Halloween Parties , the parade in Nyack et al.

Alot has gone on lately and I've been remiss in writting about it.

Before Halloween Nastia gets her Halloween costume in the mail. It is a patient leather shiny black short dress that she is going to wear and be a cat for Halloween. She trys it on for my opinion. I tell her it is too short to wear without shorts on. She says she will wear shorts and she asks me what stocking she should wear? (Should I have voiced my opinion? well, I did)I never see the complete costume on her and as far as I know no photos exist of it. I will ask her if she has any. When she got to the party and put her costume on it was too uncomfortable and she changed out of it. We get a text somewhere south of midnight...I just checked for the text where she said she was at CJ's where she was going to spend the night and maybe I imagined it, I can't find it. I thought she left the party early. She is at the age where she can do things that no one will find out about unless she tells them. I know a few of those stories, but I'm sure some of the more, well we all know the stories we don't tell our parents. If she left the party earlier or it was early in the morning it doesn't matter because she lived through it.

On the same night as Nastia goes to her Halloween party Nyack has their parade. Over the years Nyack has had some really good and some really bad parades. The best ones were when we lived in Nyack and the parade went right by the house. We had a party and the parade was almost an after thought. This year I put the two usual chairs in the car. We're a little late getting down there so we park on Catherine street and walk. I take my chair and offer to take Teri's. She says to leave it in the car. We find a good spot behind a barricade in front of the bank that is just off the corner of South Franklin Avenue. We spread out and I

sit. No one else wanted a chair and as we wait people start crowding in on our spot.In the past the barricade didn't exist all the way up the street. I'd sit down with a front row view and when the parade started I'd be six rows back. With the barricade I keep my front row view. It is great and the parade is pretty good this year. After the parade we go out to eat. I think we go to the Hard Wok. It is weird, it's just Teri, Nancy and I, no kids.I miss them.

Several weeks before Halloween I am cleaning in the attic and find all or at least most of the Halloween stuff. We hadn't put anything up in years. Elena sees it and puts it all up. She even buys a blow up cat and and blow up T-Rex costume. While we're at the Halloween Parade she sends us a video of her in the costume. Later she tells us the music is from Jurassic Park

On Halloween eve, called gate night when I grew up, kids would go out in packs and get into 'mischief' The next day you'd see toilet paper hanging from trees, peoples windows soaped up. In later years it got to be a little more destructive and pumpkins would get smashed. As I got older we'd make sure the cars were not in a place to get hit. This year as in most of the last twenty or so 'Gate Night' is not what it was, if anyone even remembers it. In this hyper partisan world I guess that's not a bad thing.

At dinner one night before Halloween Nastia anounces she has to wear a costume to her job at West Nyack Elementry. She rules out the cat costume, too short and sexy. She thinks she has an old costume. I tell her I have the lion costumes from when they were fist here in America. Nastia always game for something really silly agrees to try them on. She tries on the first one I pull out, her old costume, not even close. I pull out her sister costume and I'd say not quite big enough.

Now Halloween, it self like 'Gate Night' has also suffered. Razor blades in candy and all of those other things ruined it. Covid put the last few nails in it's coffin, except in Nyack, on North Broadway. I haven't been down there in the last several years, but Halloween in Congers, on South Harrison Avenue has never been that exciting. We had our decorations up I got out of work and I'm driving down South Harrison Avenue towards the house and I see a group of kid and parents. A quick count would have come up with a total of about twelve. I think, well maybe Covid hangover is going to bring everybody out. They'd passed the house by the time I'd gotten there, but Elena's car is parked in the driveway so she must have given them candy. I enter the house and she is in the shower, she's going out with Matt. and the candy is still in the bags. I set everything up and then wait... Sometime about two hours late we get our first kids. Then sometime around eight I answer the door and two little kids are at the door. We have so much candy left. I give both of them some. Mom is down at the bottom of the stairs watching. The older girl gets her's first. The boy of about four, I guess gets his. Just before he leaves I say, "Give your mom this and hand him a candy. I have to laugh when he grabs the candy and says, "No, that's mine." So I try again and hand him a second candy saying give this one to mom and this time he says, "No, that's mine." Twice is funny, I give up and let him go. It's the highlight of the night. Oh, about two weeks or so ago Nastia began hanging out with Elena and Sean from work. I thought little about it. Not to insult anybody, but he is not the type of guy she would be interested in. I thought she was hanging out with Elena when she happened to be with Sean.

One night, this past Tuesday, she asks if she can invite Sean to dinner. She's done this before with Dylan and before that Kevin. During dinner everyone is talking about going on vacation to different places. Nastia keeps saying something like when are you going to take me there? She has this habit of flirting with guys she is not going to date. And again Sean is not her type. He is tall, a little heavy and he's white. Nastia tends toward skinny black guys. Call me a racist if you want, but a fact is a fact. We all wish we just saw a person, but we don't. Anyway...Nastia goes into the kitchen with some plates and I follow. Quietly I say to her she needs to quit flirting with someone she is not going to date. I tell her, "You have broken enough hearts and one day someone will not take it so well." I think her reply is something along the lines of," Well, you might be seeing him here more often, I think I'd like to date him." Again it's something like that. Her message is we're not dating yet, negotiations are under way, nah, that's not either. Well, they weren't dating yet, but they hope to be soon. To say the least I was surprised. We talked briefly about Jonathan and how he is leaving for three years, he's in the service. Teri sushes us every so often. The bottom line is they are dating, I think now. Speaking of dating, guess who are back together...(It's hard to write that with out laughing) Matt and Elena. He came over for dinner too. Nastia came to me one night and said, "Guess who are back together? Matt and my sister." I think I laughed and said they never broke up. It's like a sunny day. It may not be here right now, but it's going to be back and that, like Matt is a good thing. I think they make each other happy. Now if they could just solve whatever it is that makes them need space from each other. I'll see if I can look in the book of Elena and see why they need space from one and other every so often. Damn, it's locked like it usually is. That dinner was on a Tuesday.

Sean came over again for dinner on Thursday for enchiladas, Tuesday's orginial dinner. Well she did say we'd be seeing him around more often then the last one. /