She also says tch-ch-ch-chow! but she mostly says thank you to Allison at A Good Mother for making my foxy Halloween dreams come true.

I was resigned to being the horse who spoke to the fox in mor-or-or-or-orse because I found a horse head for $2 but no fox.  I bought said head and told Allison about it.  And she made me this fox hat out of pity for my lack of crafting skills.  So now Josh gets to be the horse and I get to be the FOX!

I think this is fair because I have an unusual love of foxes.  We have one in our town that sometimes trots through our neighbourhood.  I’ve gone outside to try to lure him into our home and be Truman’s friend, but he usually ignores me and keeps walking.  I’m not offended.  I get that he likes to be out on his own.  He doesn’t have time for me and a little guinea pig.  He’s a fox.  He has places to go, people to see.

So a massive thank you to Allison at A Good Mother.  If you don’t know her new blog, you should.  She’s an old blogger with new digs, and they’re pretty sweet.

We got tickets to see Broadway Idiot at the AFI before it was announced that the movie would be out on iTunes.  We decided to keep the tickets so we could see it with a crowd of American Idiot lovers, but Josh joked that I’d probably download it beforehand so I could determine what were my favourite parts before the viewing.  For your information, I waited a solid half hour after seeing the movie to download it.  See, restraint.

Afterward I turned to Josh and said, “great documentary or greatest documentary ever?”  He looked at me wild-eyed, a picture of disbelief, and then I smiled and said, “trick question because ¡Cuatro! was also released this year.”  He found the movie very enjoyable but ultimately without any conflict.  And I loved the lack of conflict because it meant that the movie was like a 90 minute hug with a life-size Gund teddy bear; albeit one that was cursing and thrashing about on a stage.

Michael Mayer’s parents were in the audience at the theater, which was nice because I got an answer as to which high school he went to since we grew up in the same hometown.  I wondered how odd it would be to watch your child in a film.  To have them grown up and living their life a few states away, but then go into a theater and visit with them in this roundabout manner.

So I loved Broadway Idiot.  With my whole heart.  Enough to buy a copy, but only after we got home from the theater because I am a good girl.

And even though it’s not really my favourite sort of music, I will end up with Foreverly too in November.  Mostly because the Wolvog had a huge grin on his face when I played him a song.  I asked him if he knew who was singing, and he shook his head.  And then I told him it was Billie Joe, and he got this look of disbelief on his face, as if I had told him that the pizza he was eating was really made out of cauliflower.  But he decided that he still really liked it because it reminded him of Johnny Cash.

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The 2013 Creme de la Creme is trucking along.  There are currently 53 on the list with over a month and a half left to go until the hard deadline (December 15!).  So, are you on the list yet?  Extra love to people who submit early!

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “My Postpartum Body” (Scrambled Eggs)
• “Pumpkin Competition” (Barrenbetty)
• “The Daisy Effect” (Sweetest in the Gale)

Okay, now my choices this week.

An Unwanted Path has a post about the cool symmetry that happened during the cycle when she conceived her first child, and now the symmetry that is aligning during this cycle to conceive her second child.  Adding my wishes to her wishes that this cycle works because it makes such a cool story.

The Great Big IF has a post about being a square peg trying to fit into the round holes of infertility.  She feels as if she’s reliving 2008, albeit now with a child.  But the emotions are rolling around again.  She writes, “I am sitting here lamenting that I haven’t gotten the chance to pump myself full of hormones. Seriously. Sometimes I wonder what reality I’m sitting in. But it is a reality that has me feeling trapped and hopeless.”  Let’s just say that this post hit very close to home for me, and I’m sending her a hug.

Family Rocks has a post that hit me in the gut about the night before the four year anniversary of her sister’s car accident.  She is currently raising her sister’s children after her death in the accident, and more than the day of the crash itself, it’s the night before — that anticipation — that makes her relive the experience.  It is a very powerful post.

Lastly, Inconceivable has a beautiful post about being unsettled.  Running makes her think, but swimming holds the anxiety at bay while she’s in the pool under the silencing blanket of water.  As she stares down IVF, she writes, “Terrifying, because if IVF with ICSI doesn’t work, we’ll have struck out at the biggest game in town.  I’m not sure how to live here, where there’s not one more bigger, better treatment option on the horizon.  I know even IVF can take more than one cycle, if it ever works.  But if this cycle fails, it will change so much for us.”  But it’s the last line of the post that will get you.

The roundup to the Roundup: Got to see Broadway Idiot this week.  The 2013 Creme de la Creme opened: is your post on the list?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 18th and October 25th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Last night, Josh and I had the most brilliant idea of all time.  At least it was brilliant for us.  You are likely brilliant on a daily basis.  Josh and I… not so much.

Last night we went to bed before 1 am.

It all started with a robo-call from the school system outlining this idea that is going to vote soon on changing the school start and end times.  We chuckled as we listened, and I said, “sure, make the school day earlier.  I’d love to be 20 minutes late instead of 10 minutes late.”  You see, our family does not wake easily.  We are cranky in the morning; naturally late risers.

Later in the evening, the thought still in my head, I commented that I’d like to go to bed early.

“What do you mean by early?” Josh asked.

“Like 11 pm.  Okay, 11:30.  Or… like before midnight,” I told him.

A little bit after that, Josh proposed that we go to bed immediately.  Right then and there.  At 10:15.

What the hell?  It was an idea that rocked me more than Taco Bell creating that Dorito-flavoured taco shell.  Going to bed at 10:15?  That just may be the craziest, most creative, most challenging idea presented to me all week.  I immediately agreed.

It took us almost 45 minutes to close up shop; washing dishes, putting away laundry, getting distracted by a Key & Peele sketch, getting ready for bed.  But still.  We were in bed before 11 pm with the promise that we’d wake at 6 am and be incredibly productive.

I didn’t think I’d fall asleep that early, mostly because I have a lot of trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.  But the somnolent stars aligned, and I fell asleep quickly (it helped that I didn’t play Candy Crush at all yesterday) and stayed asleep until the multiple alarms we set around the room went off.  Yes, we didn’t trust ourselves to actually get up so we set three different alarms.

This morning, I wrote two articles and finished a third before I took the kids to school.  I then launched directly into yoga and was showered and ready to edit a manuscript before 10 am.  This never happens.

I don’t think every day would go like today if we always went to bed early and rose early.  But I think I can trick my brain into going to bed early and waking early one day per week.  I think I’m going to choose Wednesdays into Thursdays.  And then I’m going to be a machine on Thursdays, cranking through work and other productive activities.

I mean, that is, unless we oversleep.  Which is a definite possibility.

What is your bedtime and waking time?

I swung by the local vegan-friendly grocery store to pick up a salad and some autumnal minestrone soup before I got back to work.  I picked up an empty salad container and got behind a nice, clean-cut, middle aged couple who were filling their own salad containers.  They looked like they had come from a nearby office on their lunch break.  Once I was committed to purchasing a salad, once I had placed my grubby hands on that empty container, that is when I listened in on the conversation that was happening next to me.  The one happening between the two people who were blocking my access to the romaine.

“Yes, there are so many options at a salad bar,” the man told the woman.  “They’re really one of my favourite things.  Let me tell you about it.”

At this point, I assumed that the woman was not from the United States or perhaps she had never left her house before and therefore had no clue how a salad bar worked.  And because I am a kind person who was only moderately in a rush to get back to work, I arranged my face into a mask of understanding and waited patiently for the couple to notice that there was someone right behind them who would love to just grab some lettuce and edamame and beat it on out of there whenever it was convenient for them to open up a little space at the bar.

“So what you have here are lots of different options.  And if you decide you want something, you pick up this thing here: it’s a scoop.  And you just dig it on down in the vegetable and scoop; you scoop it up.  And then you move the spoon over your container and drop the vegetables inside.”

“Wow, lots of options.”

The woman’s accent was definitely American.  So she must be a recluse.  Except she had a nice healthy glow about her.  And she was in normal, business-style clothing as if she had come from an office.  So now I decided that — poor lamb — she must have had a head trauma and forgotten about salad bars.  And now this nice man was reteaching her how to pull together a lunch.  If she could bravely relearn salad bars, then I could wait patiently for two minutes so she didn’t feel rushed.  I also had to wait patiently because even though they acknowledged my presence with a nod, they weren’t moving aside to let me put my speedy salad-making skills to use.

“So, yes, you just pick up the spoon, scoop it on down in the vegetables, and then place them in your container.  And you can choose anything here.”

“This is great!” the woman said.

“I like to start with lettuce,” the man admitted.

“Oh, me too.  Actually, Gary, I’ve been to a salad bar before!”

“You have?  Well how about that.  Have you ever put English peas in your salad?” the man asked.

“I just hadn’t thought to do that.  That’s so clever.  Have you ever put peas in your salad?”

“No, I’m not a big fan, as they say.  No thank you on peas!  What about carrots?  How do you feel about carrots?”

“Well they have certainly sliced them very thinly here,” the woman commented.  “How do you like that?  Little matchstick carrots.  How clever!”

“Okay, Helen.  Tell me.  What do you think of cooked foods in a salad?”

“Like these clever little tofu strips?  I don’t really know, Gary.”

They realized that I was staring at them in disbelief, and they made a big show of stepping back from the bar so they could let me have a turn while they debated out the merits of every single offering at the very extensive salad bar.  As I quickly filled my container, they talked about whether or not to add croutons at the end, how they felt about salad dressing, and the best way to close the salad container.  I decided I would do the rest of my grocery shopping and come back to get the soup from the soup bar at the end because I was about to lose it on Gary and Helen.

I did all my other grocery shopping and then swung back to the salad bar, certain that even though my first trip to that area of the store took 8 minutes, that Gary and Helen would be gone by this point.  Back in their office with their very carefully constructed salads.  BUT THEY WERE STILL AT THE BAR.  And now they were debating all the soups.  How to fill a cup.  Which soup to get.  Which soups remind them of their grandmother’s house in the middle of winter and which soups are really ones they’d rather never have again.  And how the lentil soup at the store is so clever because it has little bits of pasta in it!

I was able to bust in there and grab a quick container of soup and dash into line.  They ended up two behind me in my row.

This is the point in the story where I’m supposed to say that I was the monster and how sweet Gary and Helen were that they could find such joy and deep thought in considering vegetables and how no one has patience these days.

But the trip to the grocery store that is within walking distance of my home took 40 minutes.  40 minutes.  So no, I don’t have a sweet, after school special, one-to-grow-on type ending to this story.  Just the knowledge that I probably finished eating my lunch before they had drained their wonder and impeded many other people from stuffing some salad in their pie hole.

If you think slow driver or slow walkers are annoying, you need to spend some time between slow salad makers.  It’s a different playing field.

I finally got to see the Fun-o-meter on Candy Crush.  It popped up while I was playing level 254 online.  There wasn’t a setting for “makes me feel as if I’m in the Goonies with Mama and her boys chasing me and the rocks are falling while we’re trying to get out of the cave.”  If there had been that option on the fun-o-meter, that’s where I would have set it.  Because level 254 of Candy Crush sucks.  It sucks hard.

Make and explode a two-doughnut combo, a two-striped combo, and a two-wrapped combo.  You are probably already seeing the problem here.  It is highly unusual to ever get two doughnuts to fall next to one another.  They are also immovable unlike other pieces.  If you try to shift over a wrapped candy or a striped candy, for the most part (unless the pieces you are switching it with lines up three of the same colour or is an opposite combination) you can move them into a different space.  But if you try to move a doughnut, it will explode all of the candies that are that colour.  So you can’t move them.  You can only hope to have another doughnut fall next to it.

The game board provides you with a single striped candy, doughnut, and wrapped candy encased behind a wall of whipped cream and reinforced with jelly.

I tried all sorts of things.  I tried getting rid of all the whipped cream and then trying to make a doughnut.  I tried making a doughnut and THEN getting rid of all the whipped cream.  I tried making a wrapped combo first using the wrapped candy encased in whipped cream.  I tried making the wrapped combo before I touched the whipped cream at all.  I tried exploding the whipped cream away, I tried gently moving the whipped cream away piece by piece, I tried lovingly talking to the candies and begging them to align.  I tried walking away from boards that felt as if they had a bad aura on the first move.  I tried talking really loudly in front of the game, telling people in the room how I was likely going to walk away from Candy Crush if I didn’t win right away.

This level made me jumpy.  I would finally make two doughnuts and they would be a candy or two apart.  And then the whole board would explode because I accidentally dropped a candy that set off a wrapped candy.  Every time the board would accidentally explode, my body would tense up.  This happened several times each round, so that by the time I reached my fifth life of the evening, I had listened to a 25-minute cacophony of bursting candy.  And while exploding candy usually is a sweet sound in Candy Crush, in this case, it was the sound of erasing hard work.  Okay, so “hard work” is perhaps a bit generous.  But still, it can take many moves to manipulate a wrapped candy to form.  And then to lose it because a striped candy formed too close to it?

The whole thing sucked.

I finally won it while waiting for Josh to get our drinks at Starbucks.  I decided that the hardest one for me to make was the doughnut.  So I cleared the whipped cream and then focused on that center line of candies, trying to find a situation where there were two on one side or the other of the same colour, and then manipulated candies of the chosen colour into the other slots, finally moving down the fifth, middle candy to form a doughnut that I was able to move down the column until I exploded it with the other doughnut.  I then lucked out and made two candies next to each other (I think I used an egg for one of these).  The striped one was the easiest one, but I only had 10 moves left.  I was going to lose it in a big way if I messed this up, so I took my time and within a move or two, had exploded the striped ones.

And then I almost wept as the game told me the level was complete.

Strangely enough, to calm my frayed nerves, I’ve had to set the game aside for a bit.  I felt like I could do that because it was my choice vs. the game’s choice.  So suck it, Candy Crush.  You’re on notice.