For me lately, my big decisions regarding Halloween have been, "Do I leave the light on and deal with the effing trick-or-treaters or can I just bail (again) this year?"
I HATE Halloween. Not only is it my Annual Sewing Event, for which I lack any kind of expertise despite my fancy-schmancy Bernina sewing machine (which I thought would solve my problems but it didn't), but it's also, apparently, a day in which short, oddly-clad beggars are encouraged to ring my fucking doorbell repeatedly and hold their grubby hands out asking for candy.
This year I live in a townhouse complex that is CRAWLING with kids so I think I will plan a vacation that night. Or go to a double feature or something. Anything to escape the maddening hordes (my own kids will be with their father, who insists it's a "family tradition" for him which means it is totally all about the chocolate, taking his OWN bag around PLUS stealing from my kids, thanks dad!).
But jeez people! Since when did it become de riguer to give more than one piece of candy out per kid? In my day, if we got a mushy apple with a razor blade in it, we felt lucky. And back when I lived in a house with a yard under constant construction that was set well back from the road in a sparse neighborhood, we'd get maybe 4 kids in a night. It was an event. I'd buy bags of candy (my favorites of course, because I knew who would be consuming them) and I'd dump the whole bowl into like one kid's bag. Let his parents deal with the dental bills.
Oh, and apparently you have to know what the "cool" candy is so as not to be branded 'weird". It's WAY too late for that for me, but tell me, what candy is "cool"? The other day, to be on the safe side (and to dollar-cost-average the expense of buying it; that shit is expensive!) I bought several bags of Halloween candy: Snickers, Three Musketeers, Milky Way. Okay, I like those (except Snickers, but I could tell those are popular because that's mainly what the kids seem to come home with), but not only am I not doing sugar (much) but what should I have bought instead? Ideas?
P.S. And when oh when did they start pushing Halloween in September??
P.P.S. (or is is P.S.S.?) PLEASE don't write and tell me how much you luuuurve Halloween, it's your favorite holiday, all those glowing little faces, and you dress up every year as a fricking pumpkin or something. Because I would really prefer to stay grumpy and peevish for the next six weeks, thank you.
