Halloween
this year did not go at all as planned.
It
remains true that if I want to accomplish certain things for Halloween, I need
to decide in advance. That may not be enough.
I
had plans. I was going to finally finish that one canvas project I started
years ago. I had four books I was going to read. I had seven movies that I
wanted to watch, and while I didn't think I would get all of them, I was going
to get a few. Also, I was going to dress up. I didn't have any specific goals
for decorating, but I assumed I would do some fun pumpkins, and they would be
ones I had grown myself.
I
guess the plan first started to fall apart when I didn't get any pumpkins. I
planted pumpkin seeds, and I got cute little sprouts and vines and blossoms,
but never any actual gourds. I think the crookneck squash suppressed them. I
can't prove it, but I have my reasons:
Next
up were the books. I did read Killing Monsters: Our Children's Need for
Fantasy, Heroism, and Make-Believe Violence by Gerard Jones, and it was
excellent. I could read it because the library had it. They did not have Pumpkin:
The Curious History of an American Icon by Cynthia Ott, The Romance of
Dracula: A Personal Journey of the Count on Celluloid by Charles Butler, or Better Off Dead: The
Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human by Deborah Christie. I could have
lived with this, but they were all kind of inordinately expensive in
bookstores.
To
be fair, I probably would have been behind on my reading anyway, and I had
already decided that it would be okay for Pumpkin to slip into November,
but that's just not how it worked out.
I
say I would have been behind because it does take me longer to get to things
than I will think. I never thought I would see all seven movies. As it was, I
only actually watched Practical Magic in October. I did watch I
Married A Witch, but it was November already. Still, that did essentially
get me through all of the witch movies, though there would be some overlap with
Nicole Kidman movies if I had gotten to The Others from the ghost
movies.
(Other
movies include The Time of Their Lives, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Ghost
and Mr. Chicken, and I don't know that Gaslight really fit there,
but I do want to see it eventually. Also, I would really love to see The
Uninvited again, because I only have very vague memories of it, but it does
not seem to be generally available.)
The
first weekend in October I got out the canvas work, and I cut out all the letters,
the leaves, and the pumpkins, except that something went wrong and I ran out of
canvas for the lower half of one pumpkin. I think I can still make it work, or
hey, buy new canvas, but no, it was not completed by Halloween.
I
never decided on a costume, which will be its own post, and I never had a
strong feeling for any specific pumpkin carving theme. I did carve a pumpkin,
and I thought I was doing a fairly random face, though it came out looking a
little like our new cat, who can be kind of ferocious.
Mostly,
though, I want to say that it was all okay. The reason Halloween is important
for me is for the creativity, and maybe a little for the scares, and I had that
in spades because of writing the 6-page scripts. That was totally something
that could interfere with the reading and movie watching. It interfered with my
regular television watching, but that's one reason for the DVR. I got to
use my creativity.
There were some themes that worked well with Halloween. One of the reasons I
wanted to read the zombie book was that despite their enormous popularity I
don't really care for them, but I wrote
three different scripts with zombies. I had some vampires show up, and pirates,
two kinds of demons, fairies, giant spiders, and a cat named Pumpkin! There was
kind of a witch figure in one, and there was a cannibal rat ghost ship, so
really, I think Halloween was pretty well covered.
I
do still want to see all of those movies, plus others, and read all of those
books, and I do want to finish the canvas project, but nonetheless, October was
a good month this year, and I suspect it will be a good month next year too.
I
regret nothing (this time).
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