This weekend’s plans include:

• Coming up with a costume. I have some ideas.
• Carving my pumpkin.
• Baking cookies.
• Coffeeneuring at least once.
• Attending a concert.
• Possibly picking the last of my tomatoes. We have a frost warning tonight, which I missed earlier, and may be expecting another going into Monday.
• Dropping off my ballot.
• Reading outside in the sun.
• Tracking down quarters for more laundry. I hadn’t expected to have to wash and dry the floor towels.
• Sleeping in an extra hour before the farmers market.

What’s on your to-do list this weekend.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My boss told me if things get too stressful or upsetting in the wake of the election to feel okay taking a sick day to recover my mental health.

2. The office sent everyone holiday cookies & candies, which I plan on digging into next week when I will want to stress-eat everything in sight.

3. Karen and I had a nice long catch-up tonight on the phone. It felt as close to normal as anything does these days.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week before Halloween and the election?

This week brought some literal unraveling as I was knitting in the dark and managed, in a move I still don’t quite understand, to wrap the yarn entirely around my cuff without noticing until several rows later. I attempted to just rip back to where I made the mistake, but did I mention it was dark…?

Anyway, even if I do not finish by Halloween, I will finish in the next week or so, and I vote these are autumnal colors and I will wear them with pleasure in November. Then maybe I’ll finish the socks I started in March 2019…

In the last week I finished How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse and read more of We Ride Upon Sticks. (I’ve reached Halloween night in Salem, Massachusetts.) I started a middle-grade nonfiction book written by a guy I grew up with, but it’s about dinosaurs and I don’t feel like reading about dinosaurs right now.

So I started listening to Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why by Washington Post humor news columnist Alexandra Petri. Have you read her Petri Dishes column? May I suggest it may be the only thing to make you laugh over the next couple weeks while we battle for the soul of our country?

I also picked up two novels to keep my mind occupied in the next week. First, I’m going to read Brandy Colbert’s The Voting Booth, because it’s about young people being hugely invested in voting, and I’m desperately hoping they come through for us this year.

Then, while we wait to find out our fate, I’m going to read Evie Dunmore’s Bringing Down the Duke, which is feminist historical fiction and seems likely to have the happy ending I will require in every book until real life presents us with the same.

What sort of comfort reading do you have lined up for the next couple weeks?

Head over to As Kat Knits to see how others are channeling their stress.

I planned to share “Zombie Jamboree” with you today, but then I realized I’d posted it last year at this time. So instead you’re getting my second favorite Halloween song, “Monster Mash,” by Bobby Pickett.

“Monster Mash” was written in 1962 by Pickett and bandmate Leonard L. Capizzi, apparently after Pickett did a Boris Karloff impression on stage one night. They recorded it as Bobby Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers (the band also included Grammy winner Leon Russell) and was produced by Gary Paxton, who had an earlier novelty hit with “Alley Oop.” The female backing vocals were sung by The Blossoms, who, at that time, included Darlene Love.

Interestingly, the BBC banned the playing of the song, dubbing it “too morbid” for the air. Were they listening to the same song?!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share a Halloween-themed list.

I’m not a fan of horror or thrillers, but I do like cozy mysteries and detective stories, so I thought today I’d share ten series I’ve enjoyed to date:

1. Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood — Set in 1920s Australia, a wealthy single woman has grand adventures in between solving mysteries for those with nowhere else to turn.
2. Lady Sherlock by Sherry Thomas — A Sherlock Holmes adaptation featuring genius Charlotte Holmes and Mrs. Watson.
3. Hamish MacBeth by M.C. Beaton — Hamish is a constable in the Scottish highlands, charged with keeping the peace, except when it comes to poaching or other minor crimes.
4. Commissario Brunetti by Donna Leon — A Venetian detective with a loving wife, beautiful penthouse, and happy home life deals with crime on an off the canals.
5. The Discreet Retrieval Agency by Maia Chance — Set in Prohibition Era New York, a once-wealthy widow and her Swedish cook are supposed to be in the business of retrieving items that could be embarrassing, but instead keep getting sucked into solving murders.
6. Veronica Speedwell by Deanna Raybourn — A Sherlockian series in Victorian London featuring a female lepidopterist and a male taxidermist with tons of chemistry.
7. Fox and O’Hare by Janet Evanovich and (mostly) Lee Goldberg — Technically a heist series, this pairs a by-the-books FBI agent with one of the world’s best thieves to take down bad guys.
8. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache by Louise Penny — A Quebeçois detective ends up in a small village solving a number of well-plotted murders while befriending the townspeople.
9. Mary Russell by Laurie R. King — If you don’t mind May-December romances, this one has the great Sherlock Holmes, retired and raising his bees in the country, mentoring a young orphaned woman with a keen mind.
10. Constable Evans by Rhys Bowen — A Welsh village constable solves crimes during the day and sings in a choir by night.

How about you? What mystery series do you enjoy?

I should have taken a before picture of my cute apple mummy turnover before I warmed it up and melted its eyes. But it was delicious and I can’t feel too bad about it.

I hope you all have a wonderful week before Halloween! Pick up your favorite candy. Figure out what costume you want to wear around the house or to the grocery store. Settle on scary or cute for your jack o’lantern’s style. You got this!