Redneck Studies: The 70% Complete Solution

I've mentioned before my theory that the reason redneck properties end up looking like redneck properties is the subjects' congenital inability to complete any project. I hold to that premise.

Just a few recent items of note in passing:

My brother has a power wash machine that's been sitting in the garage for a couple years now. (I think the last time it was used was when Mom died and he blasted (most of) the outside of the house before the cousins came over for her wake.) A couple months ago he took it out and discovered just how easy it was to clean the driveway of twenty-odd years of weather, dirt and grime. He would do a smallish section at a time a couple times a week and we moved the vehicles around accordingly to accommodate.

Except he's apparently become bored with that now. The last 20-25% of the driveway, down by the street, hasn't been touched in weeks and there is no indication he intends to go any further. And it's not an even break between completed/untouched sections where he can pretend that it's a different color concrete or anything. It's just obviously not done.

The Christmas tree, at least, came down a week after I removed the last of the ornaments. He insists there is one proper way to assemble and disassemble the tree and he knows what that is. So it's in its box . . . which is still sitting in the hallway two weeks later. I do not know the location of his storage unit, neither do I have a key.

Meanwhile, though, he suddenly had the urge last evening to clean out the roll-top desk. It needed it desperately, having accumulated probably a decade's worth of holiday cards, utility bills, batteries (dead and alive), pens (dead and alive), address books (mostly alive), insurance calendars (assuredly dead), and other assorted ephemera and impedimenta. He had apparently finished by the time I came home since he was in his room watching TV having left the chair he was using blocking the doorway and all the drawers and top of the desk wide open. Do you want cats in your roll-top desk? Because that's how you get cats in your roll-top desk. They'd climb on it occasionally even when it was shut. I closed everything up.

I believe he honestly does not see finishing detail. And certainly does not see it as part of the project. The project was to take down the tree. It's down. The project was to clean out the desk. It's clean. End of story.

I don't know what the deal is with the driveway.

Hardly a Creature Stirred

This was the most low-key . . . and enjoyable . . . Christmas ever.

The tree went up the week before along with the large Santa atop the bookcase, two penguins under the tree and a couple of large stockings on the front door, one inside and one outside. That was it. No creche, no exterior lights, no carol-wielding circus train. My brother did scatter some Christmas balloon figures across the lawn but never got around to inflating them.

We limited ourselves on the presents, too. Since my niece was the only one who sent a wish list, and since half her list consisted of books, I was happy to oblige her. My brother and I agreed to limit ourselves to only "stocking stuffers" which meant he gave me three small jars of flavored honey, a bottle of orange flavored syrup and a box of fudge while I gave him a case of beer and a bottle of honey roasted peanuts. We were both happy.

The cats, being natural born heathens and not, as we, lapsed communicants, received nothing. They were content to nest in the boxes and nibble on wrapping paper. Despite occasional manic bursts of running about chasing each other around and under the tree, they were (generally) very careful to avoid touching it and only a couple of the lowest ornaments ended up on the rug.

We had Christmas dinner mid-afternoon and in the evening I made about a gallon of split pea soup with a portion of the leftover ham. The cats turned down ham samples although I did catch one of them later gnawing on a piece of gristle she stole from somewhere. I now have pea soup, bean soup and turkey soup taking up space in the refrigerator and freezer and kind of wish the weather would cool off again. It feels weird eating hot soup when the temperature is pushing 80F.

If we can maintain this same level of concentrated placidity, 2015 could start off well.

Over 200 Served, Not Counting the Cops

Last night began with my brother cursing (one of his favorite pastimes) and vowing never to honor this holiday again (totally not to be taken seriously) because the wind kept threatening to blow over the balloons and even the zombies, and the blower motors inflating the balloons were worn out and there were no viable batteries to power the zombies' eyes and moans, pretty much all of which was true but irrelevant since the real problem was that, as usual, he left everything to the last minute, didn't do any pre-installation checking (re: batteries and motors) and, even on the morning of the day, wasted an hour or two (I wasn't home at the time) chopping down a bougainvillea that was encroaching on the lanai--and had been for several years so why it had to come down right then who knows.

There's no point engaging him when he gets like this so I just let him run his course and assumed the wind would die down once the sun set (it did) and the motors would be more effective when the air cooled (they were). The battery problem was solved when he ran off to the store as the first kids were arriving and bought a jumbo pack of AAs. 

Meanwhile the pillaging hordes started to trickle in about 4:30. Our first visitor, a teenage female pirate, was followed by a five-year-old female doctor. I was kind of disappointed that a lot of kids really didn't seem to put much effort into their "costumes" although the first pirate was very good and there were a number of passable ghouls, super heroes (both male and female) and even a couple of classic Ghostbusters. A couple of kids had corrugated cartons on their heads and I assumed they were Box Trolls but, when I said that to one she sounded very disappointed and sighed, "No, I'm a robot," and turned on the flashing rotating lights in her eye and mouth spaces. I think I might have gotten that correct if they'd been on to start with. The most original was a five- or six-year-old orange Crayola crayon. Second place went to a perfect little Beetlejuice being wheeled around in his stroller.

There were three distinct waves of foragers, the first starting just after sunset, the last coming through just as the police arrive around 9:10.

Did I mention that the police shut us down?

One patrol car went by very slowly on the main street early on in the evening but didn't stop. A second one came onto our street and parked just up from the main activity about 8:30 or so but that's way too early to enforce any sort of noise ordinance and we weren't that loud anyway so he left.

We can't be sure a complaint was filed since people were parking in the main road's median strip as well as on the shoulders in order to get into our street and the police may have been responding to the congestion. Comparing the ethnic diversity of our visitors with the homogeneity Neighbor Dan (who, it must be admitted had partaken of a number of shots) was not taking any chances and attempted preemptive revenge on the mean old man down the street who always complains about everything to the point of calling the police and filing reports about car horns, lawn mowing and unregistered vehicles, by taking a visiting German shepherd named Diesel for a walk and encouraging him to poop on said neighbor's lawn. Diesel was uncooperative.

Finally, three patrol cars came back around 9:20 and stayed until everything completely wound down about forty minutes later which it totally would have done anyway since we were running out of candy and the third wave was thinning out. They didn't say anything to anyone as far as I could tell but their presence was a big hint. Plus, the night was crystal clear and the temperature had dropped into the mid-60s which is a little cool for short-sleeves around here. We put the zombies safely away in the garage, my brother deflated the balloons and I went in to make a cup of hot tea.

My brother's mood had been steadily improving throughout the evening (as I knew it would) and now, operating on the theory that any party shut down by the police is by definition a success, he was delighted. By my calculations we served just north of 220 trick-or-treaters. I managed to salvage three 100 Grand bars for myself and my brother gave me two Almond Joys he acquired somewhere.

This morning is bright and sunny but the wind is howling again.

Balloons Are Up. Dead To Follow

Our Hallowe'en decorations are finally up.

Almost.

The balloons are emplaced and, except for the ones over on the far side of the driveway (which include the headless horseman and the hearse), inflated. We have a couple of new ones including a large orange and black spider with glowing swirly lights in its abdomen. Neighbor Dan has a similar one but its abdomen is white and the swirly lights are multi-colored. I like ours better.

Neighbor Dan has had his decorations up since the first week of October. My brother intended to put ours up shortly after he saw Neighbor Dan's yard but his truck broke (again) that weekend so he couldn't retrieve anything from storage and then his truck was stolen so he mowed the lawn instead which was necessary but insufficient as this is the time of year when the grass shoots up about a foot over night and sets its seeds. Its all getting a bit raggedy already. He finally got around to placing balloons a few days ago.

Our yard still looks sparse compared to Neighbor Dan's but that's mostly because a lot of our decorations are not inflatables: the zombie wedding party, tombstones, dancing skeletons, etc. that really shouldn't be put out too far in advance although there's hardly any chance of rain anymore. Even the TV weather people have officially announced the end of Rainy Season. The days have been glorious, warm and sunny; the nights clear, cool and dry.

We have a couple new zombies, too. Actually, three, I think, plus the dog skeleton. They're the top-half-of-the-body-bursting-through-the-ground type zombies and will go well with the tombstones. One of them arrived broken and when my brother called the company they said they'd received a number of complaints about that one and they would refund his money and he could just go ahead and keep it anyway. That's the way to ensure customer loyalty. The skeleton dog is poseable and is currently leashed to the picket fence along the walkway to our front door. I don't understand how a skeleton can have ears and a nose, but otherwise he's kinda cute.

People have been driving by to check out the neighborhood prior to the pillaging spree this Friday. They seem to be impressed, if they are new to the area, or, if not, satisfied the tradition continues.

Oh, and I voted for the fourth time this year, not that it'll do any good in this district. Maybe in the statewide races.

Reversion to the Mean, Or: Coal For the Kitties

Now, this is more like it.

I came home Saturday to surprise Paribanour in the Christmas tree. Technically, leaping from the Christmas tree, about a third of the way up. There were four ornaments on the rug, none of them broken. I reattached them and we stopped the tree from turning in hopes that would lessen the cats' curiosity.

My brother reported that after he had kicked Mittens out of his room for some infraction he went into the living room to check up on the F.L.A.C. and noticed under the tree one penguin, a lump in the tree skirt, then another penguin. Mittens had crawled under the skirt. He also had to reattach a number of ornaments from a previous incident.

After I took away their lizard last night (I don't know where they found it. Jasmine and Paribanour were staring intently barely a nose-length away while Mittens played with it on the rug. I was surprised to find it was still alive and put it outside.), they all became agitated and, frankly, a little pissy and I had to keep chasing them away from the tree until they finally all curled up together on the kitchen table.

This morning, there is a branch bent down to the floor, one of the lower ones with no ornaments but strung with lights, and no one is admitting to anything. The skirt is all scrunched up around the trunk.

My brother has packed up the trains and track. Even he admits there are limits and is not willing to tempt Fate further. Instead, he spent the afternoon putting out Santa, snowman and penguin inflatables on the lawn and lights on the house and fence.

Doubling Down On Good Behavior

The tree now has ornaments. It does look much better.

My brother went out and bought several packages of cheap, solid-colored glass balls of different sizes. Most are more or less traditional colors: shades of red, green, gold/yellow and white. But some are just weird. Gray? Brown? Maroon? Seriously?? I can't even imagine on what sort of modernist artificial tree those might be appropriate. We did put up some of the darker traditional colors, but those stayed in their plastic cradles. (They came packaged with the nicer colors. Otherwise he would never have bought them in the first place.)

We refrained from hanging anything on the lowest branches, which does look a little weird but, overall, the tree is better for having ornaments than not. The cats have not taken the bait and are still behaving themselves, although Jasmine gets a longing look in her eyes whenever she sits under the tree and gazes upward. It's the lights.

Paribanour has been especially good considering she's the electronics nut of the clan. Whenever the TV goes on, she has to run over and hop on the table, pressing her nose against the screen and standing as tall as she can to bat at the picture. She crawls around behind and peers around the edges to discover where the sound and imagery comes from and where it all goes when it's turned off. Ditto with my laptop. She's the one who remapped my keyboard for me. Of course, it's not just electronics; any sort of tech fascinates her. She comes over to inspect the faucet whenever the water is turned on or off and has to stick her nose into the flow when I pour water into their drinking dish. I frequently catch her in the sink, inspecting the tap. The Christmas tree lights, however, she is content to lie under and just stare up at.

The train tracks still lie in great piles on the kitchen counter. Moving trains under the tree will be more temptation than any of them can stand, I'm afraid.

And, yet, who knows what my brother may dare next.

The Eternal Optimist Dares All

The Christmas tree is up.

I came home to find my brother had taken it out of storage and assembled it, with lights, while I was gone. A few other heavy and/or unbreakable decorations (the penguins and a couple of Santas) are also scattered around the house and under the tree.

He apparently spent some time, while assembling the tree, cowing the cats with various threats, both physical and psychic. Mittens seems suitably traumatized. Jasmine and Paribanour will occasionally sit up and sniff at the lower branches but are otherwise content to curl up on the festive under skirt beneath the boughs and nap. Paribanour worked herself into a tight little ball but, apparently, was still dazzled by the lights over her head. She slept with one paw raised up over her eyes. Jasmine tried to pick a fight with a penguin but, when it continued to ignore her, eventually gave up.

There are no ornaments on the tree and, despite my observation that it looks just fine the way it is and my recommendation to leave well enough alone, my brother still intends to buy some cheap unbreakables to gild the lily and tempt Fate.

He also retrieved the train set(s) that had been set up and forgotten (because unseeable) on the top of the barrier wall separating the kitchen from the cathedral ceiling living room. He's cleaned off most of the twenty-odd years of dust and grime and now has two complete trains and some three dozen pieces of track which he intends to set up around the base of the tree. He expects the cats to respect the layout.

There is a fine line between unwarranted optimism and outright delusion.

Just As We Suspected

Our smoke detector started going off on short random bursts the night before last. I figured the battery might be low so I retrieved a ladder from the lanai room and attempted to change it.

Attempted, I say, because the ladder was only eight feet tall and the alarm is set a good 14 feet up in the cathedral-ceilinged living room, right next to the air conditioning vent and just outside my brother's bedroom door. I'm not really happy with heights as it is and, standing on the top rung, I could barely reach the plastic disc only to find that it is not battery operated at all but attached firmly to the wall by the electrical wires that power it. I found this out by twisting the disc in a manner that would unscrew a normal battery powered model but succeeded only in wrenching it from the wall to hang dangling.

My brother came home to find the vandalized alarm hanging in a most accusatory manner, the ladder in the living room and cats resting on the lower rungs. I had thought that he, being taller than I, would want to fix the thing since the alarm was still going off on a random, if less frequent, basis but he said he had a larger ladder outside and would take care of it in the morning so I shook the cats off the rungs and dragged it back out onto the lanai.

When I came home last night, he had pulled the thing completely off the wall which means we have no smoke detector now although that doesn't bother me all that much since the only times it has ever gone off, other than this instance, is when my brother burns his supper which we already know because of the smell. (It didn't go off the night Mom draped a nylon top over her quartz heater. I woke to the smell of burning plastic, went into Mom's room, and managed to unplug the heater and pull the melting shirt off it before anything actually caught fire. Mom, who otherwise would have slept through the whole thing, was duly embarrassed and promised never to do anything like that again which, to her credit and despite the increasing dementia, she never did.)

My brother had, by then, moved the bigger, 15 foot tall ladder into his room so he could clean his ceiling fan but, before he could start, the cats found it. Mittens climbed all the way to the very top. And was obviously stuck there. The look on her face said there was no possibility of her
ever climbing down that steep slope (and this is the cat that climbs screen doors all the way to the top and back down again). Paribanour started up after her, very slowly, and only got about two thirds of the way up before she, too, froze. My brother climbed up to retrieve them but they maintained death grips on the rungs. He almost lost his balance pulling Paribanour off. He couldn't climb back down holding the cats and had to toss each one down to me as he pried them loose.

They're now banned from his room until he's done cleaning and the ladder goes back outdoors. Because they will not learn from experience. Mittens was so desperate to take a second crack at the ladder, she spent ten minutes clawing at his door to get back in.

So, yeah, after last night, I don't see a Christmas tree going up any time soon.

F.L.A.C. vs The Spirit of Christmas Present

Usually, by this time of the month our house is at least partially decorated. The tree may not go up until next week, but the crèche, the ceramic Santas, the carol-playing Christmas train, the various wreaths, candles and table ornaments and such should be out and on display. Not this year.

There is a glitch in our Christmas Plan. Three of them, actually.

The cats.

Bartleby, rest her soul, was never a problem with holiday decorations. True to her character, she preferred not to interact with, or even acknowledge, trees, lights, inflatables, statuary, really anything obviously temporary. Disdain was the order of the day.

The F.L.A.C.*, aka the Entropy Gang, are a different story.

Considering their willingness to sleep with zombies, steal pistachios to play floor hockey, race from one end of the house to the other at full speed leaping on and across chairs and tables and crashing into walls, wrestle each other to the ground rolling around before leaping straight up into the air, climb curtains and hang from screens, nest in the bookshelves, knock over trash cans, remap my computer keyboard, nest in the recycle bag, spread litter across the floor, and shred cardboard boxes before nesting in the wreckage, it's no wonder we're having nightmares about what they could do to a Christmas tree decorated with thousands of dollars worth of handmade European glass ornaments. They would look upon it as a challenge.

My brother has made several trips to the storage unit looking for any cheap, unbreakable ornaments he might have stashed away over the years and there are several boxes stacked up at the head of the driveway now, but we're still concerned about the tree itself. We just know there will be a contest to see which cat can climb the highest. Jasmine's too fat to win that one but she will compete and might bring the whole tree down.

It will be weird if we end up with no tree at all, but this year we may decorate in extreme minimalist style.

*Furry Little Agents of Chaos

The Night In Question

(The Wedding Party)

So, it turns out twenty (20!) bags of candy weren't enough, after all, and we needed to borrow one from Neighbor Dan who only bought 9 bags but his were three times the size of ours so it balanced out pretty evenly in the end.

Despite the last-minute nature of our decorating due to my brother's bout of the plague followed by his trip to the Bahamas and delayed return from spending an extra day with his girlfriend, we looked pretty good. A little sparse compared to previous years, but the trick-or-treaters didn't seem to notice.

(A Wedding Crasher)

The wedding party went over nicely. Several people even crashed it to have their pictures taken with the bride. Later in the evening, my brother joined them and sat very quietly until unsuspecting visitors came up close enough to collect their treats.

(Spot the Living Guest)

Reactions ranged from glorious screams to comments of, "Really?" (but only following a sideways jump of at least three feet), to one woman who got into a snit and just stomped off. Generally, though the responses were great, especially from the kids and foreigners. The kids, in particular, showed no fear. They posed with zombies and in front of the hearse and danced with the skeletons.

(Spiderman Does a Turn With the Singing Skeleton)

One German gentleman came up and, explaining that it was his first time here, asked me when the holiday normally occurred and how long it lasted. I told him it was always the evening before All Saints' Day and, although the decorations went up a few days earlier, the kids came by only on this one night. He seemed intrigued, yet bemused, by the whole concept. He especially didn't seem to understand the gorilla chasing the six-foot banana down the street.

Another German family came by later in the evening. They were relative veterans, it seems, as they were all dressed as pumpkins. I informed them they made a very sincere pumpkin patch but I don't think they got the reference. And the only beagle that showed up was dressed as a lobster. 

The giant banana came back later in the evening all out of breath. He took a couple of candy bars and said, "Thanks. That monkey's been after me all night long."

(Giant Lawn Cat Is Watching You Trick-or-Treat)

Final tally: 200+ kids of various ages and sizes plus almost as many parents/guardians (many themselves in costume), three dogs (one disguised as a crustacean) and the equivalent of 23 bags of candy. And lots of appreciative compliments. Guess we'll do it again.

(Y'all come Back Next Year, Y'hear?)

Show Time

My brother took an extra day getting home from his trip. Actually, he stopped by his girlfriend's house and spent the day with her before coming home.

As a result, he is now (yesterday and today) scrambling around the front yard staking and inflating his scary Hallowe'en decorations. Despite not being able to find all of the extension cords, they seem to be coming together much better than Neighbor Dan's balloons a good half of which he replaced with all new items because they would not inflate properly. That was a big hit to his budget this year.

Ours still have a few problems. The headless horseman is slumped over by the mailbox although the hearse behind him is doing fine. And there's a ghost out by the main road that keeps falling over. Either a guy line or a spike keeps coming loose in the wind. And the giant black cat looks a little wobbly in the knees. Nevertheless, my brother seems confident all will be up and running come sunset.

On the non-inflatable side, over by where the trick-or-treaters will be coming up the drive, the zombies have established a wedding party by the recently established graveyard and are merely waiting for the groom to finish extricating himself from the ground. The bride looks positively ethereal.

And on the more mundane, but no less important, sugar front: We have twenty (20!) bags of assorted candy bars sitting on the dining room table being inspected by the cats. Our contribution to the continuing childhood diabetes epidemic is well established.

Let the pint-sized hordes descend. Let the pillaging and plundering commence.

The Cuddly Un-Dead

Well, my brother left for the bus to the boat to the Bahamas this morning and none of the Hallowe'en decorations are up, yet, although that's not entirely his fault.

(Paribanour and "Larry")

The cats, it seems, have adopted the newly arrived zombies and are much more comfortable cuddling with them than with the living humans who, y'know, feed them and clean their litter boxes and play with them and give them treats. Case in point: Paribanour snuggling up with both "Larry" and "Henry." 

                            

                                     (And with "Henry")

   (Paribanour relaxing in Henry's embrace . . .)   

I do like the way their eyes light up and match the zombies'.

We'll have to hurry to put up our decorations when my brother returns. Most of them are in storage and I don't even know where the storage company is so I can't do it myself. Neighbor Dan has his all laid out and was inflating them yesterday evening but he complained that the motors on several of them seemed to be wearing out and were just not pushing air like they should.

(. . . and sharing the love with Larry)

I wish we could trust the cats outside. They'd make a great addition to the cemetery section with their dark gray fur and glowing eyes. Maybe they'd be happy to curl up with their undead buddies out on the lawn. More likely, they'll freak out completely when a hundred or so costumed little kids and their parents wander up our drive.

That's the sort of thing that would bother them.

The Frightful Day Approacheth

The local newspaper has officially announced that Rainy Season ended last Wednesday. They may be right. We haven't had a drop of rain since then and hardly a cloud in the sky.

Let the games begin.

Neighbor Dan took an early lead by laying out several of his inflatable Hallowe'en displays over the weekend but he has yet to inflate them. I suppose he's just positioning to get a feel for balance and composition but he has also not mowed his lawn in over a week and his grass is already shoe-top high and raggedy. If he leaves the displays staked as is he won't be able to cut and will be close to knee deep by the time the big evening rolls around.

My brother, on the other hand, mowed yesterday afternoon. At least, he mowed the front lawn which, after all, is where the decorations go and the only part visitors will see. Actually, in best Redneck fashion, he mowed most of the front lawn, ignoring under the live oak and bougainvillea and around the coconut palm on the logical assumption that neither decorations nor visitors will go there and it will be dark anyway, after all, so who's going to notice.

I've only seen one other house with any decorations and they've been up since late September but the house is nowhere near us and their display consists entirely of smallish inflatable Disney characters leaning heavily on the theme of Mickey as Sorcerer's Apprentice. Not even also rans.

The Props Department Delivers

Fall is in the air and my brother has been into the catalogs again. Our newest semi-audioanimatronic props arrived yesterday. The UPS person apparently came while we were out.

Henry

Four large cartons appeared in our foyer. There is a life-size vintage Victorian animated dead bride and three zombies: two partial upper bodies to be placed to appear as if crawling from the grave and one animated full-body undead walker.

Larry

The company which offers these characters has also, for some reason, named them. That's a fuzzy shot of Larry in the suit while Henry is the dapper one in the bow tie.

I'm assuming my brother intends to retire some of the less frightening inflatable Hallowe'en displays, like the pumpkins and giant Bart Simpson and such as, in favor of the more, shall we say, naturalistic presentations he's been acquiring over the past couple of years. Otherwise, our yard, especially the driveway approach used by the trick-or-treaters, is going to become very crowded indeed. The life-size inflatable illuminated horse-drawn hearse with re-animating corpse inside will definitely stay as will the 20 foot tall black cat but some of the others will just have to move off to the side yard where they will actually be easier for passing traffic to see.

That Time of Year

Well, we're finally recovered (mostly) from our Labor Day bacchanal.

My brother managed to get the lawn mowed and the bunting up along the fence by the path to the front door but the rain threatened and although it never did pour like it has every other day for the last two weeks, we wimped out and ate indoors.

I barbecued way too many ribs on the assumption my brother's new girl friend would be joining us which she didn't because she had apparently already made a commitment to her own kids' picnic (which was just as well because we didn't have enough corn on the cob, otherwise) so he and I ended up with basically a rack and a half each and, although we had left overs of the chips and dip and beans and potato salad and Cole slaw, we killed those ribs. (I suspect there may have been some Valium in the sauce because my brother collapsed and slept for six straight hours right afterward.)

So now Summer is unofficially over and Rainy Season is almost over and mango season is definitely over although its going to be next mango season before we manage to eat up all this year's harvest. What's next? Oh, look!

Catalogs.

Decking the Halls

The Christmas tree is now up and (mostly) decorated. It would have been up sooner, i.e., right after Thanksgiving per my brother's borderline obsession with Christmas, except it turns out he'd put his back out a while ago making it painful for him to stretch or bend. Of course, he never mentioned it until the day before yesterday, and I'm perfectly content to leave the house as it is, so now we're scrambling at the last minute.

The tree itself is at least 20 years old but surprisingly realistic. It's a 7.5 foot tall replica balsam. We think Mom & Dad spent maybe $100 for it. Assembly consists of stacking foot long sections of trunk and then attaching individual branches of decreasing length as the layers accumulate. My brother saves time by stringing the lights around each layer before adding the next one. Makes it easier to get the lights into the interior.

During construction, it even realistically shed all over the living room rug. I had to vacuum the whole area  . . . again.

My brother had to go to work after the tree was up and lit so I spent part of the evening decorating it. I went through two large boxes of mostly hand blown glass Radko and Pandora ornaments, most of which I had not seen before. I think, toward the end (and not trusting Mom's failing fine motor skills), my brother may have kept some of the more delicate ornaments out of the mix.

I have not, so far, run across any of the animated or otherwise disturbing ornaments from previous years but, then again, there's at least one more large box that hasn't even been opened yet (and possibly more still in storage).

And, neither we nor Neighbor Dan have put any lights or decorations out on our lawns, yet.

And Random Acts of Retail

My brother complained, after the mail came yesterday, "I just threw out every catalog in my room!" by which he meant approximately three dozen or so recent arrivals (and didn't count the twenty or so still in the living room). He held another even dozen in his hand fresh from the mailbox.

I often wonder from whence the catalogers get our address. It's kind of a game trying to figure out whose mailing list we came from. Sometimes it seems pretty obvious: Wild Wings, purveyor of wildlife coffee mugs, nostalgic animal art and clothing, most likely came by way of the World Wildlife Fund or Birds and Blooms magazine, both of which have had our information for years. Likewise, we know where Wireless (NPR), Signals (PBS), Smithsonian and National Geographic catalogs all come from.

But what about Front Gate? Their publication (I hesitate to call it a mere catalog) is printed on heavy glossy paper bound in a clay-coat four-color-process cover stock more suited to a commercial real estate prospectus. Then again, projecting that kind of image is necessary when your offerings--one-off holiday decorations and full-size pre-decorated Christmas trees--are priced from the low three-figures to the mid (and upper) four-figures. Are these guys, maybe, second generation from the Grandin Road people of life-size Hallowe'en zombie fame?

And then there's Russell's For Men. Apparently, there's an A. G. Russell's with a more general demographic somewhere that has skipped over us in favor of leather wallets, leather vests, leather travel accessories and knives of various sizes, shapes and utility (including, one presumes, scraping hides preparatory to making leather). Neither my brother nor I, are particularly lacking in testosterone yet we can not determine the provenance of this one.

Thanks to FedEx overnight delivery, we have a long way to go before the catalogers stop sending in the realization that is too late for us to order.

Seasonal Stuff

Eleven catalogs came today, including three from various orchards offering holiday fruit and candy compilations, two geeky gift shops (I'll need to go through them more thoroughly later), a bunch of holiday home decor offerings, The Victorian Trading Company, and, best of all, The Noble Collection, containing props and memorabilia from fantasy films including, among other treasures: Harry's, Hermione's, Dumbledore's and Voldemort's wands; a time turner; a working cryptex from The DaVinci Code; Batman, Superman and Green Lantern tchotchkes; and from The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, Gandalf's staff, full-size Sting and various incarnations of the One Ring, with and without Elvish inscription.

My list is complete.

On a completely different note: A coconut fell last week. Yay!! We peeled off the husk and split the shell. I've frozen the milk and it's now sitting on the kitchen counter drying out before we shred the meat. Macaroons here we come!

All Things Considered, That Went Well

We survived the looting and pillaging mini-hordes. It took ten bags of candy to do it, but we didn't run out and actually have a few pieces left over for ourselves, like we need them.

Earlier in the day I came home to find my brother upset because he'd decided to frost the skeleton cakes with a glaze, apparently not realizing just how runny that would be (why not I don't know, it's not like he's never seen a glazed cake before), and ended up with two skulls that looked as if they'd been used for candle holders with wax dripping all down the sides. I liked the effect, but he didn't.

Later, he tried making a "fire" pit using colored streamers blown upward by a fan but, after a couple of hours constructing the thing, the fan he had wasn't strong enough to move anything so he went out but couldn't find a single window fan at WalMart (!) and finally purchased one at Lowe's which didn't have enough power, either, so the whole project went south. He took it surprisingly well, which is not his normal M.O.

The actual bribing of the monsters started a little late and slow this year but picked up after 8 p.m. and eventually ran long. I especially enjoyed the tiny three-year-old Batman and also the slightly older Batman who, being a little unclear on the concept, upon hearing us yell, "Hey, there's Batman!" lifted his mask and insisted, "No! It's me!" Never seen him before. We had a pair of moving sound-activated ghosts suspended from wires that crisscrossed the driveway moaning and cackling. Some kids were freaked out but the ones I liked were the kids who were so fascinated that they forget all about asking for treats and just stared transfixed as the ghosts floated by overhead.

The police stopped by at the height of the festivities and we were worried either the cars parked up and down the median strip of the main road were causing a hazard or the neighborhood curmudgeon had complained. (He's filed formal complaints at one time or another against every single property owner adjacent to him and a couple of others that aren't.) It turned out to be just a routine patrol and we all carried on.

The weirdest thing I saw all night though were pick-up trucks with flatbed trailers (the kind lawn care companies use to transport mowers) kitted out with chairs and even a porch swing all filled with kids cruising  through looking for likely neighborhoods to loot. Apparently, those trailers are a thing down here.

From Each According to His Abilities . . .

My brother demonstrated, again, why I end up doing most of the cooking around here.

He decided he wanted another skull cake to take to work and made red satin cake batter from a mix while I was out. I came back to find the skull halves in pieces. We debated all the things that could have gone wrong, from not being cooked through to trying to get them out of the molds before they were completely cooled down, when he suddenly remembered, while looking at the instructions on the next box before trying again, that he had neglected to add any eggs the first go around.

(Seems like it took forever to find the split seam
between the toes on the left front foot.)

He's outside today setting up and inflating the Hallowe'en balloons (which is his métier) despite a continuing low-grade variable wind. There's just nothing else to do if we are to have any decorations at all. It should be O.K. for 24 hours despite Frankenstein's Monster's stakes being pulled from the ground by the wind over the weekend . . . and that was while it was still just a misshapen lump on the ground.

Neighbor Dan was out there, too, and very upset. His balloons have been lying around out in the weather so long that several of them have developed rips and tears and won't blow up. We had a leakage problem with the giant black cat last year and found Duct tape an excellent bandage.

The tombstones are in. The four new apparitions will stay in the living room until the last minute and then join us in the driveway when the first little monsters arrive.

As we've both been reasonably good about not eating the candy ourselves, there should be enough to go around. This year.