It wasn't even sixty when we woke up this morning. I'm wearing long sleeves, and I don't think I'll regret it.

I love fall. Though I need some more fall clothes. Alexis and I were talking about going clothes shopping together sometime soon. Maybe this weekend, though I'll have to work out the details with Matt. 'Cause, you know, trips to Cancun and San Antonio weren't draining my account fast enough.

I made a second Warcraft character yesterday. Because I'm a big dork. One thing some other people do that's handy is to give your characters names with a similarity -- it helps your friends keep track of who you are.

My first character's name is Atheri. So for my second character, I named him Therival. That's a soft "th" as in "thin." THAIR-ih-vahl.

Immediately after contacting KT and getting the new character into the guild, about three people said, "The rival? Whose rival?"

Oops. Oh, well. At least no one will forget it.

Yesterday morning, Penny told us her blanket was wet. So we threw it into the wash, and I promised I'd put it in the dryer when I got home from work.

Guess what I forgot to do?

I was taking her upstairs to get her pyjamas on when she asked for it, and we realized that it was still in the washer, wet. Matt went out to the garage to take the blanket and put it in the dryer on high so it would be ready for bedtime, but in the meantime, Penny was distraught and sobbing that she couldn't have her blanket.

Hey, she's three. I took my childhood security blanket to college with me.

But she did not want to hear that her blanket was wet, and she did not want to hear that she would have it when she went to bed.

In a fit of desperation, I said, "Stop crying, and we'll go see if we can find you a different blanket." I didn't expect it to have any effect.

But she swallowed a sob and looked up at me tremulously. "Anudda bwanket?"

She followed me into her room. No, she didn't want her quilt. No, she didn't want the hand-crocheted blankets that Matt's great-aunt made for her. No, she didn't want an old receiving blanket.

She followed me into the master bedroom. "The kitty-cat blanket!" It was piled on her basket of toys in our room. "How about the kitty-cat blanket?" Thicker and softer than her regular blanket -- the kitty-cat blanket was made by my brother's mother-in-law; I love it because it's got a cute Hello Kitty pattern on one side, but the other side is blue, not pink. It doesn't actually bother me that Penny's favorite color is pink, but it does get a bit overwhelming at times.

She wrapped her arms around it and buried her face in its softness. "Yes!"

Whew. Crisis averted.

She abandoned the kitty-cat blanket in favor of the yellow blanket as soon as it came out of the dryer, but at 4:30 this morning, Matt tells me that he woke up shivering, and after he put on some sweatpants, he thought Penny must be cold, too. He went into her room and covered her with the kitty-cat blanket.

This morning, when I went in to get her, she was snuggled under both blankets, the edges of them rumpled around her like a little nest.

--Liz