Here I am! With a few hours left in the first day of November, I’m getting in a post by the skin of my teeth. Speaking of that, how many of you feel like you have socks on your teeth from all the sugar you’ve eaten today?

Halloween was kind of a bust around here, what with the rain and the FREEZING, but somehow my kids managed to get plenty of junk. The adults managed to drink plenty of beer too, because we roll redneck in Ohio. It makes the cold bearable. Almost.

I won’t lie. I didn’t craft together my son’s costume until about an hour before trick-or-treat, because of the wicked witch that blew through earlier this week, I just wasn’t into it this year. Hurricane Sandy kind of ruined the spirit of Halloween. Get it? Spirit. People, this is as good as it’s going to get if I’m posting every day.

Now that my kids have dressed up for Halloween a combined total of 25 times I am apparently tired of taking pictures of them in their costumes. I got one photo of my daughter with a glaring flash, none of my two kids together and two pictures of my son which, if pieced together, make his full costume. Take this duct tape covered parka…

…and combine it with this mustache (instead of the one above that I crookedly drew on with waterproof mascara)…

…and you have the total look.

I win at mothering, no? Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to them at Thanksgiving. I’ll give them all the dark meat and I won’t let their dad deep-fry the turkey again. You’re welcome, kids. You’re welcome.

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Posting has been light around here lately. Sure you might think I’m polite and don’t want to share my nonsense when half the eastern seaboard is dealing with devastation, but you would be giving me too much credit.

Okay, I took today off because of Sandy, but what’s my excuse for all of the other days I’ve skipped?

It’s because I have been gearing up for this. And, by “gearing up” I mean doing nothing whatsoever.

Apparently, I didn’t learn my lesson last year.

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I’ve mentioned before how much I hate winter. Autumn gets second place in the hate column, mostly because I know what follows, but also because of the yard work at our house. In case you get tired of counting, that’s 25 bags and/or cans of leaves. For this week.

Two days after bagging all of those? The back yard looks like this.

Even the bushes are shedding in preparation for winter.

But, as much as I hate winter, I’m pretty sure the yard waste people hate me more.

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My dad had a friend named Squirrel.

Well, he wasn’t really a friend, but rather an acquaintance from the bar my dad went to after work sometimes. Squirrel was a slurring, drunk man, though probably not as much in real life as he is in my memory. In the far reaches of my mind he is the wobbly pharmacist from It’s a Wonderful Life, stumbling and spitting his words in my grandma’s kitchen one cold Christmas Eve.

I know for a fact that he stammered, because one of my cousins compared his speech to the lyrics of the Chaka Khan song playing every hour on the pop-radio station that year. Not the part where she croons, “I feeeeel for you,” but the part where Grandmaster Melle Mel raps, “Chaka, Chaka, Chaka Khan…” Squirrel could have probably been an 80’s star if he had only had the right management.

I was a young teenager when this odd, little man stood on the white, tiled floor next to the butcher block where the Christmas ham was perched. It was the same place where my grandma spent hours rolling out dough and cutting noodles by hand. She had no dishwasher, no air conditioning and no counter space, yet she never failed to have supper on the table. I have of all of those things and still don’t always make an evening meal.

But, it was never about what she didn’t have. What she did have, and what that house held, was immeasurable kindness and love. Squirrel, weaving inside the circle that my cousins and I had created around him, was there that Christmas Eve because he likely didn’t have anywhere else to go. My dad made sure that he wouldn’t be alone. Though, at the time, I saw this drunk man as uproarious entertainment, I see him now as a symbol of everything I’m proud of.

Sure, we probably handed him egg nog and rum when he didn’t really need it, but we also gave him warmth, food, and a rapt audience for his grand tales. We gave him a room to dry his boots, a place to laugh and feel part of a family, if only for an evening.

I can’t tell you what I got for Christmas that year. I don’t remember how many presents were under the tree or if my stocking was full. What I got was a fond memory and the sense that I need to give something back. I’m not talking about money, because I don’t have a lot of that. What I really want to do with my life is give people a place to dry their figurative boots.

But, first I have to get this Chaka Khan song out of my head.

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