Halloween night was a sleepless night for me. As you probably know, it was a full moon. Also a blue moon, the second full moon of the month. In Arcata, a lovely light layer of fog turned it into a literal blue moon. It was extremely pretty, so much so that I texted Suzanne around 9PM to tell her how beautiful it was.

Zelda, however, did not share my admiration. Or maybe she did. Because the moonlight was so bright shining through the skylight in the tiny house that sometime around midnight Zelda decided the day had begun. She was highly committed to this idea. From midnight to about 3AM, she did her absolute best to convince me that it was morning, and we should be going for a walk. She hardly ever sleeps through the night anymore — she almost always wants to go out at midnight — but usually I can sleepily get up, let her out, then five or ten minutes later, sleepily let her in again. This was different: she really believed we should be going for our walk together. It’s tough to convince a senile dog that moonlight and daylight are not the same thing. But you know, it was still beautiful. And I love the skylight in the tiny house and the light it lets in, even when it is the middle of the night. And I adore my dog, even when she’s confused.

Suzanne likes Halloween, so even though we suspected this year would be weird, on Halloween day we carved Jack-o-lanterns. Well, Suzanne carved Jack-o-lanterns, plural: I carved a Jack-o-lantern, singular. As it grew dark, we set them up with lights on hay bales, with our socially distanced chairs six feet away from a bowl of candy. As it grew cold and foggy, we managed to give away a single tootsie pop to a homeless guy wandering by, before we acknowledged that it was a year of no trick-or-treaters and retreated to our respective cozy houses. It was still fun.

You might notice in the above picture that Zelda is wearing a jacket. Yep, I have turned into a person who dresses her dog. Or she has turned into a dog who wears clothing, which might not be exactly the same thing. Not that she dresses herself, but she trembles when it’s cold and seems to welcome her coat, so… *shrug*. And I have to admit, I think she looks adorable in her various layers. Mara, Suzanne’s next door neighbor, gave us two of them; one which seemed a little small; one (above) which is pretty big; and I bought her a sweater at Target, which fits just right. Yep, my dog now has a wardrobe. I like it, and I think she does, too.

Another thing I like: the cozy pajamas I bought at Costco. One pair is plaid and one pair has snowflakes on them and if you had asked me as recently as six months ago if I would ever wear something plaid or with a snowflake print, I would have scoffed at you. Clearly, no, never. But, oh, these pajamas are sooo comfortable. I would be tempted to stay in them all day if I didn’t think that was unhealthy.

Another thing I like: the crispy cold morning air turning into sunny afternoons. I’m not excited for this upcoming Friday where the high temp is predicted to be 48, but the past few days have started out chilly and then become warmer with clear blue skies by the afternoon. Yesterday I convinced Suzanne that we should walk the dogs in the forest instead of at the beach. What I really wanted was the crunch of leaves, which she pointed out to me I wasn’t going to get in a redwood forest, but it still felt like autumn.

Another thing I like: my friend Christina’s taste in music. Every season, she makes a Apple music playlist. I’ve been listening to her autumn playlist all morning. It’s filled with songs I would never have discovered on my own, some of which I would also probably have skipped through if they actually showed up randomly on the music Apple picks for me, but I’m loving it. I really like Run Far by Elliphant, among others. Weird, and delightful, IMO.

Another thing I like: playing with covers. I didn’t make one yesterday because the day wound up being filled with others things: phone calls and errands and laundry and pumpkin-pie eating and long conversations. But Saturday I went for the fairy tale & painterly look for a horrible title:

And today I did a sci-fi cover for my font project. This font is Encode and it’s definitely a good sci-fi font. Straightforward, but the curves on the top of the letters and the straight lines down the sides make me think of spaceships. I would absolutely have sworn that I’d downloaded a spaceship, but I couldn’t find it, alas. It would have made a nice background element. I tried about six different backgrounds before finally settling on a texture and those splashes of color, but it was mostly experimenting with fonts. Still, I like it.

Still more things I like: leftover Halloween candy, gluten-free bagels, complicated cooking plans (pork carnitas for dinner, I hope), and Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education, which I’ve read three times now. It’s maybe not a book I want to look at too closely (how does the narrator know everything she knows?) but I love it anyway. I downloaded the author’s entire 9 book dragon series from the library to help me make it through the next days of uncertainty. Distractions & more distractions! That, plus plenty of candy, are going to make this week much easier, I hope.