Holy Halloween

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much over Halloween this year. There are some things I love about the holiday and some that I loathe. I got an email earlier today from my friend Susannah asking: “Who ever thought of Halloween??” According to my 8-year-old son, it was the pilgrims. I don’t think so. 

Top 5 things I love about Halloween:

1. Candy. I’ve already admitted that I’m a junky.
2. Watching It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.
3. Tasteful décor. Let’s face it, no one does it better than Martha.
4. Roadies (yummy dark & stormies tonight -- thanks Natalie!) while you're cruising the streets with your kids.
5. When your child picks who they want to be months in advance and doesn’t change his/her mind. And, you have the costume together in September.

Top 5 things I loathe about Halloween:

1. Running out of candy and having to turn away ambitious trick-or-treaters.
2. Freshly carved pumpkins that burn because you used the wrong kind of candle or didn’t keep an eye on them. True story.
3. When your child doesn’t know what he wants to be and announces the day before that he wants to be a zombie with Thriller like zombie makeup he saw on YouTube.
4. Scrubbing off zombie makeup at 9:00 pm.
5. Teenagers who are clearly too old to trick-or-treat, especially sans costumes.

Poll: how old is too old to trick-or-treat? Please weigh in on comments section.

Just one more peeve: when did people start trick-or-treating by car? Last year we had some parents who drove their kids house to house down our street. Ridiculous!

For those of you who are health conscious, here are some abbreviated tips I received from my gym today followed by my commentary:

Tips on battling the bulge during this crazy candy season:

• Don't buy your favorite candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters.  Too late.
• Out of sight, out of mind. Once the holiday passes, don't keep the candy sitting out. Yeah right.
• Keep count. If there were ever a day to keep a food journal, Halloween is that day! No way Jose.
• Don't drastically cut calories earlier in the day in an attempt to counteract any excessive candy eating later on. Never even crossed my mind.

Tonight we are going to a party at our new neighbor's house (welcome Jen and Greg!), so I’m leaving a bowl of candy on our doorstep. Back in my youth, that was considered a jackpot. Maybe kids today are more considerate. We shall see.

Sign my son helped me make posted on our front door at 5:43 pm.

315 pieces gone 7:57 pm.

Enough said. Next stop Thanksgiving. I know it’s coming because I saw the Thanksgiving candy at Target yesterday.

Good night.