when nothing fits

I keep telling myself that my posts don't have to make sense, I just need to post something. Oh hey, here's something (imagine that):

NaNoWriMo is in full swing and I'm NOT DOING IT this year, but I do have a novel in in the works (am I allowed to share that? Maybe that stuff should be private, so that in three months no one asks my how my novel is going and then when I burst into tears they feel uncomfortable and wish they'd never asked). I'm work on an outline this month. But finishing the first draft this month? Only if I went full-out cliche and bought a typewriter and began chain smoking and poured whiskey into more than BBQ.

In other news, there was this thing called Halloween that happened a few nights ago. Lots of candy with peanuts in it that makes me have a frowny face because, talk about bad for you, that crap could kill my daughter. But she loved it, of course. Not the many opportunities for death by anaphylactic shock, but the yelling "Trick or Treat!" with abandon. She was sure to add, "It's Uli!"just in case anyone thought she was really a gorilla. Ilse didn't know what was going on, especially since we'd been telling her she'd be a lion and then that old costume of her sister's was clearly too small for her so we popped a bat coat on her instead, but she flapped her wings vigorously whenever we asked her to and walked up to the houses with her sister, an amused, confused smile on her face, just happy to be included.

Of note: we recently had a birthday in the family. My firstborn is four! There were two days of festivities, first with a successful friend party (they baked cupcakes) and then a family breakfast (we surprised her with a "princess" dress I'd mended into decency and a set of fairy wings we thrifted, both of which she has now worn almost 24/7 this past week).

Oh, and one last thing did happen recently:  a stranger congratulated me on my pregnancy. Except I'm not pregnant. Which was awkward.

And that's what I have. Random, but that's my life.