I Just Can't Walk Away

I hope your Halloweens went well. Mine took a delightful turn, even if I am paying for it now.

I woke up a little later than intended, but since my plan was to stay up as long as possible, the sleeping in probably worked out for the best. After breakfast, I went ahead and scared myself by paying bills and then firing up Halloweentown High so I could carve my JOL.

I would like to reiterate that I loathe gutting pumpkins and I'm not super fond of actually carving them, but it's not Halloween if I'm without a lit jack-o-lantern, huffing that sucker on a regular basis. Some years I get a little more ambitious than others, but since this year's pumpkin was bigger than the friggin' sink, I decided to keep my inspo pretty easy and just copied one of the NINE BILLION ghost buckets I got from McDonald's this year. Seriously, I have 8 buckets and it's just four each of the ghost and witch. Would it have killed the universe to throw me one cat? Maybe a zombie? Sigh.



So, that took forever and a day. I finished my movie and fired up Twitches 2, but my attention was split for that, so I eventually just restarted it when it was lunch time. I took out the bits of pumpkin that didn't get chucked and offered them to the squirrels and the crow that flew by overhead. Not sure if I had any takers, but I tried. Gonna make the seeds in a few because I knew I wouldn't have the energy to do that yesterday.

Mums had to hit CVS, so I went with and fell in love with a Halloween thingie but I wasn't paying full price for something I'm fairly certain is on sale right now, but not entirely sure since yesterday was my first time in a CVS in YEARS. Which is funny since I could walk to the CVS if the city didn't hate sidewalks and public transportation. Anyway, on our way out we saw that one of the neighbors had put up an inflatable. At first I thought yay, someone did a last minute decoration! Annnnnnnnnnd then I realized it was their Christmas Bucees inflatable. BOO. HISS.

Came home, enjoyed some sunshine (I know, so weird) and went about gathering things for Halloween night proper. Filled the bowl with my bag o' candy, grabbed some glow-sticks (is it Halloween if you don't have a green glowstick? I think not.), put on my Robin Hood costume (so comfy and POCKETS, which came in handy) and turned on the various lights. So damn cozy.

I was hopeful we'd get our first trick or treaters ever, since there are kids right next door now but as the sun set and I wandered outside, I suspect they went elsewhere. :( Widget headed out to wherever Widgets go now, and I decided to walk to the fancy part of the neighborhood and see the house with the eye-lights at night, and then see the giant skellies in their element on HALLOWEEN.

Just picture this little Halloween elf every time I say Halloween and it'll be pretty accurate.

Anyway, put on my leggings because it was kinda chilly and I knew I'd be out for awhile, remembered to wear my sneakers, and headed out. The moon overhead was nice, and there was a slight breeze. I debated putting my hood up but since I'd forgotten to put on glowstick bracelets to go with my necklace, I decided to not chance it unless it got too cold. Put a water bottle in one pocket and my phone in the other and hit the road to see the giant skelly I pass most often. It did have its eyes lit up! And this is where I made maybe my second mistake. To get to the fancy part of the neighborhood, I could continue going the way I was going, or I could loop back and go the back way, which is the way I normally go. I debated it and decided to keep going, forgetting that while the main road would be less crowded since there's a median and I'd only have to worry about traffic one way and that way was less likely to have as many cars since everyone was coming home, the road I was currently on? Yeah, people are coming home.

That road is clearly coasting with the only other decorations that I saw being the paper skeleton on the house that's clearly pro-genocide. Terrifying and also fuck them.

Main road into/out of the neighborhood has two houses that are FAB and I'll share pics later, but I also ran into a family heading out to go trick or treating. :D And had I been paying attention, I would've noticed how everyone seems to do trick or treating now, as I passed a few people sitting in their driveways.


Made it to the fun houses (yay!) but chose not to play frogger with road crossing and just admired their beauty from across the road/medians. Onward to fancy!

First house had a billion trick or treaters crawling all over it, and I realized that the pops I'd been hearing were because someone trusted a nine year old boy (guessing the age here) with a fucking cap gun. Nearly got run over by three golf carts and grumbled to myself a little over this, but also told myself they're trick or treating, I don't care all that much if the adults have golf carts. (I do, because the adults in some cases were clearly teenagers or adults who were definitely drinking and driving.) But when I decided to head into the less populated by golf carts section to see the eye house first, I passed some people in their drive way who offered me candy. :D

So for the first time in ten years or so, I went trick or treating. The first time alone, actually. Put my candy in my pocket and continued on to see the EYES. I quickly realized that I felt weird taking pictures of someone's house while they were just sitting there and I also didn't take pictures of children I don't even know because that's creepy, so I didn't really take many pictures last night. But I enjoyed the everloving shit out of seeing the houses all lit up and so many kids running around. I got wished a Happy Halloween by a little girl dressed as Minnie Mouse (and her parents/adults) and felt like I was walking on air.

One of the things I loved most about going out on Halloween, whether it was trick or treating myself or with Widget, is when the sky changes from dusk to nightfall and because I'd chosen to head out at what I'd consider normal trick or treating time (so not for very little kids, but like maybe 7 and up), I got to be out and about during it.

Saw the eye house, didn't get a good shot of it because the people were in their driveway and there was a cop car sitting down at the house with the mummy tree (I'm guessing the fancy dock area was having a party or something? Or maybe they're just paranoid, I dunno, as I didn't investigate), and then decided rather than circle back the way I came, I'd go down the road that never seemed to have any actual decorations.

I learned that they don't seem to have street lights at all, which meant once I was away from eyeball house and the house that put up two solar mini trees:

it was pretty much all darkness with people shouting and chatting from various driveways. At the other end, after I crossed the road to avoid trick or treaters and also the skunky pot cloud, I did see quite a few lit JOLs.

Waved to the nice candy people again and headed off to see the other skelly. This is when I realized that yeah, apparently very few people still wait at their door for ToTs anymore, as nearly everyone was in a lawn chair at the end of their driveway, or you'd have a house with two or three people from various houses handing out candy. Kid!me stomped her foot and screamed about how unfair it was that in order to hit the truly fancy parts of my neighborhood growing up, we had to hoof it up a million steps and there was nary a golf cart or car to be found. You earned that freakin' candy and got a workout in the process. But adult!me, other than getting twitchy at having to dodge so many people, definitely enjoyed the chatter that floated through the night. It was comforting and something different from what I grew up with and what Widget and I experienced during his ToT years.

I also got to witness the fact that kids do still understand the rules of which houses to hit, as a cheerleader very seriously told her cohorts that they shouldn't go to a house which had lots of lights on but no porch light, since that meant they weren't handing out candy. Since we were in the fancy part, I didn't think it was like ours, where the HOA fucking still hasn't fixed it after years. I hope the people in the house didn't expect trick or treaters.

At multiple points I did wonder when we stopped teaching people which side of the road you walk on because holy fuck. I also wondered why so many people parked IN THE STREET on Halloween. Not even partially on the grass, these assholes had huge trucks (and it was always a truck) just parked in the damn street.

I hit the house with the free little library, admired their porch set up, but didn't take pics since right next door they were clearly having a little block party. I loved the person who called out, "Happy Halloween, person I don't know!" to me. After that, I turned right and headed around the circle, and the next big group I passed was pretty close to the street and I swear they looked like they were posed for a group photo, they were all so close to each other. The dogs (not leashed) lost their minds as I went by, and it wasn't until I was nearly two doors down when I heard someone say, "Oh that's why Molly (the dog) was going nuts, someone just went by." Madame, I am not a small person. My costume had white that was pretty visible, and I was sporting a giant green glowing necklace that hadn't faded. I didn't blend into the shadows, like, at all. The fact that NONE of these people saw me was both amusing and a little weird as fuck. I shook it off and admired the house that tends to go pretty all out and they had music and extra lights. After that, it was pretty much done in the fancy part, though I did pass a few more houses decorated but those all had bowls and I didn't think I should partake. It was one thing when people offered (full size bars!) but I wasn't trying to wind up on Nextdoor with some Ring camera footage. Though, given that I was Robin Hood, maybe I should've gone hood up and done so. Hmm.

Anyway, made it out of the fancy part and headed home. My legs were starting to scream (keep in mind I'd just done this walk not too long ago, though that was during the day, and I'd added to it) and I wanted to get home because I was hungry. Had to dodge traffic around yet another truck parked in the street, and then wonder why this section of the neighborhood was so foggy/smokey and it just occurred to me that maybe someone had a fog machine that didn't actually work that well. D'oh. Wished another set of kids a happy halloween and stupidly took the longer way home because I thought I'd see more lights. I... did not. So my legs cried and by the time I made to our street, I'd kind of blocked out any lights I'd seen before and just wished the ducks a happy and safe Halloween, then all but ran for home.

There was a moment when I turned back into our part of the neighborhood when I saw a bunch of kids go into the complex by the pool that has stairs and thought, "oh, dang, so they really are just ignoring our section, but will brave stairs?" but I think that maybe they were just going home at that point.

Made it home, admired my skelly family, and then rang the doorbell and found out that I was the only trick or treater. Woe.

More candy for me. :D Had tacos, watched half of Over the Garden Wall, and then passed out sometime after 10 because I am old and had been up since 6am.

It was magical and wonderful and weird all at the same time, just the way Halloween should be.

*dances* Target's Halloween drop went about as well as I could have hoped for, as I knew there'd be something borked. In this case it was them having their Target card down so I had to make other arrangements, however I'd kind of already planned for that so it didn't super matter. I kind of ran through like a madwoman trying to find all the little subseries I love (you might recall my obsessive love for their take on the Halloween villages and I do try to nab a Featherly Friend when I can, plus their felt duos are always cute and I do love a black cat and you get the idea so I'll hush) while trying to outrun anyone else causing sell outs. It doesn't look like I needed to do so as word didn't seem to hit that the stuff was up until right as I was checking out (finally) but still.

So I'm trying to go back through now that I've nabbed the stuff I loved right away and see if I missed anything. It's a good thing their card was down because otherwise I would've missed that they seem to have done something odd with their mini mantle series, but we'll get to that.

I do want to know when Target made you jump through extra hoops to add things to your cart? I do know the last time I considered buying MH from them I couldn't seem to get it to work (I feel like a jackass because it's literally just hitting another button but still) and it took me entirely too long to realize that all the things I'd hit "add to cart" and then run to the next thing? None of them made it to the cart. Argh.

Anyway! So um. Bought some stuff and thought I'd also share some stuff in case you wanted to admire but didn't want to dig through however many pages of stuff.

First up, stuff I didn't buy but might remedy:


Creepy Translucent Plastic Phone will set you back $15.
If not for my absolute certainty that the sounds would drive me bonkers and that Widget would likely steal this, I would've bought this because who doesn't love buying something modeled after their childhood only now as a Halloween prop to make you feel old?!

If you like neon, I suggest going straight to their Throwback Collection.

( More under the cut. )

Halloween landed yesterday at AG but since I had to do battle with the black cats, I didn't get time to post until today. Ooh. Ahh.



( Pictures AHOY! )

Happy Halloween! Another year of no trick or treaters but I'm used to that by now. I managed to carve my pumpkin and I'm glad I wasn't foolish enough to try and tackle either the haunted house or Ruby Gloom and instead went with Toothless. I think he came out pretty well, actually.

I went to take pictures with my camera and found that sometime within the last however many months it died. :( The screen in the back is all blown out and it's impossible to tell what you're taking a picture of. Sigh. I know my phone's got a better megapixel thing going on but I liked my camera. I guess it did live a pretty long life but still.

More pictures of my displays to come later, I think.

Happy Halloween a few hours late! It's still before sunup so I'm counting it because if I happened to be at work, it'd still be Tuesday to me.
Anyway, this year's Halloween proper wasn't awful. It wasn't spellbindingly amazing but it was nice. I tried to figure out the best time for sleep so I didn't crash in the late afternoon and then miss everything. This didn't work out exactly right because the dog sang for an hour right in the middle of my snoozing and if you happen to wake for any of her song, you ain't getting back to sleep. Which means that by 8:30 I was yawning like an old lady and by 10 I was passed out in bed with the cat snoozing on me in that way that says "yesssssss, you are mine and now I shall proceed to knead you into submission. Pay no attention to the pain, it's part of my process."

But I got my pumpkin carved and this means my favorite scent in the world was available. Mmm. The smell of Halloween is a lit jack o lantern and a bowl of chocolate candy. The candy is negotiable but the pumpkin is not. This year I couldn't find our usual apple or cinnamon candle so I went with a candy corn one and it worked pretty well. The carving itself is one of my least favorite things in general but the gutting, which is normally my least favorite part, was actually pretty easy. Which meant that when it came time to carve my dragon, I got cocky and well... I knew it was a dragon but Mums, even when I left the stencil out, was all, "It's a lovely bat, right?" It looked better lit though.

Annnnnnnnd hours later I return to this. In my defense, the dog needed walking and stuffs. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So Cass stopped by after work and we discussed the dumpster fire that is a sort of mutual friend's life and how much of said fire is likely due to her hooking up with 'former' meth-heads.
Widget went out with his mom because of course he did. I couldn't very well say no, you must stay home with meeeeeeee as we await the trick or treaters who aren't going to show. This year I didn't even hear them when I went out after dinner to get the mail. I wandered around the townhouses and yeah, not a single kid to be found. I imagine that most were in the richer section of the neighborhood but it's still very strange to compare Halloween now to how it was when I was a kid.
Tangent time - I grew up in a fairly rich neighborhood and you earned very last calorie of those candy bars because the houses in the very back of the neighborhood had a million steps and you had to walk up and down huge lawns and basically it was a workout. So if you'd offered me the chance to cut waaaaaaay down on the walking and hit the townhouses like here? Uh, yes. But I get the feeling from the way a lot of people, everywhere, are talking that ToTing has basically fallen prey to the trunk or treating and who knows what else. Which is strange because it's not like the people handing out candy from their cars aren't strangers, too. Hell, I'd probably trust the weirdos in the neighborhood more than someone who just appears from wherever. Also, see above about the walking and the walking to get said candy.
The alternatives to trick or treating make sense to me in the more country parts of the state, or even certain neighborhoods where maybe going outside as it's getting dark is just a bad idea, either from a traffic or *ahem* gun situation (looking at you, North Charleston!) but otherwise... why?

Let's see. So I spent most of my Halloween evening at home with my festive decorations and lights, and honestly, I enjoyed myself. I really do need to figure out where to put the green lights next year because I think it'd work well. Maybe do a strand of green in with the purple above the door? *muse* Also, need to get wall stickies or something to replace the ones that will not be saved at the end of this season.

Watched The Weekender's Halloween special and Recess: Taking the 5th, the Halloween part before falling asleep. Both deal with losing your Halloween spirit/changing how you deal with Halloween after trick or treating might not be for you but handle it in different ways. They both make me fairly happy and don't require too much attention... which is good because I was falling asleep. :p

Took pictures of the various set-ups but if you're looking for the annual AG army, that did not happen. I ran out of time and energy and decided I could either frazzle my nerves and not finish or I could just allocate my energy elsewhere. I still plan on reviewing the two costumes I bought, and I'll do the same for the two things I bought from AG if they ever arrive. Anyway, the pics went up on FB but I probably won't have time to share here until the weekend.

This Halloween blew. First was my vacation getting screwed, then the hurricane, then not getting paid properly but not wanting to bring it up until I see if they did what I think they did, the stress of that...
Then my little pumpkin mysteriously sprouted white mold and died. My big pumpkin apparently was decently easy to gut but when trying to put a design on it, things did not go well. First it was too big, then too small, and back and forth it went til Mums comes along and free hands it. It should've been pretty easy but when Widget came by to give me a kiss before heading out to hang out with his friends (Widgetless on Halloween is another blow against this day), I wasn't paying attention and cut the wrong damn piece. Sigh. Mom nearly impaled herself with a toothpick trying to reattach it. My pumpkin glowstick was apparently popped in the package so it didn't work (what the hell) and this was the first year in eons where I hadn't stockpiled them. I also didn't have quite enough tea lights because I never found where I put last year's box of two dozen.
Basically the day was just not fun. It's nice and spooky looking right now, but the dog also keeps whining and I swear to all that is holy, she would whine off and on for five freakin' hours and it drove me insane. She shut up just in time for Mums to tell Widget to take her out and then we were back to another five hours of whining. I love you, dog, but you're fucking with me and I can tell because when you're actually whining because of a real reason, you don't pant and look at me like "oh, uh... pay no attention to the dog behind the curtain." This is the same dog who hurt her paw once during a great escape and after getting waited on for one day, tried the trick the next day but switched paws. (Yes.)

Sigh.

SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH.

No trick or treaters. I did amaze some dude when walking the doofy dog this evening. She and I were walking by the ducks and I short-leashed her because a car was coming by and I don't trust people on a normal night to not get too close (she tends to wander into oncoming traffic. She's... special.) This meant we were basically right next to the ducks and he says, "Wow, is she friends with the ducks? Do they get along?" only sounding less doofy. Yes, they're cool. She ignores them, they let her live, it's a thing. The ducks are getting a little riled up at this point and she's just calm as can be, so he rides off with a, "Wow, that's cool" after I tell him "happy Halloween" and she and I continue home.

The most vexing thing is again, trick or treaters exist. I saw some, and it was pretty late for 'em, so... wtf. You could even see our decorations (some of them, anyway) from the street.

SIIIIIIIIGH.

Well. On the plus side, it's really pretty now and I also got to make my AG order thanks to luxken27 and free shipping. I debated a long, long time on this and the recent addition of taxes basically meant I scaled back more than I'd originally intended, but I'm pretty sure I'll like everything I bought.

Yes. Everyone else did do this. But y'know what? Given that my Halloween kind of sucked, I don't really care. Woo.

( pandas and dinos and sailors, ohmy! )

And I got mail, with amusing halloween joke stickers, from ghosty4. I felt so special. :D