From Each According to His Abilities . . .

My brother demonstrated, again, why I end up doing most of the cooking around here.

He decided he wanted another skull cake to take to work and made red satin cake batter from a mix while I was out. I came back to find the skull halves in pieces. We debated all the things that could have gone wrong, from not being cooked through to trying to get them out of the molds before they were completely cooled down, when he suddenly remembered, while looking at the instructions on the next box before trying again, that he had neglected to add any eggs the first go around.

(Seems like it took forever to find the split seam
between the toes on the left front foot.)

He's outside today setting up and inflating the Hallowe'en balloons (which is his métier) despite a continuing low-grade variable wind. There's just nothing else to do if we are to have any decorations at all. It should be O.K. for 24 hours despite Frankenstein's Monster's stakes being pulled from the ground by the wind over the weekend . . . and that was while it was still just a misshapen lump on the ground.

Neighbor Dan was out there, too, and very upset. His balloons have been lying around out in the weather so long that several of them have developed rips and tears and won't blow up. We had a leakage problem with the giant black cat last year and found Duct tape an excellent bandage.

The tombstones are in. The four new apparitions will stay in the living room until the last minute and then join us in the driveway when the first little monsters arrive.

As we've both been reasonably good about not eating the candy ourselves, there should be enough to go around. This year.