Good morning all! It’s been a busy, chaotic few days and I am taking a minute to sit and enjoy my coffee this morning. This mug is from an actual PI business near me, and they would occasionally do work with my cousin’s law firm. When I worked there regularly I fell in love with this mug and took it home. The coffee today is my favorite, Post Alley from Seattle’s Best. Last week we were drinking 6th Avenue Bistro Blend and while it was good, it still couldn’t replace Post Alley in our hearts. We are very serious about our coffee I guess over here.

We started painting our bedroom this weekend! I am so excited about it! It has been a long 20 years of me not liking the color and wanting to paint it but never ever actually doing it. Now we are in the process and I am so impatient for it to be done, but things take time if we want them done right. Billy ended up having to put three coats on to cover the deep blue, even with primer, and since we had the extra paint, added a fourth coat. He plastered, he sanded, he painted the walls, the ceiling, the doors. I painted the trim, two coats. Today the trim goes up and by tomorrow I think we will be in our room again. I’ll make sure to share some photos! For now, this is how we are living…Wyatt loves that we are “camping” all in that room. Lol.

On Friday though before all the madness began, my cousin (the one I mentioned above – his name is Brian) and I went to a “Spooky Shop” at a local used and new bookstore. They opened fairly recently and neither of us had been there before. It was really neat, and I enjoyed hanging out with him. We have been close our whole lives, more like siblings than cousins, and lately we have been making efforts to get back together again. The whole pandemic thing and all put sort of a stop to that for a bit.

Brian is a whole foot taller than my five foot one so it was handy to have him there to get the books down from the high shelves for me. I ended up buying just two this time around – a Sherlock Holmes book, and a book of poetry for Wyatt.

I have a whole folk post percolating in my head. Maybe when the room refresh madness is over I will be able to get to it.

Saturday night we celebrated October with a fire at my brother’s house. It was a perfect night, complete with cider and apple pie. I had to drag Billy out of the bedroom and his work, but he needed a break, and he was happy I forced him to stop working for the night.

My life would not be complete without a nature story. After Wyatt’s physical therapy – which he rocked like a rock star – I was getting in the car and noticed a praying mantis, looking pretty dead but fully intact. It was in the parking lot and I couldn’t bear the thought of it getting run over. I know, I am super weird but things like that bother me. Anyway I scooped it up with my Kroger receipt, and put it in a bag I had in my car and took it home, having no idea what I planned to do with it. Probably just dump it in the garden honestly. When I took it out of the bag though, I thought I saw it twitch. I thought I was crazy. Then I remembered the night before had been so cold, and maybe this mantis had just been too cold to move. So I put it in a butterfly enclosure on the porch in the sun to warm it up safely. And fifteen minutes later, it was moving around. However it is injured, so I will just let it live in the enclosure I guess until it no longer is alive, then dump it in the garden.

And that is it for this morning! Enjoy your day everyone!