Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Step Into My Web...











Hello, my dearies!
Welcome to the Witchin’ Kitchen where I
will brew up tales of Hollow’s Night of Yore.


Many harvest moons ago, there lived a
family
of four in the beach city of
Santa Monica, where
the foghorn bellowed
and the dense fog swirled
in ghostly waves,
bathing the city in an eerie glow.


Halloween was spooky in our neighborhood.
Houses all stacked like dominoes lined the
unlit street,
with narrow passageways
between the houses.


I was convinced a witch lived in one of the
houses
along the walkway. Her pointy nose and
glaring
eyes always peered through the parted
lace curtains
at the window anytime I walked by.

Mom loved Halloween.
She wore her huge black witch’s hat, and tied
a
sheet around her.
Raisins dotted her face like old, gnarled warts.


Michael was a pirate and I, a witch--what else?
I’m not sure if my Halloween bucket got pirated
and pillaged by Michael as I stealthily tried to
hide my treats.

Years later, we were living in the hot San
Fernando
Valley where thoughts of Halloween
were brewing yet again.

We decorated the house with ‘pumpkin tumbleweeds’.
Mom had her warty, powdered face and dad had a
few surprises of his own.

When the grandkids came over Halloween night,
he told them to go to the closet...
Suddenly, the kids were screaming--dad had
his prosthetic
leg propped up in the corner with
an old shoe attached.

That always gave dad a laugh.

As I later had my own family, I strung cobwebs,
hung
skeletons and spiders, stuck a candle in a
cow’s skull, and played spooky
howling tapes from
the upstairs window that could be
heard outdoors.
Needless to say, there were few kids coming
to the door!

It’s that time of year again, in another town where
we have Halloween parades up the street of our
gated community, and a few kids will come to claim
their
treats. I have an overfilled pot of candy waiting--
and maybe, a trick or two…

Thursday, August 27, 2009

One Ringy-Dingy, Two....



Our land line phone was obnoxious--
it had a ringer like an air raid siren.
The phone didn’t have a ringer volume adjustment.
It was so loud it could have caused
a stampede of elephants.


I detested it with a passion, and even more so when
telemarketers would call me during the evening.
My trick, finally, was to ask if they’d mind holding
for a moment , someone’s at the door…
I’d just go back to what I was doing, usually
watching Seinfeld [my Seinfeld moment].
After a minute or so, I’d hear Hello??
then a click.

I got rid of the land line.
Tom and I both got cell phones two years ago.
Weather always knocked out the electricity anyway...

Figuring out how to use the darn thing took awhile;
the user guide could have been written in hieroglyphics.
When your brain is over 60, forget it…
It took me almost two days to find the ring tone options.

Tom’s ringer is a cool Caribbean sound.
He’s not into reggae--more like the 1812 Overture…
The ring tones for my phone are far out,
modern, jazzy tones.

I chose one called Chill.
Not too bad; not too good, either…
Maybe I’ll download Jimmy Buffett’s
Margaritaville again, or the Beach Boys California Girls--
both music tones drove Paul nuts when I had them
on my blitzed phone.

On a dark and stormy night a couple of weeks ago,
I woke Tom and Paul up with a top-of-my-lungs scream.
It was almost 1 a.m.
I’d had a horrible nightmare, and was bashing Tom
like a crazy woman.
Now that scream would have made a great
ring tone for Halloween…