Hallo

Well hello there. When last we spoke it was summer and now it's autumn and the painted ponies go up and down because we're all trapped on a terrifying carousel of death. Or something. I may have gotten those lyrics wrong.

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED, YOU GUYS!

H started her senior year of high school, OMG. Senior year is nuts. C never had one so we're new to all this. And it could not be more different than my own senior year 32 years ago. For one thing, the internet exists now, I don't know whether you're aware. The number of times I've thanked my lucky stars that Instagram and Youtube and Snapchat and whatnot were not actual things when I was in high school: 47 million, give or take. Just since August.

I finished nutrition school and got my certification so now I'm all bona fide and shit! And I turned 49 so I'm also all old and shit! Yeah! And I cut off all my hair. Like you do.

I read a bunch of really good books somewhere in there. Marcel Theroux's Far North, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, Andy Weir's The Martian, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, all excellent. Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog, Spike Gillespie's Sit. Stay. Heal., Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, Louise Penny's The Nature of the Beast, Terry M. Green's Shaman, Healer, Heretic, Laurie Colwin's Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object, Zachary Thomas Dodson's Bats of the Republic, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, all really freaking great. Slightly disappointed with Oliver Pötzsch's The Beggar King and Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies, oh well. And I read a bunch of stuff for work that you don't care about.

I've been cooking and doing yoga and reading the tarot and coloring mandalas. And knitting this stupid Kindle cozy I've been knitting since H was in middle school. And sneezing a lot. September marked three years of staying at my goal weight and I can't remember the last time I had to pluck a long, wiry hair out of my chin so if that doesn't sell you on Balancing Your Hormones Through Real-Food Nutrition(™)(just kidding, I haven't trademarked that)(YET), I don't know what will.

In other news, it's come to my attention that some towns/communities/dystopian societies actually schedule trick-or-treating and sometimes it doesn't even happen on Halloween and I'm completely traumatized by this knowledge. You guys. What. Around here the kids trick-or-treat on Halloween night no matter what, there are no do-overs or weather delays (what is this, BASEBALL?). They start around dusk and continue long into the night until everyone has turned off their porch lights and closed their curtains and hidden their pumpkins. Which is what God intended. That's in Leviticus, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, so that's what's going on around here. Birthdays (my mom turned 69, H is about to turn 18, what is happening?) and renewing my passport so I can take another health coaching certification exam (which will make me a Certified International Health Coach, very exciting) and gearing up for Festivus and our annual pilgrimage to the ArkLaTex and whatnot. Yep. How are things with you?