Weird Halloween

This was a weird Halloween. For a couple years I had been thinking about how cool it was going to be when Halloween was on a weekend. Last year, it fell on a Friday and it was a blast. I went out with a co-worker whose husband was in Afghanistan. I was dressed as Bettie Page, she was a pirate wench. We met up with a group of friends and I came in second in a costume contest, stayed out really late, then slept in the next morning and attended another costume party the next night. Many laughs all around. A year ago, I was already looking forward to this year. Halloween on a Saturday was going to be even more perfect! No mad rush. No chomping at the bit to get out of work, get home to don the perfect costume and hit the town. I would have all day to prepare for the many festive events I was sure I would be attending!

What a difference a year makes.

As it turned out, this year I had three new fun wigs and no festivities on my calendar for Saturday night. Zip. Nada. Zilch. What a colossal disappointment. Boyfriend was working, like he does every alternating Saturday night when we don’t have his son for the weekend. My costumed co-worker cohort of last year was out of town with her husband.  The rest of the crew of my offline peeps of ‘real life’ … well, this year they have weekend jobs, an array of kid, stepkids, husbands/boyfriends who exercise their right of first dibs on time. This year, I am on the outside looking in – a haunted little waif peering into the snow globes of everyone else’s lives, or the window of a bakery in a cliché-ridden made for TV movie adaptation of a Dickens novel. Or I'm just being dramatic here for the literary effect because generally happiness is kind of boring to read about due to the lack of tension.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am compelled to confess that I had received a last minute invitation to a Halloween costume party on Saturday. Usually, I am 100% on board with spontaneous fun, but as the details of the evening’s activities were unfurled, my enthusiasm waned to full-blown nothingness. There was a costume plan involving a theme for which I had nothing on hand, and 4:00 on Halloween day is really not the time to start compiling a costume for an evening of events starting in a couple hours. At least according to my sometimes rigid and limited realm of way-inside-the-box logistics planning. The night was to include multiple stops spanning different cities and dinner at a loosely stated and still flexible time with a cast of characters including a few who are infamous for their inability to keep to any kind of a schedule. Knowing what I knew, realizing it would be a very late night, fully aware I had not napped in preparation for such and would likely be yawning by 8:30, I politely declined the invitation. Well, I hope I was polite.

So, on Halloween night, I attended a local art reception. Alone. In normal, boring street clothes. But like a true wild woman, I closed the place down – at 8:00. Then I went home. Parked myself on the couch like I do nearly every night. Fired up the laptop. Watched DVDs. Played word games online. Alternated between feeling quite comfortable with my choices and horrendously peeved with myself for turning down that party invitation. Sometimes I am such a moron. Ok, lots of times.

To add to the weirdness that was Halloween, I saw no costume-clad neighborhood children. Ok, I passed two about a mile up the street from my house when I was returning from the art reception. Two! I know there are kids in my neighborhood, because I am stuck behind one or another of the danged school buses almost every morning because I can’t seem to grasp the schedule and leave the house at the right time to avoid them. The bowl of candy I set out on the porch before I left seemed untouched when I returned. Weirdest Halloween ever.