Day 170/365 How Did We Miss This??

Apparently it's November 1st.

And somehow, some way, we have missed Halloween.

Halloween is considered the best of all holidays at our house. Christmas falls a distant second. Fourth of July is a even more distant third, and Easter isn't even on the map.

We have a garage full of decorations, in addition to a bathroom full of decorations, on account of we ran out of storage space, and decided it would be easier to use them as a decorating motif instead of packing them up. This is why we have a bathroom shelving unit that is an actual life-size coffin, and animated skeletons in our bathroom, with skull candles.

Think of it as Martha Stewart Gothic.

This is what I look like in my witch's costume.

Okay, not really, but it's incredibly similar. Sortof. At least the hat.

Every year we do costumes. We have everything from the Grim Reaper to sorceress witch to demon to highway man to Boudicia the Celtic queen (my favorite).

We've got skeletons of every persuasion: skeletons in cages, in a coffin, glowing-in-the-dark, in tuxedos, on doorknockers, hanging skeletons, tapdancing skeletons.....

To keep the skeletons company, there's a few witches, including the animatronic one we got last year. She stirs her cauldron and mutters things under her breath - and she's life-size. She keeps the lifesize mummy company - he mutters too -sounds vaguely like someone bound up with a gag trying to say: "Lemma go! Lemma go!" Mummy Boy lives year-round in my daughter's room, under the gargoyle bat hanging from the ceiling, not far from the stuffed Batcat and the bloody hand on a chain.

Our trick-or-treaters are usually fairly run of the mill as far as costumes go - lots of face paint and non-descript efforts. We attribute that to living in a small town in the South that struggles with the whole religion thing (the biggest haunted house near us is one of those "you're going to hell" church-sponsored efforts).

Our house, and our feeble attempt at decorating is the only traditional Halloween experience available in our area. Some years we have had upwards of 200 trick-or-treaters, including a church bus that pulled up and disbursed a full load of kids, looking for candy and ignoring the possibility of a detour to hell.

And for that reason, I'd like to apologize for letting you all down this year. Life being what it is, it really interfered this year and we just couldn't manage it. Of course, it rained halfway through the evening, so hopefully a lot of folks didn't waste gas stopping by the house.

But....

Just wait till next year.