October is always an interesting month in central Texas. We still have plenty of 90 degree days, but they’re tempered with some days that are cooler as well. We all eagerly anticipate the brief break from the heat, around these parts. But October is also the start of our household’s holiday and birthday craziness that lasts through the end of the year.

As the kids have done every year they’ve had the opportunity, I think, Ian entered the yearbook cover contest at his elementary school. Maya’s middle school doesn’t do this (to my knowledge), so it was just Ian working alone this year. I really like what he’s come up with and he’s excited about his chances.

Maya and Ian had a long weekend that first weekend – four days! We thought about trying to figure out a small vacation, but we’re still recovering from our big Hawaii trip I think, so we decided to keep it low key. Since we had bought season passes this year, on Saturday, we took the kids up to Arlington to try out Six Flags over Texas. As I understand it, this was the original Six Flags location.

Since the park didn’t open till noon, we started our day with a nice sit-down lunch at Tom’s Burgers and Grill. Our food was delicious, though they were pretty busy, and it took a bit longer than intended. Six Flags itself was pretty crazy because they were all decked out for Halloween. The decorations were spooky and all the water in the park was dyed red, presumably to simulate blood.

We all tried our first ever bobsled coaster – La Vibora. While Ian enjoyed the snake theme, the ride itself wasn’t really our favorite. Maya and I went in a circle loop coaster, El Diablo, that Sean tells me isn’t really a roller coaster. Since the loop changes direction partway through (you dangle upside down for a bit too), they had us seated facing another pair of people. Maya watched, bemused, as the clearly-older-than-her girls screamed and screamed as the not-a-coaster completed its loops. Maya and I thought that one was actually pretty fun.

Maya, Ian, and I rode Titan. That guy is pretty fierce. It features a 255-foot drop and reaches a max speed of 85 mph. Maya rode it by herself and Ian rode with me. This thing has some pretty intense positive G-forces, and because of that, I will likely avoid ever riding it again. This forces are so intense, in fact, that Sean actually started to have tunnel vision while riding it in his younger days, which is why he was bowing out today. Ian may have permanently damaged my arm from gripping my hand so tightly, but we all really enjoyed our ride.

Next, we all rode what was probably my favorite coaster of the day – New Texas Giant. This was originally introduced in 1990, but in 2011 underwent a refurbishment by Rocky Mountain Coaster (usually referred to as RMC), intensifying some of its elements and adding a steel “I-box” track. The net result for me and my borked spine is that it’s a wooden roller coaster that I can ride comfortably, which makes me happy. We all loved it! Fun fact: this was the first ever RMC coaster conversion.

The only sour note to our day was that we waited in a sweltering hour-long line at the Batman coaster only to have it shut down right when we’d have been the next set of folks to board. We gave it I think another twenty minutes or so to see if there’d be any news. We got nothing, and by then both kids needed the bathroom, so we gave up and left. It wasn’t but five or ten minutes later that we saw them running empty cars. Alas.

As it got dark, costumed folks began to roam around and scare people as part of the Fright Fest celebration. Their makeup was excellent, and they really did a good job of jump scaring folks. But, at Ian’s request, one of the zombies agreed to pose for a photo, which he loves. Maya was again bemused that people seemed to be actually afraid and were bolting through the crowd to run away from these “monsters” and their scares. Ian chuckled at it too, but he also stuck pretty close to us once it got dark.

We decided that any of the haunted house type stuff would be too graphic for the kids and avoided that too, so once Sean and Maya got a ride in on Judge Roy Scream, we were ready to go. (On the first drop of the Judge Roy Scream coaster, there’s a sign that says “Appeal denied!” Maya chuckled and said that was the legal equivalent of “Get wrecked!”) All in all, it was a fun day trip. That said, it is about a three-hour drive either direction (and Sean drove all of it), so it’s definitely nicer to day trip to Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio, which is a mere two hours away.

Ian wound up being a little congested and coughing a lot on that next Thursday, so he missed a day of school. I was sweating it a little because we were all scheduled for our flu and covid vaccines on Friday the 11th. Luckily, Ian was feeling better and went to school on Friday, so we proceeded with our shots. Ian always copes with the shots pretty well, but Maya is a little more of a wild card. This time though, she did great! The patient woman administering the vaccinations was very good with her, and Maya was so happy that she actually hugged her when she left! Maya is not a big hugger, in case anyone was wondering.

Everything was ok on Saturday. Sean always has a reaction to the mRNA vaccines, so this time he tried the Novavax vaccine instead. His symptoms were extremely mild by comparison. Hooray!

And then Sunday, Ian vomited. Weird. And then he spent most of the day vomiting. He couldn’t keep anything down, not even tiny sips of water. Poor dude was so miserable. We didn’t go carve pumpkins with his Cub Scout pack that afternoon. We canceled a play date he was supposed to have on Monday (they had the day off school). He must have felt bad because he didn’t really fight those decisions all that much. Sunday was also (if memory serves) the day we hit 100 degrees. WTF, Texas?!

On Monday, he seemed able to keep food down finally, but he was so weak from the day before that he still spent most of his day resting. He went back to school on Tuesday and his appetite slowly returned through the week. We still aren’t sure if he had a bad reaction to the vaccine, had a small virus (he never had a fever), or some other ailment.

At any rate, by Friday, the kids were all ready to go to Boo Fest, the elementary school’s fall carnival. In an odd turn, they both decided they wanted to wear their halloween costumes to the event! Maya was a kitty pirate, and Ian was a zombie pirate. Yarrrr!

We have fairly big kids these days, so Sean and I hung out and ate tacos while the kids roamed free, hanging out with their friends, playing games, eating junk food. We wandered around chatting with parents we’d met over the years, catching glimpses of the kids now and then. It was pleasant, laid back.

Day-to-day, I get so many junk phone calls, that I’m a pretty notorious ignore-by-default person. We had been chatting with one of Ian’s friend’s mom when I received a phone call, which I habitually ignored. And then that number called immediately again. I handed the phone to Sean and asked him to answer it since I sometimes have a hard time hearing over surrounding noise. And then he was gone, with my phone. Something had happened.

After what felt like several tense minutes, he came and got me. Maya, while standing in line waiting to go into the haunted house, passed out. When I got there, she was sitting at a table with her friend Selma and Selma’s mom, and Sean ran to get her a slice of pizza to eat. Evidently she felt it coming on and started to bend forward to try and rest against a rail, passed out for a few seconds, and then popped up saying something like, “oh, it’s actually happening; how long was I down there?” and then calmly gave someone my phone number so they could call me. Good job, Maya.

Sean got her water and pizza, though she said she’d eaten and drunk water during the day. I checked over the various parts of her costume to see if anything was constricting her, but everything was loose. The long and short is that we aren’t too sure what happened. When she fell, she busted her chin and her elbow and bit the tip of her tongue. After sitting a while and eating and drinking, she wanted to try to spend her last few tickets. She seemed ok as we were walking around playing games and whatnot. We watched her further when we got home. All seemed well, so we decided not to press it further.

The next day, Maya seemed like she was still doing well, so we all went on Ian’s fall Cub Scout campout at Bastrop State Park. We had a delightful lunch at Paw Paw’s Catfish House in Bastrop before going to “rough it.” Three of the four of us had the blackened catfish, which was excellent. Ian had some absolutely massive chicken fingers (more like chicken hands, I think), but he seemed to enjoy what he did manage to eat of them.

We camped in the deer run loop at Bastrop State Park. In 2011, some 96% of the park was affected by a wildfire. The deer run loop appears to be in the remaining 4%. The loblolly pines loomed over us as we set up camp directly beneath them. It was really pretty.

Per scouting guidance, we made Ian help set up the tent, which irritated him to no end. Maya sat on the ground right next to our tent and spent what seemed like literal hours chiseling up stones. We had to “borrow” our mallet from her, so we could actually get the tend set up.

It was so hot. I was thinking it would be cooler, and it was in the morning, so I had worn jeans. That was a mistake. Luckily, there was readily available water near our campsite, so it worked out ok. The kids played at a playground in the same loop, even letting Maya play along, so I think everyone wound up having a lot of fun. There was a burn ban, so the “campfire” was more of a gas fire pit, so Maya actually hung out with us while the kids told jokes and did skits and we all sang silly songs.

At one point, Maya was quizzing me about the den that Ian is in this year. It’s called the Webelos, but the name isn’t actually a plural, so she was irked by some of the linguistic goofiness that happens when you refer to something that sounds plural as a single thing. It stands for WE BE LOyal Scouts (which, to be fair, has its own linguistic goofiness). Ian, on overhearing this explanation, looked at us horrified and said, “We boil scouts???” Not what was said, son. And go read your scouting handbook.

This version of camping is relatively easy. You’re car camping, so no heavy backpacks. There are bathrooms with flush toilets, sinks, and even showers just a short walk away. The scouts handle all the cooking, so we don’t have to worry about food. Since there was no campfire, we didn’t even really have to worry about Maya’s food, though we brought some just in case. You’re there less than 24 hours.

We got home in time to unload the car and have showers before Ian was scheduled to go sell popcorn for his Cub Scout fundraiser. His sales shift was at a Randalls grocery store, and it was pretty slow going. They ultimately did all right though, and it’s probably good experience learning how to interact with folks and how to handle both positive and negative outcomes. Still those sales shifts personally stress me out. I’m an introvert and shy to boot, so I have to go way out of my shell to help support Ian in his endeavors. Luckily, he’s very extroverted and outgoing, so it works out ok.

Maya had her first school dance the last Friday in October. The sixth graders had a costumed dance in the gym at school. She initially didn’t want to go. A dance? Ick, no! But we pointed out to her that especially at her age, it was probably more of a social, hang-out situation than a full on dance. She eventually agreed to go. She wore her kitty pirate costume, took along cash so she could buy pizza and sodas, and brought her phone, in case she needed us to come rescue her early.

It turns out it all went really well. Maya told us she had to hide under the bleachers for a little while at one point because there were so many people, but a friend kept her company while she was hiding and then she re-entered the fray. She got to see a number of her Davis friends that don’t have classes with her, which I don’t think she was expecting. The girl was all smiles when we picked her up.

With all the running around we had been doing so far in October, we tried very hard to keep the following weekend as low key as possible. Plus the temperatures were down to the mid to upper 80s, so it was maybe cool enough to undertake a meat project. I was all excited about trying to cook a piece of meat called Thor’s Hammer. It’s basically a beef shank that’s “been Frenched” or had the thinner meat and connective tissue cleaned from one end of the bone, so you can hold it like a Flintstones-sized drumstick.

Alas, despite what HEB’s website said, they didn’t have any beef shanks in stock that weren’t sliced. Instead, we picked up a 13-14 lb prime brisket. I would simply smoke that instead of the shank. The night before the smoking, I trimmed the brisket, removing a lot (but not all) of the fat layer. To get a nice shape for even smoking, I trimmed some of the thinner and more nubbly bits of “good” brisket and saved those to grind into burgers later in the week (which were stupendous, btw, can’t recommend enough). I seasoned the brisket heavily all over and left it in the fridge overnight, very loosely covered.

I used the same “snake” method I’ve used in the past. You run a “snake” of charcoal around the edge of the grill, leaving an opening. You light one end of the open-ended snake and the fire slowly works through the coals over many hours. You place chunks of smoking wood (in our case pecan, though I’ve also used the more Texas traditional post oak in the past) at regular intervals around the “snake” and as the hot coals get to them, a fresh wave of smoke ensues.

I am out of practice and had a little trouble keeping the temperature down, but otherwise, I’d say the brisket cook was successful. The meat was tender, there was a nice smoke ring, and even after eating brisket in tacos, sandwiches, and lovely piles off and on for a week, I still had about four lbs to package up and store in the freezer for later enjoyment. Plus tending meat over fire for literal hours while I don’t have (or can successfully compartmentalize for later) a thousand other to-do list items is therapeutic for me.

Now, Maya doesn’t like the smell of fire *at all* so she wouldn’t hug me or really even be in the same room as me till after I had bathed. And she wouldn’t eat any of the meat. Maybe someday.

Sean and I managed to work in an early voting run on Sunday afternoon. Maya and even Ian are paying more attention lately to who’s running for office and wanted to know why we might choose one candidate or another. This election season has been absolutely bonkers. The level of hateful and infantile discourse has been gross to observe, so we haven’t really let the kids watch any of the debates or speeches with us. Maybe in a couple years when we vote for governor, we’ll have to get the kids more involved.

Maya and Ian farted around forever not deciding what they wanted on their pumpkins, so for the first time in their lives I think, Anna didn’t draw their pumpkins for them. Each kid drew their own. I gutted them, reserving most of the seeds for roasting, and then the kids carved them. Sean helped Maya a little bit with a drawing method, but I think she did the work herself. Ian did his entirely on his own (except the aforementioned gutting).

Maya’s is a cat whose ears were repurposed from the triangle eye cut-outs. Ian’s is meant to be creepy. He wanted to do a “shaded” type pumpkin where you cut off some of the skin, but leave the flesh to glow in the candlelight. I don’t know what tools we need for that but we definitely didn’t have time to gather them up. Next year.

The kids had Friday November 1st off school (Diwali celebration, I think), so that left us latitude for Ian to have a sleepover with his friend Damian on Halloween night after Damian joined us for neighborhood trick or treating. I tried to get Maya to arrange trick or treat plans with her friends (some of whom live within walking distance of our house), but I think with the dance, her social bucket was empty, so she just joined the boys in their trick or treating.

Sean wasn’t feeling well, so he manned the candy bowl at our house while I walked Maya, Ian, and Damian around the neighborhood. Maya’s costume was really long, so she had to walk to keep from tripping. Ian and Damian, in their excitement, ran absolutely everywhere, usually leaving Maya and I behind. I don’t think Maya got to ring a single doorbell, and after a while she told me she was tired and would like to go home. I have a notion she was tired of getting left out, but I could be wrong. We walked her home and spent maybe another half hour trick or treating before the boys decided their bags were full enough.

After we got back, the boys half-watched Scream. They sacked out in the living room on air mattresses. It was cute.

For my part, I had a beer and tried out a new method for roasting the pumpkin seeds. They were better than any I’ve made before, but still didn’t achieve the desired degree of crispiness I was hoping for. Earlier that afternoon, I boiled them in salt water for about five minutes and laid them out to dry for a couple hours. Once I was ready to roast, I tossed them in olive oil and salt, spreading them on a parchment lined sheet pan, and baked them at 350 for maybe 25 minutes or so, stirring a few times during the baking. I have a friend who says he lets his dry out for days, and that may make the difference. I don’t know how to square that up with the fact that our jack o lanterns don’t last all that long in the Texas heat, but I may have to try that next year.

I’m delighted that Maya still wants to be a kid and dress up in a fun costume and go trick or treating. Ian and his friends are still very excited about trick or treating, so we’ll ride that out for a while. I’ve heard it said or written a weirdly large number of times over the past couple weeks that “the days are long but the years are short.” And I feel this too. I get weary of getting the kids to all the things all the time, but Cub Scout campouts and sixth grade dances and trick-or-treating will look hazy and sweet in the rearview mirror. Sentimentality must just be in the too-hot, wish-fall-would-start-already Texas air right now, I guess.