"what revels are in hand?" a midsummer night's dream: v; i

*Sigh* It's never a good thing when I start yelling back at the radio on my way home from work. I won't get too much into what it was that made me yell at the innocent NPR reporter who was simply delivering the news that I found so abhorent -- in fact, insert your own yell-inducing topic if you like. But it got to the point where I was actually yelling - not in my head, but out loud, directing my gaze at the radio as if it could hear me and might heed my anger, changing the news it was telling me. Some people call it passion, others call it fucking bonkers. When I realized what I was doing, it felt like the latter. So I turned the channel and settled into the thrall of pre-programmed Corporate Radio, those fucking bastards. Oh, right, I forgot; I Have Opinions on that, too. I'm glad my work week is over; put it that way.

The upside of today was that there was a big crate of pumpkins outside the store today, which means it is almost time for my favorite holiday; you guessed it, Arbor Day.

Haha, no, no, of course I'm just kidding; everyone knows Arbor Day is in April. Of course I'm talking about Halloween. I. Love. Halloween. Sadly last year I did not get to "do" anything for Halloween because of work, but even on the years when I don't get to do anything, I still love it. I love the feeling of fall at that time, I like the first few weeks after we change the clocks and it gets dark early (I get tired of that pretty quick though). I like the feeling of Halloween being one of the last nights of outdoor revelry before we all hunker down into our homes for the winter. I'm a dork. I know it.

More than anything, though, I love the stuff that has to do with Halloween itself - the pumpkins on all the stoops, which, a day or two before the holiday, sprout glowing faces; the scarecrows in the yards, those all-out folks who build a whole horror story in their yards, and the costumes. Oh, the costumes!! I'll tell you something about my childhood - my birthday is at the end of August. With no real holidays between my birthday and Halloween, I would often spend the whole of September and October dreaming about, brainstorming for, and building my costume for Halloween. I never had anything super spectacular, but it was always well thought out and, well, my parents always said my costumes were neat. It was doing the work that was fun. Sometimes I would finish my costume well before Halloween and I would get bummed out, having to look at it wasting away in the corner of my bedroom, waiting for that one glorious night when it would get to shine!! And then it would all be over too quickly, one fleeting night, sometimes even so cold that the costume was obscured by the sweatshirt my mom would make me wear. Actually, after a while, I started thinking of costumes that would work well with a sweatshirt.

Recently, the most fun I had for Halloween was when my husband, one of our dear friends, and I decided to hit the town as the I-Don't-Care Bears. Instead of the warm and fuzzy Care Bears, with character names such as Cheer Bear, Friend Bear, Wish Bear, or Do Your Best Bear, we were their ne'er-do-well cousins: Boozy Bear (my husband), Druggie Bear (our friend), and Special Bear (me). Boozy Bear was all black, with a belly emblem of a variety of alcoholic beverages, realistically rendered with eye-popping detail on the martini's olive spear and the beer's foam. Druggie Bear was in all purple, with a belly including a syringe and a lifelike bag of a suspicious crystaline substance. As Special Bear, I was dressed in all yellow, and on my belly was a short school bus. The topper on my costume was the helmet I wore, with stickers on it proclaiming that "God made me special." No doubt I, if not the three of us collectively, are going to hell for that one.

Halloween: Best. Day. of. the. Year.