Happy Halloween, everyone! I have to admit, though, that I’m not up for it like I was last year. Last year I was out of a lengthy relationship where Halloween was forbidden due to religious reasons. That sucked ass. Last year was my first year free from this in a decade and my now-fiance and I planned a nice holiday. We bought a pumpkin to carve. It’s the first pumpkin I’d carved since college, and that was a long time ago! We carved a really nice pumpkin and put a candle in it before placing it on our front porch. It looked really nice. I also bought myself a scary mask to “trick” all the kids who’d come by for candy. Gretchen dressed like a hippie. She looked pretty good. I also bought tons and tons of candy. Enough to fill several bowls with plenty left over. We were living in a nice sized new residential neighborhood and were anticipating lots of trick or treaters coming by. I also bought some glow in the dark window decorations — spiders and spiderwebs, etc. They looked pretty cool on our windows. When evening came, I hid our cats — especially Henry, our all-black Halloween cat. Then we waited for the tons of kids to come.

You know how many times our doorbell rang last year? Three times! That’s right — THREE damn times!!! We had virtually no kids at all. We had a ton of candy left over. The kids across the street didn’t even come to our house. WTF? I didn’t get it and I still don’t get it. I did scare one little kid with my mask, which I had to quickly take off, but Halloween was a bust last year, so we’re not doing a damn thing this year. Yeah, we have a little bit of candy in a bowl by the door in case the doorbell rings at all, but I’m not holding my breath and we’re not dressing up. We didn’t even get a pumpkin! That’s kind of disappointing. I haven’t seen a single pumpkin at anyone’s house in this large neighborhood. It’s like we’re in the Twilight Zone. Things are weird. At least we’ll have our ghost. Yeah, we have a ghost. I named him Zachary. Henry and Toby can see him all the time and stare at him for long times. Gretchen saw a shadow on our fireplace hearth last year. I guess that was Zachary. It actually could be a female ghost. I don’t know why I named him Zachary. It just seemed to fit at the time. Henry will stare at the corner in the den for 15 minutes, at nothing. Nothing’s there. Then Toby will go join him. They always look at something really intently and nothing’s ever there. They do the same thing by the fireplace. Last week it happened in the dining room. We hear odd sounds at varying times of the day. Strange things happen. I guess we’re haunted. I think my religious mom wants to do a house exorcism, but I’m kind of used to Zachary now and I don’t think he’s going to do anything bad, so I guess we’ll be spending this Halloween with our ghost. Cheers!