Boo-ya!

Seems like just yesterday it was a hot n'sweaty summer afternoon in August. Next thing you know, it's a hot n'sweaty pseudo-fall afternoon in October and time to start considering all that lies before us with the arrival of the Halloween season.

I love Halloween, and I haven't outgrown any of the trappings of the holiday. Once a year it's totally acceptable for people to put gigantic, garish displays in their homes and yards. Well, people do this at Christmas too - but it's different. With Halloween, at least where I grew up, it was anything goes. The word "tasteless" found its true meaning in the month of October. I remember my aunt and uncle putting an elaborate faux cemetery in their front yard, complete with the token plastic foot or hand reaching up from at least one of the graves. Headstones were made out of styrofoam and personalized with black markers. Year after year my Uncle Fred put the same thing on his: "Fred is Dead."

Now, as a single gal living in a condo, I'm not really able to unleash the tacky Halloween decorator that lives within me the way I might like to. The only place I might be able to make any sort of display would be my office. And I can't do that. I'm not in a work environment that lends itself to a cackling witch recording going off every time someone walks through my office door. But I absolutely have to decorate a little. I will probably end up buying a sophisticated fall trinket of some kind to sit on the edge of my desk. Maybe from Pier One. Or Michaels. Maybe a boring basket of mini pumpkins, or something. I would, however, much prefer this.