Let’s call this one the Relentless Bi-Weekly since I skipped last week, if that’s okay with you?
Loving: FALL WEATHER! I’m not thrilled that we went from 85 to 45, but I’m loving these crisp mornings in Wisconsin. I want to go to a pumpkin patch. I want to drink hot apple cider. I want to read spooky books!
Reading: I’m having trouble reading print right now. Something is going on with my eyes. That something might just be that I’m 46 years old? (I’ve worn glasses since elementary school, and started wearing bifocals last year.) I can’t decide whether to reach out to my optometrist or not. Maybe? Is it time to switch to an e-reader so that I can adjust the font size?
Listening: Thank goodness for audio since my silly eyeballs are misbehaving. I’m currently listening to Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea. The sinking of the Essex whaling ship in 1820 was the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Let’s be real, this is as close as I’ll get to reading that doorstop! It’s been quite good, really scratches that itch I have for narrative nonfiction.
Re-Thinking: We’ve all made some adjustments this year haven’t we? We’ve been using our imaginations to make things work in new ways. I recently had a conversation about Halloween with my sister. No matter what our respective towns decide, we won’t be participating in any sort of public trick-or-treating. (Giving for us, receiving for her – I have an empty nest while she still has young ones at home.)
After thinking about it for a while we decided to treat Halloween more like Easter. Candy hunts in the yard! Pumpkin baskets filled with goodies! Why not let the kids run around in costumes and video chat with various grandparents and family members? Times are weird. It’s okay to lament the weirdness. But what if we leaned into the weird and created some new traditions? Let’s give it a try.
Have a great weekend, you gorgeous creatures. Let me know what you are reading or loving or re-thinking. I always love hearing from you.
The Relentless Reader 
I’m sooooo wanting cooler weather here. We don’t normally get it until October, though. And hahahaha *sob* I was just complaining about my eyes yesterday. I’m with you, blame it on the 40s!
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I’d like a few more sunny days before the snow flies, but man it feels good to put on jeans and a sweatshirt. You’ll roast for a few more weeks I suppose, ugh,
Darn eyes! Ridiculous!
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Your new tradition ideas sound lovely! I’m in California, so it doesn’t ever feel as much like fall as it does in the northeastern US, but I’m also excited for the season. Hopefully I’ll be making some apple crisp this weekend š
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Apple crisp! That sounds perfect. Ohhhh the smell of it in the oven… drool.
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I’ve been thinking about Halloween a lot, too. We don’t know if things will be canceled here, but if they’re going ahead, I’ve figured out a way to adapt giving out candy. Assuming it’s cool enough, which is not a guarantee here. We have a deeply inset door (about ten covered feet back from the front of the walk). I plan to dress up in a costume that involves a mask – probably as a cat, heh – and have the candy bowl set out at the opposite end of that walkway. Then I can watch and wave and let kids take candy, but not have too much direct contact. And if it’s all canceled, then we’ll just have some kind of internal family party with the four of us. At least we’ll definitely dress up the house!
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That’s a good idea too! We live right in town, on a very popular trick-or-treating residential street. (One Halloween we counted over 400 kids at our door for candy!) It becomes a bottleneck of witches and vampires on our porch, lol.
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Before this shutdown, my eyes were having trouble focusing. I could not push the computer back far enough and kept having to take my glass off to do stupid things like chop an onion. I was dreading the bifocal conversation but when I went to the doc, he got me a second pair of glasses just for the computer and it is just enough of a tweak to work beautifully for me without the headache of bifocals. I am so glad I got them before the shutdown because working from home would have been so unpleasant otherwise.
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Maybe that’s what I need, a different pair for reading/computer use. Hmmm.
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