Now It Be November

 I always felt that it was appropriate for Halloween to be the end of the year.  Maybe it's the ancestral memory of the harvest coming in, and winter on the way.

A couple of pictures to start.  I wrote of the eagle who hit me.  We're at the stage of gauging her before we go in to clean.  If she's up in her tree - even if she's screaming - it's OK to go in, just keep an eye on her.  If she's at the gate, attacking you through it - obviously discretion is the better part of valor, and cleaning will have to wait until later.

And a picture of Mabel the barred owl, just because it was a chilly morning and she was looking round and puffy and adorable.

Halloween happened, as it often does this time of year.  I had a bit of an odd family visit.  Amanda is really into Halloween, and I thought they might like to come up for the Terror of Tallahassee, a quite good haunted house.  They decided to bring up their camper for the weekend; Don and Della thought they would come too (they also have an RV)

I haven't seen Robert, Amanda, and Zeke for almost a year.  Amanda's work schedule is all over the place, and Zeke, now 10 years old, has all manners of extracurricular activities.  I haven't seen Della and Don for even longer.  When they used to come visit on a more regular basis, we'd go out and do something - maybe go to my museum, or the ComicCon, or the saltwater fish store.  So I had some suggestions as to stuff we might do on Saturday before going to dinner and the Terror.  I had also asked Don if he would like to come look through the barn to see if there were any tools or supplies he might like to have before I start cleaning stuff out.

The odd part started Friday night.  I got a call from Robert around 6, saying they were in and set up and Don was firing up the grill for hamburgers.  "Do you want to bother to come visit tonight, or just wait until tomorrow?"   I can see making that offer if to get there was my usual drive-across-town, but the RV campground is less than 10 minutes from my house.  I opted to go join them.

We had our hamburgers.  The campgrounds are on a lake; Zeke and I went out to try skipping stones (in which we failed - the only pebbles we could find were round rather than flat).  We came back to sit around the fire pit, and then socialized the way people do in the 21st century:  everyone pulled out their phones and started scrolling.  Eventually I wandered back home.

Don and Robert came to the house the next day.  Della and Zeke opted to stay at the campground, and Amanda decided to go back to sleep (she had been sick lately).  The guys looked around, decided there was nothing they needed, and then headed back with a "we're just going to hang around the campground today - see you this evening."  All right, then.

So I went back in the late afternoon, we went out to dinner and the Terror, came back to skip a few more stones, makes some s'mores, and take a flashlight to the lake to look at alligator eyes shining.  The lake was beautiful in the full moon.

And then I came home.  They left the next morning.  It was just sort of a strange non-visit visit.

My other Halloween thing was an event at the Goodwood Plantation.  They had advertised that they were doing a free event on Sunday afternoon - and did any organizations, vendors, or artists want to come participate.  I offered to come walk around with my dragon.  I'm glad I did, because they had a large turnout of people, but not of the wished-for organizations or artists, so the lines for the few things were fairly long.  But my dragon kept them entertained.  Of course, it had to be one of the hot October days so it was pretty uncomfortable, but otherwise fun.  I don't get too many chances to take the dragon out.

Since then, the weather can't decide what it's doing.  We might have a high of 62 one day, and 86 the next.  But it's dry, so it's comfortable, and I'm suddenly filled with the urge to be working outside.  I've taken a load of stuff out of the barn; I've worked some more on the chicken coop; I've mowed, and hacked away at underbrush.  I'm sort of all over the place.  This afternoon I decided that it was finally time to re-stain my deck.

The deck is one of those things, where you do something on the things-to-do list and all it does is add something else.  The deck was starting to get a little slippery again, so on the list was "power wash deck."  Which I did.  And it ended up looking like this.

Hard to tell in the picture - but that's a lot of bare wood.  So "put more Thompson's water seal down" went on the list.  I remembered from last time that painting the railing and steps took as long or longer than the deck itself, so that's what I did today and I'll do the deck itself tomorrow. Of course, that means painting myself into the house and then having to stay in for a few hours until it dries.  That's part of the weirdness of having only one entrance to the house.

It's good to keep busy, and tire myself out.  I love the cooler and drier weather, where I feel I can work without collapsing, but the downside is that on the chillier evenings it's very hard to go to bed.  I can't help but remember, as I crawl into the chilly sheets, what it was like to have the warmth and solidity of Bob to snuggle up to.  So best if I'm worn out and just need to crash.