Halloween, I LOVE it!

Forever, Halloween has been my favorite holiday. I'm not sure if it really even qualifies as a true holiday, but to me it beats out Easter and even Christmas. Easter is ok, but it has always been all about the dressing up which is just not my thing. And Christmas, well I'll admit when I was a kid it was right up there with Halloween, but Adult Christmas is totally different than Kid Christmas and you know what I mean by that.

Before I go into Halloween (and I have a lot to say), I'll go over the other holidays starting with my second favorite, which is 4th of July. Always fun because I love fireworks and summer and picnics and parades. Memorial Day and Labor Day, they're just kind of non-holidays and a good excuse for a barbecue. Thanksgiving, great food, but waaayyy too much in the preparation and clean up. New Years' Eve, well I just don't drink and not much of a partier so it doesn't fit me well. Valentine's Day is great if there's candy involved, but I just can't look forward to February which is one of the most dreary months in the year. St. Patrick's Day, I don't think I even need to comment on that one. I'm sure someone would just end up hating me. Mother's Day/Father's Day, depending on the level of adoration of your children, it can be good or it can be depressing. No further comment.

So that brings us back to HALLOWEEN! So many great things are involved in this holiday! I get excited just thinking about it.

First, the season - autumn. My favorite! I love the colors, I love the crisp weather. I love having an excuse to stay inside. I love hot chocolate and hot soup. I love crockpot stew. I love fall camping. The fact that Halloween happens in the fall is just such a bonus.

Then there's the spooky factor. I've been raised on ghosts, scary stuff, ghouls and all that. Like I've said before, its in the genes and nurtured by the nature. Or however that goes. I've been encouraged (and paid) to walk through cemeteries in the dark at a very young age. When I was growing up, Creature Features was the highlight of my week. Then there was "Dark Shadows", wooooo. As a kid, my friends and I played Ouija Board as often as we played Monopoly. We had a second story in our garage and would fix it up like a haunted house and then charge the rest of the neighborhood kids two cents to tour it. So, you understand scaring and being scared is just plain fun for me.

OK, there's no beating around the bush, I love free stuff! Free samples, I'm there. I fed and diapered my first born for a month with the freebies I garnered at every baby fair I could possibly attend for nine months prior to her arrival.

Candy? Ask me if I prefer sweet or salty. What do you think? SWEET, baby.

Now put all these together: Fall + Spooky + Free + Candy = HALLOWEEN!

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

The dressing up I could do without, but let's face it, at my age its a necessity. At least the mask is anyway. Kind of hard to pass for a 12 year old without one. Yep, I'm talking about Trick or Treat and I've been doing it my whole life. Just once a year though.

When I was a kid, I'd get the bag filled up and dash home to dump it out and get back out there. One year, a family on my block was giving away World's Finest Chocolate Bars - yep, those big logs of heaven, studded with almonds. Hearing that loud thunk when it hit the bottom of my bag, digging in there to find out what it could possibly be, discovering the exquisite treasure - all this prompted me to run home, change my mask and run back repeatedly to get as many more as possible until my ruse was discovered and the WFC became a regular snack sized Hershey.

Another fun thing I did as a kid was to sort and catalog my stash. After T or T (trick or treating), I would dump out my booty in the middle of the living room floor and sort sort sort. Suckers, Mary Janes, popcorn balls, those orange or black wrapped peanut butter chewy things, these would all be donated to Mom's giveaway bowl and regifted to arriving T or T'ers. The rest of the goodies were piled into groups of type: Hershey's, Reese's, Nestles, Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, World's Finest.....and then after counting and assessing popularity of various brands, it would all go back in my bag to be enjoyed, hoarded, traded and finally when it was down to a handful of 'not sure I really like these' candies, it would end up in the community bowl to be shared.

One year, we took our dog, Stubby, T or T with us. Not for the cuteness factor, but because we could hang a bag around his neck and get extra candy. I recall one of our neighbors thinking it was just adorable that Stubby was wearing a torn pillowcase around his neck and claiming to be SuperDog. She asked if it was ok to open a piece of candy and give it to him. Sure, why not? Well, it happened to be one of those awful orange and black wrapped peanut butter chewy things. Poor Stubby only made it down the porch stairs before he realized this thing was not leaving his teeth. He plopped down at the edge of the sidewalk and proceeded to try to scrape the glob off his teeth, using his paws. While we were extremely annoyed that the group of kids we were with were NOT waiting and we were missing out on precious T or T time. That was the end of Stubby's SuperDog career.

When I kind of grew up a little bit and had kids of my own, oh yeah! We'd take a wagon so the smaller ones could ride and also so that when their plastic pumpkins got too heavy with booty, we could dump them into larger containers that rode in the wagon. When we hit the Halloween Trail, there was no going back. It went on till dinner time and then out with the relatives after dinner. One year, it was so windy, cold and rainy, we were the only ones out there. I cut black plastic garbage bags for us to wear, and we got as much candy in 10 minutes as we would normally get in two hours - since we were the only ones, people wanted to get rid of their candy and bags were literally being dumped into our greedy little plastic pumpkins.


Nowadays with no more little kids, the scam is up. It's become obvious, I do it for me. We go out at night, en masse. All the relatives that are Halloween junkies, kids and adults, but usually the adults outnumber the kids. The best neighborhoods are those with split level homes, no porch stairs to climb up, no crowding at the top with the smaller ones falling off the sides. I am careful not to show my wedding band. I make my voice three octaves higher. And the loot drops in, thunk thunk thunk.

The days and weeks after Halloween become a torment. I can no longer stuff myself with all forms of chocolate without paying the price. So I need to carefully ration out the goods, two or three pieces a day.

I used to think it was all about the candy, but have come to realize otherwise. I've asked myself, why not just hit Walgreen's the day after Halloween and buy myself all the candy I desire, all at half price? Surely, I can afford it! So obviously, its not just all about the candy. Its the fun, the ghosts, the dark, the deception!

Happy Halloween!

The Duggars (That's Spelled with a J)

I love watching the TLC shows about families - you know, the Jon & Kate disaster, that little short couple - Jen & the kind of mean husband that harps about how much Jen spends and she is a freaking DOCTOR - hellooooo WHO is the breadwinner of that couple? But I'm getting sidetracked.

I think my favorite is the stranger than fiction, Duggar family. The girls (including teenagers) all wear skirts all the time and never cut their hair. I'm kind of shocked that the girls wear make-up. The kids all get along and love and help one another. Oh, yeah, and there are 18 or 19 or 20 of them. I think, at present, there are 18 but by the time you read this there may very well be 20 or 21.

So, the other odd thing is that all the kids in the family have a name beginning with J. How clever and how smart of the mom and dad to come up with so many J names. You think? Not.

Because if there's a name that they really want and it doesn't actually begin with a J, they just respell it to suit their J fetish.

For instance, there's a girl named Jinger. Would you think this is pronounced like jingle? I would. But, no, the name is actually GINGER, but they needed to satisfy their J craving, so they spelled it JINGER and pronounce it GINGER. Lame.

The news is that their upcoming addition is actually going to be named Michael. But, spelled with a J, as in JICHAEL. But of course, it will be pronounced MICHAEL.

Lame-O's.