Let Me Count The Ways

Today is DoesThisParkaMakeMyButtLookBig's 100th post!  It's a good thing you aren't here to see my happy dance, because despite the scientific advances of the 21st century, you still can't erase something like that from your memory, even if you desperately want to.  It's better this way.

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At this particular time of year, there are some things that I miss about our old neighborhood.  

I miss scampering through the local corn maze with my sister, cackling loudly as we race through the crisp fall air and trick small, rosy-faced children into marching down dead ends. I yearn for my kitchen, with its sharp knives, miraculous dishwasher and double sink.  Here, when I load the sink with dirty dishes and greasy pans, I don’t have a second bowl to fill my coffeepot in, and rearranging the mountains of glass and knives is like a kitchen version of running the gauntlet  – one of these days, I am going to reach in, flail about, and emerge not with ten fingers, but with two fists of what appears to be ground meat.  I long for the vegetable stand a mile up the road, with its locally-made ginger and eggnog ice creams and perfectly inspired cherry tomatoes that almost never lasted the 3-minute drive home.  I crave a yoga class, a match with my volleyball team, my washer and dryer, and the company of my parents.   I even sort of miss the way the local McDonald’s employees recognized my face as I drove through for yet another vanilla ice cream cone.  I’d try not to frequent the same franchise more than once per day, but there were times when I cared less about my reputation and more for my craving.  They probably had a nickname for me, and rightfully so.  

But despite the wonder of NPR, wireless internet, and comprehensive fitness centers, there are also a few things that I don’t miss.  For example, I don’t miss traffic.  For you friends who doubt the existence of traffic in the neighborhood, boy do I have news for you.  I can identify between 40 and 50% of the vehicles driven in our current town.  The other half is made up of either Canadians or logging trucks.  The last time I had to stop behind a car was about a week ago.  It was on the 3-mile dirt road to camp, and was because we all knew each other and were stopping to have a chat. 

Traffic.

I also don’t miss shopping.  C and I have developed a very brief retail half-life, which seems ironic since before the move, I worked in that industry.  Perhaps it was always this way, but I suspect that making our direct purchases almost exclusively at convenience and grocery stores for the last nine months has exacerbated our impatience.  The only exception I make to the above statement is that I have retained an insatiable love for shopping with my sister, which categorically falls somewhere between Halloween-costume hunting and raiding a candy store, and is perhaps better known as the eternal quest for the most revolting frock.

Lastly, among the things that I have gladly left behind me are traffic circles.  If you believe in such a place, I am convinced that these, friends, are what Limbo is made of: circle after badly engineered circle of misery and anguish and panic.  I dread them.  There is a special, particularly abysmal roundabout near our old house that was recently re-designed, which means that they decided after a dozen years or more to abruptly change the traffic pattern.  I completely agree with the decision, because the vehicle interactions were backwards and inside out for years (inside out, I tell you!), but this is exactly the problem with traffic circles: there seems to be no universal way of constructing them.  Another loop I know of has two lanes – two lanes­ – something that simply cannot produce a safe or predictable traffic pattern.  I am certain that a preschooler somewhere took red crayon and drew a set of fiery concentric circles, then crammed the paper into her city planner/mommy’s briefcase, only for it to slide out onto the office floor and get pushed through approval and funding by some recently-promoted department intern.  It's particularly infuriating considering that the circles were probably drawn to be a giant apple, or maybe Buzz Lightyear.  Bottom line: a two-lane roundabout is ridiculous. 

Just try to get out of this inside circle without reaching for your Paxil.  Kiss your sanity goodbye. 

Mercifully, I haven’t driven in a circle in months, hardly ever see a stoplight, and buy my gifts online.  This softens the blow of not being able to watch my sister kill a bag of 75%-off Halloween candy or nosh on my mom’s salsa while listening to Simon & Garfunkel with Dad at the dining room table.  It’s is a good thing, because life without the joy of those two events has the potential to really bring me down. 

But no traffic circle Limbo?  This just might be worth it.  

I'm Dreaming Of A White Halloween

The forecast for tomorrow night calls for evening snow showers.  Now, if I lived in Salt Lake City or Breckenridge or Tahoe or somewhere wonderfully ski-hill laden, this might be good news.  Unfortunately for all of us, I don’t, and the hint of impending white stuff is no lottery prize.  Halloween is next Monday, and I really like Halloween, but how can I celebrate in Bog boots and insulated Carhartts? 

Some college friends and I once made the rounds in 40 degree weather (suburban Chicagoland is prime candy-begging real estate, even when you’re a college junior), and let me tell you, my roommate Noel, who took the evening by storm as Lady Liberty, was quite literally shaking in her boots.  This was mostly because her costume was a thin grey sheet and [the coolest] aluminum foil crown [you’ve ever seen], and also she didn’t have any silver Carhartt overalls that would match her torch.  The group of us spent the night slowly shuffling through neighborhoods in the cold, receiving all kinds of suspicious expressions from moms and dads, but still getting their mini Snickers bars.  I don’t want to relive a cold Halloween.  And what about the children?!

Snow and cold aside however, I love costumes, and love to conjure up ideas for the old two-person dynamo.  Here is a sampling from my collection.

Our pet cat, Kiwi and box turtle, Lois - I’d wear black (already filling my closet) with face paint whiskers and a tail, while C could strap on our friends’ turtle sandbox cover. 

Vermont and New Hampshire – constructed out of cardboard, this is always on the list.  Even when you’re dancing in two separate rooms, everyone will know that you’re together.

Thing One and Thing Two – I  saw this done once in college, and it will live on in my mind for-e-ver.

A chicken and an egg – I like the idea of wearing a round suit.

A hunter and a moose – the only hazard being that one of us might actually get shot walking to the party.

source 

Moby Dick and Captain Ahab

We have some friends who are pregnant, and I’d personally really like to see them go as a bun and the oven.

Of course, I don’t actually have a party to get dressed up for, and I don’t imagine that we’ll really have any trick-or-treaters stop at our cabin, but hey – who needs a reason, right?  So if Monday night comes around and you happen to be a dromedary camel or bunch of grapes with nowhere to go, stop on over.  You can come watch the Chargers and Chiefs hammer it out with Captain Ahab and the white whale. 

Bring some chips.

Fight or Flight

Each Halloween when we were kids, my sister and I, along with millions of fellow gremlins, would stage our annual burn-and-pillage of the neighborhood candy-supply.  Most children seemed to return home with their bounty splitting the seams of a king size pillowcases, but not us.  She and I would barrel in the door with our loot swishing around at the halfway mark of a department store jack-o-lantern pail.  And those were the good years.  Don’t begin to let yourself feel sorry for our miniature plunder; it was more than enough to feed the fires of a benign preadolescent buzz. Like our juvenile counterparts around the country, the hit we got from those eyeball jawbreakers and rainbow Skittles was strong enough to sustain our excitement during the 162 days it would take to reach Easter. 

www.bodyshockprogram.com

I know I shouldn’t be using up a Halloween tale in March, but this story is funny, and really – you only live once, right? 

Unlike some kids, my sister and I didn’t usually start the costume process until around the day of, at 3pm, and in general, our final products betrayed our lack of planning.   I think, because of where we grew up, we lacked the competition that would make us better trick-or-treaters. Our staples were the following:  

1. Gymnast / Dancer – Both my sister and I had taken dance lessons for a while, and had moved on to gymnastics.  These costumes were the easiest and fastest to produce, thus the most frequent.
2. Egyptian Princess – I’m not sure why, but for some reason, if we put on one of our mom’s silky nightshirts, a big belt, some necklaces, a scarf and a lot of eye shadow, we transformed from two awkward preteens into Cleopatra and Bathsheba. 
3. Hobo – As socially and politically incorrect as it is, we did it, wearing flannel shirts and carrying stuffed bandanas on a stick.  I probably also ate a can of pinto beans before setting out, just to - you know - be in character.
4. Japanese Princess – Mom had this gorgeous navy and white kimono that we would swaddle ourselves in.  It made you feel perfectly regal.  But you had to get pulled in a wagon, because walking was just not an option.
5. African Princess – Mom also had a Liberian dress we’d steal.  This outfit as a costume seems particularly wrong to me in hindsight, but don’t throw stones until you’ve done it. 

Other costumes would make an appearance on occasion.  One year I was a cow.  Another, a ghost.  During college I was a German yodeler/Minnie Mouse.  But the highlight of my collective Halloween memory took place when I was probably 7 and my sister 9.  She had decided to wear my dad’s flight suit from his days in the Air Force.  Imagine a 50-inch fourth grader wearing a jumpsuit sized for an average male in his mid twenties, helmet and breathing hose included.  No tailor could have made this work.

But the results were awesome.

So on this particular holiday, she and I were wrapping up our 10 house circuit culminating with our godparents’ home, which traditionally came last, probably because they had been out earlier with their kids [filling actual pillowcases].  We didn’t live in an area where you could trick or treat by foot, unless you wanted to start early that morning and pack tuna salad sandwiches for lunch and dinner.  So we get to our friends’ door, ring the bell and recite our line in an enthusiastic off-key singsong.  They reward our efforts with caramel-apple lollipops (a longstanding personal favorite) and Sugardaddies (my sister’s golden goose), and we say our goodbyes.  We start off down their walkway toward the car.  I hopped in the seat behind my Dad and shut the door behind me, pawing in the darkness at my treasure, running my fingers through the crisp wrappers, lost in a gluttonous trance and paying no attention to my surroundings.  As we are rolling down the long driveway, I break concentration and suddenly realize that I’m alone in the backseat.  And I shouldn’t be.  The car door to my right is half open, and I can see the olive green of my father’s flight suit flickering as my sister’s arms flail at the car door.  What is she doing?!!

We probably made it halfway down the dirt driveway with my sister dragging beside the car, air hose and all.  It took me a second after seeing her for me to start howling for Dad to stop the car, that she wasn’t technically riding with us.  She must have had a hard time finding the seat with that visor over her eyes.  Regardless, she turned out fine, and even more disappointing at the time was the fact that she was indeed going to be alive to maintain ownership of her jack-o-lantern.  Maybe next year. 

www.costume-place.com

What my sister should have worn.

via the Aerospace Museum of California

It was a dragging thing of beauty.

You might think I’m a monster for highlighting this story as the pinnacle of my entire Halloween repertoire.  But if it were you in my seat, with your hand in your bucket and your eyes on that helmet clanging on the car door, you’d be no different.