Halloween 2015

I know you’re dying to know how my dire predictions for Halloween 2015 panned out.  First, I’m glad to say that we did not enjoy any more horf-a-thons (thank you, handwashing and swabbing self down with bleach wipes).  I’m not holding my breath that we’ll get out of the rest of the Horf Season scot free, but at least we were not affected on Halloween.  The rain, however, hoo boy. The rain.  On Friday, it poured, and poured and poured and tornadoed and poured some more.  The airport about 20 minutes away from our house got fifteen inches of rain on Friday. We normally get about 32 inches of rain a year. So yeah, about half that in one day. Good times.  Needless to say, the school festival was cancelled.  Early school pickups and cancelled work parties were also involved. Trick or Treating was looking a little iffy, but the rain stopped by mid-morning on Saturday and we were good to go. 

I spent Halloween morning driving around to find pumpkins to carve.  Pro-tip:  do not wait until Halloween morning to find pumpkins to carve because you will drive to four different stores, only settling for the last one out of desperation and they will sell you janky pumpkins for $5 a pop. ("janky pumpkins," that’s a technical term).

I had a plan that the boys would draw their own jack-0-lantern faces and we’d carve them out together.  Rowan became bored with this plan approximately 30 seconds in.   Hopper was happy to draw the jack-0-lantern face, but wanted nothing to do with it after that. So their grandmother and I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to gut these pumpkins, which seemed to possess an excessive amount of slimy innards, probably because they were janky. We finished what seemed like 3 hours later (but was probably only about 45 minutes). 

Costume time rolled around and the boys were still very much anti-facepaint, even though I managed to tackle them down and sit on their heads to apply a bare minimum—just a puppy nose! COME ON IT WILL NOT KILL YOU. (there was screaming and a claim that it might, in fact, be somewhat deadly).

That is me. I was a sandwitch. 

Wiping off facepaint. Busted. 

We started our trick-or-treating at 6:30pm which I think is a fairly reasonable time? I mean, it wasn’t quite dark yet, but it was hardly lunchtime. You would not believe the lack of participation in the ‘hood for 6:30pm trick-or-treating.  In some cases, there were senior citizens who hadn’t quite gotten around to locking their front gates and turning off the porch light. In other cases it was just plain WTF-ery. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was always taught that the Universal Signal for I HAVE CANDY was to decorate your house and leave the porch light on to beckon the kiddies.  You don’t do the following:

Decorate your house/leave light on and do not answer door, even though we can clearly see the blue light from your TV flickering.

Decorate your house/leave light on, answer your door and say you have no candy.

I do not understand the decoration/non-participation aspect here. And yet, welcome to 1/3 of my neighborhood.

And then there's this dude. I'm not exactly sure what he was doing other than possibly plotting to take someone out. He didn't jump up and yell BOO or anything, maybe because I was shooting him a look that read, "if you jump up and point a gun at my children (even if it is a toy) I will take you the $@* OUT." Seems an odd choice, right?  This same group of folks were sitting outside on lawn chairs and had disemboweled baby dolls sitting on the chairs next to them.  So, I just. Yeah, I don't know. (but it should be noted: they had candy, so: points? I guess?). 

Luckily, the boys are still young enough that they get tired after about an hour of this business, so we headed back home where they insisted on being the ones to hand out the candy at our house for the rest of the night, even though Rowan insisted on doing so in his underwear.  We had no pants. BUT WE HAD CANDY. I sense a new family motto.