BOO!

for all the years I've wished for a home with multitudes of trick-or-treaters, I have NEVER met my match as I just did at my house in Newnan, GA.

holy monsters! at one point I opened the door and before i even saw a masked face i heard a parent say "wait jacob, theres a line, wait your turn"....i peeked around the corner of my door to see about 30 costumed children. all muttering and yelping "trick or treat!" --down the road, crowds and crowds of children ventured from house to house to gather treats. it was fantastic!

and a little overwhelming. i ran out of $30 worth of candy before dark, and flipped off the porch light before i had to give bad news to the next round of spidermen, storm troopers, cinderellas, pirates, fairy princesses and gypsies....better luck next year.

the big victorian home across the street had a great display, with lights and spooky music playing until 7pm.

after scraping the bottom of the candy cauldron, i snuck upstairs to watch the late evening halloween goers (the ones i wish i still had candy for, because halloween is only really fun after dark) next year i'll play up a big shabang, and hopefully have a pumpkin carving party for all the friends who still dont mind driving way down (or up, or over) to newnan.

on my way home from work, i saw one house where the owners were dressed up like the adams family. face paint and all. and at first i felt bad that i didn't put that much effort into halloween. but then i though. shoot, when you're retired you can do that sort of thing!" and settled on being a good treater just for having some candy.

and i stress "candy" because during our visit to "wal-fart" as it is so endearingly called by beaux kev, i stated that i wanted to give "healthy" treats. like apples and granola bars. and was immediately corrected and stood so as i realized i was verging on becoming "one of those" who seem to RUIN halloween by giving such "treats" that totally evade the purpose of children gaining as much chocolate and sugar as possible. i remembered dumping my pumpkin bucket out in the living room floor and being entirely too excited about milky way bars and kit kats, and only caring for the boxes of raisins because when empty you could make deafening whistles and squeals with them. haha. so i bought bags and bags of CANDY. good old mini candy bars, goobers, pixie stix!, warheads, doublebubble, malted balls and sugar daddys.

right before i ran out, i was sitting on the front porch with my bowl of goodies, and i heard a little boy yell from down the street "hey daddy, a light! yay! a porch light!" because most of the houses around here had resigned themselves for the night. and i giddily wished them all a happy halloween and dumped the rest of my sugary bounty into their orange cellophane bags.

a few "good" parents made sure their kids said "thank you" and i heard threats to take away some treat bags if their kiddies weren't saying it. hilarious. some little kids were so terrified by the really scary costumes that they were already crying by the time they got to my porch. hah. i didn't even have time to dress up so it wasn't me. but there were a few masks that even spooked me!

and so a good time was had by myself and my terribly inquisitive kitties, who, being black, made a feast of being the great center of attention this time of year.

so Happy Halloween to all. and to all a good night.

yesterday

i remembered that there were several occasions that my dad would pick me up from school to take me to the orthodontist. or the dentist maybe. but i only remember it was just him and me. and on the way home we almost always stopped by the TCBY in spartanburg because i seem to remember it was a ritual of ours. and i would always get the rasberry yogurt and dad got the cookie dough ice cream though he preferred neopolitan at home. but then they stopped making the rasberry, so we both would get the cookie dough soft icecream in a big cup.

come to think of it it's pretty funny that my father took us to an ice cream parlor after leaving the dentist. it must've been the ortho. i just dont think dads psychosis would have allowed him to buy his child ice cream after the "fluoride treatment"

anyway it was one day we stopped and i dont know why i was with him because we had definitly gone to the dentist for him to have a tooth pulled. maybe i really had had my teeth cleaned. and maybe mom had met us there and stefan had ridden home with her. i just dont remember much about those things. but i would only go to dr. wynn if dad was there because i never wanted to sit in the chair by myself i always had to sit on top of dad. hah. i mean, i was a serious daddys girl. no wonder mom didn't like me that much.

but i remembered this one occasion that on the way home (and after getting icecream) we had stopped in traffic and i was laughing because he had been given novacaine so his face was numb and he kept drooling out of the corner of his mouth and had opened the door to spit (in case you're wondering, not "to spit" like a redneck with chew, but to spit, like, out of necessity...okay whatever). But he couldn't really spit well because his mouth was so numb and he ended up getting more saliva on his face anyway. And he was trying to give me the "scientific" reasons why his face was numb and telling me if i ever had my mouth numbed at the dentist to be careful that i not bite my lip because it would swell up and be injured even though i woudlnt feel it (of course, this i simply thought was absolutely cool and always planned to bite my lip if i ever had it numbed. and i think i actually did once and had a "busted" lip for a week or so) and then he bit his lip accidentally. it was pretty funny.

"the lion sleeps tonight" is always in the background of these memories because it was one of our favorite songs to sing. and he always sang the high parts. haha.

so as you probably already know. these times we were in the car, we always listened to oldies. 93.3 to be exact. when they were an oldies station. it was like an addiction. so we were almost back to wdf and i dont remember why. it seems that there were always understood reasons that were never spoken about. but instead of going home or back to school or wherever it was that i guess we were supposed to have gone. we drove past the wdf house and down to van patton shoals and we got out of the jeep and walked down to the bridge and looked over at the water and finished eating the cookie dough smoothies.

i just remembered that a few weeks ago. i dont know why.

and last time time i was in SC i cleaned out my bedroom closet and threw a ton of crap away. and i came across a program to this concert dad took me to. it must have been in 1992 or 93. about 4 or 5 groups of "oldies" singers reunited at the spartanburg memorial auditorium. and i wore a kelly green notre dam sweatshirt and some cheap imposter perfume i'd gotten at rite aid that i thought smelled really good. it was one of those "if you like Emerald, you'll love _________" in the little mini aerosol cans.

i remember being slighly terrified. but it was probably one of the best experiences of my childhood.

and thumbing through the pages of that program, i realized almost every single member of each group that was there had autographed it and written little things to me. you know, like "best wishes to Rachel" and "Dear Rachel, keep on rockin!" though i can't remember getting all of them. i do remember being afraid of all the grown ups there. some of them were drunk. and most of that night is naturally pretty fuzzy just from years that have passed adn clouded that occasion.

but i remember dancing in the aisle. and i remember the Platters and singing "peppermint twist" at the top of my lungs and knowing it was okay to yell because dad was doing it too.

these are things i remember that made my childhood really, really good.

so to all the dads out there who do stuff like this with your kids.

thank you.

A Perfect Summer Vacation