I’ve been so busy this month that Halloween has been an afterthought. In years past, October often meant working on costumes to wear to parties–like the Snow White I recycled for the masquerade ball last month or Mr. Karen’s carrot (inspired by the Monty Python “Spot the Loony” sketch; I went as a bag of M&Ms and we were health food and junk food). The year Mr. and I went as New Coke (him) and Coca-Cola Classic (me) was particularly fun; it was topical and the costumes were entertaining to look at, especially when we did our made up on the spot “whirling dervish Coke can” dance.

There was a party we could have gone to this year. The invitation arrived the week we were in California, so we didn’t have much notice to get costumes together though we could have come up with something if we really wanted to, recycling parts of old ones to make something new–punk rock carrot, maybe. But there’s so much else to do to catch up after being gone and while Mr. Karen is feeling better I’m still sick with the crud I picked up this last trip, so we decided to stay home. That’s probably a good thing because I conked out for twelve plus hours Friday night and was rather confused about why Mr. was not only up before me but dressed and ready to go somewhere Saturday morning while I was just waking up–that almost never happens.

So no party this year. No jack o’ lantern, either. We used to carve a pumpkin or two–I had particular fun the year I got to use the electric drill to make holes in mine–but haven’t gotten around to it the last few years. We do have a little pumpkin for decoration on the kitchen table, and I have an even littler one (okay, it’s really a gourd, but it looks just like a pumpkin) that Mr. bought for me on my desk at work, which I have now accented with the Nightmare Before Christmas scary teddy antenna ball topper we bought at Disneyland. That’s the extent of our holiday decorating this year. Some people in our neighborhood have orange and purple lights in their bushes and glowing skulls along their front walks and other festive displays, which I’ve enjoyed looking at but have not been even a little bit tempted to compete with.

The trick or treaters who come to our house tonight will only get candy–no decorations, unless you count the “Happy Everything” sweatshirt which I plan to put on when I get home. And because we only bought the candy last night, they won’t even get what I consider the best Halloween stuff–snack size Snickers bars and M&Ms. We had to take what we could get, and there wasn’t much left. As far as the grocery store is concerned, Halloween is over. Costumes and decorations were relegated to the clearance section and the few types of candy that were left were pushed to one end of the seasonal shelves. While we were debating the relative merits of Kit Kats and white chocolate peanut butter cups, store employees were busy filling the empty space around us with Christmas merchandise. I am so not ready to think about Christmas.