I would say Happy New Year but it’s really only my new year. As in the past, I observe a new year’s eve on October 31st and my own personal new year on November 1st. And like some folks celebrate their birthday all week or all month long, I start prepping for the thinning of the veil a week in advance. New candles, special wine, clean out the fire pit, etc. My creative photography also gets special seasoning. These were some of my faves from the run-up to the big night.

That’s a headless Dwight Schrute from when he was Hay King. A gift from a coworker from a job I no longer have. The Grandcub beheaded the King a while back and I decided I liked him better that way, both literally and metaphorically. There is also the delicious irony of a microphone but no mouth.

The headdress was new for the occasion. I fashioned it from a long scarf and wore it as a crown to build and tend my Samhain fire. I was so proud of it you can/will see several iterations of that shot, including a wicked-fancy double exposure for November’s calendar page on the highlight reel at the end of the month. Yep, that was a teaser for a post no one really reads anyway! If I chronicled my accomplishments on Facebook you’d see a follow-up to last month’s highlight reel no one read. It would be captioned, I did a thing today, as people do on Facebook.

It would also feature a photo of me installing a new washer and dryer MYSELF. If you’d read that highlight reel you’d know it was backordered for weeks and scheduled for delivery on Halloween. You’d also know my castle has no laundry room. It has a nook, enclosed on three sides with mere inches of clearance, and all of the utility hook-ups hidden behind the unit. No access whatever without inching the hulking stackable beast out of its encasement and crawling on one’s belly through 22 years of detritus to disconnect the hoses, pipes, vents, etc. without ripping them out of the wall.

So before you smirk and say hooking up a new washer/dryer is easy; it was not. Although I paid the delivery dudes to haul the old clunker away I did not pay them to install the new one. I did that myself and it was a bitch and there was googling of things and two trips to the hardmonger‘s shop (that’s hardware + monger) and cleaning of linty muck and removal of dead things and the poop of living things and wiring so I could re-use the electrical and the tender tampering of 60 year old plumbing fixtures. Not easy; none of it. But I did it. I learned it and I did it and I’d never done any of it before so yes, big deal. Big boss deal.

That’s a nod to Financial Wellness and Intellectual Wellness highlights which did not make the reel you didn’t read because I was finished writing it well before the delivery window and the several HOURS it took me to light those highs. So while dancing around my Samhain fire in my sorcered crown (that’s sorcery as a verb + past tense) there was also celebration of this daunting domestic conquest. Laundry feels ceremonial today. Upon each approach to the shiny new machines I grin and feel a Tyrion vibe; as in I do laundry and I know things.

And bonus – two brand new words created. We are off to a dandy start. Be well, friends.