I'm a Halloweenie

Who needs a Halloween costume when you wake up looking like this?

I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since I was twelve. This is because my sister was too cool by then to partake in such antics and Ari was always off doing something progressive with her school friends. This left me with no one to trick or treat with except my two middle school friends who lived in other neighborhoods and trick-or-treating with them meant I would be trapped with them until my parents came to pick me up.

This is the same reason I hated sleepovers as a kid. I was trapped. As you may have noticed, I prefer alone time. Social occasions were met with much hesitancy not because I didn’t enjoy them but because I would need time to recharge from them. When I did venture over to other kids houses I made sure my Mom knew she was required to pick me up by nine o’clock the next morning and that beautiful woman always would because she understood. I inherited this trait from her. We have both endured the prolonged mistake of inviting a friend over for the night and having them misconstrue that invitation to include the entirety of the next day up until dinnertime. Well there goes your whole weekend! I will accomplish no moody brooding or deep thoughts on humankind. So as you can see, choosing to walk an undetermined distance for an indeterminable amount of time through the dark in costume no less, with your cackling friends and their parents was no small decision. I needed specifics and logistics. I needed to know there was a plan in place to get me back home. What are you thinking, ten? Ten thirty? Are you driving me or will I be picked up? Will there be a lot of kids in the car? Will it be a loud ride?

As all thirteen year olds do, I entered teenagerdom and though I still really wanted a bucket of candy I was afraid our mean hall monitor, busybody neighbor would ask for my birth year, slam her door in my face, and call everyone on the street and turn them against me.

In college I intentionally hid from Halloween, making sure to drive home for the weekend as an excuse not to dress like a bimbo and endure the peer pressure to drink excessively and have my bimbo costume fall apart piece by piece as I staggered from room to room or sat on a half chewed taffy stick causing a run in my thigh-highs. No no. I’ll pass thanks. I have also almost always been of the disposition that does not enjoy costumes or themed parties unless with just the right crowd. I have never been ‘in’ enough to feel as though my, no doubt, clever costume ideas wouldn’t be met with ridicule by others whose sense of humor was not nearly as refined as mine. They wouldn’t begin to understand the genius of dressing only as the back half of a two-person horse costume.

Mostly I haven’t partaken in Halloween since the seventh grade because I have an aversion to organized fun and crowd following- unless that crowd is running from something terrifying. I hate scary things more than I hate being trendy and would surely wear leggings as pants if I would otherwise be strung up and killed. Therefore, I’m opposed to wearing a costume because life says I have to. You know my thoughts on The Man.

Now as a mid-twenties antisocialite I have struck an impasse. I have reluctantly found myself with a group of people that enjoy costumes and irony. My excuses are not working and I fear I have less than a day now to impress them with my heighted sense of humorous cynicism or unassuming genius and I’m just really not in the mood.

This morning I thought of being a leg lamp. Then only the bottom half of me has to dress up.

The Love Story of Buddy and Grace

There once was a very rowdy dog named Buddy. Buddy was a spirited pup who longed for adventure and companionship. Buddy would wait until nightfall and break out of his gorgeous, waterfront dungeon and prowl through the night, quenching his thirst for intrepid trials and befriending nocturnal creatures. Buddy’s captors spent his daylight hours letting him swim, kayak, and jet-ski and though Buddy enjoyed these things greatly, he longed for someone to share them with. Buddy made a name for himself quickly, verbally introducing himself with grunts and wheezing noises. He cozied up to humans and did not understand why other dogs fled in terror as he tried to greet them in haste, so excited for a potential best friend.

One day, as Buddy stared out the window, letting out long sighs and rolling his eyes back to check to see if his humans were paying him any attention, Buddy heard the screeching of brakes outside in the front yard. His ears perked up and he ran to the door. Buddy watched as a black Jeep came to a stop in the driveway. Only moments later he saw her. She leapt from the car in slow motion, her shimmering coat catching the sun as she sailed through the air. Buddy whimpered. She looked just like he did. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She held her tail high and it curved back towards her as she bounded to the front door. Their bodies wiggled as they stared at each other through the window. Tails were wagging as Buddy talked and wheezed incessantly. “Play it cool.” Buddy’s human told him. “Don’t blow this.” but Buddy was already in love. Buddy found out her name was Gracie and as soon as the front door opened they took a moment, rubbed noses, and then bolted down the stairs and ran circles in the front yard.

Since that day Buddy and Grace have been happy lovers. They miss each other when they are not together and when they finally meet again, it’s like meeting for the first time. Buddy gets giddy when he knows Grace is coming over. Buddy learned the phrase, “Gracie is coming.” and he jerks upright and runs to the front door and waits silently until she gets to him. Sometimes the wait is too much to bear and Buddy will talk and moan until he finally sees her again. One day Buddy’s human slipped and told him too soon that Gracie was coming and Buddy spent exactly twenty-two minutes staring out the window, just waiting to hear her Jeep.

When they are together they play and wrestle consistently for the first hour or so, taking breaks only for water or a quick tinkle. Sometimes they wear each other out after a few hours of hijinks and so they stop to rest, side by side.

Dad's Plum Tree

Several years ago Dad planted a plum tree in our front yard and he was very excited about it. He watered his little plum tree and every year it would get a little taller but never did it produce a single plum.
"Next year." Dad would say confidently.

Two years ago I suggested that the plum tree might need it's male or female counterpart.
"It needs what?" Dad said to me skeptically, as though this was just another of my fantastical stories. A plum tree romance.
"Some fruit plants need a male and a female in order to produce fruit." I told him. "Like blueberries!"
Dad stared and me and then dismissed my thoughts. "Nah. It's one of those that can do it by itself."
"A self-pollinater?" I asked him.
"Yeah! One of those! Self-pollinater." he said.

So I left Dad there with his plum tree. Perhaps they've come up with self-pollinating fruit bushes by now. I don't know. I don't keep up with these things and it saved me from having to teach Dad about the Birds and the Bee's. Another summer passed by with no fruit on the tree. "Next year's gonna be our year!" Dad would say and every year the plum tree let us down. "I can feel it this time Lulu! Next year!"
Dad and I began to laugh at the process of checking the tree and reciting 'next year.' just in case it would motivate the plum tree to be a plum tree.

Last month I came over to find Dad eyeballing the tree. When I asked him what he was doing he told me that he's planning on relocating it. "I'm going to plant it in Bob's yard. It's just not producing here."
"Dad you can't give up on the plum tree! We've worked so hard. You've waited so long. Maybe, just for fun, we should buy it a girlfriend plum tree and see if they want to make little ones!"
"No Lulu. It's a pollener."
"A self-pollinater?"
"Yeah."

And so Dad plans to move the plum tree to a nice area in Grandaddy Bob's yard and while he's at it he's planting two lemon trees. I felt bad about how bummed Dad was that he never grew any plums. I found it a sad notion that he would never see fruit in his tree so just before dinner one night, I snuck out into the yard and hung plums from it's slender branches. I ran inside and said "Dad come look! Something amazing happened overnight!" and I walked him over to the tree.
I figured he would know instantly what I had done once he saw the plums but I forget that he is an aging man and in the blur of his everyday vision he could only see the plums, not the bright white poultry string and packing tape they were dangling from and he let out, with childish astonishment, "Oh Wow!!!" and his gait quickened as he bounded towards a great disappointment.

It was less than a moment when he figured it out and he plucked one plum from it's dangling string and then boy did he laugh.