I haven’t posted photos of my Halloween decorations this year because it’s basically the same as last year, except we kiboshed the spider web because it was easier to throw away then prep for storage. The spiders are still there in the bushes, though. Homeless.
Inside, the only Halloween lights on were the ones set on timers, which is about 40% of them. Where had Halloween gone?--he asks, surrounded by foam gravestones and cobwebbed walls and lighted jack-o-lanterns in the fireplace and big pumpkins sitting on the floor plump for carving.
Honestly, we weren’t totally in the seasonal mood today. Like I said, a long work day for me. My eldest is sick. Lindsey’s getting to the ragged end of her umbilical cord dealing with this baby that needs eviction. I mean, it really needs to come. At the very least to save Halloween. The Baby Who Saved Halloween. At work, things are stressful, especially since I’m making plans for a couple of weeks of paternity leave and that’s creating bumps for my colleagues that make me feel guilty.
I needed a drink. Not that kind, though. I grabbed the bottle of carbonated caramel apple juice that we’d bought at the Christmas Tree shops back in early September and sort of forgotten about. I poured myself a glass and tried to toast Halloween back to life.
It…sort of worked. The drink wasn’t great. Not by far. But it was enough of a gimmick to be worth passing around to the rest of the family. Nobody else was much enamored with it, either. I even tried it with booze, but that didn’t help. But it did help restore Autumn equilibrium a bit. Just enough. We won’t finish that bottle, but I’ll still try the other bottle of pumpkin spice apple juice that we bought along with it.
After the kids were down for the night, Lindsey and I settled in to catch another episode of The Haunting of Hill House. We’re four episodes in now, and I’m still digging it. A friend of mine described Mike Flanagan’s movies as “well-done meh,” and I agree. And this one has been undeniably well-done so far. As to the meh, this series has the potential to be his best work, I think. Six more episodes to go. Regardless, I do love having a horror series to watch this time of year. No nightly decisions on what movies or specials to watch as we endlessly flip through streaming services until we’re dulled into lassitude. With a series, you always know what’s on deck…the next episode.
I finished the night working on the Halloween Die-ary as well as a post about a fantastic graveyard we visited in Cleveland during our cross-country trip.
That’s all I need, really, for a Halloween night. Something Fall-ish to eat, spooky to watch, and weird to write.
