October is my favourite month of the year, but oftentimes one of the hardest to get through. The drop in temperature provides the opportunity for scarves, hats and maybe even a fingerless mitten (or two…). The change in the leaves from yellow to orange to no leaves at all. The ability to decorate everything I own with pumpkins, witches hats, cauldrons and any other festive or witchy thing. All of these things bring me massive amounts of joy. And yet, I guarantee every year I will spend at least one day staring at a wall feeling like the big sad is going to swallow me whole.

The return of American football is another bringer of joy, enhanced wonderfully this year by the introduction of the ‘4 game view’. Being a Giants fan has not been quite as depressing this year as it was last, yes we are only 2-5 but somehow it feels like we are 5-2. We have a QB who models his eye paint after Anakin Skywalker and a running back who actually believes he is immortal – if that doesn’t say ‘future Super Bowl winning team’ then I give up on the whole institution. Yes, that is a tiny version of our sofa that I bought for the cat. Yes, I do see the irony that she prefers the actual sofa.

I visited my parents this month, all the way in sunny Norfolk. Norfolk was indeed the only part that was sunny, it rained the whole way home. We dug out the original Wii* and Wii music and those exciting extender Wii mote things that make the whole thing more accurate and EVEN the nunchucks! The dream was to both recapture the joy experienced in all those hours of playing ‘Handbell Harmony‘ but also attempt to achieve the coveted 100 points. To be completely honest, I don’t think any of us realised that we could even get 100 points originally. Needless to say the bottles of pink cava went a long way to making us musical geniuses, clearly the Wii motes were broken though as none of us got anywhere near 100.

*If you don’t know what a ‘Wii’ is, this blog might not be for you.

There was an exciting array of extra curricular activities in October including a trip to Dakota in Manchester, 6/10, had a nice time because we always do but could definitely find better. Super weird though, given the one in Glasgow we went to last December was a 1000/10. Watched Megadeath and Disturbed at the AO which was musically brilliant, visually wonderful but organisationally rubbish. The theatrics were pretty wild including a gigantic blow up ‘bad man’, David in an electric chair (yes it was as gruesome as it sounds) and a FIRE PIANO. I am pretty sold on having a fire piano at home, just need to sort out logistics…

Tony and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary of living in West Didsbury and it’s wild to think how much both the apartment and our entire lives have changed in that time! New kitchen, new en-suite, new living room furniture, new jobs, a half finished hallway project and a lot of really fun memories along the way. It is also exactly 2 months before Christmas which last year felt like the longest and shortest 2 months of my entire life at the same time, so, looking forward to a more chill November/December this time!

The Halloween joy was topped off by a lovely 2 part Halloween party at Milmo & Lauren’s new home. We started by having a ‘kids party’ including crafts, games and some trick or treating. Followed by an ‘adults party’ once all the kiddies had gone to bed exhausted from running around in search of free treats and pooping themselves at the fireworks. Ok, it might have been me that was most scared of the fireworks. Despite the ever present ‘We are all now in our 30s and therefore our drama and baggage is a lot more intense’ we had a rocking night and I am very thankful for the lovely people in my life.