Happy Friday everyone, I hope you're having a great week! Things have been a little hectic around here (though good hectic, I guess!) so I'm looking forward to taking things down several notches over the long weekend and soaking in some birthday fun. My pro-40 feelings are still with me; I'm excited to ring in 41! Meanwhile, if you're looking for something to do, enjoy this 32 event mega roundup, lovingly curated for your consideration!

1. Free evening at the museum for the deaf or hard of hearing. (Acton)

2. Bring your imagination. Legos provided. (Acton)

3. Three-day spectacle of light, sound and projection art. (Boston)

4. The largest display of LEGO® art ever assembled. (Boston)

5. Celebrate Hispanic Heritage month with music, dance and games. (Boston)

6. Concert with Mr. G, Latin GRAMMY nominee. (Brookline)

7. Sleeping Beauty marionette show. (Brookline)

8. The pumpkins are all aglow. (Carver)

9. Celebrating local food and growing community. (Concord)

10. Columbus Day parade celebration. (East Boston)

11. The thrill of the chase of letterboxing. (Framingham)

12. Riverside blues and bbq. (Greenfield)

13. A weekend celebration of the autumn harvest. (Harvard)

14. Are there really dinosaurs in Holyoke? (Holyoke)

15. Spooky hayrides. (Lexington)

16. Think you can’t draw? Think again. (Lincoln)

17. Columbus Day weekend fall festival. (Lunenburg)

18. Observe resident birds and fall migrants at a unique urban habitat. (Mattapan)

19. A playdate with nature. (Mattapan)

20. Party down by the river at the Mystic River Celebration. (Medford)

21. Fall Festival at Blue Hills Trailside Museum. (Milton)

22. Crafts, fine art, music and food. (Newburyport)

23.The Farm Festival. (North Andover)

24. Fun in the sun rail jam. (Princeton)

25. The final weekend of the Topsfield Fair. (Topsfield)

26. It a festival of outlet shopping. (Somerville)

27. Get out and HONK! (Somerville)

28. Help the zoo by recycling your bottles and cans. (Stoneham)

29. Breakfast with the bears. (Stoneham)

30. Outdoor storytime on Waltham Common. (Waltham)

31. Cranberry harvest celebration with bogside demonstrations and cranberry-related activities. (Wareham)

32. Halloween hike at Boo Meadow Brook. (Worcester)

Image credit: Boston Children’s Museum

Just watch it. You have time. You'll have a way better weekend if you do.

The internet is overflowing with Halloween adorableness right now and as someone who loves holidays but is short on bandwidth for from-scratch projects, I'm immensely grateful to the awesome and clever people who make it easy for busy parents to make the house festive in a matter of minutes. So, fire up your color printer, go visit these amazing creatives to download a free printable (or 10!), and get your home Halloween ready in a snap.

1. How cute (and tasty) is this Halloween bingo game?

2. Build in a little learning with this Halloween scavenger hunt.

3. There's still plenty of time to countdown to Halloween.

4. Inspire spooky play with these Halloween shadow puppets.

5. Everyone will love these adorable (and yummy) mummy bars. (These remind me of the DIY mummy minion door!)

6. Even fingers need costumes.

7. Be the ghost and BOO! your neighbors.

8. Enjoy instant costumed cuteness thanks to these mask printables.

9. You'll be sure to have the most charming treats on the block with these treat bags.

10. Inspire a few lunch time laughs with these Halloween lunch box jokes.

Image credits: all images per linked sites above

We have had the hermit crab twins, Charlie and Sebastian, since the little angel turned two. Never in a million years did I think they would live so long. Guess what? If you take care of your hermit crabs properly, they can live up to 40 years in captivity, with an average lifespan of 15 years. Charlie and Sebastian are at least eight and a half. Lord help me, these crabs may live to see the little angel graduate from high school.

Unless the mites get them first.

I have noticed the mites before, but I didn't realize they are such a big deal. Apparently, left unchecked, they can kill the crabs. This week the little angel and I have noticed Charlie coming out and attempting to scale his way out of the tank when we are in her playroom doing homework. Charlie is not shy, but this is new behavior. I felt kind of bad for a while, like maybe he wanted to run free. I even had an entire inner monologue with him about how he was too far from a temperate zone and even if I released him into the lake he would be toast in a month. 

I know, I know.

I just went over to Beloved and made a plea for a vigourous scrubbing and hermit crab bathing session this evening. He rolled his eyes and said we need new substrate and I bought the wrong kind last time. This does not surprise me, because no matter what I buy on my own, from ripe avocados to hermit substrate to gym socks, I buy the wrong kind in his opinion. It is a running joke. It used to really stress me out, this buying of the wrong kind, then I realized, well, if he is really concerned, he will do his own damn shopping. It is not like his legs are broken. 

This is the key to a lasting marriage.

Anyway, I kept poking at him and whining about our duties as hermit crab guardians (something I take more seriously every year these crazy huge bastards hang on) and so he has promised to buy new hermit crab whatever so we can SAVE THE CRABS FROM THE MITE ARMY this very evening.

I only hope we're not too late.

Hi folks, I have an awesome -- and super mysterious! -- newsletter subscriber giveaway this month. I've filled a roomy Lands' End tote with a collection of cool woman-oriented gifts (meaning, no baby things...just things for YOU). One lucky newsletter subscriber will win this delightful gift tote (estimated retail value = $275). To be eligible for the giveaway, all you need to do is subscribe below by Monday, October 13! Good luck!

Subscribe to the newsletter!

 

Note: the Boston Mamas newsletter drops 1-2 times per month and offers the best from this site (and elsewhere on the internet), as well as periodic exclusive goodies. Yay, for periodic exclusive goodies!

After I get above eight miles, my mind starts to wander. 

I've discovered while training for half marathons how much your mind can disconnect from what your body is doing. There are times when it's too hot and my legs are too heavy and my lungs are bursting and I feel my mind slamming on the brakes, ready to override my desires with heat exhaustion, if necessary, to make this crazy 40-year-old woman stop running in the heat.

There are times when my legs are fine and the euphoria sets in and the air is so awesome to breathe I want to stop and tell other people do you taste this air? Isn't this air unbelievable?

Lately the temperature's been dropping. My vision no longer gets swimmy on big hills. I don't have to press pause on Runkeeper and pant like a dog in the shade after a big uphill. And above eight miles, I have all sorts of crazy thoughts.

I just read THE INFINITE SEA by Richard Yancy. It's the second in a dystopian end-of-the-world series that does a particularly nice job of being a dystopian end-of-the-world series, in a similar way to Dexter doing a particularly nice job of being a good serial killer. Really entertaining and well paced plot but also gets the job done showing the uglier side of humanity: how we make choices, how we weigh one life against another.

Ever since I read UNDER THE DOME by Stephen King, I've been having trouble swatting flies. The metaphors have invaded Missouri.

As I run, all the latest books swim together in my head along with the plotlines of my own writing and my own life. I think (in my running-induced euphoria that can sometimes beget delusions of grandeur) that if only I could somehow write and run at the same time I could solve some proof of humanity simply by analyzing various forms of pop culture and running them against current events divided by the number of times the Gaza Strip has been bombed and squared by the population of China. 

That would be it: The answer to why we are the way we are.

It was probably around mile nine when I noticed a large bug ambling across the sidewalk in front of me. I wasn't sure exactly what kind of bug it was, probably a beetle of some sort, but it smacked of warm-weather bug. Not-gonna-survive-the-frost kind of bug. 

And it was really cold that day. 

I started stirring all the end-of-the-world dystopian plotlines and honestly wondered if the bug was contemplating whether or not this would be his last day on earth. Could the bug know about dewpoints? Frost?

I skirted around the bug, because if he was going to die, I didn't want to be the cause of it.

I wondered how high the oceans would have to rise to flood Kansas City.

The air tasted amazing.

And I ran on. 

Yesterday on Twitter, a blogger who had read my Dr. Phil anorexia post tweeted to me. I went over to look at her blog and felt the familiar stomach drop when I read this:

A month ago, in Flagstaff, SB had a Subway sandwich for dinner Friday night and at lunch on Saturday she had a few of the sweet potato fries I'd ordered for the table. Yesterday, when it was suggested she needed to drink Gatorade to combat the recent dehydration that led to her fainting twice and being rehydrated in the E.R. this past Sunday, she cried. And said no.

As a mother, my stomach drops for the blogger. As a recovered anorexic, my stomach drops with muscle memory. 

I'm reading THE MATHEMATICIAN'S SHIVA by Stuart Rojstaczer. In a book within a book, the protagonist's mother writes about going with only a tiny bit of food a day in war-torn Russia. Her description of hunger is spot-on:

I want you to follow my instructions. Take your eyes off this page when I tell you to do. Look at the room around you. Wherever you are, simply open your eyes adn look, listen, smell and think whatever thoughts come your way ... Then imagine all of your awareness disappearing. Your eyes work, yes, but they don't see anything. Your brain won't let you process such information. The smells, they are gone, too. Your ears, they work simply to warn you of danger. Your thoughts, all of them are so uncomplicated and pure ... All is about the numbness inside you ... You are truly in hibernation. Everything has slowed, because any processing, physical or mental, requires energy, and that, if you are truly nutrient-deprived, is precisely what you don't possess.

When I read that, I remembered crying from hunger. And I also remembered crying from fear of what would happen if I ate, because the hunger was easier to tolerate than the fear. The space between those places is anorexia. I wrote about that motivation and that place in my young adult novel, THE OBVIOUS GAME. Writing about it forced me to go back and experience those feelings again, and it was no fun. However, it's important for those of us who are recovered and feeling brave to talk about life after an eating disorder, because when you're in it, you can't imagine life on the other side of it. I keep writing. I'm here. I'm on the other side. It blows my mind that I still get 2-3 emails a week from people who love someone with anorexia. They are desperate. They have no idea what to do with this thing they don't understand at all. They want me to tell them what to do. I can't totally do that. I'm not a psychologist or doctor. All I can do is try to explain how their loved one feels so they can support that person in the best way possible.

My new friend Jenn told me about the March Against ED next week (September 30) in Washington, DC. I wish I would've known about it earlier, because I think I would've tried to go. If it happens again next year, I will be there. There is so much misinformation about mental health in general, and anorexia is one of the few mental disorders you can see on a person, which I think contributes to even further misunderstanding, because you form opinions without knowing the person at all just by looking at them. 

I have a list of ED resources in my Young Adult category up in the masthead. I will be updating that list with some more from Jenn. I was never inpatient anywhere (I threatened to run away and I was 18) and I ended up recovering physically in college and mentally in my thirties. 

They were deep ruts in my brain. Deep, self-loathing ruts. Filling them in was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it's what I want for every disordered eater out there. It can be done.

I'm relieved to hear Jenn's daughter is in recovery. There are many other people whose sons and daughters aren't. I know. They email me. It's best if you catch it early. It's often comorbid with other mental illness and therefore hard to separate or identify. (Is she not eating because she's anxious? Is she counting her calories because she's OCD?) If you think there's a problem, it's better to err on the side of caution, just like you would if your kid suddenly sprouted an unexplained lump in her breast or a persistent ache in her teeth. Please don't assume what you see on television is real. It's not dramatic or romantic or disgusting. It's someone who is hurting really, really bad. Someone hungry in every sense of the word.

Hello Everyone! It's that time again. We have less than two weeks until the YA Scavenger Hunt begins. I hope you reserved plenty of time for this one because there isn't just one team or two or even three. This time we have 6, that's right, I said 6 YASH teams which means more prizes, news, and fun for all you readers out there! So let's get started!

TEAM RED INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GOLD INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GREEN INCLUDES:

 

TEAM ORANGE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM INDIE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM BLUE INCLUDES:

  There are so many books here I don't even know where I would begin. I hope you all are as excited as I am! The YA Scavenger Hunt begins at noon pacific time on Thursday, October 2nd and runs through Sunday, October 5th. That means to get through the entire hunt you'll need to go through 1.5 teams per day!

Are you going to play? 

If you're at work, put on headphones.