Friday, October 30

We were up at 6:30 this morning, so I could go to water aerobics. I really debated whether I wanted to go or not, since it was pouring rain, after raining hard most of the night. At one point in the night, a strong wind came up. It was brief, but it blew the trees enough to litter the yard with small limbs, leaves, gumballs, and pine needles. Our yard gauge showed we got five inches of rain. Our lawn is now dotted with little lakes.

On the way to the college pool, I noticed that the road was also littered with leaves, and the ditches were full, the creeks overflowed their banks, and low-lying fields were flooded. Tragically, our local paper reported this evening that a young man in our county was killed early this morning (around the same time I left for the pool), when he was swept from his truck in floodwaters.

Fortunately, no water covered the road that I traveled to the college, and since the school is on a hill, there was no flooding on campus. I was a little later than usual arriving at the pool this morning...I just couldn't seem to get my day started.

As I climbed the stairs up to the pool area, I was startled by a form on the top step with a spooky, "dead" arm sticking out. Our resident prankster lady set that scene, I'm sure.

Br-r-r, the water was a little "ghoul" this morning, but I braved it anyway. Four of the ladies wore Halloween headgear. Our leader donned a curly, blond wig, with a sparkly tiara attached. She accessorized with dangling sparkle earrings and garish makeup. Another lady dressed as a leopard...black swimsuit, with black pantyhose, and an animal print hat with cat ears attached. The lady who created the dead man scene wore a rubber half mask depicting a blond swimmer with swim goggles (couldn't tell if the mask was based on a famous person, or not), and the fourth lady wore a rubber skeleton mask.

One lady came to the pool wearing a white turban-style shower cap. When she entered the pool, a lady asked her if she was portraying Esther Williams for Halloween (Williams was a competitive swimmer in her youth, and later became a Hollywood star, in the 1940s and 50s). Another thought she was dressed as a mummy. She laughed and explained that she had just gotten a permanent yesterday, and was wearing the cap to protect her hair from the chlorine.

Not many showed up for water aerobics today...I counted 13 on this Friday before Halloween...woo-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (or similar scary sound effect).

I didn't do much after I got back home, except make homemade banana pudding. Right at the crucial moment of combining part of the hot milk/cornstarch mixture with egg substutute, and then pouring that back into the hot pan, the nurse from my doctor's office called. I cradled the phone on my shoulder and tried to keep my mind both on what she was saying and the about-to-boil-over pudding. I furiously stirred the rapidly lumping pudding as the nurse scheduled me to go in for bloodwork next Thursday morning. This required that I check my calendar as I talked and stirred.

During our conversation, she also agreed to have the doctor FAX a letter to the Revenue Office to get new handicapped hanging cards for our van and truck, since the current ones expire in November. Of course we only use these cards when Mother is with us.

Mother had made tuna fish salad at her house this morning and brought it over for our lunch. After lunch, we settled in for another session of watching Halloween shows. We started with "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," plus another Charlie Brown feature, that I'd recorded on DVR. We followed that with the DVD musical stage play of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring David Hasselhoff.

Supper tonight was leftover beans, turnips, and butternut squash, with baked potatoes. As Mother was leaving to go home, we suddenly heard voices coming from the bedroom upstairs. Had the TV (boo-gotcha) turned itself on? Hubbie went to inspect. He found that the radio was playing. Apparently, he had set the clock last night for p.m. instead of a.m. He thought he'd set it for 6:30 a.m., but it came on at 5:30 p.m. Hubbie couldn't explain it (woo-o-o-o).

Later, Hubbie and I, you guessed it, watched TV for the evening, particularly Halloween-themed one-hour shows.