Saturday was a hot day. Crisp, cool fall days are a rarity in Pasadena. Amanda and Dick and I piled into the car with their costumes in bags so that they could change quickly later, just pulling the outfits over their lightweight regular clothes. Amanda was going to be a mermaid in a satiny, sequined green skirt and a bright green headdress, a sort of tiara with shiny seaweed hanging down to her shoulders. Dick was going to be Spider Man, as were most of his friends; originality did not yet rank high in their scheme of things. I wasn’t going to dress up, but I had a box of small prizes from the toy store for the little fishers; a committee had brought some already, but I didn’t want to run out and have disappointed customers. The treasurer would reimburse me later: she had enough to do running around giving people change and counting the money earned by the day’s end. When I say major fund raiser I mean several thousand dollars collected in just one day. I bought the scrip for admittance to the booths and went to my post at the prize-fishing booth.

After a couple of hours of constant motion in the sun I was pretty tired and was glad to be relieved by one of the other mothers. I showed her where the extra prizes were and set off in search of food and drink and a shady spot if any was to be had. I knew where both Dick and Amanda were since the booths were all on the open playground and nearly everybody present was plainly visible if I looked around. I waited in a longish line for a grape pop and a piece of pizza donated by a neighborhood restaurant; indeed, it was the owner’s wife who had relieved me at the booth. Laura was a practical sort who believed that women owed it to themselves and their husbands to be as glamorous as possible and was so herself, blonde, slim, leggy and dressed to the nines. She was fond of lecturing me about this duty when she was able to catch me.

Pizza in hand, I worked my way through the crowd to a section of tables with benches in the shade of a pergola. There were a few vacant seats near the wall opposite the outer edge. As I began to move in that direction a figure came from behind and made passes at knocking benches over, causing both annoyance and hilarity. No one panicked, even though it appeared to be a werewolf, no one but me. The creature came up to me and tried to grab my piece of pizza from my hand. “No, no, NO!” I shrieked, completely unnerved. Through the holes in the mask, I could see laughing blue eyes.

“Aw, darn,” it guffawed and lurched away. I was panting as if I’d almost been hit by a truck. I must get a grip on myself, I promised silently.

Dick came running up. “That was good, Mom,” he enthused. “You looked really scared!”

“I was,” I replied, out of breath. Fortunately someone had just gotten up near me and I sat down; I didn’t think I could ever have made it to the back row now.

“You know who that was, don’t you?” Dick whispered loudly so that everyone nearby could hear, “Mr. Millsaps! Ian told me before.”

Colin Millsaps was the wolf man? My best friend’s husband was a voyeur? It was impossible. I must be crazy to imagine any such thing for even a moment. I ate my pizza, almost choking on it in the process, and swallowed down my drink. I had another two hours to go on the booth, but then I would get out of the general cleanup after the fair was over. I felt relief as I trudged back to the fishery;no wolfman could impinge on that little world, surely. Or could he?

From "The Watch"
by Sari Mittelbach

"Two events loomed on the horizon, requiring attendance, and in one case a considerable amount of work, the school harvest moon festival and Fred’s dean’s annual fall party for staff and graduate students. The school festival was essentially in honor of Halloween, but was masquerading as a more innocuous autumn party: Pasadena doesn’t have any harvest moons to speak of, but some full moons seem larger than others. I think I’ve read somewhere that that’s really true. The other party required me to dress and make up to look gorgeous, and to remain charmingly calm. I thought I’d rather carve a thousand pumpkins.
Pinegrove’s PTA president, Rosella McPhee, had to have several board meetings before all the work for the festival was properly allotted. It was one of two major annual fund raisers and so was deemed worth all the talk and effort. I volunteered to be in charge of the fish-for-a-prize booth. Everyone liked that booth because everyone who tried to fish won a prize. It attracted mainly younger children since there was no challenge, but they were all cute and it was fun to see them grasp the miniature poles and strive to hook something behind a screen decorated with pictures of waves, shells, and starfish. Few people who volunteered for anything escaped Rosella’s enthusiastic graspings of forearms, but most of us enjoyed being part of a group attempting to do good for the school and our kids, and if we were less anxious to do good for Rosella McPhee, we gave it little thought."

From "The Watch"
by Sari Mittelbach

After happy hour with Dicky Bird and Loriver, we noticed a neon sign across the street that said "Psychic." I've never gone to a professional fortune teller, so I went to get my palm read as a lark. The psychic made my peeps wait outside. She told me not to share the reading with anyone, but I didn't think to ask why. She was kind of intense. I'll tell you this much though: I'm supposed to have a long life. Thrillsville. I was not prepared for the hard sell at the end when she tried to entice me to purchase some strange,very expensive spiritual healing services involving a candle. Do I have "Sucker" stamped on my aura or what?

Things I'm not fascinated by for some reason:

architecture
the Olympics
California history
fashion designers
restaurants

I've tried to open my mind, but these things won't come in.

Hey, did you hear that news story about how a frog was discovered in India that's, like, prehistoric and belongs to a new family of frogs? Oh mama!

Check it out! http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_829079.html

More tiger attacks in the news the past couple of days. Milo and Inky are giving me looks that say, "Just do what we tell you and no one gets hurt."

You know how if you donate money to the ASPCA or the Human Society, they send you further solicitations that include things like personalized note cards and return address labels? I dreamed I got a wrinkled letter from the Kabul Zoo thanking me for my donation and it included kitten-themed wrapping paper, but it was really crappy quality, thin paper.(It reminded me of the icky periodicals from Pakistan we used to get at the library printed on some weird, gritty, insecticide-sprayed paper. I guess they don't have nice redwoods to chop down and make paper with like we do.) In reality I never donated anything to the Kabul Zoo, so now maybe I should.

Speaking of decimated zoos in countries the U.S. has invaded lately, I can't believe my tax dollars are probably going to the medical care of that idiot soldier who stuck his arm in the tiger cage at the Baghdad zoo. The news story said they shot the tiger. Too bad it only got the guy's finger. Can you say "dishonorable discharge"?

I also dreamed the other night that there really was a colorful insect called the Lovebug. Its wings had the texture of pipe-cleaners. It was like the quetzal-quatl of bugs. I've always felt cockroaches would be a lot more tolerable if they were rainbow colored. Darla Hood says, "The Lovebug will get you if you don't watch out." I'm not sure I believe her.