So, um, a day after expressing my extreme thanks for being able to pay my mortgage/monthly bills in full and on time, the payroll gods at Joe's company decided to piss all over my gratitude. See, a couple of Joe's hours got filed incorrectly, so instead of contacting him or his manager to straighten out the situation, they just decided to deduct 80 hours worth of work from a check that was supposed to have retro pay for something else that was processed incorrectly back in JULY. On a day when I was expecting a decent-sized check that would give us a little bit of money for the holidays, we actually received a check that totalled $253. Which is significantly less than even his normal two-week, after-tax pay. Which pretty much sucks. And because it was a holiday, and Joe was one of the only people from his department working on Friday, the situation can't even get resolved until Tuesday or Wednesday. Super!

To compound things, yesterday we went to spend the day with Joe's grandmother and brother in Bethlehem. It's been a while since we'd gotten up that way, and we had a fantastic time. But when we went to leave, we discovered that my Beckett, the 1998 Saturn SL1 that I've adored and defended since I purchased it in 2001, was dead. Archie, Joe's brother, is a mechanical engineer, but after two hours of tinkering with various parts of the car, he still couldn't definitively say what was wrong with it. So we decided we'd have it towed to a shop. Only, guess who never opened her welcome packet from AAA? If I had opened it, when it arrived back in JULY, I would've noticed that they'd processed my membership as basic instead of plus. I'd wanted the plus membership because it entitles you to three tows a year up to 100 miles, and since we do visit Bethlehem fairly regularly, and since Bethlehem is 92 miles from our driveway, we figured it would be a good investment.

Instead of having the car towed back to DE, we opted to have it towed to Joe's family's trusted auto mechanic Bobby Stevens, whose shop is within the five free miles my crappy basic AAA membership entitles me to. This meant that Grammy had to race us to Lehigh International Airport at 10:40 p.m., so we could grab a rental before the Hertz kiosk closed at 11. This also means a return trip to Bethlehem on Thursday, to pick up my car, which should (hopefully) be repaired by then. Because of the rental fee, and because I don't know how much fixing Beckett is going to cost, and because of the ridiculous $253 paycheck, I'm pretty much out of the holiday shopping game for the next week or so. Possibly longer.

So much for Cyber Monday.

The upside? My "economy" rental is a fully loaded Chevy Cobalt that has power everything, a huge GPS monitor, and rides smoothly and quietly. Do I have to give it back? Every time I'm in a rental I realized just how far cars have come since 1998. Too bad it's going to be another decade before I can afford a new one.

Funniest moment of the evening: me kicking Beckett's tires and saying, "Eff you, Beckett! I've loved you and defended you for years! And this is how you repay me, you p.o.s. car?"

Sigh.

In less depressing news, all of us have been mightily amused by the situation going on in my mother's small, tucked away neighborhood. It's two circles, something like thirteen houses, and everyone loves how private the place is. Seriously, it's hard to even give people directions to my mom's house, because it's that tucked away. Anyway, a new family recently moved in, and apparently they were known in their old neighborhood for their over-the-top Christmas displays and music-choreographed light shows. My mom's been calling me with daily updates, telling me what new additions have been made and how the family keeps saying there's even more to come. Then Friday, when she's out walking the dogs, she sees they've put up a barber poll with a web address on one side and a radio station on the other. Not only had the family expanded their previous displays, but they were advertising where to see this year's daily shows. With directions to come. Within hours, the entire rest of the neighborhood was up in arms, and people were organizing campaigns to have the new family take down their web site and possibly even their display. In the end, the family agreed to remove the directions from their web site, but for now, the display stays, and who knows how much traffic word of mouth will bring?

Seriously, I haven't seen this much uproar over a lawn decoration since the kerfluffle on Wisteria Lane involving a semi-pornographic fountain.

As for everything else: vacation is over as of tomorrow morning, and there are only about 10 days left in the semester. In those 10 days I will be grading 22 research papers, commenting on 14 revised stories, and evaluating 5 magazine projects (written and oral). Plus, I'm knee-deep in an editing job that I wanted to get finished by 12/15, AND Joe's decided that this year he'd like us to pull out the Christmas decorations and purchase a small tree, despite the fact that my craft room/office is still languishing, thisclose to being finished but not enough for me to actually move in.

Last complaint of the afternoon: we waited too long to see WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and now it's out of the theaters. Let's hope we make it to FANTASTIC MR. FOX before it disappears as well.

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, though to be honest, it's been a couple of years since I rocked a costume. In fact, the last full-on costume I did was when I channeled Frida Kahlo for an Oscar party I hosted the year FRIDA was up for several nominations. Still, tonight Joe and I are going to continue a tradition we started last Halloween, and that is packing up the dog and taking him to Wendy's to help pass out candy. Wendy goes all out on every holiday, and for Halloween she sets up one of those iron fire pit things in the front yard, bundles up and camps out to greet all of the neighborhood kids. This year, she's added some blow-up Haunted House thing I can't wait to check out. It's nice. I've never done the candy thing at my house because A) there aren't that many kids in the neighborhood and B) with Scouty, having someone knock on the door every 10 minutes would turn him into Frankendog. He still goes postal every time the mail man comes (bad pun intended).

Today is also the birthday of Chris, one of the sweetest, classiest, coolest women I've ever known, who also happens to be a part of my writing group, the WIPs. Hope you have a fantastic day, Chris!

This weekend marks the beginning of the Birthday Rush. My mom's is Sunday. I usually go all out, because even though my mom is now in her 50s, she gets very sad if people don't make a big deal out of the day. Last year my gift was tickets to see MENOPAUSE: THE MUSICAL; she requested them specifically, but my real gift was pretending to enjoy it as much as she did (I didn't. I'm sorry. Bad jokes about hot flashes do not tickle my funny bone). This year, Joe and I have decided to prepare one of her favorite meals from scratch. This doesn't sound like that big a thing, but the meal happens to be chicken mole. Traditional Mexican black mole is a recipe that has like 40 ingredients and takes four hours to cook. We're heading to the Mexican markets tomorrow to try to track down all of the crazy peppers and spices needed to make her dream a reality. Side dishes include Mexican rice, pot beans, and, as an extra-special treat, Joe's going to make homemade white corn tortillas in a press and everything. It should be fun.

The birthday gauntlet goes something like this:

11/3 - Joe's Grammy
11/4 - My former editor at Razorbill, Kristen Pettit
11/6 - Joe's grandfather (a.k.a. Pop)
11/7 - My friend Carolee
11/13 - My friend Jaime

Then I get a slight, two-week respite before it's Joe's birthday (12/5), followed immediately by my stepfather's birthday (12/6), which is also shared by my Uncle Jeffrey.

And since my friend Candace was organizing a women's conference around her birthday, we still haven't had her actual celebration. (Kind of a good thing, since the present I'm making her isn't exactly done yet. But she's a fellow procrastinator, so she understands.)

I think the most frustrating thing is that this is the time of year I love to shop. I'm a shopper any time of year, but my favorite kind of shopping is the stuff I do for other people. Unfortunately, between the economy and my upcoming nuptuals and a laundry list of fix-ups that needs to get done around the house, the holiday budget is the smallest it's ever been. Candy and I are planning a couple of craft days to see if we can make some gifts, but if any of you remember me talking about my in-progress craft room that Joe and I started to redo 14 months ago ... well, let's just say it still isn't done. And all of my many craft supplies have found "temporary" homes in random closets and corners. I'll be lucky if I can find my paint caddy and store of brushes.

No matter - today is a day for FUN and FROLIC.

Hope you all have a great Halloween!