Fighting the Current

Happy Halloween... but it'll be over in about 45 min...

Went out tonight for Halloween. For the first time in... a while, quite a few years people actually knew what (well... who) I was dressed up as: Amelia Earhart.

Yesterday afternoon, I realized that I still did not have a costume for Halloween. I dragged my youngest brother up there with me to A) find the costume boxes, and B) help bring them downstairs. The first box I carried downstairs by myself -- it's only full of hats, which makes it very light. The second box is much heavier. It was really hard to get it downstairs without killing one of us, but we managed. Now, if you've never seen my attic stairs (which most of you reading this have not), you have no idea how hard that is. The stairs are maybe two and a half feet wide; they curve twice, meaning that the stairs get extremely narrow towards one end; there is so much stuff on the bottom few stairs that it is an incredible balancing act to get past them carrying something; the walls are old, they haven't been painted for at least 15 years, probably more -- they are an off-white (currently -- they might've been whiter before) scuffed lead paint (it's an old house, go figure); there is no electricity, plumbing, heating, cooling, or insulation in my attic at all. None of that makes it easy to carry these two things down. It's not like I can just slide them down the stairs (because, believe me, I would if at all possible). I had my brother stand at the top of the stairs, and I stood a few feet down. We inched it down, trying to balance it between steps, and getting it around the bends without having it knock me down and go sailing down the stairs, knocking over everything in its path. There were a lot of "Watch it!"s, "NO!"s, and "HANG ONTO IT!!"s while we were doing that. But we got it downstairs, amazing as that was. I dragged them down the hallway and into my room and proceded to throw the contents of the boxes all over my floor in a desparate search for ideas. I was still wearing my boxer-shorts, navy stockings, and white t-shirt (fromy my school uniform) while I was trying on different outfits. I tried on about three different skirts, just to see what they looked like, and various accessories to try to get ideas of what to dress up as. I tried to try on some shirts on top of my t-shirt, but I think I outgrew them when I was in the 5th grade. No way I could ever fit into those shirts -- too short, too narrow all the way thru, too small in general. Didja ever try to try on a shirt and end up with your arms stuck out behind you because they couldn't move in that shirt and you didn't want to rip it? Yeah, it was a little like that. Anyway, I gave up around 7 o'clock and said that I would dress up as an artist and just wear my painting t-shirt and black pants. I left all of the clothes and hats out on the floor (including one hat that just kept spreading feathers all over the place) and went downstairs still wrapped in one of the scarves. Later, I had to go back upstairs and clean the mess up. I cleaned it all up and forced the box shut. Then I had a really good idea. I rememberd that my dad's old maroon wind-shirt that he used to use for skiing was still in the box. I opened the box back up and tore through it looking for that shirt and a thin white scarf. The jacket was perfect for an Amelia Earhart-type thing and the scarf worked really well. I wore those and black pants and a tan turtle-neck and a pair of swimming goggles on my head which were the closest thing I could find to aviator goggles.

But people could actually guess what I was this year!!!!!!! Last year, I was one of the men-in-black, the year before, I was an obscure character from The X-Files, and before that, it was easier, but still not the easiest to guess.

I carved my pumpkin today. I drew a sailboat in indelible marker and carved out waves and clouds. I was going to carve out the sailboat, but the pumpkin was too thick to do what I wanted.


~a_g_

         More than an end to war,
         we want an end to the
         beginnings of all war.
                    - Franklin Delano Roosevelt