October Rites

OK, OK, so I haven't posted in a while. Let's see.

Arthur now says, "up" when he wants us to carry him. Which is a lot of the time. He also makes a clicking sound with his mouth when he wants to snap, which is part of the sign for "dog". Arthur recognizes the moon, and he will point to it and say, "moon."

Two weeks age some friends from Seattle visited. Eugene was pretty, it was seventy-something degrees and all the leaves were turning. We did a few traditional things, mostly surrounding eating establishments. We went to a farm where apples were being pressed into cider and where the Pearwood Pipers sang a few songs. And we discussed the lighting treatment for the house.

As part of an early Samhain celebration, I lead a ritual at the UU church. It went pretty well, considering I hadn't quite gotten it through my head that over half of the participants would be teens and pre-teens. I've decided that ritual for this age group is kind of like ritual for cats. From what I've been told, the kids enjoyed it, though (and so did the adults).

Last week Arthur caught a stomach flu, which I caught the next day (thankfully after the ritual, otherwise it's quite likely I would have been invoking the powers of "eeuuw-ack"), and Mark a few hours later. Arthur was pretty much over the flu in a day, so he was running around and aware while it was busily taking over the dads' g.i. tracks. I don't know how Arthur managed to stay relatively grumpy-free, as both Mark and I had the chills and needed to sleep most of last Sunday. Luckily, our friends the Wilds watched Arthur for most of the day. Mark shook off the flu quickly, but I had it for an extra day. I'm pretty sure that I killed most of the flora in my intestines, so I've been eating a lot of yogurt.

Halloween was very fun for Arthur. He did not go out, but he had a great time answering the door and giving out little candy bars (I think it helped that he didn't know that he was handing out waxy Hershey's chocolate). He was interested in all the costumes, and we were surprised at how many two year olds were out working the streets with their parents. We did have one scary moment that was straight out of a David Sedaris Santaland Diary, and I'll leave it at that.

Arthur now demands that I light the candle next to the gargoyle on the mantle and the ceramic jack-o-lantern every night.

This week we're continuing the Great Shelving Project (which was interrupted by the flu). The ultimate goal is to get all of my books out of the boxes in the garage.