Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Halloween

A magical month of ordinary days: October round-up

October has felt like a magical month. The weather has been as close to fall perfect as I can remember in recent years, the colors of the trees eye-catching and gorgeous.

It’s been a busy month with a lot of ordinary days but not without its moments. Here are some of those moments in the form of What We Did, What We Ate, What We Watched and What We Read.

What We Did

I had the amazing opportunity to go away for a weekend with some friends from book club at the beginning of the month. We traveled about 3 hours away to the west and north into the mountains to a cabin on the creek. It was dark when we arrived, so it was morning before I set eyes on the beauty of the place. 

Coffee at the creek

I was in love at first sight. I kayaked (you can read more about that here), and we went to an overlook in the PA Grand Canyon.

Gorge.

Now I want to go back and hike some of the park. It was fun just to get away. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone somewhere without my family, and I didn’t realize how much I needed it.

Also that weekend, my friends encouraged me to bring some of my writing for them to read. I went overboard and printed three of my current works-in-progress.

The following weekend, my parents came to visit. We enjoyed the fall weather and the fall sports/activities the kids are in. They helped me with some yard work, too.

We consolidated the porch plants for the indoor season.

Band competitions, football games, and soccer games have been our lives this fall and October was no exception. During one of those soccer games, the boy got a mild concussion, which took him out of the physical activity world for a bit. He’s better now.

Soccer was on hold for almost two weeks but we’re finishing up the season.

One of the marching band activities was a Halloween parade in a small community in the school district. I haven’t been to a parade in a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a night parade. It was fun to watch kids running for candy in costume.

And we spent a quiet night in for Halloween watching shows and eating our own candy.

Lastly, there were costumes on Halloween for the school day.

“Bruh. This is so dumb.” (I’m a middle-schooler)
Elastigirl to the rescue!

What We Ate

Chellas. Peruvian food cooked basically on our block. We took my parents here for lunch during their visit because I like food I don’t have to make.

No pics of the food because it disappeared too quickly!

We also ate at the Nifty Fifties diner in the Philadelphia suburbs before attending a band competition.

It was well worth the experience and the food was delicious.

Crab fries
Holy milkshake, Batman!

To celebrate our girl and her band performance, we picked up some Crumbl cookies. We are newly obsessed with these cookies, so it’s good that we can’t get them super locally.

On the one Friday night we opted out of football, the three of us ordered from The Big Five African Cuisine … a smorgasbord of  beef stew, chicken stew, rice, cabbage, chapati, beef samosas, and ugali.

Maybe it’s not the flashiest looking food but it is tasty

And of course, we had some soups. Pot pie soup was a hit from the Cravings cookbook by Chrissy Teigen.

You can trust a supermodel with food recommendations

And winter vegetable stew was easy and yummy.

One night, we had Dino nuggets because if you’re going to have chicken nuggets, they might as well be dino-shaped, right?

While the kids were at a Halloween party at church, Phil and I went to brunch. I had shrimp and eggs.

He had biscuits and gravy and a virgin bloody Mary.

We’ve had so much time as a family lately but not enough couple time. It was nice to be reminded that we can still be a couple.

On Halloween night, I made this ultimate 7-layer dip from the Cook’s Country cookbook. It’s the second time we’ve had it this fall. It lives up to its name.

I can taste it just by looking at it

What We Watched

Shows that fill the time:

Richard Osman’s House of Games. Quiz show. British. Low-key. Fun.

Press Your Luck. The new one. I watch for nostalgia and because I’m personally risk-averse but like watching other people take risks.

Saturday Night Live clips. It’s the most wonderful time of the year when SNL returns.

Movies:

The Mighty Ducks. Hits different when you’re a parent/teacher of middle schoolers and our middle-schooler loved it.

Home Team, the story of Sean Payton’s one-year suspension from the NFL and his stint as a coach on his son’s football team. I had mixed feelings throughout but I think it turned out okay.

Shows in progress:

She-Hulk Attorney at Law. Six of nine episodes. Love it.

I Am Groot. We actually watched all of these shorts at once.

The Great British Baking Show. I read a book (fiction) about a baking show like this and since I’ve never seen one episode of it, I decided to start. It’s good company.

What We Read

Books I finished: 

All That We Carried by Erin Bartels. I bought this book on our anniversary trip to Michigan this summer. I liked the memories it brought up of our time in nature.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. Out. Standing. I couldn’t put it down except when I had to. 

The Traitor’s Wife by Alison Pataki. Historical fiction about Benedict Arnold’s wife. Pataki is a new favorite historical fiction author.

Last of Her Name by Jessica Khoury. This is YA sci-fi that reminded me of Veronica Roth, and since I love Veronica Roth, I loved this as well.

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida. A memoir written by a 13-year-old Japanese boy with autism about what it’s like inside his brain. Fascinating.

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall. This is the book that led to me watching The Great British Baking Show. Features a bisexual single mom on a baking competition and the love she finds along the way. So much fun.

Books in progress:

Here For It by R. Eric Thomas. Book club read. Has led to some interesting discussion.

Spy School At Sea by Stuart Gibbs. Reading with my son.

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny. I started this then had to return it to the library, so Inspector Gamace is in limbo.

Portrait of a Thief by Grace Li. I’m only about a third of the way through. It’s like Ocean’s 11 meets Sneakers. I’m loving it.

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

I wore a costume to work yesterday, maybe the first time in 10 years I’ve purposely dressed for Halloween to go out in public or for others to see. It’s not my favorite holiday but because I work at a school, I wanted to participate in the fun. A last-minute Pinterest search netted me the idea of “smarty pants,” so the night before Halloween I was supergluing smarties candies to a pair of pants and questioning my life decisions. (Like, why don’t I have a glue gun already?)

Here’s what I ended up with: Pants with smarties glued to them, a button-down shirt belonging to my husband as well as suspenders and a bow tie on loan from him. Hair in a bun and sensible shoes completed the outfit.

For those of you who need a visual:

Confession: I was really nervous to walk into the building. If you’ve seen the movie version of Bridget Jones’ Diary, you’ll remember the scene where Bridget shows up to the annual Tarts and Vicars party (yes, it’s as terrible as it sounds) dressed as a “tart” only to find out that it’s not a costume party that year. That is my fear every.single.time there is a costume/dress-up/dress-different day. I am certain I will have gotten the day wrong or that no one else will be dressed the way I thought we were supposed to dress. I always look for someone else dressed differently to alleviate my fears.

But my fears weren’t enough for me to not do it, although my husband questioned my decision that morning when I was grumpy about the whole thing. (I thought for sure I’d be leaving candy all over the school. The kids would have loved that.)  Let’s just call the whole day a major psychological win for me, though. Not only did I go through with it; I OWNED it. When you know you’re clever or cute or whatever, it doesn’t matter what other people think. Not as much anyway. I’m at a point in my life where fear has won far too many battles, and I’ve decided it’s time to treat fear like the loser it is. (Mostly. Those are strong words that I don’t always live up to, but I’m trying.)

Anyway, the costume was a big hit. I had to explain it to a couple of students, but others got it right away. And more times than I expected I was asked for a piece of candy. (NO, BECAUSE THEY ARE LITERALLY GLUED TO MY PANTS.) Other teachers smiled. One told me I looked adorable, which really is one of the best compliments you can get on Halloween in my book. (I don’t do scary or sexy or culturally inappropriate costumes. “Creative” is another good compliment but I gave all the credit to Pinterest for this one. I didn’t have a clue what to do.)

At one point when I looked at myself in the mirror I saw my grandpa, who died two years ago. Suspenders and bow ties were his jam and with my hair pulled back into a bun I could see his face for the briefest of moments. That almost made me sad for the rest of the day, but I chose to cherish it as a happy memory. I wasn’t working at a school when he died but I like to think I carry some of the teacher he was inside of me. He would have approved not only of the bow tie and suspenders but of the work I do every day. Gosh, I miss him.

This Halloween costume also got me thinking about Halloween costumes from past years. The most memorable one is the time I dressed up as my husband, long before he was even my boyfriend. He had a unique way of dressing (we called it vintage, I guess; he had a thing for clothes from the ’70s) and sported a mohawk and some facial hair back then when we were all just friends. My roommate and I thought it would be a fun idea, and I probably wanted to back out at some point, but I went through with it, wearing magenta pants and using some kind of costume glue on my face along with a bald cap for the mohawk. I have a picture somewhere but I’m not sure where. I know you’re all wanting to see it. If I find it, you’ll be the first to know.

That costume is memorable because it’s sort of the beginning of the story of us. I don’t know if I was trying to lure Phil with that particular move, but he was flattered enough that he started to look at me more seriously. Or so the story goes. Or so I’m choosing to remember. I count that among the best decisions of my life, and it makes for a great story. Maybe I’ll have to use that in a novel someday.

Another time, when I worked for a newspaper in Illinois, I dressed as a bandwagon Chicago White Sox fan. (I am a diehard Cubs fan FOR LIFE.) It was either the year the Sox won the World Series or were playing for the World Series or the year after that. My boss at the time was a Sox fan so I thought it would be funny to wear my fiancé’s Sox jersey with a player who no longer was on the team and make a “Go Sox” label to tape to my Cubs hat. I don’t know if anyone thought it was funny. Fellow Cubs’ fans weren’t too keen on it. But it got attention. Sadly, I’m pretty sure that costume would only play in Illinois.

One year I also dressed as Lois Lane but because I didn’t have a Superman by my side, I wore a name tag so people would know who I was. I was in late middle school or early high school. I probably shouldn’t have been trick-or-treating. C’est la vie. I lived to tell about it.

There must have been other costumes but those are the ones that stick out. Of course, I have pictures of childhood Halloween costumes, like the year I went dressed as a present. We wrapped a box and I stuck my arms and head through some holes in the box and slapped a bow on the top of my head.

While waiting with my kids at the bus stop Halloween morning, I told them some of these stories, as well as how their Papa, my dad, liked to wear this creepy green monster mask and answer the door to screaming children. My husband told a similar story of how he would sit on their porch like he was a decoration and then scare the living daylights out of trick-or-treaters. Ah, the memories.

I don’t know what my kids will remember about Halloween. We don’t make a huge deal out of it. We spend as little as possible on costumes while still being creative. We adopt a neighborhood to do our trick-or-treating in since we don’t really have one. The candy gets eaten or goes bad or gets thrown out, but the memories are the things that last.

I want them to remember that life is fun and silly and dressing up doesn’t have to be something you outgrow. I got the biggest smile on my face today seeing my co-workers dressed as Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, a triceratops, and PB&J. Maybe the students won’t remember that their middle school teachers dressed in costume, but maybe they won’t forget that they can still have fun when they’re grown-ups. I know I need the reminder sometimes.

I also want them to remember that Halloween is one of the most unique and interesting times of the year. Neighbors flock to each other’s houses and people willingly give out candy to kids. The community and generosity on Halloween floors me every year. Last night, one guy gave my kids two handfuls of candy. Whatever the motivation, I’m always reminded of the goodness of the human spirit. I love seeing the neighbors who go all out for Halloween with decorations and scary music and the ones who are content to casually hand out candy while they’re watching TV.

Mostly, I just love seeing people in contact with each other. God knows we don’t get enough of that.

When I was a kid and trick-or-treating, we knew the names of every person who lived in the houses where we were trick-or-treating. Not living in a neighborhood complicates that for us, but the neighborhood we do choose to go to is full of kids my kids go to school with. One of my best Halloween memories from the past two years is all the kids who run up to my daughter and hug her, and the boys who run up to tell my son a funny story. They are like rock stars in that neighborhood.

What do you remember about Halloweens past and present?