End of October

This year, my mom is the one who gets the extended birthday. Dinner and cards last night. Presents on the weekend. Dinner out with my dad next weekend. Lucky!

I may have been a little over-ambitious with my menu planning: MuShu Vegetables, Sweet Potato Pot Stickers, and Apple Crisp. It was good, and nothing major blew up or spilled, but man, that was a lot of cooking.

To anyone (everyone) out there who does this with more frequency than I -wow. I'm impressed. I have a new appreciation for people who cook. (Notice I don't say chefs...)

Halloween is coming up. When I was younger, and had big birthday parties, October would knock us (my mom) flat.

My birthday, my mom's birthday, Halloween.

Boom boom boom.

I was never over-the-top into Halloween. Dressing up was fun, but the candy was better. I loved it, but it didn't make me crazy.

Our neighborhood is quite sad on the trick-or-treating front. This meant we would have to pack the car up with hot drinks and five extra coats and relocate to a neighborhood more friendly to kids knocking on doors and asking for sugar.

I would usually do some afternoon rounds in town, where all the shops handed out candy. As I got older, friends and I would go out and hit the houses known for handing out hand-fulls of good-quality candy.

I don't really remember when I stopped going. It was several years ago. I had lost interest in dressing up-my brain couldn't take that much creativity.

The appeal of trekking around in the dark to get small pieces of sugar had worn off. Half my friends weren't going. So I stopped. I don't miss it. I do wish we had more kids coming to our house, though, because I've always thought it would be fun to be the hander-outer of candy. Seeing the costumes and how hyper the kids were.

So no plans this year. We have pumpkins. To be carved this weekend. I only want to take off the top and get the seeds to roast. That is one Halloween tradition I'm not ready to give up.

But we always buy a big bag of candy-just in case.