20141031.0727

Insert typical Halloween message here.

One of the things that has come along with fatherhood is a reconsideration of how the holidays can work and ought to work. (It is something I have mentioned before.) Since today is a holiday, and it is one I mark, I find myself considering those things once again.

Ms. 8 has a costume; she will, fittingly enough, dress as an octopus. Her step-grandmother and mother made the costume for her, and I have seen her in it (but not yet today); she is remarkably cute, and I do not normally register cute or see it as a good thing. For my daughter, though...

Aside from that, though, I am not thinking any new thoughts. I am rehashing ideas I have already had, and I am not finding in them any more comfort than I did before. I am finding no resolution in them. I can, though, take some comfort in the idea that I am at least not appropriating other cultures in my daughter's costumery (and I will not be costuming myself; I am a bit old and curmudgeonly for such things anymore, and Ms. 8 will not know whether I do or not). While I may be participating in appropriation by engaging even as much as I am (although the argument could be made that I am a participant in the successor cultures to those being appropriated, which would mitigate the error of appropriation), I am at least not making mock of the more overtly and directly oppressed in doing so; if I err, the error is less than it could be. It may not be a thing to celebrate, but there is at least less mourning to attend upon it.

In other news, today was payday, which means that today was also bill-pay day. The pain of the latter cancels out the joy of the former, as it happens. I am caught up on expenses for the month, though; I get to have a car and a house, at least until December begins, and the lights will stay on a little longer. The increasingly autumnal weather, though, will be driving up utility costs soon, however much my wife and I weatherize Sherwood Cottage. (We have a better idea of how to do it this year than last, however, and thankfully.) More work will be in order, I think--if I can find it. (More freelancing will start tomorrow, which will help in the short term, but freelancing is not a thing on which I can depend, even if I have increasingly been doing so.)

Work on finding work and on The Work continues. I sent out applications yesterday and am poised to do another couple today (if I do not get bogged down in other things), and I posted a piece to Travels in Genre and Medievalism yesterday, too. It is a hopeful sign, I think, a reminder that I am still able to do the things I am called to do. If I could find a way to make a bit better a living off of them, though, I would not be averse to it.