narrowly escaping stitches

On Wednesday of last week, my mom received a phone call from my frantic teacher saying that I needed to be picked up from school immediately because I fell and needed stitches. Her panic wasn't entirely because of the blood. She has 29 years of classroom experience and she is a mother of a leukemia survivor so she has seen more than her share of blood and gore and blood and more gore. She was hysterical because, by her own admission, she wasn't supervising us boys closely enough. And, as she explained, she knew our game was rough but the accident occurred when some of the other younger children were being dismissed and she couldn't/didn't intervene.

When we moved to the new campus, there was more flexibility for younger children to stay all day. That sounds good but it sure adds an element of chaos and sometimes my mom and I talk about how hard it must be to keep track of children scattering everywhere at noon: some go to the rainbow room, some go for a nap while others go home and then there are some of us who stay in the classroom for an afternoon of academics. How do you not lose children? even one child!

My mom prepared to get me from school . . . telling the teacher that it would take 45 minutes to get there. Just as my mom was getting to school, the teacher called back to say maybe just maybe stitches were not needed.

My chin was cleaned up nicely by the time my mom got there so we decided to spend our stitches money on Lego. Best idea ever and I will take credit for that!

At bedtime, it seemed like maybe I should have had stitches. Since my cut was under my chin, it re-opened often and kept bleeding and weeping. Now, I will probably be left with a gouge of a scar in my chin.

Halloween

I really wish I could say that it was the changing weather that helped put me in the mood for Halloween. Most days, though, have still been a bit on the way too warm side. We forged ahead anyhow with our Halloween preparations . . . mostly because it is just one more stop on the way to Christmas. (Yes, I have my calendar marked so I can tell you exactly how many more days until Christmas.) 

Since it has been so hot, I could not buy/carve my pumpkin too far in advance. This is the pumpkin that I agonized over choosing, based on the size, relative smoothness, and roundness of its face. I had the honor of scooping all of the guts out. by hand. This job, I later told my dad, was the worst part of my day - though I didn't complain at all while I was doing it. It took me two tries to draw the pumpkin face as cute as I wanted it to be. We could be brothers! 

Scooping the guts out was only made all the more challenging because my mom insisted that I remove every last seed so that we could roast them. We used a different recipe this year that happens to involve melted butter. (Note: up up up the amount of butter and salt.) These are the toastiest gems of buttery goodness that you could hope to eat.

At long last, it was Halloween night. We went trick-or-treating in a nearby neighborhood that has wide, safe, and brightly lit streets. I walked and walked for almost two hours.

This was my haul. I forgot to mention that I already had a mountain of candy (not shown) from the previous weekend when we went tick-or-treating at the Galleria Halloween party.

Basically, I only like Reese's. We have some baking projects planned for my excess candy of the non-Reese's variety.

To wrap up our Halloween celebrations, I baked a loaf of pumpkin bread yesterday.