Distracted By Something Shiny

So Sis wore her unicorn head and gave out candy every time it was a little, little kid because she was worried my costume would scare them. Several of them were scared of her giant unicorn head too. I’m not surprised - its eyes follow you everywhere you go! I just did a quick makeup job. Hadn’t decided until last minute if I was gonna go happy-creepy or creepy-creepy for the clown. I mean, Sis was happy-creepy, seemingly cute & sweet but somehow still terrifying. But when it came time for makeup, I decided just to run with the creep factor. The costume is actually pajamas, so yay, I now have an extra pair of pajamas. One little 7 year old told me she loved my costume. Her parents should maybe worry about her, lol.

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Sis at work.



Me, going creepy-clown.

We had a 13 year old girl Castiel come to the door. She was super cute & I told her I loved her costume, but oops, I thought she was The Doctor. She didn’t have a blue tie, just a striped tie, it threw me off! I felt bad. I told her about my Castiel Angel wings I got from the Halloween store though and she’s gonna go look for a pair. We also had a teenage Michael Myers who just stood on the porch, said nothing and stared. I was like, “Damn, that’s scary,” and then he said in a very deep voice, “Trick. Or. Treat.” It was freaky. Then we had a 9 year old Venom come to the door and he was so surprised I knew who Venom was, even his Dad was like. “Someone got it!” I’m guessing people had been thinking he was Spiderman all night. I asked if he’d seen the movie and if they did a good job and then his dad and me talked for a minute about Venom, so that was cool. We also had a little 6 year old Black Panther. After I gave him his candy, I looked right at him and said, “Wakanda Forever, little sir”. His whole face lit up.

Sad for me though, I had a tooth pulled yesterday, so no candy for another week, but we had about 2 little sandwich baggies of candy left, so that’s my special treat for when I’m back on solid foods. Let me tell you, if you need to diet, just switch to soft food for a week. I mean, you will be ravenous and starving, but I gotta be losing weight, damn. What a sucky week to be on food restriction though - I want my candy!

Anyways, hope your holiday was a good one! Share costumes pics if you want - I’d love to see em!

So I gave my sister very explicit instructions on what candy & how much to buy this year for Halloween. She never buys enough, but The BFF always comes through with backups, but since The BFF wasn't coming down this year, I was nervous. Sis did excellent on the type of candy tho! She didn't quite buy enough, had we had our usual turnout, but because it was 35 degrees outside, numbers were down & it ended up perfect. I insisted we give out 2 pieces per kid, because I wanted to be the "cool house", lol. I ended up being able to give out 2 per kid, plus 3 for every Spiderman who came by! I shut off the porch light at 7:50, with 10 minutes left in scheduled city trick-or-treating, and was left with one sandwich baggie full of candy for me. Not bad! Winston helped at first, but then he had to go to his room because he tried to follow some sweet princesses home - right out the front door & down the sidewalk with them! They brought him back for me, nice girls.

Here's Winston & I tonight, as Spidergirl & Spiderdog!


And me a few weekends ago, before we took all four niblings to the small zoo that was having a Boo At The Zoo event!


And Sis (the witch), Me, and Canadian Bro (eh, breaking my photo posting rule about asking permission, but he wouldn't care) as a dragon!


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

So, if you’ve been following this journal for a year or more, you probably know that Halloween is a big deal to me and my sister. We started buying things to go in the yard as soon as we moved in together - a sound activated creepy bat/ghost/witch/light up eyes in the front bushes, giant spider and cobwebs, light up zombie/skeletons coming out of the ground, tombstones - we just go wild. Then we (along with The BFF) always dress as something scary and do a sort of Larping in the big front windows, acting out things to scare the kids who come to our door. We’ve gotten a bit of a reputation in the neighborhood and on a good year, we can get 150 kids. On our best year, we got approx 250.

But this year…we aren’t doing it. The tombstones fall over all the time from wind and rain and Sis just didn’t have it in her to set them back up over and over again all month. We didn’t have time to carve pumpkins. I even totally forgot to send out my traditional Halloween cards. Plus, Sis is on a new schedule of four 10hr work-days, to have Wednesdays off to take Mom and myself to appointments, so she won’t be home until 6:30, in costume until 7. And The BFF is working (yay for permanent job!) and can’t come to town on a weekday. I’m sad about the lack of Halloween around here.

But I am still dressing up! As Ballerina Batgirl! Which is basically just Batgirl, but in a yellow tutu and with glittery makeup. And I have two friends stopping over for dinner and to see my costume - they’ve joined us three years now, and they love to watch our zany Halloween antics. And when she gets home, Sis is putting on her Darth Vader outfit and Winston’s R2D2 outfit and taking him for a walk amongst the trick-or-treats, which will delight them.

At any rate, since I’m more comfortable posting photos here of myself, I thought I’d share some of my costumes from years past. The first year we did the Larping, we did zombies. We stood in the big front windows and acted like we were trying to get out of the house. Sis would throw herself against the window and growl. One little boy dressed as a soldier ‘killed’ her repeatedly with his toy gun. The next year we were Reapers and BFF and I stood in the windows and held very still. Many kids thought we were holograms. Until we started to turn our heads, very, very slowly. One girl, about 9, screamed and ran away at full speed. The next year it rained and BFF had the flu, so Sis and I took what were going to be Scary Witches and turned them into Good Witch outfits. Then the next year, we did Scary Witches. BFF brought a cauldron and fog machine and there was a lot of cackling. I sat in the rocking chair, positioned so you could see me once BFF opened the door to hand out the candy. I would start rocking very slowly once I knew I was in view and I got a lot of, “What is THAT?!” from the kids. The following year we were Steampunk Vampires. I sat in the front windows with my face in my baby doll’s stomach. Sis would signal me when to lift my head and I would and my mouth was covered in blood and guts and the kids would scream, “She’s eating her baby!”. Also K brought his then-tweenaged son over and wanted a picture of us and right before he clicked it, I turned and tried to rip the kid’s throat out with my vampire teeth. The look on his face clearly says, “I hate my dad’s friends.” Last year we went for Scary Fairies, though they turned out a bit more Victorian Fairy than anything. It was a slow year last year, so I just sat in the windows and sort of growled and screeched at kids.

( Photos under the cut! )

This year I’ll just politely handout candy like any good ballerina superhero should!

I'm not sure how much I will get done off of this month's checklist, because so much of my time is being taken up by funeral stuff and trying to help my sister as much as I can, but I will try to do a little at least. The funeral is next Saturday, but that won't be the end of the stuff we need done, especially since Sis is volunteering to do the house clean out at the farm, along with my cousin. One room at a time, sorting and cleaning. She had her first day today and it was mostly doing dishes and laundry and basic cleaning that needed done.

Anyway, here are the things I got done for July and August...

( July stuffs! )

( August stuffs! )

Anyways, I think it's okay if I take a break this month!

We have a new addition to our family. Her name is Libby. I know she's not pretty, but she's ours and we love her.



( Proceed with caution! Don't say I didn't warn you! )

No, okay, for real - this is the newest addition to our Halloween decor. She is actually called Limbless Libby and I got her online. I won't say how much, but less than $100 and more than $50. My sister opened the box and yelled, "What have you done?!" I said, "I just want to represent my people." We were trying to convince The Nephew to come in for Halloween this year, since it's on a Saturday, but he saw her and was like, "If she's gonna be there, I'm not coming." She wasn't even assembled yet! I was like, "How can you be scared of something that you saw come in a box marked 'Amazon'?" (in the end, his dad refused to let TN come in, bc he gets scared so easily and we apparently do Halloween too scary or something, phewft.). My sister's friend from work was invited to join us for Halloween too - and this is a grown ass woman - and she was all, "No, I'm scared of your zombie lady, I saw pictures." And I was like, "I can't believe you, discriminating against certain zombies because of their disabilities!" I've already had so much fun making spoonie jokes about her that she was worth the money for that alone.

We've had to keep her inside though, because she is big and bulky all put together and Sis can't be hauling her in and out every time it rains, so instead we set her in front of the big windows in our living room. From outside, you can totally see her and the walker and everything. The step pad is stretched out to the corner, so we can stand in the corner, out of sight from the outside, and activate her whenever we want. It's gonna be awesome come Halloween night!

A couple of our friends may stop by on Saturday to watch us terrorize kids and we are kinda doing our costumes on the fly this year - what with Mom's health we are a little disorganized - but there will be pizza and wings and bread and wine and pop and candy and maybe some Buffy Halloween episodes this year. And, of course, terrorizing the neighborhood kids! Sis said maybe Libby was too scary for the kids and I said, "That's the point. They aren't my kids, so...too scary is the point." Because it's Halloween and scary is the point!

Happy Halloween!!!

My sister had to bribe them with treats and even so, she couldn't get them in the same shot. Kirk does not like this ridiculousness - he is Captain James T. Kirk, dammit! Pippin loves it. He is so pretty as a unikitty and he knows it!



Hope you all have good holidays/weekends!

So, on Monday it was almost 70 degrees outside and sunny. It is slowly getting colder and according to the weather forecast, will be 40 degrees and snowing by Friday...Halloween. Dammit! I hope this is one of those times that the weather forecaster is completely totally off-base. I always hated it when it was that cold out on Halloween, because Mom would make us wear our winter coats over our costumes. That's no fun at all. For myself this year, I have PT on Friday afternoon - (which means I'll get to see the carnivale I helped them design as their contest theme this year!) - so I figured it would be easiest for me to get my costume on beforehand, so I am not rushed when I get home. Plus, then I get to show off - though the dress is kinda form-fitting, so I'm a little self-conscious, but I'm really excited that I am going to have like a bloody mouth, all gross, like I just ate someone. It's gonna be so freaky! But I want to wear my faux-leather jacket, because I'm a vampire and they wear cool leather jackets. I just hope it's not too cold out because it's a light weight coat. Oh, how we suffer for our art!

Anyways, here's another Halloween post for you guys...this time our front yard, all decorated up like a graveyard meant to terrorize the neighborhood children! Our reaper and our bat have both broken, so this year we replaced them with a howling spooky light-up ghost.

Our yard this year, in the daylight.


( More under the cut! )

Our yard this year, at night.

I found this cool thing online that looks like a Welcome Mat, but when you step on it, it cackles and moans. I think I want to get that for next year, so that when the kids actually work up the courage to approach our house, there will be one last thing on the top step to freak them out. Man, I love Halloween!

Thank you to everyone for your comments and love on my last post. It has been strange around here, without the old man bossing everyone around. Pippin has been sleeping with me though - I think he knows I am sad. And Kirk has been bringing me all of his favorite toys. Roo doesn't seem to even notice, which is not a surprise. Mostly it hits me during those times of day when Buddy and I would take a snuggle break together.

Anyways, I am way behind on comments and stuff, but it's Halloween week, so I thought I'd share some Halloween pictures with you all, starting with these photos of my Halloween costume/makeup from last year. I was reluctant to share them, because I don't like to share photos of myself online, but The BFF was adamant that they look nothing like me and my makeup was awesome and I need to share. My makeup was pretty awesome.

So, here I am as a witch.

A wicked witch.



/insert evil cackle here/

Maybe I'll post our pumpkins tomorrow.

So, my sister works in a pretty cool office. Her team leader has a Barbie on her desk with a sign that says 'Assistant". So my sister brought in her Bilbo standee and put a similar sign on him. Now the most recent addition to their team is looking for the perfect assistant for himself. They often get caught up in geeky conversations at work and after Avengers came out, they had to go to several group lunches just to talk about it. My sister got her team leader to start watching Supernatural and all of them, including their supervisor, swap DVDs of TV shows and movies.

Suffice to say, it's a pretty cool place to work. There are the normal office headaches, of course, but it makes it all better when your coworker pops their head up over your cubicle and asks you who would win in a fight, Iron Man or Thor?

So, recently, the one coworker went on vacation and while he was gone, my sister and her other coworker did this to his cubicle.



( More under the cut. )

Her coworkers all actually covered her meetings for her too, so she could take a week off while I was in the hospital. I bought her a gift basket of sweets as a 'thank you' for sitting with me in the ER and coming with me for all the testing, and then I bought a second gift basket for her coworkers as a 'thank you, for covering all her meetings for her. They really came through for us.

Yeah, about to spam this on you, because the end of the year is coming up and I am putting together my tally. October was the beginning of me being sick, but I still was running high from breaking 10k for four months in a row, so apparently I was trying really hard to hit that mark again. Still, I didn’t do too bad. 8k is acceptable for any month, let alone one where I had some nasty stomach virus. This is also the month I started my first Criminal Minds fic ever! And I worked on two different Halloween stories, though The X-Files one never got finished.

Here is my approximate word count for the month.

October, 2013
Week One: 1,350 words of Criminal Minds fic.
Week Two: 1,100 words of X-Files Halloween fic.
Week Three: 1,050 words of X-Files Halloween fic.
Week Four: 2,000 words of X-Files Halloween fic.
Week Four & 1/2: 3,150 words of Avengers Halloween fic. Completed. (already posted!)

8,650 words written in October!

( Fics posted in October, 2012. )

So October seemed pretty successful, all in all! Of course, at the end of this month I looked at my WIPS folder and realized it was bigger than when I started the year, so tackling that had to come next.