Faster Than Some Speedy Bullets

• Tomorrow my second son turns nine. No school tomorrow, so I took his favorite spiderweb cupcakes to school today. (That picture is from two years ago but my spiderwebs are still about that wobbly.) Tomorrow my MIL is coming and so are four or five of his pals. Not quite ready for the party but I think we'll manage.
• I am making a note here for future reference that doubling the devil's food cake recipe in the Halloween chapter of Nigella Lawson's Feast gave me 24 cupcakes plus enough batter for an eight-inch layer. Everybody liked the end product too. I would share the recipe but (1) I am trying to be speedy and (2) I have the British version of the book, with measurements in grams, and trust me when I say you don't want me to attempt to convert to cups in a hurry.
• My children seem to have inherited my appreciation for quirky costumes. The almost-nine-year-old has been saying all month that he wanted to be a leviathan for Halloween, using a modified dinosaur costume from three years ago. He talked the six-year-old into agreeing to be an Umber Hulk. I just smiled and nodded because they change their minds, without fail, in the week before Halloween. Sure enough, all three of the trick-or-treaters presented me with new costume ideas (yes, plural) this week. The 3yo is deciding whether he wants to be a doctor or a cat. The 6yo is going to be a skeleton (thankfully, using a costume from the costume chest in lieu of the gorilla costume he asked me to make). The almost-9yo decided to be something really scary when it was discovered that he has grown an astonishing amount in the three years since he last wore the dinosaur costume: he's going to be Steve Ballmer. Why, yes, we are Linux users in this house -- how did you guess? And how does one make a 9yo boy look like Steve Ballmer, exactly? I only have three days to figure this out.
• One of these years, I tell you, I'm going to enforce a Halloween costume deadline. What you say you want to be on October 15 is what you get to be on October 31. Yeah. Maybe next year.
• On the subject of open source software, I have been trying to get The Gimp to lighten up some shadowy faces for our Christmas picture. It is not going well. I have succeeded in making various children look like mutant androids, but this is not really the look I hope to send out in our Christmas letter. Any tips? 
• I am suddenly feeling much more third-trimestery, with backache and symphysis pain and contractions all the livelong day. (I asked Elwood, "Am I looking a lot more pregnant all of a sudden?" because I wondered if baby had had a growth spurt that accounted for the increase in discomfort. Prudent man that he is, he said, "Oh, no, dear, not at all." I guess it's one of those "Do I look fat in this outfit?" kind of questions. But I'm still curious.)
• Ooooooohhhh, there were more things I was going to say but I cannot remember them at the moment. This time of year always gets to me, with the darkening days and the beginning of the end-of-year rush. The election is getting me down too this year. I have been quiet because who wants to read grumping? But I'll go ahead and stick this up for anyone who wondered if we were still alive over here, and be back soon with a cheery knitting post. (I am delighted with the way Joe's Sheldon has turned out. He just needs his last few ends woven in to make him presentable.)