Sleeping In

I woke up seeing pictures on Facebook of friends attending various Saturday night Halloween parties, all kinds of costumes, positions and inhibitions on display for all to see. I'm not embarrassed to say that we were in bed by 9 pm. It's shortly after 8 am, the coffee is made, and I'm sitting down to start my day after an 11 hour sleep. Whew! I haven't had one of those in memory.

All of the candidates knew that victory in the election would mean a whirlwind of meetings, team building sessions, governance workshops, budget presentations and reading. We won't really be able to catch our collective breaths until the Christmas recess in mid-December. In the New Year, the schedule becomes much more manageable.

I'm enormously grateful for a full day at home, doing all those mundane tasks that I miss so much when the merry-go-round of external responsibilities is spinning too fast: laundry, dishes, cleaning, organizing, and banking.

The other task on my plate is to put away my election lawn signs to make room for the vehicle in the garage for the winter season. Now that the temperatures are consistently dipping below zero at night, it's far more efficient to go through the effort of making room than having to scrape the window every morning. Our garage, insulated though not heated, makes an incredible difference when things get really cold outside. We have seen a temperature variance of up to 30 degrees between inside and outside the garage. Stratford Contracting did an incredible rebuild of the structure about 5 years ago, solid construction, great workmanship.

So, here we are, a frosty October 31st, the tops of the trees across the Clearwater covered in a fine dusting of snow, Halloween 2010. Ben is eager to squeeze into his devil costume and pounce through the neighborhood collecting sugar treats. I will sit bravely behind at our house, dishing out a sticky stew of fruit and chocolate bars.