Spooky

The boys do not seem to understand that Halloween is not an actual holiday…as in no school. Connor’s remark was that “If it’s on the calendar, it should be acknowledged in a bigger way”.

That’s my 11-year-old son…using words like “acknowledged”. I’ve reminded him that our calendar also features the lunar phases…and there’s no acknowledgement there, either.

Ya can’t win them all.

A few years ago, I found the answer to that ever-present prayer for a permanent way to display one’s pumpkin carving abilities. (What? We all have them…don’t we?!) Enter the faux-yet-carvable pumpkin:




(Okay…so “word” is nixing “carvable”…it doesn’t care whether I try it with an “e” in it, and it's offering me the choices of: “cartable, curable or servable”. Thing is, I want CARVABLE. )

Interestingly, when I use the same words in ALL CAPS, it ignores me altogether…not unlike my 16-year-old son. Sigh...

We used to decorate with the old witch-crashing-into-whatever…until it was totally being overdone and I saw them everywhere, then I simply had to stop.

In recent years, we’ve gone for the subtler approach:


There were three bodies in all and we received quite the response. I don’t know why I only took a photo of one of them…maybe I thought it was too morbid to show the ones that were clad in the boys’ castoff clothing…I honestly cannot remember.

When that got old, (read: too much effort) we moved on to “Jeffrey”:



Okay, I’m having an epiphany. Jack remarked recently that we have the need to “name everything” over here…and I guess he’s right. Evidently, our comfort zone requires that anything resembling human form, either visually or audibly (think Sophie), has to have some sort of name.

Anyway, “Jeffrey” freaked out da neighborhood. Several people commented that it was just plain creepy to see a small ghost standing motionless on someone’s front stoop for days on end…but eventually the freak-factor wore off.

Now each year, it’s becoming less and less about Halloween decorating and more and more about school breaks, (involving real holidays, thankyouverymuch) coordinating social schedules and will someone puleeze answer the phone, dammit!

Last I saw “Jeffrey”, one of his broomstick-braced legs had broken (probably in the last move) and his kickball-sized head (that really IS a kickball) had lost a significant amount of air and had a serious dent to it.

Scary.

Well, there’s always next year.