October, it turned out, was a month of lasts (with a small, furry "first" that I'll get back to later). The first last (Dude, is that like "the best wurst"?!?) came early in the month with the Pipsqueak's school's annual parent/child fitness event. It has several names because the school has -- correctly, as far as I'm concerned -- worked to acknowledge that there are a lot of nontraditional and/or reconstituted families represented in its student body, so the flyer includes "parental figures" along with a fairly comprehensive list of relatives... but the whole idea is to have each kid to work through a school-wide fitness challenge course in friendly competition with one of their associated grownups.
Unlike a couple of years ago, I got to the school on time... and was surprised to find AJ but not find the Pipsqueak. It turned out that she was worried she might get in some kind of trouble for not showing up for her morning post as a Patrol -- she's too young for pedestrian control outside so they have her helping the kindergarteners in the mornings & afternoons instead -- and had headed off to her assigned classroom. Lucky for me (I always get lost in that building!) AJ knew where she was, and in just a few minutes Miri and I were looking for the start of the fitness course. After a couple of minutes of confusion, a staffer figured out where we were supposed to be and we got there just in time to be added to the group ahead of us.
And, as they say, that's when it began, with "it" being my total and complete defeat in every. single. challenge. I've usually held back on most of them to give Miri a chance to beat me (a little less each year, by the way) but it quickly became obvious to us both that if anyone had to hold back, it was the Pipsqueak. 10 jumping jacks? Okay, I won that one, but only because My Niece The Dancer got her feet tangled. Running ring stack? I led for 2 rings, and finished to find Miri standing with her arms crossed laughing at her slow uncle. Tire stepping? That was a tie, but only because I had longer legs and didn't have to move as fast. Jumping rope? Let's just say I provided great entertainment value to all present. I could go on, but you get the idea... By the end of the course, I did the "standing push-ups" because I wasn't sure I'd get back up off the floor if I did the normal ones, and Miri complained "Eew, you're sweaty!) when she went to give me a congratulatory hug, but we both had a great time.
This is an event that Miri & I look forward to sharing every year, but the local middle schools don't have an event like this... so it was our last. Sweaty, sore, and still breathing a little heavily as I sat in my car outside the school afterwards, I couldn't help but look back at how much Miri has grown (and how much older & decrepit I've become!) since the first time I had to help her walk through a row of tires on the floor.
And the second last...
Because the weather report was so cruddy for Halloween evening, I'd planned to simply not turn on the lights out front but that plan went out the window when the doorbell rang and I found the twins from 3 houses down on the front porch with a little girl they often babysit, all smiling and saying, "TRICK OR TREAT!" Overall, I had 22 kids (some with parents nearby on the sidewalk) trickle through despite the wind's ongoing attempts to blow them off my front porch. The expected heavy rains showed up a bit early, so that was that -- the smallest number of trick-or-treaters I've had at the house in over 15 years of my keeping count!
But let's push the clock back a few hours to early in the afternoon... it was also the day of the annual Halloween parade at Miri's school! We'd been wondering if the event would even happen as soon as the first weather reports came out, but the school sent out email with information on how the parade was being moved indoors this year, where to sign in, where to stand to watch, etc.
We were all glad to hear that the parade was still "on" because this would be Miri's last such school parade. The local middle school doesn't have this event (Dude, notice a trend here?), so this instance of the parade was kinda special.
We got to the school on time and staked out a good spot in the gym at a curve in the parade path that was marked with miniature orange traffic cones. (As one teacher mentioned while putting out some chairs, there were also LOTS of arrows directing traffic because she still remembered the last time they held the parade indoors... and what happened when one group of classes entered going the wrong way.)
Unfortunately, I don't have any good photos of the event because after getting one underexposed, blurry shot of Miri just as she entered with her class, my camera decided it should be all tricks and no treats and refused to work properly -- autofocus wibbly, onscreen level wobbly, and the only way to zoom out after zooming in was to turn the fakakte thing off completely so it could reboot. AJ got some shots on her iPhone but I'm still waiting to see them... (Hey, Sis, if you're reading this... consider that a hint!)
Later that evening, just as my last few ToTers were visiting, Miri texted me to tell me she'd had the most successful Halloween in history -- her haul was over 160 pieces of candy! Apparently a contributing factor was that a lot of her peers were worried about the weather and skipped a bunch of houses while my methodical (and slightly daredevilish) niece made a point of not skipping any house that looked like it was giving out candy... thus collecting the spoils passed over by everyone else.
And as for the aforementioned first...
Meet Licorice! She's a rescue kitten -- a tiny little thing! -- and as AJ says, the only part of her that isn't black is her eyes. Her first day as a member of the family was early in the month, and I didn't know about her until a couple of days afterward when Miri kept telling me she had a secret. (By the way, she's usually awful at keeping secrets, so this really was a surprise.) I didn't get to meet my new feline niece until after Mom & Dad had also been let in on the secret, but I have to admit she's darn cute. She and Xuan have been slowly establishing a relationship under the watchful eye of both AJ & Miri and so far, so good. (Xuan is one of those cats to whom anything jumpy, bouncy, fast-moving, or otherwise exactly like Licorice is an anathema). Even the worst habit she's exhibited so far is cute; she still likes to suckle on AJ's blanket, so poor Sis keeps finding wet spots (cat spit, not pee) when she goes to bed at night.
So -- despite the best efforts of my misbehaving Internet connection (thanks again, Verizon <sigh>) -- there's a quick catch-up on October. Looking through my queue, I've found sevral forgotten, incomplete draft posts so I suspect y'all will be seeing those here soon. Until then, I wish everyone a happy belated (in alphabetical order) Diwali, Halloween, Rosh Hashonah, Samhain, Vijayadashami, and any other special day that I managed to forget until it had passed.
Stay happy, stay healthy, and keep the California firefighters (especially our cousin Ethan) in mind 'til next time....!
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