It has been one crazy week! It started with a nightmare night where the cats apparently popped out a screen window and escaped. I doubt it was intentional – the window they went through is one where Jojo often hunts flies, and he probably just pounced against it. I’d had bad insomnia that night (possibly because the dog next door kept barking all night, possibly at the escaped cats), so I was up in the wee hours of the morning groggily making coffee when Ash jumped into the kitchen through the window. All the cats except Jojo were inside by that point, though I know they were all out at one point, and Jason and I had to go chase Jojo until we could get him back inside. Somewhere out there he lost his collar, and he was running across the street heedless of cars, but because it was 4:00 am, he ended up safe, if terrified. He’s recovered now, though a cold is making its way through all the cats. Being out at night in the dew probably isn’t good for immune systems that are used to the indoors!

Then there were the injuries this week. First, Jason sliced open a finger while cutting up potatoes. It was BAD, and still requires gauze padding several days later. Then on Halloween morning, he spilled boiling grease onto a finger on the other hand. From knuckle to nail, he was blistered with second degree burns, and he lay in bed trying not to throw up from pain while I ran around town acquiring various medical supplies. I’ve never seen Jason react so badly to an injury before, and we’re talking about the person who sliced through his hand with a reciprocating saw last year. He slept for about five hours before he felt any better, and today he went back to work with one finger on each hand wrapped in gauze and medical creams.

In better news, we worked our butts off the last two weeks to get a big chunk of the front yard done before Halloween. We didn’t want anyone to get hurt on the unfinished pathway from sidewalk to our front door. Most people used the driveway anyway, but we still needed to make sure all was well. Jason worked on the drainage area, and we built the path as much as we could. The sides where it meets various rock walls still need to be finished, but it was great work all around. We also got the final planning done for the dirt pit where our Halloween skeletons lived. That’s the next part of the yard we plan to work on, and it should be pretty easy to do. In the meantime, the one section of the yard that didn’t get ripped up is thriving, full of intertwining mistflowers and salvia and ground-daisies and purple hearts and silver ponyfoot (and a lot more). It’s attracting tons of bees and butterflies! I’m so happy with how it’s come out.

And speaking of being happy with how things came out, let’s talk costumes. One of my goals this year was to dress up for Halloween, and I had no idea what I was going to wear. Jason found a DIY skeleton image on Pinterest, and I ended up modeling a costume on that. The face paint didn’t last long – it itched too much! Ambrose’s costume came out well, too. He was originally going to be Santa Claus, but then it was 80 degrees for most of Halloween so he modified the outfit into “summer Santa” complete with flip flops and beach towel. Ha! He went to a friend’s house to help pass out candy, while Jason and I passed out candy at home. Despite there being a thunderstorm for the first hour of trick-or-treating (it was raining last year, too!), we had a good number of kids come by. And several people from the neighborhood stopped to talk to us about how great the yard was looking, and how sorry they were when we had to rip it out in September.

Halloween decorations came out well this year, too. There were the spiders crawling up the kitchen door (above), and spiderwebs draped all over our bookshelves, and ghosties hanging from every window, and of course the skeletons in the garden. Plus the shelves of sugar skulls and Halloween duckies and sleek ravens and flickering faux-candles (because real candles are a no-no with cats!). The house was very festive this year and I just loved every last bit of it! I’m sad to put it all away, but it’s time for the next round of decorations.

November has started off fun, with the arrival of our first Empty Faces package. Have y’all heard of this? It’s a serial supernatural mystery where you get to puzzle out codes and such to try to solve the mystery. Jason and I decided to try it for the first five-month episode, and had our first date-night-mystery on Friday. It was a lot of fun. Once I have a few more episodes, I’ll do a review with my thoughts on the series.

And now it’s the end of DST, the hardest day (physically) of the year for me. While most people sleep more on this day where we supposedly get an extra hour, I always lose many, many hours this day. And more in the days to come, as I spent the next few months jetlagged. This year was worse than normal, waking up just after 3am. I think a nap is in order today! Wish me luck switching to the new sleep schedule easier than I usually do. I can’t wait until the spring time change! Only four months of “regular” time to go! And hey – the week ended the exact same way that it began, with me up in the wee hours of the morning groggily gulping down coffee…