Saturday, September 27

The girls had to be at school this morning at 6:45 to get the bus to their XC meet. Lucia couldn't find her singlet, suspecting she'd left it at school; indeed, her coach had it for her when we arrived. Mom and Dad drove in around 8, and they and Andrew and I drove out to Youthtown for the meet. Both girls were running; this was a gigantic meet with lots of levels and groups. Both ran well. Lucia came in 13th out of 104 girls. She broke 23:00 but didn't quite beat her PR. 

At home, we had lunch with Mom and Dad, and when the kids got back to school I picked them up. Meanwhile, Andrew had a quick lunch then took Farrah to the emergency vet, because yesterday we became pretty certain she has an ear infection. 

I got a much-anticipated delivery in the mail today: my first shipment from Ffern, a perfume maker in England that creates seasonal fragrances available only to people on their "ledger." Each shipment has an elaborate back story for the fragrance and comes with a tiny piece of pop-up art, a larger artwork that matches the theme of the fragrance, a seasonal teabag, a terracotta diffuser tile stamped with a seasonal symbol, and the bottle of perfume. There was also a "ticket" with a QR code to a short film evoking the fragrance--this Autumn fragrance is apple orchard-based and the film showed a big happy group of young people "scrumping" (a word I learned in this film) in an orchard. Anyway. It's all very story-driven and beautifully packaged and precious and delightful and YES, I was made aware of this this highly attractive and hard-to-procure item on Instagram, immediately clicked through, and accepted the invitation to join the wait-list for the "ledger," which I am now on. That algorithm! Usually I have to see an Instagram ad five thousand times before I crack; this time, it was instantaneous. Instagram fed me the ad when I was having a very hard week of scan-ziety and I think I definitely deserve all the beautifully packaged fun Instagram can dredge up for me. Bring it on. 

Once Mom and Dad went home (after I forced them to watch the scrumping film with me), the girls and I went shopping at the Waterfront. The goal was homecoming shoes for Lucia, but she didn't find any she liked. She did find a few cute fall clothes at Old Navy. Andrew continued to wait at the vet. We ended up all getting home at the same time, Farrah with an antibiotic. Poor little baby.

Tonight was the final Squirrel Hill Night Market of the season, and we finally managed to get there. Greta went with a friend; Lucia went with four friends; and Andrew and I went together. We browsed all the booths and got some dinner. We ran into the kids and their friends a couple of times. It was a fun end to a busy day.