The last half of October has flown by, and now all of a sudden it’s November and the time change has happened and my brain and body are both confused. At least I got an extra hour of sleep out of it last night.

We celebrated my nephew’s 3rd birthday a couple weeks ago and, at my niblings’ insistence, I proved that I am still capable of maneuvering a child’s jungle gym/obstacle course, albeit much less gracefully than when I was their ages. Also, have tube slides ever not hurt a little bit?

This past week has been all about Halloween festivities. We did a “Clue” theme at work Friday, decorating each office as one of the rooms featured on the game board and hiding the clue cards throughout the building like a giant game of “I Spy” for anyone who wanted to try to solve Mr. Body’s murder. I dressed as Mrs. Peacock, complete with a feather in my hair and, for pictures, a giant wrench in my hand. We had fun, and I think most of our customers got it, although no one spotted all the cards & solved the murder.

My niece got to decorate a pumpkin for her class, which then led to needing to create Halloween, fall, and Christmas decorations for her house. When I visited yesterday, she had a tape spiderweb in one corner, snowflakes hanging in the hallway, and fake pumpkins in the living room, all of it very well constructed, and she’d wiped down the fireplace in preparation for the real Christmas decorations to come out of storage as soon as Halloween ends. She says she wants to be a doctor, but I could see her making an excellent designer or engineer at this rate too.

I’ve made a little bit of headway on query letter drafts the last couple of weeks as well, and I’m hoping to have those ready to present to my writing group by the middle of this month to get some feedback.