These last couple of weeks have been full of low-grade drama, of the mundane sort that isn't very interesting, even to those of us who are slogging through. I've held off on writing about a few things, because they weren't MY things, exactly. But it sort of dawned on me that I haven't written about anything else either.

The morning of my birthday, my sister called. She had on her "brave" voice which let me know that things weren't going exactly well. One of her two cats had been missing for over a week, and she wished me a happy birthday with a quaver in her voice.

The night before, on a hunch, she poked around bushes in the median of the road that runs in front of her house, and she found her sweet kitty had been killed by a car. Rest in peace, sweet Jakers.

Not only that, but she had found a suspicious lump in one breast, and was heading to the doctor to get it checked out. A brief comedy of errors ensued, with misplaced medical records and delayed appointments, and the resulting stress began to creep up on all of us. To take my sister's mind off of things, we went to see Whip It last weekend, and whoo boy, real life did NOT intrude on that storyline.

I mean, SHUT UP. Don't you want to put on some ripped up fishnets and hipcheck someone RIGHT NOW? (My husband is edging away from me as I type.)

I'll skip the in-between parts, but today she had a biopsy, and we'll know what's up tomorrow. I'm keeping positive thoughts, because that's sort-of my schtick. You guys do that too, okay?

In other news, I'm making the kids' halloween costumes this year oh my HELL. How did that happen? I'm a buyer, not a maker!

My oldest is going to be a white cat. She's got a white dress, a faux fur vest, a faux fur hat with built in cat ears, and we bought some faux fur to make a tail. I hope that is good enough, because I'm feeling way less than crafty.

My youngest is going to be a black widow spider. We are using a black velour track suit as a base, and then I'm fashioning extra spider legs from legwarmers. I'm knitting a spidery ruff for around her neck, and whatever you call the butt part where the silk comes out. And then I'm using felt to create the black widow hourglass for the back of her shirt.

My son? I'm totally stealing a Martha Stewart idea.

I will post photos as soon as we get the parts put together.