October arrived with a golden rush, carrying harvest, Samhain, bonfire smoke, and the whisper of ghosts

We didn’t get to go pick up chicks today. 
We ended up at the walk-in clinic instead. 
Cowboy said yesterday it felt like something was moving around in his eye, and all the way to Badger’s appointment and back home he kept squinting and rubbing it.
When he got home from work, he flushed it with water and even ran a Q-tip around it, but it still hurt and still felt like something was crawling around in there.

A year or so ago, they opened a walk-in clinic in the post office building. 
It used to be an old bank long before I ever moved here.
 Now the clinic and the post office share the space. 
When you walk in, there’s a big open area with the clinic on the left and the post office on the right.
 It’s less than a mile from our house, and with his eye bothering him, I wasn’t about to drive twelve miles to the Jefferson City clinic.

I felt like they brushed him off. 
People around here take one look at him and decide he’s something he’s not, and they act different because of it. 
They also talked loud at him, like he couldn’t hear. 
He can’t, but that wasn’t the point.

They numbed his eye, looked it over, and put in what they called alien drops that glowed green under a light.
 It showed irritation in his upper eyelid, so they flushed it out. 
They gave him steroid drops for a week and told him to go to Walmart Vision if it kept bothering him. 
He kept telling them it still felt like something moving, but they said they didn’t see anything and told him to wait and see if the numbing drops helped.

It was almost noon when we got home, so there wasn’t much time to do anything. 
Badger had already cleaned the house, started our laundry, and even started dinner. 
She also decided to give Fox a bath, and I ended up with one furious, dripping cat staring at me. 
Cowboy took care of his chickens and then came in for a nap. 
I watched some TV and read for a while. 
That’s all today turned into, just a TV day.

Badger and I managed a short walk before sunset. 
We’d planned to go farther, but they had their poodle tied out again. 
They switch between the pit bull and the poodle, and neither one of those dogs likes us. 
Both of them will chase us, snarling and growling.

Raven came home and is actually spending the night. 
He said he can’t start moving his things out yet. 
He’s waiting on the money for the tiny house. 
The new job pays more, but the hours are shorter. 
He slept most of the day.
I can’t remember the last time he was home.

Heron’s in the air right now.
 He texted to say he made it to Dallas and was heading toward McGhee Tyson. 
I’m not sure which flight he’s on, but one of them is running about twenty minutes late.

Look at that, October has sneaked in on us.
It doesn’t feel much like autumn yet, even though my yard’s covered in leaves.
October is a bittersweet month for me.
My mom’s birthday is in October, and we lost my great aunt in October.
I used to love October, but now it’s more of a love-hate thing.
Sometimes, at this time of year, when the veil feels thin, I can almost feel my mom and Aunt GG around me.

Tomorrow is town day, so I’ll be getting off of here and trying to go to bed early for once,