It's October! Probably my favorite month is here.
How I used to eagerly anticipate Halloween. I guess those days are gone.
Those days ended for me at least 10 years ago because I got sick of the ordeal of finding costumes for my kids and then cleaning up the bathroom splattered with (fake) blood. Toward the end of their trick-or-treating years they didn't dress up as any particular thing, like Frankenstein or Darth Vader, they just plastered themselves with fake wounds and blood and things like that.
One year when my older son was in 4th or 5th grade he picked out a bullet wound. I suggested he paste it to the middle of his forehead and dress as Abraham Lincoln. He pointed out(correctly, of course) that would be in poor taste.
For a few years, though, we decorated the yard with little ghosts the boys made of Styrofoam balls and pieces of white sheet, that spider web stuff they sell at drug stores and scarecrows made of old clothes stuffed with leaves, wearing masks. That part was fun.
Even after my sons aged out of Halloween, I got sick of never knowing how much candy to get, jumping up and down all night on the busy years and having a bunch of leftover candy on the quiet years. I also ate way too much chocolate, so I started getting things like Starbursts that I don't like.
Now that I'm living in an apartment with few kids, I expect Halloween will be pretty much like any other night. I should probably get at least a little candy, though, so as not to wind up in the position I was in one year in NYC, when the one child in our entire high-rise student housing apartment knocked at the door. I briefly panicked about what to give her (olives? a spoonful of peanut butter?) but found the perfect thing: refrigerator magnets shaped like colorful tropical fish. Happy ending!