This is Halloween

I've had that song running through my head all week! And now finally today it is Halloween, and in fact as I type this, it's almost over. I'm starting this blog post at 5:28 pm, so I'll have to stop in a minute and get the kids ready to go out trick-or-treating.  

And now it's 10:30 pm and they're all tucked in for the night and the cats are fed and I can finally return to the blog. I think I'll go ahead and finish the post now -- it's not too late. I took a shower earlier today, so when I'm done I can just crawl into bed.

It was a mixed week -- got some things done, didn't get other things done. Having the book group here on Monday was lovely, and wonder of wonders, no one was scornful about my little Halloween dolls. Instead, they enjoyed them. "They're so cute!" They really are. They didn't remember ever seeing them before, which is possible. In 20+ years, the book group may just never have been to my house right before Halloween, until this year.

I got my flat tire fixed on Tuesday, and though I had to sit in the waiting room for two hours, at least it wasn't four hours, as they had predicted when I walked in without an appointment. There was a screw in the tire. They fixed it for free. I don't know why -- maybe that's some service I paid for when I bought the tires two years ago. I wonder how long they'll keep doing that? I probably have some paperwork in a pile somewhere that specifies.

I worked on my novel some, but not enough -- but it's OK. Now I have all November to work on it, even though the action of the story ends on November 1st. 

And then today, lovely Halloween. We carved our pumpkins (see photo above of the twins working on theirs and of course this lovely one of me). Teen B's pumpkin had a bleeding eye (we used food coloring), while Teen A's had square eyes and mouth (but he swore it had nothing to do with Roblox -- I am suspicious). I did a cat face in the little white pumpkin and a generic scary face in the big orange one. 

Rocket Boy celebrated Halloween in St. Louis. He got two pumpkins and carved them both (he texted us photos) and gave out granola bars to his surprised neighbors. It was fun texting photos back and forth with him. Maybe next year he'll be with us.

I realize that I am wearing a tank top and capri pants in the photo above, revealing my fat arms and calves (and also I am barefoot), but it was actually really cold here today. The high was supposed to be 43 or some such, but I'm not convinced it ever got out of the 30s. And so gloomy. Somehow very appropriate for the last day of October, the last lovely day.

In half an hour it will be November. The transition from October to November is always important for me. It makes me think of a poem by David Ignatow called "Rescue the Dead." I don't think I really understand the poem, but in it he contrasts loving and living, and I think of those as representing October and November. There's the line about how to live "is to set bread upon the table/and a knife discretely by." But also,

To love is to be led away
into a forest where the secret grave
is dug, singing, praising darkness
under the trees.

To love is October; to live is November. After tonight I must set aside the dark and the forest, and go back to setting bread upon the table (and a knife discretely by).

And in some ways I'm ready. I'll miss October, but November is always something of a relief, too. No more black and purple -- I try to wear more blue and brown. I don't really own a lot of brown clothes, so I substitute gray. Note to self: buy something brown to wear? I tell myself that most Novembers but I don't do anything about it. 

When I was 17 I had a beautiful brown dress with little gray and blue flowers on it. It was very flattering. I don't think I have a picture of it.

I had gotten costumes for the cats, but Sillers' witch cape didn't work out very well. It was too big and kept sliding down her body. Cats don't really have shoulders, as such, and so there's nothing to really hold a cape in place. I think the costume was actually for a small dog.

She didn't audibly object to the costume, didn't hiss or scratch when I put it on her. Just looked very sad and very confused, and hurried around the house with it sort of partly falling off. We took it off her pretty quickly.

There was a funny bit in Allie Brosh's second book about people who involve their pets in holiday celebrations and what the pets probably think about it. I can't really describe it -- you have to get the book from the library and see for yourself. Solutions and Other Problems is what it's called. Pretty funny, though perhaps not as good as her first book, Hyperbole and a Half. But still, not a bad second act.

Baby Kitty's costume was more successful: a candy corn collar, definitely intended for cats. He wore it for quite a while, didn't seem to mind it too much. But still, there was an indescribable expression on his face, something like, "There's something wrong here but I don't know what it is... I hope that soon it goes away... How much longer are we going to do this, exactly?"

Eventually he made an attempt to take it off, so I took it off and put it on Sillers instead, for a while. She liked it better than the witch cape, but still, she had that expression on her face. That hysterically funny but also very sad expression.

Last year, during Covid, neither twin went trick-or-treating, and the year before, only Teen B did. So it had been three years since Teen A went out on the 31st, but he did it this year. Here they are heading out (the photo was taken from across the street -- perish the thought of actually posing so Mom can take our picture). Teen B wore a long wig and his wizard costume, which he has had for ages -- maybe since 2016? I looked back at my old blog, but I don't mention their costumes every year. In 2019 I say we've really gotten our mileage out of that costume, and in 2015 he was Harry Potter (a different kind of wizard). So he probably got this wizard costume in 2016 or 2017. It gets shorter every year, but it still zips up, even over his hoodie. Teen A wasn't really anything in particular -- just wore black pants and hoodie, but he had a red bandana tied around his face and tucked into the hoodie and it actually looked kind of creepy. So it was fine, and nobody cares what you wear, anyway.

They went by themselves -- a first. In 2019 I went with Teen B (who was still Kid B at the time). This year there was no question that they would go alone. I stayed home with the cats and read a spooky novel -- The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle. Every so often there would be a knock at the door and the cats would jump up in horror. They are not used to having all these visitors! There weren't that many kids out, though -- cold, Covid, plus it's Sunday. We sure have a lot of candy left. It's OK. I bought Tootsie pops and dum-dums, and those won't go bad. We can save them for next year!

Well, it's almost midnight, so I should finish this up and go to bed. It was a lovely night, a lovely month. And now it's over.