It is October which is my all time favorite month. Nothing beats the crisp air, brightly colored leaves , the chilly wind kissing your cheeks, and all things fantastically fall. Yes. I just love October. To me it signifies the beginning of fun and excitement. Why you ask? Well Halloween of course!

Halloween is my most favorite holiday. I know it gets a bad rap being that lots of people still try to equate it to the "Devil's Holiday" and all sorts of demonic witchy foolishness.. BUT to be fair just like oh.. say.. CHRISTMAS.. and uh... EASTER..  Halloween is a holiday that has murky origins which are not 100% Christian. A little pagan here.. a little druid there..Celtic.. All Saints Day (finally Christianish). But people believe what they want to believe. If it helps them sleep at night to assume Halloween is an evil holiday then fine.

Anyway.. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Halloween over ever single holiday. (I stopped celebrating or acknowledging my birthday years ago as I decided I would stop ageing). To me it is better than Christmas because you do not have to run around getting all stressed out buying presents for people who most likely won't like it anyway. Unless you are me with origins of being a personal shopper at Nordstrom.. I always hit gift giving out of the park. Yes. Halloween has the best package for fun and mayhem in my estimation. Number one.. You get CANDY.. Uh hello? WIN.. Second.. You get to dress up! My preference is always a costume with a crown of some sort and sky high heels. I would have made an exceptional drag queen with my predilection for big hair, high heels, crowns, and pageantry.  WIN WIN WINNAH! Dress up.. Get candy! This is a holiday tailor made for me.

This year I am dressing up as the Vampire Queen of Louisiana Sophie Anne. Frasier C Puppykins is also going to be a vampire. He isn't as excited as I am. I can barely wait for the 31st. I am simply buzzing with delight.

Another component of Halloween is decorating your home. Carving pumpkins and decorating with spooky stuff is so much FUN! Over the years I have quite a collection of bats, witches, vampires, pumpkins, and such.. I kinda do the Vegas Showgirl Halloween decoration route. Very sparkly. Very over the top. Not scary at all. Never ever scary. Annnnd that brings me to the other part of Halloween.. I HATE SCARY STUFF!

I hate scary stuff.. I hate being scared.. I do not like the creepy chill that goes up your spine, the tingly feeling on your skin, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end.. I hate hate hate all of that. I hate it when I am so frightened my spine gets stiff. I do not like screaming in fear. I do not like scary movies. I do not like ghosts. Witches are ok. I rather like them. However, anything remotely scary I run from like a vampire from sunlight. How can someone love Halloween so much and completely dislike the scary part? Easily. I have been doing it for years.

I think I have always been a scary kid. Number one, I have an older brother by 8 years whose only goal in life was to scare me daily in hopes I would have a heart attack and die so he could have our parents to himself again. He did everything in his power to frighten me to death. Like.. Making me watch this horrible movie which I will not name but it rhymes with Phexercist. Being our father raised us Catholic I totally believe that movie was real. I haven't been right since. Then el hermano fed me a constant diet of scary movies like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, The Howling, Halloween movies.... just anything scary as hell.. Sooo.. yeah.. At a young age I learned to be very afraid of the dark. (it doesn't help that I also can detect ghosts. I have been since I was very young). I am ruined for life. I will always be super jumpy and very scary.

It is so bad, my friends LOVE LOVE LOVE to cajole me into watching scary movies. Unless properly tricked, I turn them down 100% of the time. One of the last "scary" films I willingly watched was Starship Troopers of which I screamed the entire time and actually jumped out of the seat and ran down the isle before I collected myself. Heather still laughs at that. I refuse to watch scary movies to this day. If a movie trailer is moderately creepy I will change the channel immediately until it goes off.

Once to confront my fears head on I agreed to go to a haunted house.. BIG MISTAKE! I walked through it with my eyes closed hoping to lessen the experience. I suppose people who work haunted houses can detect the people who are the most frightened and amp it up for them because, the man dressed as Jason jumped out at me. This was so overwhelming that I started running. Knocking into people... RUNNING.. He chased me through the haunted house and in my terror, I tripped screaming all the way to the floor. The last thing I recall was Jason standing over me with a bloody knife. Annnnnnd when I woke up, I was in the back of an ambulance. Yeah. I passed out. Fainted. My adrenaline kicked in then caused a system over load.  I ladies and gentleman passed out from fear in a haunted house. Not only did I wake up in an ambulance with an oxygen mask on my face, they shut down the haunted house for 2 hours so there were a lot of super angry people shooting me the death face. I was just happy to #1 be out of that monster house and #2 I managed not to pee on myself.


So you see. I love Halloween in a kind of fun dress up candy way. I just hate the scary movies ghostie part. Anyway.. Enjoy the season. I know I am! And to all those who aren't being Nancies.. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

FIN