It's Halloween - please visit Where's the Bubbler and Fartwood Manor today as I'm sure they are chocked full of great spooky fun!  And for the best Haunted House story ever, please stay tuned.

Here, you'll have to settle for something a little more mundane.  No special Halloween fun for me this year, being in Nigeria and all.  No beautiful red and orange fall leaves.  No snow.  Even if our Celsius temperatures were in Fahrenheit, it'd be too warm to snow!  (Average lately has been 37.)  No candy corn, no vampire teeth, no jack o'lanterns.  But the season still makes me think of all these wonderful things and fondly recall my previous Halloweens.

My favorite part is not the candy.  Don't think it ever was.  My favorite part has always been the costumes!  Lovingly made by Mommy, and inspired by who-knows-what.  I can't remember every thing I ever was, but I'm going to recap a few of them.  I wish I had pictures to post, but they're at home in photo albums or on my external hard drive.  You'll have to settle for pictures of what the costumes were of, and random shots of Katrina.  Sorry.

I think my favorite ever was the year I went as Jafar.    Mommy worked so hard on that costume!  (Is Halloween a fair use for making a derivative work?)  Mommy was very creative, getting the shoulder things to stand-up like that.  I had to walk side-ways through the doors at school.  We made the staff out of paper towel and wrapping paper tubes.  And the shoes were covered in red duct tape.  I had a stuffed parrot on my shoulder to be Iago.  The best part was taking my little sister trick or treating.  She was in 1st grade, I was in 9th, so she was (and still is!) much shorter than me.  And she was Jasmine. hee hee  I even ran into someone from school who didn't recognize me, but recognized my sister.

Another favorite costume of mine that Mommy made was my pumpkin costume!  It was actually a jack o lantern.  It was a big round ball with arm holes and filled with tulle to make it puffy.  Wendy had a similar apple costume, but I think she wore that a different year.  I think she was a vampire when I was a pumpkin... Mommy would know.

Everyone has at least one costume sometime in their life with some sort of functional problem, eye holes you can't see out of, shoes you can't walk in, etc.  Mine was the year I was a birch tree.  Couldn't sit down.  I remember going to the gymnastics open house at Midwest Twisters and basically having to take off my costume, which was made out of poster board, in order to do any of the activities.  But I really liked birch trees.  We had one in the back yard... .

  There's also that one costume in everyone's repertoire that nobody else knows what it is.  Mine was in 4th or 5th grade, I can't remember if we'd moved yet.  I went as Daddy.  People kept thinking I was Albert Einstein.  I wore a suit, had a big poofy white curly-haired wig that we sprayed with paint to add a bit of black and grey, an old pair of glasses frames and I carried our backgammon game as a briefcase.  It's not fair, I go as Daddy and people don't get it.  When Wendy went as me, everyone at school got it, and they told her that her skirt wasn't short enough!

As I got older, I either got lazier or less creative.  I still did Halloween costumes late in high school and in college, but not for trick or treating.   For the late night double feature picture show!  Midnight showing of Rocky Horror at the Oriental.

(Doesn't Katrina make a great Frank 'n Furter!)
One year I went as a baton twirler and wore, gee, my actual baton twirling costume and carried my real baton.  Another year, I went as a cat, in my catsuit that I wore nearly every week anyway.  I just added a little cat-eared bonnet.   Pretty much the black cat equivalent of the pink bunny rabbit I was at 2.  Then I wore my footed pajamas and a pink knit ski-mask-hat with bunny ears on it.  I was so cute with those little drawn on whiskers!  (both times)

I got more creative again in Zambia.  We weren't dressing up for Halloween then, we just had themed costume parties every time we were all together.  For the Heaven and Hell party, I was Adolf Hitler.  It was simple and I had everything I needed.  Eyeliner to draw a moustache.  Black leotard, and a red bandana folded over and tied around my arm with an electrical tape swastika on it.  Boy did my BOMA-buddy (nearest neighbor and thus usual partner for various activities) and I start laughing when we saw each other.  He was a Rabbi!  For the Circus party, I went as the little girl that goes to the circus.

And for the Texas Man-Fest party, I went as Texas Trash.  I made a mini skirt out of a pair of jeans I had bought at the market.  Paired it with a silver shirt tied at the chest and plastered with two big blue stars.  Flared it up a bit with a garter skirt and fishnet stockings, and topped it all off with red white and blue 7" stripper shoes.  My friend Nikki commented that I was probably the only person she knows who would have 7" stripper shoes in Africa. ;)  I think that was the party where Mary tried putting stripper poles in the backyard.  Set them in cement, but they were bamboo, so when Anna was trying to spin upside-down down the pole, it bent over.  She got a sliver. :(

And last year at Halloween, I finally got to be something I'd always dreamed of being.  What I'd always wanted to be when I grew up.  My idol.  Jessica Rabbit.  And Daddy Bunny was Roger.  It was great, until another Jessica walked into the party.  But my dress was better, more authentic.  Hers had straps and no slit.  And she had a wig.  I grew my hair out for the costume and dyed it bright red.  This one I actually have a picture of:

 

Hmmm... I seem to remember carrying the Birthday star wand around, maybe I was a princess or fairy one year.  We definitely had pink wings that Wendy and I wore with poofy skirts at some point.  I seem to be missing a lot of my life; I can only remember one other costume.  I think it was from sophomore year of high school, though it could have been late middle school.  I was Alice from Alice in Wonderland.  Mommy made a big blue basically mumu-styled dress and then I put my white daisy-kingdom pinafore over it.  Mommy must have liked that costume; it was probably one of the simplest ones I ever had.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

SLEEP TIGHT, DON'T LET THE VAMPIRES BITE