Halloweening

So Halloween now starts in September, and least at the local Walmart store. Actually, there were a couple rows of Halloween stuff in the gardening section, but also Christmas junk too. Christmas!!! And they dared to move my precious gardening items out in order to start marketing the better-selling holidays. I'm disgusted!

The Halloween push is on in full now, scary movies and documentaries on TV, yards decorated with cobwebs and skeletons- it's such a lovely holiday... This makes me remenisce about my Halloweens past. We lived 5 miles from our nearest neighbors, so it was a 1/2 hour drive down a bad dirt road to the closest trick or treating. Needless to say, no one came trick-or-treating to our house! When we were young, we'd rush from house to house, all dressed up. Except, our mom was creeping down the road in the car behind us, determined to let us do Halloween, but not ready to let us out of her sight.

In high school, the most fun was to meet at the local Dairy Queen with our friends. We'd bring dozens of eggs, and joyously hurled eggs at all our friends, or anyone else throwing them. We were pretty good about not throwing at outsiders, who wouldn't appreciate it, but boy did we have fun trolling the streets of Prescott with a group of guys in the back of the truck, hundreds of eggs in tow, and trying not to get plastered ourselves. Today that would get us arrested, back then it was just good fun. However, we didn't throw at everyone, just active participants, so maybe that was the difference. We'd slide into the car wash every hour, scraping the egg off the truck, and each other. Oh yeah, wet Tshirt contest, practically. In those days no one minded me in a wet Tshirt, today they'd run screaming down the road!

My kids Halloween was a little different, but not much. We lived out of town, and only had 2 neighbors to visit. We had the old 2-story farmhouse at the top of a hill, and it was haunted, so not many trick-or-treaters came by, just the 2 neighbors. If there were more kids, I could have really made it a spooky looking place, and I bet our resident ghosts would have been happy to make it creepy! Anyhow, we'd pile the kids in the car, but when they were little, the razors in candy scare was huge, so we went to the School Halloween carnival for years, it was safer. One year, I raced home from work, threw dinner together while I was putting costumes and kids together, made them eat something 'wholesome' and tried to think of my own costume, on the run. I was still dressed for work, feeling frantic and frazzled, when it came to me... I put on mismatched heels, way too much makeup, ratted my hair up and slapped a sign on my back- FranticMom. I got some pretty funny looks from the front, and a few chuckles when they passed me.

I was so excited when we moved to town, I'd finally get to hand out candy for Halloween! The first year I bought bags of candy, had a cute mega-bowl to put it in, a few decorations on the porch, and anxiously awaited the coming hordes. I was a little nervous, because our house sits back off the street, but hopefuly the kids would come. HAH! Even with the porch light on, nobody showed up! Course, our house has a long dark, gravel driveway with no lighting. My hopes were dashed, not even the older kids had the nerve to walk down that driveway with no idea what was at the end, you can't see the house at all from the street. So, my hopes of a real Halloween are dashed again. But I sure enjoyed using up all that candy! Now, out of the Mommy phase, but no grandkids coming to trick or treat, we just hang out or go out to eat, it's just not the same as a fun Halloween, but not as frantic either. Maybe some day we'll have a house that gets trick or treaters, but David said he's not moving again, so that's just a dream, I guess. Anyway, Happy Halloween!

Good friends

I just added a link to Julie Hutchins Greer's website, www.julzhutch.com. She's an amazing artist, and one of my best friends. I've always been in awe of her talent, and now that I've figured out how to add websites to my blog I want to share her art with everyone. Plus I want to brag about her- she was chosen as an 'artist in residence' at the Grand Canyon, so she will be painting a mural there in November for several weeks. I don't know where it will be yet, other than the South rim, on a building somewhere. I'll add that information when I know more.