I basically had a calm Halloween season despite a few bumps. This year I decided to put up my decorations earlier in October than my usual waiting until a day or two before Halloween when I hurriedly put everything up. I thought it would give me a chance to get in the festive mood more. The only bad thing with that decision was that about a week or two ago someone came up to my doorstep and took the rubber bat that I usually have dangling over my mailbox.
I won that bat an an office party that was held through one of my old jobs as a clerical worker and I’ve displayed it over my mailbox for the last few years. I looked around the area of the mailbox to make sure that the string didn’t just snap but I didn’t find the bat. I think someone just walked up to my porch and took it. Granted I didn’t have a major sentimental attachment to that rubber bat but it’s still annoying that someone would be so brazen as to walk up to my front porch and just steal it outright.
So this year I replaced the bat with the grim reaper. So far no one has swiped him.
Here is what he looked like with the porch light turned on behind him at night.
About the web that can be seen over the Grim Reaper’s shoulder, it’s a real web that was made by a spider. I don’t do the fake webs that one can find on sale in the stores this time of the year. Those fake webs don’t look realistic at all compared to a real one. The best thing about this real web was that I didn’t have to pay anything for it. 🙂
I have both the coffin and the ghost from Scream in the same places as last year.
I got this free Halloween decoration when I purchased a bag of Utz Bats & Jacks Pretzels to give out to the kids. I ultimately decided to put it over the mailbox at the very last minute before the official Trick or Treat time began.
I had some candles lit on the edge of the porch.
The biggest difference between this year and last year is that I didn’t do any pumpkins this time. I caught a cold about a week and a half before Halloween, which totally sucked. (What was weird was that I caught this cold about a day or two after those news reports about a nurse in Texas who caught the Ebola virus while caring for a Liberian man—who later died from it—who was transferred to NIH in Bethesda. I became paranoid that people would fear that my coughing and sneezing fits were Ebola-related and try to avoid me. It didn’t help that the news media were fanning hysteria about that illness. NIH has since released that nurse while declaring that she’s free of Ebola.) I was still too tired to do any kind of carving.
On top of it, my oven broke a few months ago and I’ve been trying to pool enough money so I can have someone repair it. (In the meantime I’ve been using the stovetop and the microwave oven to cook my food.) So even if I could gather seeds, I wouldn’t have an oven to roast them in until after I get it repaired.
I even managed to shoot some video between the Halloween preparations. I didn’t shoot a whole lot of footage. I’m currently working out a potential future idea. I don’t know if or when I’ll upload it because I need to find the time to view the footage I shot to see if my idea really worked. I accidentally pressed the wrong button on my smartphone camera so I ended up with a couple of stills from this video which may or may not see the light of day.
Here is what I gave out that night. The first 20 trick or treaters received packs of Halloween-themed temporary tattoos, which can be seen in the bottom row of the below photo. The rest of the trick or treaters got the Utz Halloween Pretzels bags. I managed to give away all 20 temporary tattoo sets but only a few additional people came to the door so I have a lot of Halloween Pretzel bags left over. (If I have to estimate, I think no more than 25 kids came knocking at my door.)
At one point the lingering cold was making me a little bit on the tired side so I decided to drive by the local mall to get myself a couple slices of pizza to take home so I wouldn’t have to cook. I ended up entering the mall through the back because there was a huge lines of cars trying to enter through the front parking lots. I parked in the back and entered the mall where I noticed a lot of costumed trick or treaters. I remembered that the local mall has an alternative Halloween event for kids as an alternative to trick or treating door to door. But I found this sign banning masks for participants over 13 to be a bit off-putting (even though I can understand the reason—they want to deter people shoplifting while disguising themselves with masks).
There were a lot of kids in costumes with their parents. Maybe I sound old-fashioned but I really just don’t see the appeal with trick or treating in a shopping mall. Are the merchants as generous with candy or other treats as private homes or not? I don’t know. Trick or treating in a suburban shopping mall was unheard of when I was growing up. I basically took a couple of quick photos, ordered the take-out pizza and drove home just in time for the official start of trick or treat time in my town.
Like I wrote earlier, I didn’t get a lot of trick or treaters coming by my door this year compared to previous years. So I decided to go to the annual Halloween party that’s thrown in the home of a couple of my friends. On my way to that party, I saw this over-decorated home.
So I went to the party of the same friends who have a Halloween night party every year. This year I wore the same My Little Pony Rainbow Dash hoodie as last year and I paired it with the V For Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask. It’s the same outfit that I wore at the Million Mask March in Washington, DC last November.
Actually I ended up wearing that mask for a very short time mainly because I had forgotten how little ventilation there is in that mask. On top of it, the eyeholes are pretty small so you have to position the eyeholes in a certain way or else you won’t have very good vision. But I kept up with wearing the hoodie. I had a little bit of trepidation because of both my ongoing cold and the fact that the previous two years I encountered something less than pleasant. Two years ago I was enjoying myself at that same party in the same location until my estranged husband and the other woman both showed up about an hour and a half after I arrived and I began to feel queasy in my stomach so I left. Last year it was the same situation. I was enjoying myself for the first hour and a half after I arrived at that party until my ex-husband and his new wife both arrived. I left immediately afterwards.
This year I left after being at the party for an hour and a half but it was for a different reason. I was feeling tired from that lingering cold so I left. I didn’t encounter either my ex-husband or his second wife (who used to be one of my friends until she became the other woman), which was good for me. 🙂
The cool thing about Halloween being on a Friday this year is that the Day of the Dead immediately follows so one can parlay this into a whole weekend of fiendish fun.
So yesterday was the first day of El DĂa de los Muertos and I spent that morning going through some clutter in my living room. I went to this Slavic Festival that was held at a local Eastern Orthodox church. Basically there was Slavic food on sale that one can either consume now or buy in a frozen bulk so one can eat it at a later date. So I ate lunch there and a couple of my friends also happened to show up at the same time so we ate together and socialized for a while. I spent close to $25 on frozen pre-cooked Slavic food but I have enough food to last me six days if I was to eat an all Slavic diet for dinner over the next week. But I probably won’t do that. I’ll try to spread the Slavic food over the next month or so by eating it once or twice a week.
That evening I checked out a free movie that was being screened at a local community center. The film was Hotel Transylvania and it was an animated feature movie. I found that it was okay as a movie in that it wasn’t as good as some other animated movies I’ve seen in recent years (such as Frozen and Brave) but it wasn’t terrible either. I saw it for free so I’m not going to complain about it.
This morning was the start of the second day of the Day of the Dead and it was very cold because of this wind that arrived in the middle of the night and it’s still blowing as I’m writing this entry. As I opened my door this morning I saw that the paper machĂ© coffin that I previously propped up on the door that leads to where I store the garbage can had blown over on the porch with the lid and the rest of the coffin being separated. I took that as a signal to bring the coffin inside before the wind picks it up again and blow it further away.
I went to church this morning where there was a guest speaking. Her name was Beth Baker and she was doing a talk based on her book With a Little Help From Our Friends: Creating Community as We Grow Older. She had a book signing after the service. I ultimately bought a copy, which she signed, mainly because I’m currently divorced and alone and I know that I probably have to make all kinds of contingency plans just in case something happens to me.
I headed home where I upgraded my MacBook operating system from Mavericks to Yosemite. (I’m still marveling at the new desktop wallpaper featuring a giant mountain.) So far everything is working out as of this writing. It was also the end of Daylight Savings Time so I had an extra hour of sleep last night, which was really great!
After spending a few hours at home, I went back to church around 5 p.m. because it was showing a free movie featuring former Labor Secretary Robert Reich that was called Inequality For All. I’ve heard so much about this movie via Facebook and I’m glad that I had a chance to see it. Even though it’s depressing at times, it really is an excellent movie that raises awareness as to how messed up this country really is in terms of the economy. I’m not really going to write further on this because this is supposed to be an entry about Halloween and Day of the Dead, not the screwed-up economy.
I’m currently finishing out the evening by doing some software updates on both my iPodTouch and my iPad. It’s been a pretty good holiday weekend for me with going to a Halloween party, seeing two free movies, and going to a book signing at my church. It doesn’t get any better than this! 🙂
Sagittarius Dolly 