WHO GAVE THIS CHILD A GUN?

Finally it's almost November.  That's really the only reason I've been looking forward to Halloween, for it means the start of November is the next day and that's my favorite month.  I love everything about Thanksgiving and since we live in America we start celebrating the Christmas season basically tomorrow as well... SO COMMERCIALIZED but I like Christmas lights and making cookies and the smell of snow and presents (I'm honest, not greedy).  It is ironic I like Thanksgiving because I don't eat turkey, but there is a product on the market called Tofurky and it's not nearly as bad as it sounds.  In fact, I think it's delicious and even better tasting.  I can picture most people reading this saying out loud, "It's not the same thing".  Whatever.  It tastes good in my mouth.

One of my teachers asked us all what we were going to be for Halloween and no one said anything because I'm pretty sure no one is going out in this weather.  I think most cities even around here have officially postponed Halloween which kinda sucks in my opinion because I just want to focus on Thanksgiving.  Three weeks from tomorrow.  Craziness.  It's weird because I can barely remember any costumes I dressed up in during my childhood.  Again, I have an extremely poor memory.  Halloween was considered a big deal when we were younger though.  We would go to my Uncle Tim and Aunt Cathy's house (her birthday is today too!) and they would go all out the party every year.  I remember being very scared that night because my sibs and I were among the youngest ones there, as it was mainly adults.  And these adults were very much dressed up.  My mom would make me sit next to witches and shit and that may be why to this day I'm not a huge fan of the whole ordeal.  Plus one year I seem to have been dressed very psycho-like.

As if you can't tell, I'm a clown and yes, that is a gun in my hand.  This is not ok.  How did the person taking this photo not tell me to put that down?  Was I carrying this the whole night?  Did I pretend to shoot people?  And why is my face like that?  It looks like I just took major pleasure in attacking anti-clown protestors.  I will ignore the fact that I didn't seem to need a mask and I could simply smile as hard as my cheeks would let me and it would be just as unsettling.  I hope I didn't trick or treat like this.  No wonder I never had any friends to go with, after this year the parents of my friends probably decided to let me be on Halloween night.  The good thing about seeing me in this costume is realizing my parents knew how to economize their money in regards to costumes.  I think we must have had some type of rotation system going on because I believe this is the year before.

Tom went the more conventional route of swapping the gun for the big red nose, but for that there are clearly personal side effects.  Compare my face to his and tell me I didn't have more fun.

xxxx

A

"Oh! Cinderella?" No, I'm a Pirate..

For someone who isn't crazy about fall and is less than thrilled about October in general, I celebrated with festivities pretty much the entire weekend.  Like I wrote previously, I did the whole haunted house thing Friday night, chilled with Mack most of the day Saturday (completely avoiding my epidemiology project), attended Jay and John's Halloween bash that evening, and spent yesterday carving arguably the third worst pumpkin out of like the 10 people in the room.  Jenna and I went all out for our costumes for the party and were hoping it wasn't going to be like some parties that say "wear a costume if you'd like" and there's one person who sticks out like a sore thumb.  We did not want to be those phalanges, but we said YOLO.

Luckily a good portion of the group did follow suit and dressed up amusingly.  

Pirate (or Cinderella in Rags) and John Donkey Democrat

The fun that I had Saturday night outweighed the regret I had the following morning of choosing to end my night drinking the Jungle Juice they provided.  Last night I saw "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", and if you haven't read the book you should.  The movie did a great job of following the book but I do sort of wish they chose an American actress to play the role of Sam, the American high school student.  Emma Watson is beautiful and a great actress but I kept hearing her accent come up.  It could have been because I was sort of looking for it and therefore just created it.  Seeing the movie was a nice break from remembering being admonished by my father for having to drive back to Cleveland in Hurricane Sandy this morning.  It's funny because I was getting yelled at before the actual occurrence of me driving to school even happened.  So I was just a mess most of last night because of that and I was so tired and on edge and all round not good company.  I will be so grateful when this day is over and I can sleep for hours on end.  I'm currently very sleep deprived as you can probably tell, I'm switching ideas every other sentence.  

One more idea switch, I hate self check-out lines at stores.  Those do not save time, I don't care how long the line is.  We used one last night at Wal-Mart, and I offered to bag Connor's purchases for him after he scanned them because I am a superb and thoughtful girlfriend.  Worst.  Idea.  Ever.  After three items I caused the "Please Wait for Assistance" screen and loud verbal message to pop up and we just waited till it went away.  Then the screen popped up like two more times throughout the transaction.  It shouldn't be as hard as they make it.  I'm just putting the stuff in a bag, why do I have to set it down first so it gets weighed.  It's all just a sloppy system that I never want to deal with again.  I'm pretty sure Connor doesn't want me to deal with it again either, mainly when he's with me.  

Happy Monday and endless rain should cancel classes.

xxxx

A

I Wish I Had My Sword Last Night

I completed my main goal for October: Attending a Haunted House.  A truck full of myself and 8 other people headed to Ghost Lake about 45 minutes away and enjoyed shitting our pants in a number of haunted houses.  They were actually pretty sweet, there were like seven different attractions/houses/mazes, and I do not understand how I can yelp as high pitched as I do.  I want to be able to do that on command because it's just this shrill of a shriek and it's seriously so high I don't understand how it gets up there.  If I wasn't me I'd be very annoyed by myself. The houses got progressively scarier depending on what we all talked about while waiting in the lines to actually go through them.  For example, after the first two we were discussing how "easy" it'd be for a murder rampage to occur.  He/she just dresses up as a scary person (mask, makeup, dark outfit) and hides in the house, stabs one at a time, and if they yell it's all part of the environment.  No suspicions.  Until people stop coming out of the houses.  But no one really stands at the exit, they only check tickets at the entrance.  The only dudes hanging out the end are the ones who chase you out with chainsaws.  And I forget who yelled it after the first clown maze, it might have been Bryant exclaiming, "DON'T RUN FROM THE CHAINSAWS THAT'S WHEN THEY'LL CHASE YOU".  Meanwhile I see Rakim sprinting in circles trying to avoid the chainsaw man.  Nice.

The scariest part of the night came during the last attraction which was an old ass roller coaster that they ran in the pitch dark.  This was scary for all the wrong reasons.  I think it's the oldest wooden coaster in existence and for that I did not think I would be alive at the end of it, based on the noises it was making alone.  Parris lost his iPhone on the coaster.  We think he left it in the seat and then someone else picked it up.  AKA: stole it.  Amazingly iPhones have that sick feature of locating one another, so Brenna plugged his info into her phone and we were actually able to track where the iPhone was going.    As if it had a life of its own.  So of course we followed it down the darkest of dark roads and cornfields, the perfect setup for a 21st Century ;Children of the Corn' horror film.  So here we all are stuffed like sardines in this SUV tracking the locations of his lost iPhone down freaky roads and Rakim and Connor are making a list out loud of whose going to be murdered first in the setup.  I still resent them for murdering me off pretty close to first because I was the "scene vegetarian character".  Rude.
We pulled over where the iPhone supposedly stopped moving and a couple of the boys searched around the houses nearby, not looking suspicious at all for 1:30 am.  Somehow Rak saw the phone on the other side of the road blinking in the grass.  The supposed thieves must have thrown it out the window when they realized they were dealing with the wrong 9 jacked-up-on-fear people.  Happy ending to a long, long night.

Tonight Jay and John are having a halloween party and I will be utilizing one of Mackenzie's old dance costumes because I am cheap and they're cute.  Plus they are ridiculously expensive and my parents were like PLEASE GET MORE USE OUT OF THEM.  I think I'm going as a pirate.  My mom was helping with my costume and I asked if she had a sword I could take.  In my head I'm picturing a light weight, smaller sized one that  I can easily attach to a belt and just have as an accessory.   She got really excited because she did indeed have a sword in her closet (why?) so she thought she could help. Um, my mom doesn't mess around.

There is no way I'm taking this with me because I felt too dangerous flailing it around even sober.  Add people in a drunken stupor to the environment and I do not want to be responsible for anything involving my weapon.  It is heavy and intense and looks like it came right out of Middle Earth.  And my dad said he wouldn't let me take it with me even if I wanted to.

xxxx

A

I Don't Even Like Tootsie Rolls.

Thank God it's October because I HATE SEPTEMBER.  I've never fully understood why but I do have a few thoughts.  It might be some innate hatred for the beginning of school that I possessed since I was a wee little one but who knows.  It could also be that I just am not a big fan of fall in general, and September marks the start of the season.  I have less of a problem with October and I actually love November with a passion.  I think November for me means fall is almost over and Christmas is coming.  Like, if I made it to November then the fall season can officially suck it.  I'm not crazy about Halloween.  We had a wise orange, large cat named Pumpkin (the name product of a family whose creativity level reaches new heights) when I was young and one Halloween he was on the front porch and a kid stepped on him.  My brothers always made me think Tootsie Rolls and mints were better than Snickers and Reese's and wouldn't tell me that's obviously not true until I traded away all my mini candy bars for little hard pieces of shit candy.  I would be pushin' 60 Tootsie Rolls by the time we tallied candies.
 I'd rather carve into my face than into a pumpkin, and it would probably look better (dramatic but you get the picture).  And pulling those nasty squishy groups of seeds out of the middle always makes me uncomfortable.  Even hayrides.  Does everyone just ignore the fact the whole event smells like farm animal fecal matter?  Maybe it's just me.  I'm now realizing it would make more sense that I hate October more than September, but I don't.  I'm clearly full of surprises.  And complaints.

I DO enjoy haunted houses and scary movies.  And they have some great ones in Ohio.  Getting scared makes me feel alive, you know.  Seriously.  Things popping out or making sudden movements freak me out though.  I took a very long way around the aisles in CVS to get to the vitamins because they had one of those life size hooded skeletons standing near the aisle I needed.  I swear to God if I walked in front of that thing and it had a motion detector and did something I would have shrieked.  There is no reason to draw that type of attention to yourself in a drugstore.

HOW DOES THIS PROMOTE BUSINESS?

Current events:  There is a huge peanut butter recall list that just keeps growing.  I am getting increasingly nervous.  If you consume the main brands like choosy moms you should be OK because Jif and Skippy are cleared.  If you're a health freak (relax I don't really think that) and buy your pb from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods then be careful because they're on the list.  I don't know what else to tell you besides be careful because I don't work for the FDA.  Don't eat it?

xxxx

A