Autumn

After that no-name excuse for the feds to take a day off comes what may just be my favorite time of year. i don't think i'm saying that because it's been over 90 degrees here for something like two weeks. I'm also not saying it because our electric bill is higher than Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. And i'm definitely not saying it because what was once a beautiful, if petite, rosemary bush is now a lightly toasted semblance of a petite rosemary bush.

I adore autumn. I love the oversized fuzzy sweaters. I love the cushy warmth at my elbows and tucking my chin into them when i'm thinking hard on something. I need to cook with apples again. Apples and cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice please. I am in withdrawal over the lack of pumpkin. Pumpkin pies, but also pumpkins sitting on porches and pumpkins all carved up glowing in windows. I even miss the rusty, spicy color of silly halloween decorations. And yes, i am severely aching for some halloween. I need ghosts and vampires and mummies like Jersey girls need tanning booths. Take pity on my boyfriend- I've been whining about this. I have large storage tubs (not bins or baskets -though i have those too), we're talking monstrously oversized (yes, full) tubs, of halloween decorations. There's a severed hand to leave in a candy bowl, and candy bowls that look like piles of ghosts or gaping-mouthed jack-o-lanterns. Tea light holders to project teeny terrifying shadows of ne'er do-wellers on my eggshell walls. A black candelabra of which Cloris Leachman would be proud.

I'll be the first to admit that it's maybe a little odd that i so love All Hallows Eve when i can't even watch a predictible pile of horror like Saw IIII without a lot of closing my eyes and humming Dave Matthews. I have some pretty awesome memories of Halloweens gone by. If there was a Ghost of Halloween Past, she'd be the cute one wearing two different colored socks and three pigtails knotted in a rainbow of ribbons. I remember a few nut-ball costumes, certainly, and the joy of the year as a kid was always the parentally-sanctioned seizure of literally pounds of sugary treats in a single night. There was something else though. Something that was just as much fun as bouncing from door to door in the slight chill of a Massachusetts October/November divide: decorating the house with my family. Competing with my brother to come up with the most complicated and original jack-o-lantern design -actually pulling it off was another matter. We'd spent hours plunging our scrawny arms well past our elbows into huge bumpy vats of pumpkin guts. Planting something sinister in the candy bowl. One time dad rigged a rubber skeleton to swing down the stairs at unfortunate souls who rang the doorbell. Another Halloween we stuffed one of his old shirts and pair of dingy overalls, sat it in a vague human form, in a chair behind the front door, and gently laid a green shrunken head in it's lifeless lap. Then there was the year we ran out of candy so my brother drafted a huge sign that read "We are Amish, we have no candy" or something like that. No doubt well lit by the electric light at the front door.

I have a lot of great memories of Halloweens past. I know there are more to come. When sweaters start to appear, and people start leaning into the wind, and you can almost smell the apple pie in the oven, you'll find me elbow deep in pumpkin guts, grinning like a, well, like someone else's jack-o-lantern. Mine will have StrongBad on it. Take that Adam. :)