Today we suddenly realized that we were supposed to help our eldest decorate one of the horse stall doors at her barn for Halloween. It’s one of those classic “forgot a school project was due” situations. Happens like once a month.
She had an original plan for the project a couple weeks back, but it wasn’t the “do it in one night” type of plan. So we had to put our heads together. Felt like one of those Halloween baking competitions on the Food Network where we have 45 minutes to whip together a half-scale zombie out of modeling chocolate and fondant. I kind of hate that I know those terms.
After some terse in-fighting and a lot of sketching, our eldest came up with a good idea that involved cannibalizing some of our living room decorations. But we still needed one more thing: A life-sized paper monster. In my head it needed be like one of those cardboard skeletons or vampires with hinged limbs that you see everywhere…except for when you need them, of course.
So my eldest and I ran out to Party City and jumped into the fray of last-minute costume-hunters. Didn’t find exactly what we were looking for at Party City, so we went next door to Joann’s, whose Halloween section had shrunk to a single bank of shelving. Nothing there, so we went next door to Big Lots. But it was full Christmas. Then, on a lark, we went next door to Home Goods, where we didn’t expect to find what we were looking for. We just wanted to see if they’d gone full Christmas. Yup.
Finally, we returned back to Party City and settled on a five-foot-tall plastic cling of a Grim Reaper that we thought would work. We’ll see how it all comes together when we go to the barn tomorrow. I also stopped in that same strip mall at the liquor store. I ended up grabbing that Captain Morgan Apple Smash rum in the spherical container that looks like a green cartoon bomb.
Tonight’s movies were
Phantom of the Megaplex with the girls—another Disney Channel joint, this one from 2000 and starring Mickey Rooney. It was okay, but the concept of people dealing with the day-to-day of working at a megaplex was a fantastic one. I’d watch a show like that. Later that night, I made an Apple Smash Diet Coke and watched Adam Green’s
Digging the Marrow on Shudder. It was entertaining enough, but the best part to me was when the character played by Ray Wise namechecks my town of Nashua, New Hampshire…for probably the only time in the history of cinema.
Happy Halloween Eve Eve!
