Halloween Die-ary: September 26, 2018

I can only see the top of the doorway from where I sit behind my computer in my study, so my 32-inch-tall daughter managed to sneak in and around the edge of the desk and successfully startle me—or “boo” me, as she phrases it.

She was dressed like a witch.

It was her Halloween costume, which Lindsey had just bought her while they were out running errands. It was my first time seeing it. The costume was puffy and black with shimmering colors overlaid on it and, well, perfect for a little girl who will only wear dresses but also wants to scare you.

Maybe it was that moment, maybe it was already there, but all day I felt something building in me. I had to put up the outside decorations. Had to. I mean, our neighbor down the street had three plastic jack-o-lanterns glowing on her porch, and I pass two, count them, two different houses with giant spiders on their walls on the way out of the development.

So I waited until the end of the work day, and then shot up the ladder to the attic, grabbed all the outside decorations, and then tossed them into the front yard.

And realized I was sweating. And it was hot. And what the heck. September 26 in New Hampshire turned out to be a mugly, ugly day.

But I’d already gone too far with this project, at least in my head. Obviously, I could have thrown all the decorations into the garage and waited 24 hours.

Plus we didn’t have that many decorations. A 30-foot-tall inflatable ghoul, a life-sized electronic witch. A metal pumpkin. Three short cloth witches with glowing spheres for heads. Some spiders for the bushes. Easy stuff. We’d slimmed down from last year (the first time we ever really decorated outside), by getting rid of the giant spider web because it was a pain and taking the foam tombstones to use as inside decorations (something I highly recommend. Really transformed the living room).

Halfway through trying to get that ghouls staked into the ground, we took a break for dinner. Me and the girls watched The Trouble with Miss Switch, a cartoon special from 1980 that was for the ABC Weekend Special and based on a series of books by Barbara Brooks Wallace. Some great visuals, but a little bit of a drag to get through. Still, it made me nostalgic because I suddenly remembered watching it back when I was a kid. And Miss Switch was kind of hot. They made a sequel to it, so I guess we’ll pull that up on YouTube at some point.

Afterward, I finished the decorations. They looked better last year, but I think we’ll still do a few things to them. Lindsey won’t let me take any photos to post, though, until she gets here mums and pumpkins for the porch.

After the kids were in bed, we settled in to watch a documentary called Monsters Wanted. Filmed in 2011, it followed husband and wife as they sunk their savings into creating a haunted theme park. Man, it was stressful to watch. I have no idea how they lived it.

But it ended happy, and then when I inevitably looked up the guy online, it was nice to see the haunt was still going, that it had grown…and that he still worked in IT the rest of the year. I like people who follow their dreams reasonably.

In the middle of watching it, that cloying heat broke, a chill wind wafted through the windows, and it stormed. Lightning, thunder, rain so hard we had to pause the movie.

All over my decorations.

It’s still raining, actually. Still thundering. And I haven’t gone out to take anything down. Just can’t do it.

We’ll see what disaster I wake up to tomorrow.