Busy Week

Elvis sez: "DOODE - U seen my other leg?"

Been a crazy-fast week here at the Circle-D Ranch. Halloween prep, school and homework, chores, prep for the movie-in next weekend, prep for the Celtic New Year party on Saturday, work assignments, maintaining some form of social profile (even in its currently reduced state), two family birthdays and at least one close friend's birthday. Crazy, I tells ya.

This weekend being my New Year, I'm making a resolution, and it's pretty much reinforcing my recent policies in blogging. It has really occurred to me lately that in the process of complaining about certain aspects of my relationship with Tyler, I'm doing us both a disservice. Although he has a blog and could theoretically defend himself, I should be far more sensitive to how I portray my son on a public forum read by hundreds of people every month. It's not fair to paint the one-sided picture I've painted in the past, either to him or to myself. Every family dynamic is different, and we're in the midst of very delicate work - stuff that really doesn't belong on a public blog. Therefore, I commit to keeping to the most basic facts and restraining from any subjective (or at least subjectively negative) portrayals of my kids. It is, after all, the way I'd want to be treated. Love you, T.

So last night Kayleigh and I had leftovers for dinner and I watched the Obama Show while she carved her pumpkin - completely by herself! Awesome anime face. After she cleaned up the pumpkin guts, she washed a bunch of the seeds, spread them on a cookie sheet, sprinkled salt and garlic powder, and roasted them in the oven. All I did was give instruction - she did all the work and all the clean up. And the roasted seeds - yum!

Kayleigh with her Willow-red hair

Tyler spent the night at Gavin's and got dropped at school early today. My neighbor/producer Darlene dropped off coffee for me this morning as a thank-you for letting one of the kids in her at-risk program interview me about being a professional artist yesterday. I love inspiring kids to consider a career in the arts. Or just inspiring them to think for themselves and follow their bliss - one of the biggest reasons I'm researching the unschooling experience for T (and I'm halfway through the first book, Marcia - thanks!).

Gotta finish up here. Taking Katherine to lunch for her birthday. Then I have to go pick up my video projector from the shop - it's finally fixed! Just in time to throw silent horror films on the screen Saturday night! There's a meeting at K's school tonight for the music program and their trip to Idaho. I have an early dentist appointment in Ballard tomorrow, and will hopefully get some answers on the whole left jaw pain and chronic ear infection thing.

Tomorrow is Samhain (sah-wen, from the Irish), when the Veil is lowest. I fully expect a check in from loved ones passed. [tangent: last night, Ghost Hunters showed investigations in Sedro-Woolley and the Seattle Underground. Pretty cool!] I'll be taking K trick-or-treating, and T will be handing out candy in his ninja costume. Raechelle will have her choice of duties. Might be good for her to bond a bit with Tyler, or it could be cool for her to scope out some of the neighborhoods in West Seattle as we troll for candy. I promise to take lots of pics of the festivities on both Friday and Saturday, but there may not be a recap until Monday.