Halloween Die-ary: September 2, 2018


Today, I wasted a September weekend day. Mostly gladly. Lindsey had a wedding to photograph, my eldest went to an all-day birthday party, and that left me, my youngest, a cat, and a dog.

My original plan for this day was to drop said youngest and said dog at my in-laws’ place (the cat’s fine on her own because she’s the bad-ass one in the family) and go shoot an OTIS video about a creepy site. However, the creepy site I was thinking of doing is two hours away, and I just did four hours in the car yesterday to the North Pole.

So I decided on a Nothing Day with the youngest. Now, Nothing Days during the Halloween Season are in themselves pretty awesome. They usually mean monster movies and candy and spooky books and scented candles. Kind of perfect, actually. But, honestly, I’ve not yet slid into the Halloween Season mentally. I’m taking shuffling steps toward the holiday, like a mummy (at least my similes are already there).

But the two of us managed to sprinkle some season here and there. We had autumn-scented candles going all day. But that’s been true for about two weeks. We actually need all new candles now. These three-wick jobs are scams. We also ate bat-shaped brownies and watched half a dozen episodes of Goosebumps on Netflix.

I’ve been through this show all the way through with my eldest, but not yet with my youngest (she’s four). At one point I gave her the option of finishing an episode later and getting some iPad time instead. Like most kids, she would kill Lindsey and I in our sleep for uninterrupted device time if she could reach the knife drawer, but (Halloween miracle) she actually chose finishing the episode. I have no idea if she was that into the story or if she knew deep down that if she didn’t see the monster reveal at the end, it would ruin the rest of her childhood wondering about it. It was a happy moment for me either way.

Season 2, Episode 16: How to Kill a Monster

Later that night, we went into the basement to dig up our Halloween children’s books. We have a shelf down there full of Christmas and Halloween children’s books. When it’s their time of the year, they move on up to the youngest’s bedroom for us to choose from for her nightly bedtime story.

In doing so, we solved a year-long mystery in my house: What ever happened to my iPad Mini? One day it just disappeared. We’d always suspected my youngest. She’s a magpie. One time she stole my wife’s wedding ring and eyeglasses and hid them in a crack between a dresser and the wall. And then forgot where she hid them. They were there for four months before we found them.

But the iPad was on the top shelf, a place she couldn’t reach. I had to treat this like a Jonathan Creek mystery, and the only answer seemed to be…it was my fault. I figure the iPad was laid atop a stack of books at some point. In our house, the chances of anything being laid atop a stack of books are pretty high. Then more books must’ve gotten stacked atop them. An then I must have taken all those books with the thin tablet computer hidden somewhere in the stack down to the basement when we de-Halloweened the house at the end of last season. Cue Danse Macabre and the closing credits.

Tomorrow, the family’s all together again for the first time on this long holiday weekend. We think we might decorate the interior of the house. But we’ll see. Mummy steps, mummy steps.