Halloween

I can't believe how excited everyone seems to be about Halloween. There's halloween stuff everywhere. It's like Christmas, except there's cobwebs instead of tinsel, and pumpkins, ghosts and skeletons, instead of Santa, Rudolph and angels.

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) had Halloween decorations all over it (including some tape that said "Caution: Enter if you dare" strung across the reception desk, which I thought was slightly scary. Even more scary when we report for our driving tests next week). Ye Olde Sex Shoppe had halloween pumpkins in the window (and cobwebs). The boys wanted to know what the toys were next to the skeletons. ("They're toys for grown ups").

Estate agents, restaurants, pretty much everywhere has got halloween stuff. We went to a Halloween shop, which had some really gruesome stuff. A and D's favorite was a slightly decomposed corpse, which had been amputated at the waste. If you stamped on the ground near it, it sort of dragged itself along on it's arms, and groaned. (Yours for only $100). There was also a bust that pulled it's own head off and laughed.

Halloween means dressing up. But you don't have to get dressed up in Halloween related stuff, you can get dressed up in anything. So, we bought the boys Superman costumes. It includes a 'metal' bar (made of plastic) which makes a satisfactory noise when you bend it. (D worked out how to make it make the noise without bending it, and A got cross about that, because it wasn't right.) And plastic hair, which looks a bit like Superman's. ("Daddy, why do Supermans wear hats?" they keep asking.)

But the Velcro fasteners on the back of the costumes make them itch, and the hats make their heads sweaty, and when they sit down, they can't get up again, because they are sitting on the cloak. So we'll see how long they can keep them on, on the big day. (Well, more than one big day - there's a halloween party in the afternoon of 31st at CoCE, and we are going to a do on Saturday afternoon as well).