Halloween

Once more the day dawns and we -- now empty nesters for the first time but long since the parents of older kids, one of whom was never into trick or treating -- are underprepared. I bought a pumpkin only yesterday and barely got one of a passable color. Of course it is not yet carved. I'm looking out at our front walk and see that it needs a good sweeping/raking if we are to have kids walk down it this evening. It is all too thick with acorns, seemingly in greater supply than in usual due to the dry autumn and trees playing defense against perceived peril. The acorns remain despite ever bolder incursions by the gangs of deer here in the nabe. They have long since ceased to be dissuaded by Mary's "deer resistant" garden and invade freely to gobble down the acorns which, apparently, form a good part of the protein in their diet. And also to poop.

Thankfully the lights along our front walkway now work. Not sure I told the story of how we had some electricians come round in the summertime. We had a few issues around the house, one of which was the fact that the lights out front didn't work. When they got here I had the brilliant idea to see if we had any replacement bulbs. We did! These weird little LED things. While the electricians were working on our main problem I applied myself to replacing the bulbs, no mean feat. It required laying on my back and contorting myself first to take out the old bulbs and then to put in the new ones under this little cover. But it worked. Thank God we had the electricians out to fix the problem.

At any rate, hopefully kids will come down to our house since we didn't get ourselves on the list of candy-dispensing households that was set up via the neighborhood listserv, which I send straight to my email account reserved for spam (sorry Yahoo!). I don't know how parents and kids keep track of the list. Presumably someone has built an app by now.