My thoughts are all jumbly this morning, so bear with a tangential, scattered recap post.
Firstly, we rushed home from work yesterday to carve these beauties:
Guess who's who? I'll give you a hint: My pumpkin doppelganger is not the tall, bummed-out one. Although I was responsible for carving that one, and perhaps that's why he's sad. His saucy, crooked frown? It wasn't supposed to be crooked. I am not a master carver.
I really should have snapped a photo of the jack-o-lantern's all lit up when it started to get darker out, but the truth is that we were bombarded with children. More on that in a minute.
After we were finished carving and our pumpkins were flickering merrily on the front porch, I proceeded to separate the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin pulp, spread a bazillion seeds out to dry overnight, and Google ways to use the pumpkin pulp. Because I am frugal and thrifty like that now, and have adopted "waste not, want not" as my mantra. Or something like that. Anyway, I had visions of pureeing the pulp with cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and allspice and creating a delightful pie, or perhaps a pumpkin bread.
Turns out the pulp is basically only good for feeding birds, and even then people aren't sure if it's terribly safe. The pulp is now in our garbage can.
The affects of eating Carrie's pumpkin pie...
Back to the trick-or-treaters, though -- OMG, there were so many kids! We haven't been around for Halloween in our neighborhood before, so we weren't sure what to expect. We bought two bags of candy -- Reeses and Kit-Kats -- and decided that would be more than enough. I'm sorry to say some of the candy bit the dust over the past few days too, pre-Halloween. Those sneaky Kit Kats.
Trick-or-treating started at 5:30, and by about 5:50 Kyle was making an emergency run to Rite-Aid for supplies and I was doling out one tiny piece per kid, rather than holding out the bowl and saying "Take what you want!" I actually shut the door at one point when we had 4 pieces of candy left. Luckily Kyle returned before a revolt was staged, but I would estimate we got over 100 trick-or-treaters last night. Our street has nowhere near that many kids, but apparently they came from far and wide.
I do use the term "kids" loosely though, because some of these boys and girls might have been pushing 20. I totally went door to door trick-or-treating at 18 as a senior in high school, and that's pretty embarrassing now. It's a little awkward to be all "Trick or Treat! What great costumes! Happy Halloween!" with someone who is approximately 4 years younger than you, as if you are a grown-up and they are children.
But the little ones -- ohhhhh my gosh, were they adorable. I saw Power Rangers and Superman and Disney Princesses and even one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (those are still around?) I love Halloween because the kids are so so so so cute.
One of my favorite pictures of all time.
Adults just do not compare.
Also, I was totally touched by so many of the parents walking their kids around, holding their hands, reminding them to say "thank you," making sure they looked both ways before crossing the street, and smiling when I made a fuss over their little ones' costumes. We live in a city neighborhood, and I know some of the families on our street and especially streets further down the hill really struggle to make ends meet. There were a lot of homemade/makeshift costumes, which were adorable. There were a lot of very, very young parents. And there were a lot of adorable little ones who were over the moon when I told them to take more than one treat. As I said before, Halloween is a great holiday -- it's fun just because.
We stemmed the candy hemorrhage at 7 and then ordered a pizza. I'm pretty sure this isn't politically correct, but can I just say how much I love immigrant delivery guys? They have to be some of the nicest human beings on the planet.
When we ordered Chinese the night before Thanksgiving a few years ago, the man who dropped it off wished us a "Happy Sanksgiving!!!" in the cheeriest voice you could imagine, and we now say that to each other every Thanksgiving -- he has basically become a part of our celebration. He actually got me quite choked up at the time, but that is no surprise.
Last night, our pizza delivery man was Russian (or at least sounded Russian to my ignorant American ears), and he apologized that it had taken awhile to deliver our pizzas, said everyone seems to order pizza tonight (I believe it), and than wished me a Happy Holiday. Emphasis on those Hs. They were guttural, my friends, and they meant business. He said it with such a smile.
I think I may order delivery close to every holiday, because both times it has been the highlight of my night.
Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra.
And then we went to bed at 9:30, and it was glorious. I don't know why we don't do that more often. It's so lovely to lay down when you aren't about to drop dead from exhaustion. Waking up at 6:22 this morning was no problem at all.
Of course, then my nail polish peeled badly in the shower and I had to remove it and repaint it and my hair wouldn't pull into the high bun I had in mind and Bailey looked at me with her sad eyes as I ran walked out the door.
But hey, I had a Hhhhhappy Hhhhholiday last night, so nothing can get me down today. Probably.
Now, we must get ready for Sanksgiving. Too much?