Friday I put out the little jiggly plastic skeletons on the dead tree, as we've done the past few years. Friday night someone took them. I was, fortunately, out of the house when Rich discovered this. He's furious enough at theft when he's well.

This is not the first time we've had things stolen at Hallowe'en, though I have a pretty good idea who stole Bernadette's prize pumpkin. That year, '89, a strange plant appeared in the back garden. It grew and grew and so fast I began to look for a Giant's Castle in the clouds. Finally a flower appeared, and we learned it was a gourd or a pumpkin of some kind. Then the one fruit grew, and grew, and GREW. It was a very deep red-orange, huge, pumpkin. Bernadette, 12, claimed it for her own, and watched over it. She made a beautiful jack-o-lantern from it, and it was universally admired at Hallowe'en. Rich, as seems to be usual, was gone that year, and I ran out to rescue Wowbagger from something, and when I came back, about 10:30 or 11, the pumpkin was gone. I looked around, but no, we hadn't put it away before I left. I was heartbroken having to tell Bernadette. Fortunately, though, we saved the seeds and grew more, unto the third and fourth generation. The kids I am sure took it, and smashed it, grew up into total losers, so there is some justice in the world.

Since Vince seems to be 2 in this picture, it has to be our first year here, 1977, Roni 11 and Monica 10. It was close to Roni's last year to Trick or Treat (officially), though she early learned that "helping to take the littles around" was a great excuse to continue. This, 1977, was the year our neighbor down the street started laughing whenever she saw the kids at Hallowe'en. We knew her as "the laughing lady" before we knew her name. Roni is a Martian, and Monica a Moonrock or maybe another Martian, and their brother was Darth Vader with a store-bought costume. Roni has about 7 different long gloves from my past, stuffed and on strings.
We weren't big on store-bought. There was the year the older three were cereal boxes, just a little different from your usual breakfast fare. I remember "Special Y". If you read the boxes, you would be amused for hours. I think that was the year I turned the littles into Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster. The laughing lady laughed and laughed and laughed. The boy was a robot at one point with a huge OFF button, which we kept pushing but it didn't work. Some of these costumes weren't that good for making it all around the loop of our two streets and the circle at the end, with both sides of the street, which was their annual goal.

Vince was "toxic waste" one year, and here is Bernadette, about 10, as a flavorradio. Note the fancy pumpkins. She's already started to become the expert carver.

Here is Vince, same year, too cool to actually T-or-T, but still interested. Mr. Bones sits in the Arthur Dent robe Vince used either this year or the year before, with his towel*. (That was the picture I used in his college graduation ad: making sure he remembered his towel for Life, and yet he still speaks to me.) Mr. Bones was a door prize at a church party about 20 years ago. He's gotten feebler. I took Sam to a play yesterday with Mr. Bones in the car, but Bonesy couldn't stay awake and kept having his head droop. Sam, however, was quite pleased to meet him.

Each carved a pumpkin here, do not ask me who did which.

This is one of Bernadette's things. This is one reason I no longer do jack-o-lanterns. She is too good. She also took over dying eggs at Easter, and I find I have no interest at all in doing it myself.
We had fun at Mustard Seed, though, in '92. A lot of the parents had never carved a jack-o-lantern. We were supposed to be there for the homeless children, but the whole family benifitted from our Hallowe'en party. Vince and Bernadette, and Rich, helped at this party, and it's one of my best memories.

Unfortunately, this is now broken and gone. A couple of years Rich went totally mad with an ultraviolet light and paints. He seemed to be diabolically inspired. A couple of years he painted himself with UV paint, and scary he was, too. (One year in Arkansas, 1973, we had a Hallowe'en birthday party. Rich had fallen through the ceiling a couple of weeks before, so I hung a skeleton in the hole and pretended it was deliberate. The point I am making, though, is that a couple of kids were too frightened to come in.)
The first few years we were here, we had a door mural of a skeleton saying "come in". This year, we're lucky to have the ceramic pumpkin I bought at the Loretto auction. I haven't even started the oooie pumpkin. (Later: the Oooie pumpkin is out and being spooky, and I also put out another ceramic centerpiece, though it's not very scary. Monica gave me a "bat globe" last year which is sitting on our TV and occasionally cackles. The trick-or-treat bowl has a spooky hand in it.)

Another Bernadette job. The pumpkin it sits on is one of the "children" of the stolen B-pumpkin.

So, we always have toys for when the kids come home. Since my Lego jack-o-lanterns were still made up, Roni decided to make a pumpkin pie wagon.

What a week of contrasts, the quiet abbey, the beyond-noisy field trip! (On the latter, there were a couple of little girls who were benched for heading down to the creek, and since they were Hmong, I wonder how much they understood of it.)

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One pound down again, though I doubt the tuna-and-potato-chip casserole (and the side potato chips!) will help there. Only one short walk. No magazines, though I did get some other things done in the house. I don't know what has become of three turtlenecks and one sweatshirt vest in my winter clothes. We even looked in the suitcases in the attic.

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*HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, of course.