It's Finally October!

Happy first day of my favoritest, leaf twirliest, spookiest, pumpkiniest month of the year - October! There are a few months of the year I could zip through without much thought, but I'd happily extend October into a double month. It's the best month of the year - not too hot anymore, not too cold yet, and all that wonderful spookiness and autumn color.

Today is my first day to Post Spooky. Nothing totally amazing today as I ended up fighting with my internet server all night and had to go in and see if they could fix this recurring evening outage problem. We'll see how it goes. Knock on wood. Then today I had issue with blogger deciding I had no more photo storage space, even though I don't store my photos in their photo area. It all seemed sort of fishy to me. Grrrr, argh. So that was a bit more time wasted. I think, knock on wood again, it's solved, at least for now.


This first photo might not seem spooky at first glance, but if you look closely, this is a bunch of guys, football players, dressed up in the girl's drill team uniforms. The tops are sequined purple and gold. So, a bit spooky, at least for this community. And a LOT funny. These guys actually did a great job with their spoof, their dance routine was fantastic! My son, you ask? Nah, he wasn't brave enough.


He was a referee. I think he really liked this whistle in his mouth. He's the one in the non-striped black and white. They wanted him to be a coach but he decided coaching powder puff football might be .... difficult. His words - "Have you spent time with teenage girls lately? They don't know very much about football!" I have to say, except for a couple mild goofs, the girls did a pretty great job playing the game. Technically it was flag football, but the instinct to tackle must run strong because there were more than a handful of kids down before the game was over. Girlz rool, boyz.... look hawt in tite pantz!

Now on to the more spooky part of the post. Although, not so spooky either. I thought I'd get this one out of the way first, as way of comparison. On our recent holiday, we spent a lot of time visiting cemeteries, mainly pioneer cemeteries, but sometimes they were cemeteries that were still in use.

Each cemetery has it's own personality and feel. Each one has different pluses and minuses, unique photographing opportunities, different historical stories and unique beauty. This last one, in Chester, California, was the last one we visited. We thought it was a pioneer cemetery but it was in fact a very contemporary cemetery.

In fact it was so new that it had one of those "flat plaques" rules, meaning no headstones or other permanent upright grave markers. Makes for easier, more efficient lawn care I guess. It was pretty, what with all that grass (not something you find naturally in the high mountains) and tall shadowy fir trees. The trees shed needles that, instead of laying flat on the ground, stuck up all pokey in the soft grass. One walked on it at your own risk. I got stabbed several times. But I really dislike the idea of "efficient" cemeteries. Cemeteries shouldn't be made to make life more convenient for the living, they should be made to be meaningful to the living. And beautiful. And spiritual. And comforting. And a lot of other "and"s, but not "and efficient".


They did allow people to leave tins of silk or plastic flowers. There were also some freestanding figures . Two of these faeries, identical.

And about a half dozen of these angels, all identical. I walked the entire cemetery and they were all the same. Honestly, it was sort of creepy in a Stepford Angel sort of way. I'm not making fun of the people who left them there, I would certainly want to put one up if that was my only choice, but I just couldn't help but wonder HOW they'd ended up allowing, or perhaps only offering, these two statues. Did the local mortuary offer them as a package deal? Were they the only two statues on the officially accepted figurine list? You'd think that if all those families went out and bought statues, the odds of them all choosing the same statues by coincidence is sort of out there, right?

First, let me point out that it was very nice of someone to put this sign up so that people knew it was acceptable to drive through the gates. I imagine many elderly people appreciate not having to walk from the parking lot to the far end of the cemetery. That said, notice they spelled "cemetery" incorrectly? And it would be nice to "just sit & ponder" if there had actually been any benches offered to sit ON. Can't sit down in the needle spikey grass. Maybe you can sit in your car.

All this catches my attention because, although my reasons for visiting cemeteries might be a bit atypical, people visit cemeteries for any number of reasons, most often to visit a particular loved one, and the point here is that cemeteries should be designed more for the living than for the dead. I don't meet many living people in cemeteries, but I meet more living than I do deceased.

I am considerate of the spirits of those deceased that lay at rest in any given cemetery, but I don't really get a sense that a lot of "ghosts" hang out in them. I mean, if you were a ghost, would you hang out in a cemetery? I think ghosts prefer to hang out with the living, if they hang around at all. At least, interactive ghosts. There's the type of haunting that's more of a replaying of a recorded event, can't remember what you call it, that one would find in an abandoned or isolated area. But ghosts that aren't just a pattern, are probably not in cemeteries unless you specifically talk to them and call them there momentarily.

Of course, that's all before I read the lovely story The Graveyard Book, which is a totally different, magickal take on cemetery life. Although I'll stick with my original view on who and what inhabits a graveyard, I have to admit that I see a whole new facet to cemeteries since I've read the book. We all need some comforting and lovely fantasy in our world.

One last bit. I've already showed folks the Halloween tea cozy I made a few weeks ago. This is also my old tea pot, the one that the top broke on last month. Happily, I found a replacement top that's hard to tell from the original. The tea cozy fits this pot but it doesn't fit my new, smaller pots. I'm going to have to make some MORE tea cozies. But, I digress.

What I wanted to show you was the lovely little tea cup and saucer I bought in a thrift shop in my trip. It's gold plated (gold trimmed?) and has a ring of autumn gold leaves painted on it. No marks on the bottom so I don't know who or when it was made, but still lovely. And the little dog is a creamer I bought this weekend as well, in a kitchen shop. They also had a cow creamer and a cat creamer (the cat had it's paw raised for the milk to come out of ) but I thought the dog was the cutest. All white, he's sort of like a little ghost dog. In the pot, caramel brulee black tea when this photo was taken. Tonight, same set up, only with a spiced vanilla black tea and one of the vegan pumpkin spice muffins I made and froze a while back.

Don't forget to check out the other Post Spooky participants in the sidebar - their numbers are growing. And I've posted some spooky art and art supplies over on Laume's Studio.