Making a Halloween Fashion Statement

This year, the kids are saluting the Addams family. Josh had thought of being Bernie Sanders; He could put powder in this hair and wear a Bernie t-shirt Janet had saved. He made a sign to put on his back that said, “I wrote the damn bill!” He even offered to change it to “d**n bill”, but I said some people might be offended and anyway, we didn't want anyone to think we were Socialists. Josh said that we shouldn't care what people think, especially if it isn't true. Cilla added that some Socialists were probably nice people and had kids “just like us.”

I finally said we could go to the costume store and get anything they wanted, as long as it wasn't the sexy version. So we went to the Halloween Holiday Ghostly “Boo-tique,” in an old Blockbuster building, where a very nice millennial vampire helped us “create a howling good Halloween.”



Cilla decided to be Morticia because the costume was pretty and Betsey picked Wednesday because she was a “badas . . .girl.” Josh will be Cousin Itt, who isn't that far from Senator Sanders. Our sales vampire asked if I wanted to be Grandmama, but I never dress up, much to the relief of Ed and the kids, although I do have a pair of cat ears, and if I feel very daring I draw whiskers on my face.



What the Heck, It's Halloween!



It may seem redundant to call Halloween “weird,” but this year it's weirder than usual. For one thing, people are still wearing shorts. Besides that, pumpkin spice food just doesn't taste the same. And when the wistful autumn songs come on the radio, I just snort.

Ed says I'm being ungrateful, and this winter I'll be wishing Joni Mitchell or somebody would call this October back for another month or so.  He's right, but I want to wear my sweaters. Some people are shoe people. I'm a sweater person. I also like socks with animals on them.

To add to the unreality, the grocery store had bags of candy corn, candy pumpkins, and “Autumn Mix,” which is regular and Native American corn and pumpkins. The drugstore also had small bags of “Maple Syrup” corn. Nobody, including the candy store, which has been around since my mother was a child,and maybe longer, carried the Halloween mix, which has yellow, banana-flavored moons and femurs, purple “salted caramel” skulls, the usual corn and pumpkins, “chocolate” cats and bats of such a dark brown they could be black, and small brown jugs, which were maple flavored. The kids always fight over those. I restrain myself.

Fortunately, I was able to find them on the Internet, where shipping was free for orders over twenty five dollars. I bought three bags and gave two to Karen and Nikki. They didn't have the jugs; I guess the maple candy corn replaced them, perhaps to stop fights. I went back to the drugstore and bought six bags. They were small.

Ed said that it was a triumph of technology that enabled me to refuse to keep up with advances in holiday junk food so we could rot our teeth with purple skulls.

I  said, “It's a tradition.” When I say that, everyone stops arguing.



 



Little Christmas

By Epiphany, we have the tree and the lights down, but we have a tradition of finishing the Christmas food that has lasted though the holidays: cranberry sauce, dips, fancy cheeses and crackers from the Intellectual Deli, the popcorn left in those giant tins, those cookies from Denmark that also come in tins, and the last of the English “biscuits,” that I get every year, along with the popping crackers and plum pudding. Every year I put little boxes of Barnum's Animal Crackers in the kids' stockings (like my mother put in mine and her mother had put in hers). The kids don't like them and Ed says they're a waste of money, but I tell everyone it's a tradition and that they shouldn't be curmudgeons.

So there are always animal crackers left. Cilla and Josh like to make the animals fight and dance around the cocoa cups and then dive in. Betsey likes to say say they are immature and tell me I'm letting them run wild. Well, at least she doesn't call them big morons anymore.

But over the years, things have changed. The boxes used to come with a string that you could use to hang them from the tree. Not they just have paper handles as part of the box. And this year, the animals are free range. They used to be in cages in a circus train car. Ed pointed this out and called it “another victory for animal rights.” I said it was a good thing, but I felt kind of bad about it, not to mention the string. Betsey snorted, Josh patted my shoulder, and Cilla says she's going to write to the company about the string.