Haunting Halloweens

The 2002 entrance to the haunted tent

When I was younger, about 1973- 75, I devoted months of my life to a Haunted House in Willowick Ohio.  It was put on by the JC organization and staffed by volunteers.  Admission was $1, half that if you were under 12.  

Times have changed. Now to enter haunted houses can be as much as $20.

Halloween was always a big thing for me.  Later it was dressing up my own house with all kinds of figures and lights, spiders, webs, skulls, and carved pumpkins everywhere.

When my youngest son was in grade school, they had a fund raiser 
Halloween party. Every year I did something for them. Usually some kind of entrance to the tent they used, just to set the mood.  (see the photo above)

Now my participation is simpler.  I put out a few decorations and pass out treats to whomever comes to the door.  Part of me misses the "big deal" of it all,  but then I see the little face of a first time trick-or-treater. The awe and wonder of getting all dressed up and going house to house, seeing all the strangers and getting sweet treats...

..and I'm young and happy again.

May the Great Pumpkin bestow happiness upon your little pumpkin patch.

Be Well.

Taking No Hostages...

So I have been absent for over a year and a half, partly because I've been busy, but mostly because I did not feel that I had anything to say that anyone would be interested in reading.  Even if someone was reading.

Simply put, I had a series of major changes in my life, all linked, and happening in what seemed to me to be a rapid succession of cause and effect. 

I was happy about none of it.   

So what to do with my now empty days and nights?  

My kitchen more or less BEFORE

Call all my friends and cry on their shoulders until they began avoiding me? Nah. 

Write it all out here so my private life would be spooled on so many backup tapes and archived for a hundred years? Again, nah. 

Maybe curl up in a fetal position on my bed at night and cry myself through it all?  

Definitely, nah.

Instead I did something that I had been wanting to do for a very long time, but my ex and I could never agree on what was to be done....  I remodeled my house. Not that I could afford it, but thanks to some timely offers of deferred interest from some local do-it-yourself retailers, I pulled it off.

So days at work and working nights.  It took eleven months. If I could have rustled up some more credit, I'd still be at it.

More or less AFTER

Some rooms got just paint, others got more.  Ceiling fans, light fixtures, paint, furniture, drapes, floors, cabinets.. nothing was sacred.  For the first few months, my right hand held little but a three pound sledge hammer.  I had lived in this house for nearly nineteen years and had changed only the laundry room and a bathroom.  Now those were the only rooms semi safe (although the bathroom did get a change of towels and shower curtain). The kitchen would be the biggest change. Lights, cabinets, floors, ceiling, counter tops... the works.

This would be my sanctuary, my therapy, the route to a new life.  I would do it myself (which I did about 98%). I would not go down, and if I did, I was not taking anybody down with me.

No hostages.