Oh my goodness, I had the worst migraine for most of today. I take Maxalt for my migraines, but in many ways, it makes a dull, steady pain into a festival of nausea and nastiness that can last for half of the day. If I don't nip my migraines either in the bud or in mid-stream, they may go on for days. I always try to use a lesser evil of medication before resorting to the ill-making prescription that works (eventually...), but lately these haven't been incredibly successful. So I had to crash for about 40 minutes this morning when I wanted to be taking advantage of our free hours without Rutledge distraction.

It's a hard week here because of Frances's production schedule. Nightly practices which have kept her out until 10 every night except Tuesday, shopping for last minute items (you wouldn't believe how challenging it can be to find a bright-colored (not pale pink, not black, not white, not light blue) leotard in a child's size small on short notice. I also really needed to find some kind of hair extensions, but I gave up on that. Now they want me to color her hair "any color." Ummm, okay. She told me blue and pink and purple, but is that what the director really said? The world may never know.

Meanwhile, we're trying to pull together Halloween costumes. Tomorrow is our homeschool group's annual Halloween party, and I think we have things mostly together, but there is always some scrambling at the end. Tonight I was mixing up the pumpkin muffins and realized that our milk was sour (actually, I didn't realize it, Kerry did that this morning, but I remembered that he had realized it when I had already started to cream the shortening and sugar). Another trip out for supplies....

Ollie has managed to get himself into a heap of trouble this week and is now on restriction, which is going to affect his trick or treating and the sleepover he had planned. It seems that it's going to be just me and Rutledge out here, which should be interesting. Rutledge is going to be Yoshi from Mario Brothers. I hope that Kerry doesn't leave tomorrow with my safety pins, since the head of his costume is a bit large and unwieldy and keeps falling in his face. I had also planned to make him a Mario Kart, but so far that hasn't happened (and yesterday was recycling pickup, so I'm low on boxes).

Tonight we started reading Oliver Twist at Ollie's bidding. This morning we finished The Shakespeare Stealer, which everyone loved. I think we must have listened to it on CD at some point, since the story was pretty familiar to everyone, though I couldn't quite place where I knew it. I am so loving finally being able to talk about literature and literary and cultural history and having at least one interested party.