We celebrated our first Halloween in our suburban utopia – many kids dressed up as princesses (including one boy who was about 13 and looked he wanted to die while escorting his younger sibling dressed as the most adorable little skunk), the Incredibles, Spiderman, soldiers, Scream and an assortment of monsters I couldn’t place. Of course, the little boy I wanted to grab up had a crazy green lizard like mask and cloak. For the life of me I can’t place the character, but it seems very familiar. He LOVED kitties and our two were sitting at a safe distance watching the little loud candy beggars. His mom had to help him get his mask off so he could see, but out pops a little 7 year old with wire rimmed glasses who loved my cats more than the candy in his bag.

My favorite family came from up the street. The mother introduced herself as “the such and such family” – there were a lot of consonants involved so I hope she doesn’t expect me to call her Mrs. Czhrzspt or whatever name she said. I recognized them as the family that has the house across from the mailbox. The crazy husband sits in the garage and hollers at the people as they pick up the mail. I do a great drunken crazy man impersonation of the guy if any of you ever want to hear it. Her kids were grabby, they weren’t impressed with what I’d given them candy-wise (Butterfingers and Crunch bars) and wanted the little box of Dots instead. Who wants those? I was happy to toss those in, too because I didn’t want to see them in my cauldron today. (Yes, I bought a special candy cauldron.) There was a little hand slapping, she called them greedy and attempted to instruct them on why people didn’t do what they were doing. She’s probably one of those people that felt I was judging her parenting skills. No, I was sitting there thinking, “you’re the crazy guy’s wife? Daughter? Wait, where did you say you live? Gah, I’ll never remember that name. Could you drive on, we’re watching Stephen Colbert on DVR and we just got Chinese food.”

Then the little boy peered into our kitchen window and declared, “You’ve got a COOOOOL house!” Immediately, I made a mental note about this kid’s fine taste. *POP* she swatted that kid “stop being a nosey nelly” and when he wouldn’t move and was still peeking in we got more *POP**POP*. The kids were forcibly dragged out of my yard. Ahhhh the Halloween spirit – heartwarming.

Of course, next year I want to do a Haunted House or something spooky. See, I LOVE Halloween and I love to dress up. Sitting around passing out candy just doesn’t cut it for me. I’ve got so much more to give. I like make-up and costumes. In fact, if you’ve seen me with the blue hair, that’s last year’s Halloween outfit. There wasn’t much to it, but it was fun.

I live for places like Austin’s Lucy in Disguise where I’ve gone to just try on costumes. In fact, I tried to justify a $400 costume for the longest time, but could never quite do it. I have a suitcase filled with costumes, stage make-up, fake teeth, wigs and ears (Vulcan/fairy – your pick and a pair cat ears that I got mostly to annoy the cats).

Soooo… here’s what I need from you guys. I need ideas, I need builders and I need volunteers for next year.(Discussion on the BBM Forums) Who’s with me?