I Schedule My Life Around Pumpkin Releases

We're at the time of year when you need the heat in the morning and the A/C in the evening.
You start layering so that you can remove the layers as the day wears on.
We won't settle into one set temperature pattern until November; then, usually, the temperature will stay on the cool side all through the day.

We did go out for groceries today; we went back to the M. Walmart.
While they are cleaner, better stocked, and have more employees, they are also farther away from where we live.
A one-way trip to the local Walmart takes twenty minutes and is 13 miles (ca. 21 kilometers) away. 
A trip to the M. Walmart is 32 minutes and 21 miles (ca. 34 kilometers) away.
It takes roughly an hour to go out for groceries if we choose the new Walmart, versus forty minutes for the old.

While we were already in that area, we stopped at Aldi's.
I absolutely fell in love with the peach pie dessert hummus, but apparently it was a seasonal flavor.
Today they only had pumpkin pie and sea salted caramel.
I'm not really a caramel fan, so we'll see if the pumpkin pie is as good.
I also walked out with pumpkin ice cream. 
I found the Little Debbie Pumpkin Delight ice cream at Walmart, but this is just Aldi's brand, I guess.
I'm a pumpkin nut—I could have easily blown through Cowboy's paycheck at Aldi's. 
They had all kinds of pumpkin products out.
Out of all of my kids, Peacock is the only one who is as crazy for pumpkin as I am, so we sent him a picture and told him to head to the nearest Aldi's ASAP.

On the way home, we took a side trip to the D. Habitat for Humanity store.
Cowboy was still trying to figure out what to do with Badger's door.
He didn't find any inspiration in their home department, but Badger walked out with, like, four giant pictures for her room.
She plans on taking them out of the frame and just taping them to the wall.

We came home, unloaded the groceries, I put pork chops in the crock pot, and Badger and I headed to our rooms to watch TV.
Well, I also did a bit of she-shed sitting.
Cowboy headed to Badger's room, and he was cranky!
It was best to leave him alone.
Supper was ready at 5 p.m. 
I told Cowboy that, and he snapped my head off, so I grabbed my supper and disappeared.

Badger said he was angrily staring at a pork chop when she grabbed her pizza.
At 6:30 p.m., he yelled at me and Badger to get in the car.
Why the man cannot go to a store by himself, I have no clue.
But we ended up walking around Home Depot for thirty minutes. 
The employees were starting to give us strange looks as we slowly made another lap around the store.
Initially, he wanted to just put blinds up. 
Badger and I told him that the cats would just jump through and destroy the blinds—and the room.
He refused to listen to that.

Then he started trying to custom-fit blinds and destroyed two blinds before admitting defeat.
He really wanted vents, but he made the hole a strange size, and they didn't have the size he needed, and he insisted he could not make anything else work.

At about the fifth or sixth lap around the store, I finally told him, “Try Lowe's.”
“They don't have anything there either.”
I didn't disagree, but at least their employees hadn't seen us making laps for thirty minutes.
We got to Lowe's, went to the vent aisle—they had less than Home Depot—but we somehow stumbled on the lattice aisle.
I gave Badger a hard poke in the ribs, twice, and she finally got the hint to tell Daddy lattice would be amazingly perfect.
We walked out with lattice without making any excessive laps.

It was 8:20 p.m. when we got home, and very, very dark.
We didn't expect to stay out all night and forgot that it gets dark early now, so we didn't leave any lights on.
Duffy and Lady practically jumped us as we walked in the door—I guess they thought we had abandoned them.

Cowboy quickly got the lattice up. 
It looks odd, but autism parents do some strange things to make their kids happy and comfortable.
Badger may or may not paint it to match the blue door. 
I personally would paint it so that it blends in, but it's not my door.

Once that was up, Cowboy settled into his recliner with his TV.

I'm heading to bed—we have an early vet appointment tomorrow.

On vets, we've been going to this one vet for about three years, had no major issues with them.
So Teresa got sicker, and I called, and they absolutely could not fit me in until Saturday.
Totally booked up.
Well, Teresa was in pain and rapidly declining. 
It was cruel to make him suffer, so I called a new vet, who got me in the next day.
The new vet called the old vet for Teresa's blood work—no biggie, I thought.
Of course, we had to euthanize Teresa—no fault of the new vet.
We had no plans to switch vets, but I get to messing around on my phone, go to the vet app I have, and they've deleted every single pet they've seen at their office.
No warning—they just, I guess, kicked us out of the practice.
So now we're with the vet who saw Teresa, and I hope they're good.
Badger says how they do with Fox and Lucifer will be the test, as they're our most difficult cats.
I think it was crappy of the old vet to not even give a call or an email or leave a message on their app.
At least this new vet is only five miles and eight minutes away, compared to the old vet at nineteen minutes and twelve miles away.
That may not seem like much of a difference, but you try riding with Cowboy some morning.