There is at least one thing I like about every season of the year … snow in the mountains during the winter, the flowers in spring, the warm summer days … but with the fall, I like it ALL … the colors, the crispness in the air, Halloween, early sunsets, getting to wear all of my jackets and yes, even pumpkin spice (no idea why some people hate pumpkin spice, although I do think some food companies go overboard with it… I don’t need like, pumpkin spice tortilla chips or something). It’s always been my favorite time of the year.
We didn’t have much transition this year from summer to fall. It seemed to go from hot to cold pretty quickly. But I’m not complaining. While I’m from what is actually a more desert climate and can take the heat, I actually like being a little cold now and appreciate the cold much more than I used to.
October essentially kicks off fall, but the real gem of the season to me will always be Halloween.
Halloween this year …
I’ve got the house all decorated with some of my favorite Halloween decor (I have A LOT, so it’s rare that I bring it all out … I kind of rotate some of it every year). Got my gas fireplace all cleaned and turned on earlier in the week so I’ve been spending a lot of evenings being very cozy on my couch. And this year, for the first time in many years, I’ve found spooky things to do right here in my own small town this October.
Tonight I’ll be going on a ghostly walking tour in the “old town” area. It’s a 2 hour guided tour where we’ll explore a lot of the old buildings and hear ghost stories. I think we’ll also luck out in that it’s not supposed to rain, so it should be pretty fun. Then next Friday I’m going on another tour that’s more along the “ghost hunt” lines in an even smaller town about 20 miles north of me. This one is led by the medium I met while going on a haunted tour of the restaurant a couple doors down from my rental house.
I still don’t have any solid plans for Halloween, but at this point, I’m definitely up for something. I even have a costume cooked up if the opportunity arrises.
Halloweens past…
While writing this, I’m reminded of how Mario was always able to come up with a costume at the drop of a hat. Many years ago when we first moved here I knew a lady who threw a big costume party every Halloween weekend at an old building she owned downtown. There was a live DJ and it was just a lot of fun, but you had to go in costume. So the day of the party we still didn’t have a costume together so we went down to Spirit Halloween. I didn’t see a single thing that really inspired me but Mario bought a black, long hair wig (and that was the only thing he bought). He ended up just putting on an old black suite jacket he had with black jeans and black shirt, an old necklace with a decorative cross that I don’t even know where he got, then put on the wig and some round sun glasses and suddenly he was Ozzy Osbourne! I figured I’d go with the rock ‘n’ roll vibe, threw together some things out of my closet, and went as Joan Jett.
When we still lived back in L.A., a friend of ours was throwing backyard Halloween costume party. I remember he got white sheet and draped it off one shoulder, put a red dot on his forehead and went as Gandhi (that year I believe I was a viking).
Mario was always up to go to a party as well as get into the spirit of things around Halloween. Although for some reason, I always had to coax him to carve a jack-o-lantern and I never did get a good answer as to why he wasn’t super jazzed about it. This was the last one I got him to carve …
