Halloween always throws me off.

I don't know quite what to do. Consider that:

Last year, I worked because I was depressed and living in a basement in Park hill.

The two years before that I was taking my then-stepkids trick or treating.

The fourteen years before that I was hosting or attending Samhain. Samhain I know what to do with. You dance naked around a fire, and if you're not with naked people, you're at least eating your pomegranate and talking to dead people. Samhain's all about the dead or the naked. With apples sliced across and caramel for dipping. That's been my element for most of my adult life.


This was technically Beltaen one year. -->









Me with merlot-colored hair and A at semiannual Melting Pot shindig sometime around Samhain 4? or 5? years ago.

And before that, I was in high school going to parties and haunted houses. But as a teenager, I didn't wear costumes, nor did my friends. Because that was kid stuff.

So all this talk of where the "coolest" and "biggest" parties are, and "they don't tell you the location until 24 hours before" and "getting on the VIP list" .... and trying to figure out what I'm going to be ...the only two years as an adult I dressed up for Halloween (because I know how to dress or not for Samhain) I went as northbound I-25 once and Shelob once, made all these armatures with fuzzy legs and everything. Oh, I went as a smiley face one year, too.

I've been told I could go as a nurse, but why wear workclothes? Also told I could go as a witch. Which either means "go naked" in my mind or wear my robe, and it feels very wrong to wear that to a secular party.

What an adult like me is supposed to do is find something that is fun and sexy and manage to not freeze to death. Cos this is Denver, and though the sky is blue and mild over Denver, there is an iron grey wall over the mountains that will no doubt be here by nightfall.

I have no idea what to be. And I'm back 4 lbs heavier than I was before I had to work bloody day shift this week.

Halloween. Just awkward.

My house has been decorated for fall since I got home from Europe. Complete with the spider lights going down my bannister. And it smells like cinnamon. Always. Really, what I want to do is light candles and eat my six pomegranate seeds. I don't necessarily want to talk to dead people, but it's impossible to avoid the feeling of them being close this time of year. It's heavy and thick and difficult to ignore dreams.

I will go out and drink and be merry and wear some sort of costume.

Maybe tomorrow night, I will light all the candles in my house and cut the pomegranate sitting in my apple bowl on the table and .... be with some echoes.

Addendum: Apparently, expensive VIP parties with celebrities, so no cameras, please, are not on the agenda this evening. That's a relief. Light rail to downtown to avoid the throngs of cars (and cops) because of Halloween parties and the World Series. It's not warm enough to wear my corset and merrywidows. Which is okay. I didn't buy them to be a costume, anyway. Off to the Halloween store to search for inspiration.