Happy Halloween

In case you missed it, Thursday was Halloween. I sometimes feel like I can hardly keep up with all these festive holidays and all their corollary activities: going to the pumpkin patch, carving the pumpkins, getting costumes, buying candy for trick or treaters. The kids are only young once, though, and so we are embracing these traditions that we’re only vaguely familiar with ourselves.*

We had a staff pumpkin carving contest in teams, and while I had initially hoped to have them all on display for customers to vote on, on the 31st, we weren’t organized enough coming back off Scriptus on the 27th, so we just sort of carved them and enjoyed them all together.

From top to bottom, we have a spider web, a Kakuno bat nib, Caleb’s monster, and Chicken in silhouette. From the responses on an Instagram story, without a doubt, the bat nib won, and so Josh and Dylan will be receiving some sort of prize, still yet to be orchestrated.

And so that was Halloween in the shop. From here on out is the long slog into the excitement of the holiday season: buying salt for our walks, checking that our shovels haven’t been hijacked for forts, hoping there’s no minor explosion when we power up the furnace, the impossible task of predicting and ordering for the Christmas season ahead, the impossible task of finding winter boots that fit small feet.

***

I lost my TWSBI Mini AL-Blue a few days ago** and was/am pretty devastated over its loss. I’ve harangued probably a total of 3-4 man hours looking for it, the cost of which is probably worth just replacing the pen. That’s neither here nor there, but just to say that it happens to even your neighbourhood pen clerk.

There only thing worse than being disorganized and flailing around unproductively is doing so when you’re self-employed. Thank goodness that’s never happened to me, and our new schedule, which involves one child-free morning of several hours, has resulted in a whole slew of emails being answered and this blog post. So I’m sitting here in a hotel lobby, of all places, clacking away.

In any case, there’s lots ahead!

***

Currently reading: Women Talking by Miriam Toews.
Currently on the table: iPad, phone, coffee, Traveler’s Notebook.
Currently looking down at the table and seeing: a man’s very, very pointy shoes at the table next to me.
Current home project: sorting through a complicated organizational system of clothing for Naomi and Caleb in preparation for winter, wherein I have boxes of winter clothes for Caleb, winter clothes for Naomi, clothes that were purchased when they were too big for Caleb but might now fit him, clothes that are too small for Caleb now but are now still too big for Naomi, clothes that were purchased too big for Naomi but could now fit her but are seasonally mixed...etc. I’ll let you guess how that’s going.
Current number of inked pens: 13.
Current shop project: photos and a blog post for Leonardo pens. Am trying to contain the tragedy of my own pen being back ordered from the first shipment.
Currently eating: last year’s leftover Santa chocolate.
Currently looking forward to: ordering some more Santa chocolate.

*It sounds like I didn’t enjoy myself, which is untrue, however, I will just say that it was raining and cold and I am a spring flower.
**Noticed its absence.