Oh, October, you tempestuous beast, you. You offered a few celebrations in my small little world, but beyond our doors, the world went to hell. Again.

Or maybe the world just established permanent residency in hell. Who’s to say?

Too much pain and suffering in the world, too much upside down, too much political gamesmanship, too much interpersonal and tribal cruelty these days.

I have a nemesis, I think.  I am following Roxane Gay’s model: not naming names but wishing this person paper cuts.

The writing goes well if you’re following along on the weekly posts. I took a few days off to work on other things so that I can focus in November on getting 50K words for the novel done as my version of NaNoWriMo. My book touches on themes of “Otherness” as well as relational aggression, racism, sexism, and anti-semitism. Sadly the world offers a little too much material for me some days. Yet, it’s cathartic to write, and I figure some things out in the process.

Obviously, the book is a comedy.

PSA: On behalf of those of us with wavy, curly, kinky, and/or coily hair – please stop touching it. From now on, if you touch my hair without permission/need, I will force you to touch my feet, because you might as well. Thank you.

My husband and I celebrated our anniversary the other day with treats and inside jokes. We bored our children to tears with the retelling of our wedding day. They were happy when we finally left for a celebratory dinner without them.  The pithy truth my husband and I arrive at over and over is that marriage is a verb.

Highlights from October:

• This month I read Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays. I don’t read a lot of scripts for fun…too often the playwright leaves a lot to the actor/director and I end up reading and staging the thing in my head for full effect. That’s…kind of the point of a script. But this book of one acts, whoo, girl. I guffawed aloud and never once thought about how I’d stage it. I just enjoyed. Then I got mad, in the way that artists can get mad when they encounter brilliance and know they can never ever do work as good. Just phenomenal and I hope to actually see these staged.
• Ben Folds is on repeat on my iPod these days. I play this:

 when I clean house or go through the pick-up line at my kids’ schools. It certainly adds an element of excitement and risk to the mundane. Then I listen to this and weep.

• I found this funny. Then I took a quiz to find out what finding this funny said about me.
• The punctuation we both need and deserve.  

• Speaking of anniversaries, Joni Mitchell has some good thoughts on long-term relationships.
• This video is just a soul-gratifying delight.

Happy November, everyone. Remember to hide the wrappers if you’re dipping into your kids’ Halloween candy.