I suppose it's the best of all possible months to be walking around in a constant state of agitation. I've been nervous, loopy, cranky, eager, and all other forms of generally excitable. I should avoid blood pressure monitors. I'd end up with some well-meaning but misguided medical professional trying to put me on blood thinners or statin drugs or whatever it is that they give for hypertension. Don't need it, don't want it. But I'm just barely keeping inside my own skin, for everything coming up in the next several weeks. Some days on the schedule are marred by onerous tasks, some feature once in a lifetime treats. The way I'm rolling these days, I am in danger of being so high strung that by the end of the month, I'll actually be frightened by the festivities on Halloween night -- Now, I don't expect to lose my cool over the couple dozen Annas, Elsas, and Olafs who will come up for candy, but once the porch light is off and I'm tuned into something like The Fog or The Thing (the John Carpenter versions, puh-lease), or good old Halloween one or two, I have to hope I can make it through the night without spooking myself the first time a dog barks or a cat knocks something over in the other room. I'm dancing on a tightwire these days, and anything can happen.
I ordered a piccolo to be delivered this week. I'm just renting it for a month, getting it a few weeks in advance of the homecoming game so that I can re-learn all the fight songs. For the first time since I got my degree, I will be playing in the alumni band. This will be every bit as nerve-wracking as going to a high school reunion, although so far I only recognize three names on the list that aren't me or my daughter. All those emotions and self-doubts I've gone through for every high school reunion are going through my head again now. Did I do enough with my life? Did I gain more weight than my former bandmates? What if they come at me with pushy politics or religion? Once I'm there, I'm sure I'll have fun, but first I have to deal with all the silly anxieties, about people I haven't seen in about 25 years. Lucky for me, there will be a football game to watch if I feel like stupid things are about to pour out of my mouth, like they have for every post-high-school gathering.
I don't think I need to do a whole lot to decorate for Halloween this year. My yard is already pretty spooky. Most of the spiders have moved on (to the great beyond), but a few webs are still active. The old ones are gathering dust and are hanging around, getting torn up and creepy looking. The azaleas all along the front walk are overgrown, as I gave up on trimming when the mosquitoes and heat were so bad over the summer. (Although a few of the azaleas are in full-bloom again. I still can't get used to that part of autumn in the deep south.) And the last round of stormy weather brought an enormous fall of Spanish moss out of the biggest crape myrtle. I need to find a way to drape it across the walk, and make it look even scarier. I should look into buying pumpkins soon, other than the teeny one I'm planning on turning into soup. The man was always the master of pumpkin carving. I may focus on pumpkin painting. It's more my speed. I don't know that I should be trusted with sharp knives and hard squashes when I'm this tense.
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