Happy sort of almost Halloween!

I like Halloween, and autumn in general.  I like orange leaves, cool weather, and basically everything pumpkin-related.  I like baking pumpkin cookies, I like making pumpkin seeds, I like eating pumpkin pie, I love carving pumpkins, and I enjoy calling people Punkin.  And since Halloween embraces pumpkindom enthusiastically, me and the holiday, we’re pals.  I also enjoy the costume-making, even though I’ve never really been all that good at coming up with my own costumes.  I think the problem is that I am a master procrastinator, and so I rarely start planning for the holiday in time to put together a respectable outfit.  Even so, I’ve decided to share with you some of my more memorable costumes.

1. MOOSE

At my elementary school, they let us to dress up for Halloween, under ONE EDUCATIONAL CONDITION:  We could only dress up as a character from a book we had read that year.  It was called Cast of Characters, and the day ended with the students putting on a parade through all the other classrooms and up onto the cafeteria stage, showing of their literary costumes.

Now, the “only characters from books that you read this year” rule was pretty clearly meant to encourage kids to stick to their reading level for costume ideas.  When I was a 6th grader, however, I took it to mean instead that picture books were totally fair game, since I could read one of those the morning of Halloween and still meet the “read this year” requirement.  So I decided I was going to be the moose from If You Give A Moose A Muffin, written by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond (the reading level of which, by the way, is ages 4 to 8).

So I found some brown pants and a brown shirt, dug reindeer antlers out of the Christmas box at home, and I was all set for the Cast of Characters parade.

My teacher actually didn’t say anything about my almost junior high school self wearing a costume ripped from the pages of a children’s book, somewhat surprisingly.  I suspect that since I was a pretty avid reader, and he knew that I had read plenty of age-appropriate books that year that I could have chosen from, he didn’t really care if I wanted to be a weirdo and dress up as a picture book moose.

The other kids, though, were a little bit confused.  First, they all thought that I had dressed up as a reindeer (I’m just speculating here, but that might be because I was wearing reindeer antlers.  It’s admittedly just a guess, and I might be completely off base, so don’t quote me or anything, but it's a definite possibility), and were concerned that I didn’t understand that Halloween and Christmas were two separate holidays.  Once I showed them my book and explained that I was a moose, the confusion lessened, but I think they still thought I was a little bit crazy for bringing a 32-page book to the Cast of Characters parade, when they all had books hundreds of pages long.

Whatever.  Moose are supercool.

2.  SNOWMAN

Some of my very best costumes were last-minute ideas that I threw together right before leaving for my church’s Harvest Festival (a carnival-like event with games and candy that was meant to provide kids with a safe place to go on Halloween).  One of these last-minute costumes was when I opted for season-inappropriate confusion and dressed up as a snowman (the kids from my elementary school would not have approved, considering their reaction to my possible reindeer outfit).

I was running around the house, trying to think of something to wear.  I started digging through our dress up box (which mainly held old costumes from dance recitals) and I found a karate outfit.  I have no idea where this outfit came from, since neither my sisters nor I ever took karate, and I don’t know why we would have some other kid’s clothes in that box.  Anyway, I found these white pants and shirt and my brain made the (MOST LOGICAL EVER) leap to SNOWMAN.

Next I dug through our linen closet and found an old white sheet to put over my head.  I don’t know why I didn’t just use a pillow case, since I ended up tucking most of the fabric into my shirt anyway.  Maybe I had ghost costumes in mind, so the giant piece of fabric seemed more holiday-appropriate than the more wieldy pillowcase option.  Incidentally, this was the same year my older sister made her costume out of bed linens as well.  She made a Tinker Bell costume out of a pillowcase.  Specifically, she made a Tinker Bell costume out of my flannel winter pillowcase. I remember being a little bit upset that she had decided to cut up my sheets, but she explained with unshakeable logic that they were the only green linens in the closet, and so I had to accept that she had clearly made the best decision for us all.

Anyway, I cut eye holes out of my sheet, drew a coal mouth and a carrot nose (I remember drawing the orange nose while the sheet was already on my head, because when I took the costume off, I still had an orange nose where the marker had bled through the sheet).  I put the sheet over my head, tucked all the extra fabric into my karate shirt (which actually made for some nice snowman padding), donned a scarf, snowboots, and a plastic top hat that I’m pretty sure was left over from a New Year Party, and my costume was complete.

I strutted into my church for the Harvest Festival, saying hello to everyone I knew.  I must have greeted 5 or 6 people before someone asked somewhat tentatively, “Who are you?”  I hardly ever wear masks for Halloween, since masks are creepy and I've seen that Goosebumps movie so I knew better, and so it hadn’t even occurred to me that people wouldn’t be able to recognize me.  That was when I realized that I had inadvertently made probably my scariest ever Halloween costume, with my hidden face, creepy peering eyes, and frozen snowman grin.

3.  UNCREATIVE PAJAMA-CLAD CHILD

One year I was similarly rushed for a costume, and I decided to just wear pajamas, forgetting that you’re actually supposed to BE something for Halloween.  The first time someone asked me what my costume was, I faltered, then answered, “I’m...wearing pajamas.”

“Yes, but what are you?”

“...tired?”

I didn’t get much candy that year.


EVERYONE HAVE A HAPPY SAFE HALLOWEEN AND EAT TONS OF PUMPKIN TREATS AND CANDY!

THWARTED.

Good news!

I got a job!
I won’t tell you where though, because I like to feign anonymity here, even though pretty much anyone who reads this knows very well who I am.  But I’m going to pretend it’s top secret anyway, just for funs.

Bad news!

For some reason the program I use to make my drawings is acting super weird.  I updated it and now when I try to fill in color this happens:

I bet you’re wondering what story THAT picture was illustrating!  Well now due to my technical difficulties YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.

Well, you’ll NEVER KNOW until I fix this problem.

WHICH WILL HOPEFULLY BE SOON.

So I guess I’ll just be posting some old pictures today, with very little commentary because I’m a bit frustrated and also I drank too much coffee and it feels like my brain is playing hopscotch.  So here goes:

I wish I had words about this picture that I could put here, but I don’t, so here are some other words instead: This weekend my garbage disposal broke and I had to call emergency maintenance to come fix it, which the guy managed to do in about five seconds.  We had accidentally ground up a shot glass or two, which is an action garbage disposals apparently frown upon.

Live and learn.

Lady frog, lady frog, what are you staring at, lady frog?

All right, that’s all from me!  Sorry about this sad, sad post.

I hate technology.

OKAY BYE.

I Hate Spiders

When I was a little kid, I briefly had dreams of becoming a politician so that I could give Alaska to the spiders.  I thought it was the perfect plan.  Humans would agree not to trespass on this new spider territory, and the spiders would agree not to trespass on human territory.  It was a total win-win: spiders could live without fear of being smashed by a shoe, and I could live without fear of waking up with a spider atop my nose.  It’s probably for the best that I never became a politician, though, because I imagine there would be considerable outrage at my proposal, not just from the Alaskans kicked out of their home state, but also from the cold, cold spiders.

I hate spiders.  When I see a spider it feels like my very soul is shuddering.  But--despite this--I really try not to kill them.  If I’m startled by one crawling on me, it might fall victim to my panicking, flailing arms, but for the most part I refrain from squashing.  To be honest, though, this decision developed more for selfish reasons than any noble understanding of every creature’s right to live:  as a kid I had a deep-seated fear that if I killed a spider, all of its friends, relatives, neighbors, and dentists would band together and seek revenge for the loss of their dear arachnid friend.  They would come after me and make me pay for squishing one of their own.  So I usually just got my mom to smash them, so at least I wouldn’t be held responsible for their deaths.

WHAT?  I never claimed to be a hero.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to feel like a jerk for killing something (whether directly or indirectly) that doesn’t even know that what it’s doing is bothering me.  So now I just try to ignore and avoid them.  If I see a spider on a wall, I just move to the other side of the room and go about my business (never letting it out of my sight lest it launch some sort of attack).  If one is hanging out above a doorway, I just pretend like I was PLANNING on staying in that room ANYWAY so I don’t have to walk under the 8-legged beast.  I don’t kill them, but I’m still afraid of them.  I once tried to simply decide not to be afraid anymore.  I told myself that spiders are little, their poison most likely wouldn’t hurt me much, and even if I were bitten by one of the monster black widows that inhabit my back yard, I would just go to the hospital and come out with a good story.  My fearlessness lasted exactly until the next time I saw a spider.

I’ve never even really had a traumatic encounter with a spider--well, except for that one time when I flipped over a bucket in the back yard and found a black widow the size of Jupiter less than an inch from my hand.  But I was already afraid of spiders at that point, so I can’t reasonably blame that incident for my hatred of the creatures.  I think it just  comes down to the fact that spiders are naturally terrifying creatures.  There is nothing about their appearance that does NOT strike fear into hearts.

I spent an entire day once researching different spiders on Wikipedia, and every single one was terrifying.  I had noticed these huge monster spiders that had been making huge monster spider webs all over the outside of our house, and I was concerned that they might be poisonous.  So I took to the internet to try to identify the beasts.  The only spiders I can identify on sight are black widows, and these were definitely not black widows.  For one thing, they were about three times as big as any black widow I had ever seen.  For another, they were brown.  Plus, they were all still married.  So, pretty clearly not black widows.  And “Not Black Widows” is really as far as I got in identifying the monster spiders outside.  For a while I thought they HAD to be brown recluse spiders, which are super super poisonous.  But then I realized that was just me being my paranoid self because brown recluse spiders don’t live on the West Coast.  Plus the spiders in my back yard weren’t being particularly reclusive.  Oh, and also the picture on Wikipedia didn’t look anything like what was hanging out outside.  So, yeah, paranoid self.  And let me tell you, spending hours looking at picture after picture of terrifying spiders was not good for my paranoid self.  I never solved The Mystery of the Ridiculously Scary Spiders Outside (probably mostly because I was too afraid to get near enough to take note of any identifying features), but when I finally tore myself away from the computer, I thought everything was a spider.  Jumpy the rest of the day.

Ugh.  Spiders.

Books, Gum, and Pretzels

I love love love free things.

It doesn’t matter what form the free things take.  If I can have it and I don’t have to pay for it (and I won’t go to jail for this act of not paying for it), I love it.

During my four years in college I accumulated a good amount of religious literature because it was always being handed out on campus.  By the time I moved out of my apartment I had a nice little stack of New Testaments in my bookshelf, and when one man offered me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita as I hurried to class, I skidded to a stop, stared for a moment, and then blurted out, “I can keep this!?” (much too loudly, I remember, because he looked kind of startled and for a second I was afraid he was going to change his mind and take his book back).  I also once accepted a DVD that turned out to be about psychosomatic medicine, and I think Scientology (I never actually watched it, but just stuck it with the rest of my movies in the living room).  On the cover was a scientific-sounding quote about the value of the video which was attributed to simply “Medical Doctor.”  For a while I considered hiding the DVD somewhere in my apartment building for someone to find, but that idea sadly never came to fruition.

There was another time when there was a box of books sitting in some grass on campus with a sign that said “FREE BOOKS!  TAKE ONE!” and after a moment of pure excitement, suspicion set in.

You set out cheese to catch a mouse.  You set out honey to catch a Pooh Bear.

You set out free books to catch a Kendra.

But then I realized that was ridiculous, so I grabbed a book and went on my merry way.

I also got a lot of free gum throughout my time in college.  Every time I accepted a piece of sample gum from someone on campus, I was certain that this was the time the gum was going to be poisoned and I was going to die the painful death that results from loving free things too much.  But that didn’t stop me from going out of my way to grab some gum whenever I saw those people handing it out.

One time some guy gave me a full handful of Stride Uber Bubble bubble gum (I remember that it was Uber Bubble because I was in a German linguistics class at the time and my thoughts were: “Why, isn’t this interesting.  The word ‘über’ seems to have become an English word, as evidenced by the loss of its umlaut.  Since neither the letter nor its corresponding sound exists in the English language, we have altered it to fit our speech and adopted it as our own.  Fascinating!”  Just kidding.  It went more like this: “Oh, hey!  German!  I love German!  And I love the word über!  Oh, look, it doesn’t have an umlaut.  Weird.  I love umlauts!  I love gum!  I LOVE FREE THINGS!”).

Anyway, I pocketed my gum and walked away (making an annoying crinkling noise with every step) only to find someone else handing out more Uber Bubble bubble gum a little farther along my way.  I, of course, made a bee-line to this person (trying to walk less noisily so my crinkling pockets wouldn’t give me away as the gum hoarder I am) and held out my hands like Oliver (“Please, sir.  I want some more.”  “MORE?”  “I mean some.  Some gum.  I don’t have any so I can’t have more.  At least according to Alice.  The hatter might disagree.”  And then he would punch me for mixing my allusions.)  He gave me a handful of gum too!  I filled up my other jeans pocket and finally got to class, where I triumphantly moved my gum from my pants to my bag to be chewed at a later date.

More recently, I was ending a less-than-successful shopping trip (I hate hate hate shopping.  I probably hate shopping exactly as much as I love free things.  If there were a spectrum of things I like and don’t like, shopping would be on one extreme and free things would be on the other) and I decided to stop for a cinnamon sugar pretzel.

Cinnamon sugar pretzels would be placed just slightly below getting free things on my spectrum of likes.  I love ‘em like I love something I love a whole lot.

So I asked for my pretzel and was paying at the register when one of the guys behind the counter asked me if I had tried the place’s new cinnamon sugar sticks (I think technically they’re Stix, with an x, which incidentally was my nickname when I played basketball in high school.  Well, briefly, because it started out as Sticks, which then became Stix because x-es are space-efficient, and then it became Stixx because if one x is space efficient two x-es must be extra space-efficient.  Right?  Right?  Then it became Bamboo, but that’s a little harder to explain so we’ll just move on).

I said that no, I had never tried their cinnamon sugar Stix.  The guy then asked me if I would mind if he gave me some Stix too because my pretzel pretzel had been sitting there for a while and might actually be a little bit stale.  I hesitated while I tried to think of a response more appropriate than, “WHAT KIND OF A MONSTER WOULD MIND BEING GIVEN FREE FOOD?” and I think this pause made him think I might actually be offended by his offer because he gave the sort of awkward (but much appreciated) explanation: “They’re exactly like your cinnamon sugar pretzel, only...less twisted.”

So I rolled my eyes and said, “FINE.  You can give me free things, if you must.”

I lie, of course.  I’m pretty sure I just grinned, nodded, and shouted, “COOL!” because I was afraid he would take back my Stix if I acted too weird about it (I don’t know why I always think people who give me things are going to yell “PSYCH!” and snatch it all back, but if this post is any indication, that seems to be a regular reaction of mine).  So he gave me my pretzel and my Stix.  I was feeling so happy with my good fortune that I shoved it all into my purse and went and bought a pair of pants that I hadn’t been sure about earlier in my shopping trip, trying not to smell too much like a pretzel when I opened my purse to get my wallet out.

The cinnamon sugar Stix were super delicious too.

But the pretzel was a little stale.

These are the parentheses who have taken a few of my good friends hostage in order to persuade me to use their parenthetical family members a million times in this one post.

I don’t usually interrupt my(have a good day!)self this much, I swear.