November 3,
Halloween was really fun. I ended up going trick or treating with Myrna, Cooper, and Ellis, at all the shops along Irving Street. There is just something so magical about Halloween, I don't know how to explain it. When I was young, of course, it was the excitement of decideding what my costume would be- who could I be for a day? I was a clown, a mime, a raccoon, princess lea, Barbie, a ballerina, a genie, even once a Japanese doll. That was my favorite. My mother made my kimono and I wore it as a dressing gown for several years after that. And the candy- the running from house to house, all the piles and piles of forbidden bounty. These last few years, the excitement has palled. I thought maybe it was just that I was getting older, or that living with Ken, with his total lack of interest in holidays ("I resent being told I HAVE to feel a certain way on a certain day, just because it's tradition") has worn me down. But this year, all the excitement and magic of the day, came back to me. Cooper was entranced with every new piece of candy. He stood in the door of each shop, unsure of how to begin. He would wait until he got their attention, and then sometimes say the magic words, but sometimes just stand there as if he couldn't believe the magic words would work one more time. And each time that he came back to Myrna and I with more candy in his plastic bucket, it was with a look of total amazement and wonder on his face. "Look at all the candy I got" he kept saying. His eyes were so wide they covered his whole head. I know Myrna could feel the excitement as much as I could. I dressed Eva up in her corn outfit. Cooper and Ellis both were dressed up like pumpkins. Cooper had been talking about it for weeks!

I think I may have gotten a cold from walking around that night. It hovered for the rest of the week, and then settled down into my throat and ears and lungs Friday night and all day yesterday and today. I am feeling better though. I was worried that Eva or Cooper might get it too, but it doesn't look like it so far.

Eva has started throwing temper tantrums. It's heartbreaking and frustrating and I feel so undone. I want to wait until she's older before setting down hard rules, but I feel stuck. I don't want to do the wrong thing and I don't know if the wrong thing is to give in to her, or to not give in to her, and set up a pattern where she feels that her needs are not responded to. She's also started biting me with those two little bottom teeth of hers. She bit me twice yesterday, while she was feeding. Each time, I pulled her off, and tapped my finger against her mouth and told her no, and didn't let her feed again for a half hour. Both times, when I put a frown on my face, and tapped her and told her "no" in my "severe" voice, she looked at me for a minute, and then smiled at me. She thinks I'm playing. I didn't smile back, but it was hard. Her smile melts my whole world.

November 10,
I've been so tired this week. I am fighting off a cold and called the whole week a loss as far as exercising goes�11 pounds left to get to my pre-pregnancy weight. Trevor won the "who's gonna lose 15 pounds first" bet. He has 10 pounds to go to get to his ideal weight. It feels good actually, to hear that he's getting where he wants to get. I still have so far to go. I spent some wasted time this week, worrying about the housing market. There is nothing I can do about it, but I wish it wasn't getting so crazy. How will we ever be able to afford a decent place?

The air had that crisp fall/winter bite to it today. It's funny how I miss the seasons sometimes. I remember my first snow in Michigan. I was 6. The snowflakes were those great big soft fluffy ones that float slowly down out of the sky. Mom had bought me this wonderful umbrella- it was clear plastic and the ends came way down so that I felt like I could stand inside it and watch the rain come down around me. I loved that umbrella. I wanted to stare at the snow coming down, but it kept getting in my eyes. I took my new umbrella with me to school, so that I could stare up at the snow coming down. It took me a long time to walk to school and everyone was already inside when I got there� but I guess they saw me coming, with my see-through umbrella open, staring up at the snow. They laughed at me. Even the teacher laughed. They didn't understand. I hated being laughed at. That's one of a million reasons why I hated Michigan.

November 28,
We took Eva to a new doctor today, for her 6-month checkup and shots, even though she turned 7 months last week. Doctor said all is well. Eva is resting quietly now. I will never get over how fast she grows. She crawls and is starting to pull herself up onto things. She still can't quite sit up all by herself with ease, unless she has something she can use to pull herself up with, but it is all just going by so fast. Ken and I left Eva with Papa Gunk again, and went out to see a movie. We saw "Unbreakable". I really enjoyed it, and it made me think.

I met a woman at a party recently that is planning something evil. She was really nice and interesting. She loves in the Internet because she thinks it is a great tool for people to use to communicate, to build community all across the world. Especially for women and girls. Her job is connected to this idea and making realities of her thoughts along this line. The company she works for was recently bought by people that seem to have no appreciation for her vision, and are also bogged down by destructive internal politics, to the point of sabotaging her work. Her plan is to wait until they are all at the company Christmas party, and to poison the coffee. Nothing fatal, but enough to make anyone that drinks it get sick. She already has the poison. I asked her if it wouldn't be easier just to find another job. She looked at me with a truly sad and anxious face. "But I LOVE my job" she told me.

I had a conversation with Kristen last week. She and Mark and I were talking about creating realistic dialog in writing. I suck at this, and this is the main reason I stopped working on my book. Kristen said (and I think this was advice that had been given to her) was this: characters are motivated for purely selfish reasons. Each character will only have something to say if it will pull the focus of the conversation back onto them. This may seem really selfish, but that if you think about it, this is how people really talk. I am thinking about it. At the same time that this has been running around in my head, I saw a televised interview of Tom Hanks on "Inside the Actor's Studio". Advice that he had received from someone about "What makes a good story" was this: All truly good stories are about loneliness. I wonder why we would be universally drawn to loneliness?

We spent Eva's first thanksgiving at Brandon's apartment. He made the most delicious turkey I have ever eaten in my life. Ivy flew up to celebrate with us, although she was only able to come for 24 hours. She is so busy these days. She said several things that she's learned in acting school that apply to life. She was playing a certain character that was being abused by her husband. Her acting coach told her "Honey, Victims are BOORing". It's true. She said she now keeps her drama for the stage. She said the thing about the people that she knew while she was living in that small town in upstate NY. "They are very, very creative people, but they don't DO anything with their creativity. They don't draw, or paint, or write, or act, or sing, or anything. They have no outlet for their creativity, and so they put it into their social lives. They live their sordid little soap opera dramas." I thought that was such an amazing way of seeing things. I am looking forward to seeing what Ivy does with her talent. She has such a gift.