Halloweeeeeen

This post is just a blatant journal entry of "What we did on Halloween". I can't come up with anything more creative to say about it because I'm feeling a bit manic somewhere inside about this being November 1 and theoretically this is the first day of the rest of my life as a professional writer. That whole Nanowrimo thing, that is. Don't have time to explain it. Google it if you want to know more (www.nanowrimo.com)

Anyhoo, we had a lovely Halloween. I wasn't sure we'd have a Halloween at all this year. I was afraid we 'd be traveling yesterday. But it all ended up working out at the last minute so we didn't have to and I was so happy about that, that happy energy carried me all the way through lots of activities yesterday.

Well, first I went to the dentist to have him check on a tooth I recently lost an old filling out of. I'm gonna have to have a crown, first appointment in a couple of weeks for the work and the temporary. DRAT. Although, crown work for me has never been any worse then cavity filling work, and bizarrely enough, my insurance pays 100% for crowns and very little on cavities. So I guess that's the silver lining (or would that be silver filling - ha!) about the situation. As far as frightening experiences for Halloween, going to the dentist would be up there on my list, so I got the worst of it over early in the day.

I did a bunch of errands with the boys. Jeff found the perfect Halloween costume. William didn't know what he wanted to be and settled for the same old black cape and hood costume that all my boys have fallen back on for year after year at the end of their trick-or-treating careers, being that it's long enough to fit them, it's not goofy, and in any case it covers their face completely so no one can tell it's them even if it is goofy. I found some hoop earrings and a nifty dagger (that collapsed inside itself so it looked like you were really stabbing someone, and then screamed - like a girl apparently according to William) for the pirate outfit I was planning on working out. We finished off with lunch out for some "real food" so we wouldn't get too sick from eating nothing but candy and cookies all night.

I wore my witches hat out of course. My winter weight one. William wanted to know why I didn't dress up completely like I usually do, with my black skirts and capes and what not. I said I was going to try something different this year and in the evening I was going to be a pirate. Without missing a beat William said "So, you're going to dress up in a costume this year?" Hahaha, that's by boy!

We got home with only a few hours before sunset. I worked on doing more outside decorating. It looked quite spooky for such a last minute effort, if I say so myself. We carved pumpkins. William attempted one of those pattern ones but quickly discovered that without an official pattern (the one he wanted was just an image, not a "cut here" type pattern) and the proper tools, it a recipe for disaster. After ending up with a big HOLE, I suggested he turn the pumpkin around and do a more traditional JOL face on the other side, which he did. Jeff went straight for the quick and easy standard three triangles and a ragged mouth. I haven't even managed to carve my pumpkin(s) the last few years, letting the family do it while I ran around cleaning up after them, but I got inspired this year and tried two pattern ones. Nothing as amazing as I've seen other folks do, but since I also lacked real patterns or good tools, I was very pleased with the outcome. I carved a tiny portrait of Rosie into her tiny pumpkin. She thought as I was drawing her that I was going to give her a treat, so she posed for me very sweetly and patiently. Gee, duh, I should have actually given her a treat afterwards, huh? Oh well, she gets treats all the time. My large pumpkin I made a triple moon design with the full moon in the middle carved into a pentacle. It looked really awesome.

William waited until minutes before he was out the door to plan if to go t-or-t'ing, when to go t-or-t'ing, where to go t-or-t'ing, and who to go t-or-t'ing with, and then changed his mind again as he walked out the door. There was a bit of a challenge over whether or not he'd wear something like reflective tape on his costume. That was shot down as completely lame. Jeff suggested a flashlight. William said he's wear those glow-in-the-dark thingies. I knew I had some, but where were they? In the Halloween stuff which was still sitting around in boxes unpacked. I dug for them frantically, which accounts for 80% of the mess in my house this post-holiday morning, but thank goodness I found them.

This is, AND DON'T LAUGH AT ME!!!!!!, the first time William has gone out alone trick-or-treating. I guess the other kids went out alone at this age, but I don't know. Maybe they never did. We're a strange family and trick-or-treating has always been a family activity, along with a gaggle of the kids friends. So letting William go out, in the dark, in ALL BLACK, with no adults, was a big deal for this anxiety attack prone mom.

So off he went, and came back with James (costumeless) and Jake (dressed as a wonderful Oompa Loompa!) in tow, trick or treating at our door. We had candy bars. And Skittles. We insisted James must wear a costume and outfitted him in William's white gorilla mask with a glow in the dark halo. Took pictures of the three of them. And THEN off they went.

I dressed up as a pirate and answered the door to a few trick-or-treaters. Rosie thought children coming to HER door over and over again was the coolest thing ever! Unfortunately after a small spat of young kids, it trickled down to... uhm, no one else for the rest of the night. We watched t.v. I checked my e-mail. We ate a bit of candy. I went out and lit up the pumpkins and the pumpkin cauldron decorations in the front yard, plugged in the lights on the Halloween arch, and went out fifteen minutes or so to stand back and enjoy it all.

A few minutes before check-in time for William, he called from up on Main Street asking me to pick them all up and would we take them to a haunted house Jake knew about up at the casino. So we did. We blew out all the candles, turned off the porch light and went off. First we stopped at the haunted house that I'd taken William and Brandon to the night before. It was really good, with lots of skeleton pirates and zombies, even a real old hearse. Then we went to the haunted house at the casino which was done up in a big circus sized tent they have set up permanently in their parking lot. It was all done up in black plastic and relied heavily on scenes of blood and guts and lots of volunteers dressed in black and jumping out at people. The black plastic made meandering "rooms", divided by more black plastic cut and hung in strips. I figured out right away that the volunteers waited to the left or right of these strip dividers, so I waited and watched for a glimpse of them and then I jumped through and scared them!!! It was too funny. And they got really creative and ganged up to sneak up on me sneaking up on them and it was all hilarious. Also bizarrely funny was the couple with the little girl, about three perhaps, who was completely enchanted with all the hatchets and blood and gore and screaming and large hooded creatures and even more frightening, teenagers, running around. I remarked to the couple that they undoubtedly had a future goth girl on their hands, and they both shook there heads vehemently no. LOL.

Afterwards we took the kids to the other side of town and handed them money and headed them to Taco Bell. They were starving. Jeff and I went in costume to Starbucks. I called the non-costumed employees (some of the employees were dressed up, some weren't) "losers" and the barista almost didn't make me my latte! Just kidding. I convinced him that if he could do a trick that would negate the non-costumed loser status, so he wiggled his ears for me and all was well. While the kids were at Taco Bell gorging themselves on burritos with hot sauce, we sipped our lattes and watched the stream of costumed teenagers walk through the door.

We went home and brought the pumpkins in for our own enjoyment, lining them up by the television and relighting them. We replaced most of our costumes with p.j.'s and settled on the couch where William commandeered the remote to watch the end of Monday Night football and then we just vegged out until it was time to go to bed with a plate of iced cats and moons and leaves and Terry Pratchett.

This morning dawned sunny and windy. The leaves are at that wonderful midway stage where there's enough off the trees to make a crunchy, kicky carpet, but there's still enough still attached to make a glorious canopy of gold and orange and streamers of sunlight. The wind is making swirls of flying leaves out my windows that make the day picture postcard perfect. Jeff was inspired to drag William outside to rake up some of the accumulation from our two big maple trees in the side yard.

This afternoon I hope to pull together, or at least plan for tomorrow night, a modified, less effort attempt at a dumb dinner for Dia de Los Muertos. I also want to go to the local pioneer cemetery to walk around, take some photos, reflect on those who have passed on before us. I've been waiting for all the silly spookiness of Halloween to be over before going, and today seems like the perfect day for it.

So that was our Halloween, or most of it anyway. I didn't write about other haunted house we went to or the photos I took that had all sorts of orbs on it or how the orbs seemed to vanish out of the pictures when I went to look at them again today. OoooooOooooooooh! I've gotta get a move on. There's lots to do. Cleaning up the mess. Planning our family dinner. Helping William with some school work. And most frightening of all, starting the first pages of my novel. ACK! That manic shaking inside me is back again.