Shake Not Thy Gory Locks at Me!

"Shake Not Thy Gory Locks at Me!" That's Macbeth, talking to the bloody ghost of Banquo who shows up at the palace just after Macbeth has ordered the death of  his old best friend. Scary, that image of a split scalp and bloodied hair..And speaking of scary, here are some images to stop you in your tracks: Pictures of how kids used to look when they went out on Halloween. Worse than any creepshow mask you can buy today eh?Hope you all got through the big night safely and are happily enjoying your loot today. Don't forget to brush and floss after, is all! :-)

Today It's All a Lovely Blur

I’m sleeping like the dead now. Our little guys and their parents have been here since Sunday morning and it’s lively times all right. Their power went out at 11 the night of that freak October blizzard. There was a kind of pop! and then that eerie silence.No clunking of the ice-maker in the fridge.No purring furnace.Just the shrieking  wind and the ticking of the slowly-cooling house. They said it was freezing by morning, yet for hours they couldn’t get out: fallen trees across both ends of their road. Finally they did get out, and came here with bags and boxes of food rescued from their fridge. Also, play clothes, work clothes and - of course! - costumes. So Sunday we ate their food, did loads of wash fluffed a whole bunch of pillows, and were all IN OUR BEDS by 8. Then yesterday the day bloomed and faded and Halloween came and as the picture shows, it was all a lovely blur.Two gangs of kids came to our front door and then immediately afterward, to  our back door. (We live on a corner. They thought it was a different house.) Our little guys got asked to a pre-trick-or-treating pizza-fest by the nicest neighbors in the world and by 7:30 we were all sitting by the fire, divvying up the loot.Whew! I myself was up  until midnight last night, finishing all the work I hadn't done by day - that's me below - but it's been one swell time all the same!

Aaaargh!

It always stinks for me when Halloween comes right before deadline day because what I want is to just sit around waiting for the little Trick-or-Treaters, maybe hide behind the living room curtains Boo-Radley-style but no. Instead here I was trying to get my column done.  (This is me in the living room - I never stop to sit down right; I just kind of slide in to home plate and start clacking away. ) Then the doorbell rang and rang again and rang again and again and sure Old Dave is finally home from Germany but I made him go upstairs to the watch the Rangers vs. the Giants so as not to wreck the spooky feeling down here in the living room which meant I was all alone on door duty. And they kept coming and coming, little bumble bees and ogres, fairy princesses and  and even one wee little MD complete with hospital ID and a stethoscope and didn’t it turn out that I BOUGHT THE WRONG CANDY.Silly me, I thought kids got sick of chocolate on Halloween, the same old M & M packs so I only had two dozen of them. The rest were Mike & Ikes, Skittles and Twizzlers, and those little hands dug into the bowl again and again past the latter three to get to chocolate pay dirt and there wasn’t enough. Never mind the kids with their Unicef boxes which we forget about every year. We had only pennies and dimes so ended up giving out dollars and the tide kept coming until all hours and finally when it stopped I sat down and, well, here ‘s what happened:

And remember, Halloween is just the start, am I right? Because look what's waiting in the wings:

And after that it’s holiday parties and Yankee Swaps and strings of  twinkling lights all tangled  together as if in some Dental Floss graveyard...Just pray you can be ready, people; it’s all I can think of to do. That and maybe put on some weight to build up my strength.:-)