Pumpkin carving, KJ sleeps over and Halloween Parade (Less than two month until Christmas already!)

This last week or so has been filled with all the fun of the season (and some global warming thrown in). Last week it was almost 80 degrees over the weekend. I have two Fig trees and an Avocado tree (Oh, daddy, here plant this seed, it’s so big!!) and they have been outside enjoying the warm wonderful, rainy weather these past months. When it was 80, I figured I had some time before I’d have to bring in the trees. Well, this is not normal fall weather, because by Wednesday the weatherman/ woman was predicting a frost. Tuesday, we didn’t get a frost, but on Wednesday they said it would be a hard frost. Me, being the ever conscientious gentleman farmer, I waited until Wednesday night to bring in his trees. All three of the trees, the leaves had turned yellow and brown telling me it is time to bring them inside. In previous years, I’d brought them in earlier, only to have the leaves fall off them in the basement. Being lazy has its advantages. The next morning, mother nature takes her revenge on my wise ass. All the car windows have a hard, thick, winter white frost on them. I wanted to get out early that morning because I’d forgotten to buy lunch. I scrape all the windows and turn on my heater fan to warm the car. The fan doesn’t work. I rub the inside of the front window trying to clear it. I have the wipers going on the outside. Then I do the dumbest thing and I know all of you have done the same thing. I spray the windshield washer fluid on the window. We’ve all done it before. Hell I’ve done it before and I knew I shouldn’t do it, but did it anyway. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same time over and over again expecting a different outcome? Well the wipers spread a nice thin new sheet of ice over my window. I go back out and scrape it down. I get back in the car and begin to wipe off the fog on the inside again, but it isn’t fog, it is also ice. Earlier I was breathing while rubbing down the window and unknown to me I got some moisture on the window. Once the outside frost, the inside must have thought it would be a fun idea to do the same.

I scrape the inside, then the outside again and decide to pull out of the driveway, because it is getting late. I drive maybe 100 feet before I pull over again and have another go at my windshield. All this time the rear window that I scraped, leaving a small pile of white scraping in the middle of it, is as white as a bride's dress on the morning of her wedding. Tha window doesn’t clear until I’m almost at work. Fun times in New York, yea know! Sean and Nastia went to his mother’s house on Sunday to carve pumpkins. I haven’t carved a pumpkin in years. We’d (my mom) cut open a pumpkin, clean it out, carve it then we’d place a candle in it on Halloween. It used to be one of the highlights of Halloween. That and the candy and watching ‘A Charlie Brown Halloween’. A Lot of things have fallen by the wayside.

Halloween has barely survived the first twenty odd years of this decade. We adopted the girls in 09. They were lions at the Nyack Street fair that year. We went with Teri’s father and stood on the upper level of a building on Main Street. Two of the next three years, I think we got snow. One Halloween we did trunk or treat where a group of people got together and opened their trucks in a parking lot in Nyack and the kids went from car to car to get candy. I forgot why that was necessary. The last few years we’ll get little kids coming around in the afternoon to early evening. It will all be over by eight. I don’t see teenagers going out any more. When I turned thirteen, I thought I was too old to go out. The next few years after that I went out and had a grand time. Maybe teenagers are going to parties.

KJ, Amanda’s baby slept over our house two of the last three nights. Teri kept him during the day and there is a reason only the young should have babies. He was fussy all day and she was exhausted at the end of the day. She’d planned to make chicken for dinner last night, but I picked something up instead. He finally settled down sometime around eight and slept through most of the night, waking up around 3:30 like he did the previous night he stayed.

Teri on both of those nights said she would sleep in the living room. She said it was better not to move him and she thought she was being thoughtful. The two nights she slept in the living room, I have never slept in an emptier bed in my life. It was the weirdest, most uncomfortable sleep I’ve had in a long time. You have to remember when Teri and I sleep together, the dogs join us too. So it was her and the dogs missing both nights. Truly not a fun sleep. And I can’t believe Christmas is only 52 days away. Remember when Halloween was so far away from Christmas and stores didn’t start showing Christmas stuff until after Thanksgiving? If Halloween gets any closer to Christmas, it's gonna squeeze Thanksgiving out. 52 days doesn’t seem enough time to shop for Christmas. I’ve already started a list. For me Christmas is 50 days of worrying about what to get people and two days of rushing around to find something.

I almost forgot about the Halloween parade in Nyack. Teri and I throw a couple of chairs in the car. Last year she thought it was an Okay idea to stand, I bought a chair. We pick up Nancy and for the first time in ever there is no parking at 55 Catherine St. Teri’s family home that was sold this past summer. We find a single spot just north of Main Street off North Franklin, a short walk to the parade. We set up our chairs, spaced out so when Sean and Nastia get there they will have space to put their chairs.

Nastia texts me, they are on their way, they don’t see any parking spots, they don’t know where they are, but they have a spot. They finally arrive, but they don’t have chairs and the three of us don't move closer. So when it is finally time for the parade. I feel like I’m in a different time zone. I'm so far away from Teri and Nancy. People begin to slip between the three of us. I take pictures of everyone, strangers appear in the pictures, hands, body parts block people I want to take pictures of. I get some good pictures. As far as the parade, it is not as good as years past. In the past Spring Valley would put on a great show. The costumes would be inventive and time would have gone into it. This year only one or two costumes were really that great.

After the parade we went out to eat at the Nyack dinner. Sean and Nastia get lost again and cross main street going south, swing around onto Rt 9W and finally arrive at the dinner. The food and conversation was good. Overall a nice night out. It wasn’t cold until a day or two later.