Monday, October 31, 2011

Trick or Treat- again

Something in my Celtic DNA makes me love this love the Halloween season. I wait all year for this. It's my super bowl, my world series, my St. Patricks Day, my best month of all.

For me, Halloween season runs from the week proceeding All Hallows Eve until the Monday after Thanksgiving. It includes Halloween prep, The Day of the Dead, Katy Day, all the exciting Thanksgiving prepartions, the big day and let down afterwards. The rest of the year is just the waiting for this time of year.

Not that I particularly do anything special, but I do have my routines. I reread Washington Irving's stories, epecially Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane. Build a scarecrow at the foot of the drive, watch The Great Pumpkin and Sleepy Hollow for the hundreth time, chop firewood, and prepare for my annual argument with Mrs. T about how much trick or treat candy we should have on hand.

This is our only major argument throughout the year. 5+ lbs each of Snickers, Butterfingers and Baby Ruths seem appropriate to me. Mrs. T sees the world through very dark glasses and believes we really don't need any. This is from a woman who lives for Christmas. Just because we have never had a trick or treater, nor are we ever likely to, she feels we can do without. Bunkum.

There is something fundamentally right about both hard and sweet apple cider, candy apples, harvest festivals, jack-o-lanterns, fall leaves, bonfires, dove hunts, moleskins and all fall activities.
Whatever your plans,be safe but have fun.
Toad

13 comments:

James said...

Amen to you my friend!

Suburban Princess said...

Happy Halloween! We had about 5 minutes of autumn before it got frosty. Let's hope it's just temporary.

Main Line Sportsman said...

I love the season as well....the beginning of Duck season and deer season to come....

David V said...

I've never understood my wife insistence that the number of trick-or-treaters we get should have relation to how much trick-or-treat candy we have.

Toad said...

David it is simply madness. I find it prudent to stock up before the weather turns bad. My bride see it otherwise.

JMW said...

It is a fun time of year - it seems we've been celebrating for the entire month - kids' parties, costume parties, pumpkin patches, school parties, etc. Some say it's too much, I say it's never enough! (Except when it's midnight and I'm sneaking Snickers bars from my kids' Halloween bags...)

Patsy said...

Happy Halloween, Toad!

I grew up in Washington Irving territory, love this time of year.

Linda McMullan said...

Aha! The argument to have pounds of small candies in the house, regardless of number of trick-or-treaters, is another Male DNA Marker! I knew it! Just knew it.

Toad said...

You can tell Linda lives in a place untroubled by bad weather. Preparedness is always prudent.

There clearly is no such thing as too much candy.

Anonymous said...

"There clearly is no such thing as too much candy."

Snic-ker. Let's back up a minute.

There are candy people, and there are people who don't like candy. Your bride and I don't want or like the stuff. Like Bride, I don't want it in the house even, it's gross. Little extruded sugar/chemical substance product nuggets that don't fit anywhere in the food-as-fuel pyramid/prototype. Like you, we haven't had TorT's here for years, so why should we purchase, store, heat and cool bags of non-food product nuggets? Why put extra weight on our footers, subfloor, slab, joists, headers and plates? Why expose ourselves to noxious off fumes from the packaging? Why bulk stock something with a limited shelf life begging to be consumed prior to expiration. It don't make no sense, Sir.

Happy Halloween to you and Mayberry Bride, anyway!

-Flo

Toad said...

and yet you live for McRib season

ADG said...

"5+ lbs each of Snickers, Butterfingers and Baby Ruths seem appropriate to me."

I see NOTHING here to contest. Especially the "each" word.

Anonymous said...

"and yet you live for McRib season"

Who me? Live for ribs? No, my sins are not food sins, my sins are my misguided actions, like yesterday I was passing through my husband's home office, I was simply passing through to refresh the bath linens, but I accidentally looked up, how did so many pairs of shoes get in here, well I'll just get these back to the closet, why are there so many chairseats groaning with stacks of papers, I will have to get some nice baskets so he can put his stacks in order, so I set down the towels and started rearranging things, putting things in the waste basket that must have piled up unnoticed, an hour or so later the room was ready for a magazine shoot, and the pangs of overstep guilt set in [even though I hung a few more pictures and his plaster-cast fish things he loves, changed the lamps, moved his life-size skeleton and spine replicas across the room....], so I stopped myself and went ahead and changed the bath linens.

-Flo, guilty