular coworker, and how this spurned me on to demand a raise and a promotion. And perhaps, if you check your notes, I was denied the promotion but reassured that I would get one during May, the official month for such matters. May came. I got a promotion, though not as high as I’d suggested (for beurocratic reasons). I got the raise, though not as high as I deserved. And, I got a swank new window office, which I moved into on Monday. So, as the world and everything on it collapses around me, I’m sitting pretty good at the moment. Well, except for that coworker.

If  you’re sporting foot fringe, sensory tentacles and pneumostome, you’re invited. No need to bring beer, the pools are filled with the stuff.

That’s right friends, it’s not pee.

It’s Milwaukee’s finest. Siren of the slug.

Want to bring a friend? Don’t be shy. Go ahead. Bring them.

All of them. And their sweet little puppy dogs too.

RSVP by 1am tomorrow. You’ll be dead by 2.