October 2023 month in review

Here it is, October 19, and I’m rather in awe of how busy this month has been. We’re trying to work on getting college stuff done, and it’s not fun. Not fun at all.

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Week 1

This was an awesome week.

Oh gosh, I’d forgotten about one of these…

We started off the month with our monthly Game Club. Superman was happy to get a chance to play some board games with friends.

My niece turned four, and we weren’t able to make the first get together so we went over to their house to celebrate. That’s the top left picture, but the bottom right picture has a lot to do with that.

See, The Artist left a bag of powdered sugar on the counter, and Leezard got into it. This is where my being raised in the 80s comes through, because I immediately thought, “It looks like she was doing drugs.” My daughter tells me I have issues, she’s probably right. But, she got a shower, and then we spent the night with her having seizures because that wasn’t all she got into that night. It was less than pleasant, but she was a happy doggo in the moment.

We played charades with the nephew and nieces and some of the animals they chose to act out were quite unique and took some guessing. We also introduced them to the concept of the Emu War which led to watching a very silly student short film about being a veteran of the war. It was highly ridiculous.

Saturday Superman had a Kung Fu show, and The Artist and I briefly got to see it before sprinting off to go see Six! The production was amazing and the choreography and lighting was fabulous. It was well worth going to see it, and it was a lot of fun listening to the people around us as we were walking back to the car and them discussing the different wives (I stayed quiet and did not correct historical inaccuracies, though it was hard sometimes).

Books Read:

• Frugal Wizard’s Guide to Surviving Medieval England– the second of Brandon Sanderson’s secret projects, and I really enjoyed this one, especially the random little illustrations throughout and trying to piece together who the main character was (he woke up with amnesia)
• To Escape a Wonderland– One of the authors I follow organized a “Shattered Tales” collaboration, and this was the Alice in Wonderland contribution to the tale, with an interesting take on the story I wasn’t expecting
• Thornrose Estate– I was beta-reading the sequel to this book and so I reread it to remind myself of a few events referenced in this one, it’s still a fun take on Beauty and the Beast combined with Northanger Abbey
• Midnight for a Curse– This was an amusing take on Beauty and the Beast where it’s Beast who is the bookworm (which is a common addition to the story ever since Robin McKinley’s novel, and Disney’s cartoon, which I personally think took that inspiration from the book)

Games played:

• Root– they played this at game club, and that’s the only one we played this week

Week 2

This was a confusing week with lots of plans and then adapting plans and changing plans

Obviously, the really big event was the eclipse! I picked up some eclipse glasses at the last minute so we could go observe them and I had a lot of fun watching it slowly change and get pictures of the shadows for how different it looked.

Batman called us from AIT and asked for us to mail him a few things, so I put them together into a very unique box I put together and stuffed in all sorts of memes. I’m eagerly looking forward to his response to that, I haven’t heard anything yet.

Then I took off to mail the package. I came up with the brilliant idea of taking the dog with me. It was fine for the part I have pictured here, but while I was in the post office, she leaped into the front seat with all the excitement.

So, I carefully opened the door, which she tried to run out of, and crammed myself into the chair with her, at which point she excitedly turned around while on me, managing to honk the horn. Finally I convinced her to go to the next chair, because I cannot drive while she’s on my lap, and eventually we headed off home.

It was also the week leading up to Jeff’s birthday, which was on the 15th, but that day was busy with a bunch of things we couldn’t rearrange, so we celebrated Saturday night. I got him a new office chair, and a D&D setting. It was a fun low-key way to celebrate his birthday and we all enjoyed it.

Books read:

• Little Persuased– officially the last of the Jane Austen Fairy Tale retellings, combining Persuasion and Little Mermaid, which worked better than I expected, and actually made me like Little Mermaid more than I usually do
• The Late Mrs. Willoughby– this is the sequel to The Murder of Mr. Wickham, and I assumed like most murder mysteries you can read the books in any order, and while that is true, I didn’t need to read The Murder of Mr. Wickham, because it is the same sets of people in both books, they talked about who the murder was from the first book quite a lot, actually that’s part of the false lead, ummm spoilers if you do read the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I went and bought the first book in the series
• The Murder of Mr. Wickham– I don’t know if I would have read the second book if I read this book first. While I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery and the newly created characters, I felt she misunderstood some of the Jane Austen characters, and so their behavior did not match their behaviors in their books. All in all, I do like the series, and a third book is coming out in a few months, which I will buy, the characters I didn’t like their characterization did not appear again in the second book and are unlikely to appear in the third

Week 3

I am feeling a distinct feeling of ennui, and just don’t want to do anything. Or I should say any of the things I should be doing. Wheee!!!!!

I know last week was really busy, but I just don’t remember a thing that was going on. This is why I really need to write these right after.

We had our monthly teen hangout, and usually no moms stay to talk, so I plan to bring stuff to do. This time, several moms stayed to talk, and of course it was when I had something I really needed to do. OF COURSE it was. But it was good to talk with them and hear how they’re doing, just I suddenly had to find another couple of hours to do what I wanted to do then.

I went to go write one of our country posts and I discovered I didn’t actually have the recipe cooked up, so I got to make a recipe for, goes back and checks notes, Democratic Republic of Congo. It wasn’t anything I particularly remembered even a week later as I’m writing this up.

For whatever reason, when writing the book lists and I’m taking a picture of the books, I’ve decided it’s amusing to find a coffee or tea cup that more or less aligns with the theme of the books. So, random little tea cup is on top of the Thanksgiving books. I don’t know why.

The craft for my Sunday school class was creating a veil-like Leah and Rachel wore to get married. We colored handkerchiefs with sharpeis and it was wildly popular with the kids, even the kids who usually play video games.

Books read

• To Betray a King– the first two books are from a kind of series, basically a bunch of authors were given a theme, shattering glass and a fairy tale, and the author took their own take, this one was vaguely a Frog Prince retelling, with the genders swapped
• To Shatter a Slipper– what if the glass slipper fit the wrong person? This was a really fun and different take on Cinderella
• Mermaid’s Tale– what if the Little Mermaid’s happily ever after wasn’t? A rather interesting concept to me, apparently this week had a theme of fairy tale retellings
• Konig’s Fire– I ended up not finishing this, it’s the monthly book quest for Lorehaven, but it’s horror, and I just couldn’t deal with the horror elements

Week 4

These pictures are not particularly in order.

First the cheese Advent calendar. I texted the family I NEEDED the cheese and got the response back from Jeff, “I don’t think that means what you think it means,” so I texted him the image how scientists have said eating cheese can extend your life. He was not impressed with my science.

Maybe I should put that in scare quotes.

Either way I did buy the cheese, because cheese. It’s been fun to randomly get a new cheese to eat, or maybe two, since I’m not really going to save it for over a month to eat.

Funny story about Leezard, the picture I included is her trying to sit on the pattern I was cutting, but the other day I was home alone and walking through the kitchen when the TV suddenly turned on. I figured she was laying on the remote and tried to feel around her, but didn’t find it. Somehow she had turned on Walking Dead, a show I’d never seen, but apparently Leezard felt like watching, and of course it happened to be one of those super bloody death scenes. After trying to find the remote near her, I finally had to force her to sit up and let me find it right under the middle of where she was sleeping. She looked at me affronted, like, “How dare you Mom, why would you wake me when I was sleeping so soundly?” Silly doggo.

Superman is a Five Nights at Freddy’s Fan, and so when I saw the trailer for that movie I knew I didn’t want to see it, so I asked my brother if he got passes to the premiere if he could bring Superman to see it with him. He got tickets and Superman happily watched it with his uncle and cousin. Then on Saturday he went and saw it again with a bunch of his friends. The hilarious thing is my brother came over for Halloween, and I found out my nephew has now seen it three times. So, needless to say the FNAF fans really liked the movie. I’ve been told the movie itself is not so fun if you’re not a fan of the game.

Then, we had the annual Pumpkin Hunt, which went better this year than previous years. We made it through 5 clues this time and the girls all had fun figuring out the clues, the clues were so much better this year, and generally, it was much more chill.

Oh wait, back up two days to Friday, and The Artist and I went to a worship night at my friend’s house, we heard from Jackie Hill Perry and she taught this amazing lesson on Hagar and Abraham, and I had so many notes.

And then finally we had Halloween. I only had one costume to make this year since Superman is an adult now and figured he would just wear his costumes from previous years if he wore anything. The Artist was an elf, and it was fun seeing the giant mob of friends she gathered to trick or treat with.

Books read:

• Scarlett and the Dark Woods– this is an example where including a sample in another book gets you to buy it, because I’d seen the books from this “series” (books written by different authors with a theme) and wrote it off as “None of these really stand out to me as I must buy it.” Then I read the sample for this Little Red Riding Hood retelling in a dystopian fall setting (the “series” theme was fall). It’s a Little Red Riding Hood retelling in only the vaguest sense, which makes sense because it doesn’t really fit most ways retellings are done.
• To Defy a Dream– this is the book that had the sample of Scarlett, and was an interesting Sleeping Beauty take, basically with her deliberately choosing to make herself sleep and using that to
• Whispers in the Waters– the prequel to the next book, it’s an interesting gaslamp fantasy (Regency fantasy). They’re an interesting world with all of the societal intrigue from Regency era, and the fun of dealing with fae at the same time
• Crimson Tattoo– the first book in this series, it’s a mystery to figure out who the murderer is in this fantasy equivalent of London, I really enjoy the mystery and the intrigue of the fae machinations
• Ruins of Bone– Starting almost immediately after the first book, Jessa has to figure out why the ruins she inherited are so very important and what is going on there, another interesting mystery and it solved a few mysteries from the previous book that were left hanging (nothing that left the ending of book 1 unsatisfying, just fun continuing plot threads)
• Invisible Library-I like this fantasy/steampunk series of librarians, dragons, and fae, and wanted something to reread for no real reason

And that is October! YAY