Avast, ye scurvy dogs! It be Talk Like A Pirate Day, an' I best be hearin' some o' th' chatter, les' ye want t'be the one t'swab th' deck!

... It's too early in the morning to do a whole entry that way, though.

Back at work.

What the heck happened to my weekend? I was supposed to get a weekend, wasn't I?

I'm not saying it was a bad weekend. It just kind of disappeared, zip zip zoom, without any warning.

It started, actually, with Friday afternoon. I actually got into a serious writing groove, banging out over 2500 words and pushing firmly into the story's climax. It felt so great that I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day and well into the evening. I haven't been that exhiliarated in ages. It was good.

Saturday morning we went to Target to pick up some flavored water for me at work, and they had Hallowe'en stuff out already. But since last year, I tried to get a costume for Penny the week before Hallowe'en and found myself picking through the dregs, I thought, well, heck, let's go ahead and get it now.

Target had a whole aisle of toddler-sized costumes. I held up an adorable little witch dress. "You want this one, Penny?"

Penny shrank back, as if in fear. "No! No!"

"Okay, that's okay, you don't have to wear it." I picked out a sweet fairy outfit, complete with shiny wings. "How about this one?"

"No! No!"

Princess?

"No! No!"

Red Riding Hood?

"No! No!"

Then she saw the cat costume, and reached out her arms imploringly.

Well, puppy one year, cat the next, I thought. "Let's try it on..." It was a bodysuit, so we didn't try the whole thing on, but we did get her arms into the sleeves and pull the hood up over her head.

It was a little big, but not big enough that we'd have to get the next size smaller. I was about to put it in the cart when she saw the next costume over.

The dog costume.

Matt tried to distract her with a lion costume. She was interested in it, but not enough to let go of the dog costume.

In fact, as we pulled away from the Hallowe'en section, she whined and fussed until we gave in and let her put the costume back on. I was a little surprised that she didn't throw a fit when we took it off her at the cash register.

So she's going to be a dog for the second year running.

Next year, we swear, it will be something different.

Saturday afternoon, we all piled into the car and headed down to Chesapeake for K.T.'s annual Thanksgiving Is Too Damn Far Away turkey dinner.

Mmm, turkey.

And K.T. made a test-run of the fancy pirate-ship cake she's planning for Jess's birthday, which turned out spectacularly.

Mmm, cake.

The girls had fun playing together, despite the fact that they were trying to snatch toys from each other and running over each other. Penny spent the rest of the weekend asking, "Jess? Jess?" and K.T. told me that Jess asked very nicely Sunday morning, "Peddy? P'ay?"

Alas, our Sunday morning was eaten up by chores. And Sunday afternoon, we drove down to my parents' so Penny could play with them for a couple of hours.

Mom invited us to stay for spaghetti, but I'd already been pretty bad, diet-wise, what with the cake and the stuffing and the sweet potato casserole, so we went home to our BLT salad. Which I'd eat three nights out of four, if I thought I could get away with it.

So it was a good weekend, really. Just so busy that I woke up this morning positive that we were due another day...

Oh, well. I mean, Arr!

--Liz