Holidays and NaNo

Happy Halloween!

Our most favorite of holidays. We dressed as suburbanites, again, although K wore black and orange in a festivy way so that added to the ensemb, and passed out candy. I made my holiday standard dinner, my semi-famous spaghetti, but because Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, I was able to cook it in the crock pot all day long. We dipped into it a little during lunch, but the real treat was dinner, when it had literally been simmering for about 8 hours in the pot. Something about that really makes the flavors meld together. We watched The Shining while we listened for the doorbell.

Last year we did not have enough candy to pass out to everyone. We always buy a lot, then wonder if we bought too much, so at first we pass out handfuls to each kid (who leaves our doorstep with a bright smile and huge eyes), and then we get worried as the night progresses that we may not have enough, given the rate of candy leaving the door (oh, and we eat some too, don't get me wrong) so we pass out less and less until the last of it is gone and we have to shut off all the lights and blow out the candle in the pumpkin on the front to ward off any further trick-or-treaters.

Last year, the final group of kids had a small boy hiding behind them, whom K couldn't see, so she divvied up the last of it to the kids that she could see thinking that we were lucky to have gotten rid of it all that year. However, when they turned to leave, this adorable little boy came walking up from behind them with his orange pumpkin candy bucket in his hands, held out to K with a "I'm too shy to say trick-or-treat, but you know what I want" look on this face. K, thinking she knew more about candy than a 2-year-old, put her closed hand, empty mind you, into his pumpkin, and then pulled it back out again, open this time, as if to mime dropping candy in. The kid looked in the pumpkin, and with savant-like mental agility, quickly realized that the candy count had not changed. With huge eyes staring right at her, almost accusatory, almost pleading, he lifted up the pumpkin to her again. All she could do is say, "I'm sorry, I don't have any more." He walked away with no smile that night. If he'd been older, we would have been the target of a trick, for sure. We hid in the dark house the rest of the evening and hoped no one else would ring the bell.

So this year I bought nearly $50 worth of candy. (All candy bars, by the way. I remember, as a kid, loving those the most. We could eat a couple pieces a day, legally, and the candy bars would go first. Then anything sugary, e.g., Sweet Tarts. Then maybe the suckers. Then, last, the Tootsie Rolls. Only the lamest of houses gave away suckers and Tootsie Rolls. That was my opinion, anyway. And I don't want to be lame in my old age.) I hit the Target on Thursday and filled up the basket. Probably too full. Definitely too full.

Today we still have half of it left. We had fewer kids at the door last night. I don't know why, maybe it was because Halloween fell on a Saturday and given the whole day to plan, people on our street found better things to do than walk around and peddle for candy, but we only got about 10 sets of kids total. Which is probably good, because there are exactly two nude scenes in The Shining (one during the scene showing Dick Hallorann's house in Florida where he's got these large prints of a naked black woman on his wall with the huge 70's afro, and the other scene, which you probably remember, where the full-frontal naked bird gets out of the tub in room 237 and starts making out with Jack) and the kids rang the bell smack-dab in the middle of both. So while K was passing out candy, I was sitting in the living room with B.B., holding onto her collar so she doesn't make a run for the door, and hoping all the while that the innocent gaggle of disguised tricksters can't see the paused image of naked boobies on the TV screen just inside the house.

But I digress...

There's a lot of candy let to be eaten. I may have to come up with a new exercise regime if I'm going to be participating in the fun. Which I will be. And our favorite holiday is over, once again, but that's okay, too. We will enjoy it every year.

NaNoWrimo 2009

So today, I've got something new going on. Every November, for the entire month, about 150,000 people around the world write a novel, and this year, once again, I'm going to be one of them. I've tried this before, twice, and have succeeded and failed once each. I'm doing it for fun, you understand. There is no prize, other than to say you did it. There is no other reason except for those of us who have always wanted to write, it's a good feeling to know that we're all writing at the same time.

NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month. Evidenced by this web site here. You start writing after midnight on the 1st, and you have a full month to come up with 50,000 words. Why 50,000? Probably because it's a nice even number that is actually doable. You need to write 1,667 words a day. That's a little over 3 single-spaced pages.

I've got about 1,975 words written since this morning. We'll see how I'm doing 29 days from now.

One thing I do know is that nothing sparks the creative juices like writing here in this blog. So even though I've left it unattended for a while (for about as long as we've had a dog, if you look back, so you can see what's been occupying my time for seven months) I'll be stopping by here for a while to ramble on about whatever helps get me moving again over on the NaNo front.

Feel free to ignore me.