Perhaps I just don’t frequent the big stores often enough, but it seems to me that retailers aren’t jumping the gun this year. Seems to me, Christmas hasn’t hit the stores before Halloween this year, as it has in years past. The King of Everything and I hop over to the local drug store from time to time to play with all the spooky candy bowls and light up goobers and goblins, but we haven’t bought any of that stuff. Mom came home tonight with some sort of funky window covering that makes a monster face appear outside when your interior lights are on. Our enthusiasm for Halloween has been casual, this year. My college roommate would be disappointed (sorry, Bizzer…).
We like Halloween, and this year we’re going to get our scare on a little early at Boo at the Zoo, and then wander the neighborhood on Halloween. I don’t think we’ll go down to Capitol Hill this year, though it’s the best trick or treating around. We’ll see. The Kid can trick or treat at his grandfather’s office, and we’ll visit everyone in the building, and perhaps stop at the houses of people we know. He wants to be a ninja. What on earth am I going to do with a kid dressed all in black?? I’m going to put reflective tape on his back and glow in the dark stickers so I can spot him in the crowd–if his grammie can’t tempt him with a cool costume in the meantime. And as we dealt with our Halloween preparations today, the kid got me good…
We haven’t gone to a fall festival this year, so today, we wheeled our handy dandy shopping cart down to the grocery store and bought two nice fat pumpkins, some cider, apples, and caramel. When we got home we prepared our pumpkins. The kid got out paper and pencils and sketched his pumpkin faces. Soon, we were scooping out the guts and separating the stringy stuff from the pumpkin seeds.
“You know who loves eating roasted pumpkin seeds?” I asked my son.
“Who?”
“Your grammie. Where else do you think I learned how to roast them?”
The kid didn’t even pause to think. “The Internet?” he asked.
I guess I’m going to have to start looking things up in cookbooks, dictionaries, and paper maps. Seems I’m relying too much on the electronic reference guide. I like the pumpkin he designed, though. It reminds me of The Scream, somehow. It felt good to let him draw his own face, though we had a bit of a skirmish over who would actually carve the pumpkins. I was faithful to his design, though. I can’t be a good mom if I don’t let him do his own thing, now can I? But oh, the knives. I’m going to have to get over that some day. When he’s thirty.
Our Walmart already has a huge section dedicated to Christmas. Before you know it there will be year-round Christmas displays!
I have noticed that hardly anyone is decorating their houses for Halloween this year, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the economy. I myself have decided that I’m not going to decorate unless my daughter says something (she’ll want to, but if I don’t say anything will she notice?). I mean, she’s not so little anymore and I’m busy and tired. But the trick or treating will commence, and we already have a super awesome costume ready to go.
And yes, I rely so much on the internet that I can’t believe I ever lived without google or mapquest. It seems like every time Casey asks me a question I don’t know the answer to, I say “Let’s google it!”