October Scrapbook

October has arrived, and with it Autumn. Oh, Summer hung around a bit for the first few days, just like it did last year, but it was a Last Gasp, to be sure. We've already had the ceremonial Igniting Of The Furnace, Planting Of The Bulbs, and the Changing Over Of The Closet. (It's Boot Season--hooray!)

Sadly, we've already had our first Frost Warning as well. Yikes.

Anyway, since we've last been together, I've collected a few snapshots to share with you. Let's take a look, shall we?

Here's the Tomato Fence, the one I pass by daily on my walk. To the right of the profusion of foliage you can see a few fronds of the cherry tomato plant peeping out above and below the slats. Just so you can see my Temptor.

Sadly, I walk past this every day now, too. Longtime readers of this blog know that I am no fan of Halloween decor to begin with, but how did this mass-produced, commercially made flag get all the way to stores with NO ONE picking up on the fact that CEMETERY is misspelled? This hurts me so much.

 But not as much as this. Not only are all the gruesome Halloween...things slammed right up against the chipper Christmas stuff--AND IT'S ONLY MID-OCTOBER--there are actually shoppers looking at the Christmas stuff back there. Furthermore, I realize Thanksgiving is a Quainte Olde Fashionede Observance now, but may we still have it? At its regularly scheduled time? Please?

I need to breathe.

And possibly take a pill.

Moving on to photos from our Department Of Redundancy Department:

Oh, may I? I swear; I read this twice, making absolutely certain that Mr. Ajay Mirmira did not also refer to an ATM machine or state that you could walk in at 2 o'clock AM in the morning. I also wondered if he would say something about ink pens or tuna fish or rising up or some other horrific unnecessary doubling of The Language that would make me swear into my coffee mug.

Finally, this. Alert Husband and Reader Rick saw this at nearby Menards, a home improvement store that is, as I told my friend Jackie, a store so enormous that it is like Home Depot and Walmart had a baby and put steroids in its bottle. (A brief aside:  Rick said that when he saw this, the first thing he said was, "Damn you, Nance! I never used to notice this shit until I met and married you. Now it irritates the hell out of me." Sigh. Ours is a Unique Love Story.)  Hey, Menards! Is it ever, ever possible to "Combine Apart?" No? Pro Tip:  Just say Combine. The word itself means "to put together".

So painful.

Welcome to Fall, everyone. It's getting chilly (and a little irksome) out there.

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In Which I Am Impressed By The Level Of Some People's Commitment To The Holiday

Winner!  It's hard to top this yard for its authenticity, scope, and overall design. It's too bad that realty company Berkshire Hathaway had to destroy sight-line continuity with its sign, but hey--that's business. And you know what President Calvin Coolidge (famous dead guy said), "The business of America is business."

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Fear Factor

Today on my walk I played a little game in honor of all of the Halloween decorations. I called it "Which Yard Is The Scariest 2014?" (It was a long walk because not only did I need to oust a Severe Case Of The Crabbies, but I also needed to go to the drugstore. I took, therefore, a circuitous route which gave me a nice three miler or so.)

Anyway, I took some photos, and here are the two Finalists.




Number One:

I'm impressed.  That thing is like fifteen feet tall.  Along with the inflatable Christmas Eeyore, it may be the only yard inflatable I will ever sanction in my neighborhood.  It's scary, yo.  But get ready; here is Entry 

Number Two:

Holy crap.  Do you see what I see?  That's about thirty bags of mulch that need to be spread!  Talk about Scary!  The chills that went up my spine when I saw that...brrrrr.  Not to mention the sick feeling in my gut just thinking about the smell and the stains on my hands, my socks, my arms, and whatever else came in contact with that stuff.  We won't even talk about what it would do to Rick's back.

Yikes.  I think we have a winner.


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This Is A Public Service Announcement: This Year Can Be Different! Live The Life You Dream Of!

Dearest Readers, hello--and believe me when I tell you that I don't mean this in a Threatening Way at all--welcome to November.

I know, right?  I was as astonished as you were by its arrival this morning.  The top of my To Do List still reads "1.  Find September!!"  The whole thing is probably a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but onward we must.

The worst thing, truly, is now that we've dispensed with Halloween, THE HOLIDAYS are officially upon us.  I honestly believe that the only reason Halloween hasn't been wadded up into THE HOLIDAYS is because it involves death and dressing up as slutty examples of everyday occupations and items.  If retailers could find a way to straighten out and clean up Halloween a little--make it more wholesome and jolly--THE HOLIDAYS would start right around September 1st.  You know I'm right.  This is a country where opening stores at 4 A.M. the Friday after Thanksgiving wasn't enough.  Now stores are open on Thanksgiving Day.  And they are crowded with shoppers. 

Where are all those outraged Christian picketers?  Get them away from the clinics and herd them over to Macy's.

Anyway.

How sad that it has become cliché to lament about the commercialization of holidays although heretofore it was Christmas, and now it's Thanksgiving.  It's simply terrible what's happened to these holidays.  Right now, it's easy to maintain the integrity of my Thanksgiving.  I won't be going shopping, and I know Rick, Jared, and Sam won't be either. 

It's harder to hold the line for Christmas.  Once November 1st hits, it's as if some invisible dam has broken, some ban has been lifted, some wall breached.  Radio stations sneak carols on; more commercials featuring Holiday themes interrupt your television viewing; and there is the constant reminding of the number of days left until Christmas.  Your friends, relatives, even strangers in line ahead of you at Subway are telling you how far along they are in their Christmas shopping.  Sadly, it is considered impolite to say, "Oh Shut Up," however calmly or smilingly you may suggest it.

Don't fall victim to this pressure.  Let this be the Christmas you relax and enjoy.  To that end, I am going to offer my Dearest Readers a Pressure Busting Tip every day during the month of November.  That way, it will be Nice And Early, and you can put them on your December calendar, if necessary, to remind you what you're NOT doing or doing a little less of or doing differently this year.  These have all been tried and tested by yours truly.

Pressure Busting Tip #1

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday.  Enjoy it on its own.  It is the one family holiday meant to be enjoyed without the exchanging of presents that you had to shop for while fighting crowds, uncertainty, frustration, and the eventual resignation that you have to get an impersonal gift card.  If you are the cook, decide to cut back on one side dish or variety of dessert so that you don't have to juggle oven times or worry about fridge space.  It will be fine.  If someone asks what she can bring, tell her.  If you are not the cook, be a delightful and courteous guest, but hey! You're a grownup.  If you're not having a good time, go home.  Trust me, they'll all get over it.  Really, they will.  Fake a headache if you have to.  They'll know, but it'll be okay.

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The Politics, Halloween, And Yard Art: Experience Life In A Swing State (An Interactive Post!)

At this point in October in Ohio, I don't know what I grow more weary of, Halloween or The Politics.  Last night while trying to enjoy some television programming, Rick and I counted eight ads in a row during one break, and those were just for two races, senator and president.

My great distaste for Halloween has been well documented here at the Dept. in other posts before, so we won't go back over all that territory now.  Suffice it to say, my feelings haven't changed except to perhaps intensify.  So while on my walk today during an unseasonably warm and gloriously sunny day, I made it my Mission not to be irked by the Halloween yard art I knew I was going to witness. 

Because that just allows the Terrorists to Win.

Now, here's an example of a very subtle celebration of Halloween:

 

What does this home say to you?  "Oh, hello.  Autumnal Greetings.  And we are proud Americans, by the way. (Or, we got a free flag from our councilman on Independence Day and, unsure of how to dispose of the flag properly, we just left it here.)"  It wasn't until I got the photo home that I even saw that there was a teeny pumpkin tucked next to each pot of mums, so subtle is this decor.

 

A few blocks later, we have this:

 

 

What does this home say to you?  "Bwaaahaaaahaaa.  We have unpacked our crazy and have a ton of Peter Pan Issues to work through."

 

Here's another view without the tree branches:

Or, perhaps it says:  "We used to work at Discount Halloween Town.  We are the Fun Parents, and everyone in the neighborhood borrows our ladders."

 

But, at least this house has a Theme.  This is a focused, directed Decorating Job.  Which is more than I can say for this:

 

 

Okay...what, now?  Just what does the decor here say to you? Go ahead-- I'll let you have some fun in Comments.





I Say Skip It And Go Directly To The Next Real Holiday On The List

I hate Halloween. I just absolutely hate it. I've kvetched about it before here at the Dept., so I won't get all in a lather again, but really, when on Earth will this little holiday go back to being just that--a Little Holiday and stop being some bigass Extravaganza Of Retail, Adult Idiocy, And Overall Bad Taste?

Let me take those 3 areas one at a time:

1. Retail. Just browse through the Walgreens advertisement and you can meet up with some incredibly horrific items that defy not only basic sales logic but plain judgment. Only at Halloween time would anyone dare to market things called Hulk Cakes: chocolate cupcakes frosted in an alarming lime green. Those, however, pale in comparison to the Blood Tablecloth, Gory Wound Sleeve, and something called the Lighted Window Leecher. WTF is a "leecher?" Try looking it up in a dictionary. Lord help us if Walgreens made a typo and it was supposed to be "lecher." But those are just small potatoes compared to the animated guillotine you can get for your front yard! This festive decoration "features a talking prisoner with lighted eyes and a working guillotine!" Finally, for those Holiday Addicts, there is actually a Two-Season Lite Set: "Go from Halloween to Christmas with the press of a button!" In reality, in my Walgreens, all I have to do is walk 10 feet. The aisle directly in front of the Halloween aisle is already stocked with Christmas wrap, artificial wreaths, ribbon, tags, stockings, and all sorts of red-and-green crap. I almost wept.

2. Adult Idiocy. Remember when Halloween used to be all about little kids going out in costumes and trick-or-treating? And they had little parties and their parents helped them carve basic jack-o-lantern faces? Now, Halloween has turned into women wearing soft-porn costumes, "grownups" decorating their houses to look like the set of a bad B horror flick, and otherwise sane individuals thinking up ways to scare the hell out of kids who come up to their houses for a free Snickers bar. Specialty Halloween shops crop up in empty storefronts overnight, and pundits try to predict the outcome of the presidential race by which mask sells the most. I always get several parents at my house for trick-or-treat pushing strollers with children who are far too young to ingest any sort of candy. They're not trick-or-treating, they're begging. For themselves. How tacky.

3. Overall Bad Taste. Halloween has become such an over-the-top celebration of...what, now? Death? What is the explanation for the house on the corner (not far from my street) which has the inflatable hearse complete with coffin, the dead body hanging in the tree, the tombstones, and the gigantic black widow spider on the roof and all the webs? What--exactly--is being celebrated here? What parallel do we draw here between death and...what? I'm just wondering how it all got so...overblown and tasteless.

Or is it just me?

All The News That's Weird To Print: Cleaning Favorites, Green Glittery Bones, And Second-Story Mushrooms

Sometimes I read the newspaper and I swear that I've entered another dimension, one where the time-space continuum is warped and skewed and all life is madness and real people don't exist. And I'm not reading the Politics section about Republicans or an interview with The Angel of Death about his Surge Strategy or anything, either. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Usually, it's the Inside & Out section of The Plain Dealer, the cleverly titled segment all about gardening and decorating. It contains articles full of helpful hints and stories about things that the average homeowner/gardener reads and scoffs at with varying degrees of intensity. "Oh, certainly I will rub a small amount of linseed oil into the wooden handles of all my tools such as trowels, shovels, hoes, and rakes to prevent them from cracking and drying out!" I say as I read the feature article titled Chores Galore! "I don't even moisturize my flaky legs after every shower." Soon, I am moved by how Readers' Solutions for Cleaning Get Heloise's Seal of Approval. It seems that I missed my chance to send in my own favorite family recipe for cleaning solutions with other NE Ohioans awhile back. Alarmingly, this article took up nearly an entire page and people waxed not only nostalgic but downright poetic about their favorite concoctions for cleaning windows, floors, mirrors, and you-name-it. I nearly became ill. One woman actually wrote of her Aunt Helen's recipe for glass cleaner: "as I touched it lovingly, my heart was flooded with fond memories of her. She loved to clean. She would fill an empty bottle with this concoction and away she went." Good God. Of all the things for which one can be remembered, to have it be cleaning...well...yikes. Allow me to say this: my recipe for a cleaning solution is very simple. If at all possible, hire someone.

But trust the truly insane to come from La Diva Domestique, Martha Stewart. The most bizarre sentences I have ever read in print, bar none, have to be the ones in her column Eerie Decorations for Halloween Fun. I almost had no emotion in my personal database of feelings with which to react to them. Here they are:

(^)A giant glass cheese dome, something I have had in my kitchen for many years, formed the perfect display case for green-glittered plastic skulls and bones when set atop a very large cake stand.

And this caption under a photo of the aforementioned objets d'arts:

(^)Glittered plastic skeletal parts create a dramatic and unexpectedly artful ambience when set off by an oversized glass cheese dome.

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?

O-kay.

You know, it's enough to put me off my paper.

Yet, I soldiered on, unwisely, it turned out. Starting on a column innocuously headed HOME MAINTENANCE, I was intrigued by the headline Remove the Source of Moisture if Mushroom Growing in a Home. This didn't sound too goofy to me; I live in a neighborhood of really old homes, some with dirt floor basements, and mushrooms sprout up in them once in a while. No biggie. Oh, dear reader...! First paragraph: I received an email from a reader recently who found a mushroom growing on a second-floor hardwood floor and asked if this was cause for alarm, and also asked for suggestions on how to handle it.

Holy crap! Is this "cause for alarm?" Ummm...is your second floor a mushroom farm? No? Then hell, yes, it's cause for alarm!

In the meantime, though, since it is October, do you have a slightly oversized cheese dome and some green glitter? Then I have a suggestion....

Dumping the Contents of My Head

From time to time, I have to drain off some of the more inexplicable thought nerfuls that keep rattling around in my head. I have no idea why these things keep occurring to me; they stick around like little velcro brain hamsters. Now they can take up residence in your mental Habitrails.

1. Every single Brandon I know is a screw-up or a brat on his way to being a screw-up. I've been keeping tabs on this for about 4 years now, and I've yet to meet a Brandon or have one in class that is the exception to this rule. If there are any Moms out there who are contemplating this name for a future son, I'm telling you right now, don't do it. Don't saddle your kid with this name. He will turn out to be a major pain in the ass. Or worse.

2. Every Crystal I know is ditsy. All adult Crystals I know are involved in the cosmetology field in one way or the other as well. Not that there is anything wrong with that. ( My stylist is not named Crystal, and she is not ditsy, for the record. Her name is Nancy.) And that includes all the ridiculous variant spellings of this name, too: Krystle, Chrystal, Christal, Krysstle, Khristall, etc. When I think of the name Crystal, I automatically know she will have stripey highlights, fake fingernails, and call people (including her mother) "hon."

3. I went to Old Navy with my son to shop for jeans. On the door it said "Join the fun. We're hiring!" No one at Old Navy looks like they are having fun. I don't blame them. They spend their whole shift folding clothes, hanging up clothes, organizing things, sorting things, and telling people where to find things or helping people to find things. In short, they spend their whole shift being someone's MOM. But hey, at least they're getting paid for it.

4. If Halloween is such a bigass holiday, then why no Halloween songs? Personally, I hate this holiday. When I was a kid, I loved it. I loved dressing up and going trick-or-treating and getting a ton of candy. But now, it's out of control. Houses around me take this holiday to a new level. A full-fledged graveyard is in the front of one house on the corner as a body hangs from the tree and a witch greets visitors to the front door. Another house is totally covered (both stories!) with enormous spiders whose webs drape over the eaves and bushes. Skeletons, hanging corpses, bloodied bodies, tombstones--are these really "decorations?" I bet these people are a real hoot at funerals. I am seriously confused as to what we are "celebrating". What, really, are these people doing? I find the whole thing distasteful. Why can't this just be a kid holiday? Do adults have to co-opt it because they can't grow up just yet? Geeze!

5. No time for Halloween grousing, though. Christmas stuff is already in the stores! There will be no Thanksgiving this year! Sorry, but we just can't fit it in. No marketing value.

6. Whatever happened to Mallow-Cups? They used to be sold right next to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They were wonderful. The marshmallow was sticky and there was just a teensy bit of crunchy coconut on the top. Mmmmmm. I love those and they are NOWHERE. And I find that marshmallows, in general, are vastly underused in the confectionery world. And that the word marshmallow is vastly misspelled I'd say a good 85-90% of the time. Oh, and that "Reese's" is vastly mispronounced a good 60% of the time. It is to be pronounced to rhyme with "pieces" not "pee-sees". Sigh.

7. I worry because I do not take photos. Everyone I know takes photos; some of them do it almost every day! They have photos of every single birthday for all of their children, even past elementary school. They have photos of every first day of school for comparison. They document every vacation, every pet, every first of every event. All new cars are photographed, as are gardens, so favorite plants can be placed in the same plots. They have cute candids, family portraits that they did themselves, and photos of astonishing scenery or ironic signs because they carry their cameras in their cars! I am lucky to have my umbrella in my car. Or a CD that I like. And do not get me started about scrapbookers.

8. I have given up on the show "Heroes." Too many characters. Too many places where the script had to do gymnastics with the normal plot events. I wanted to like it. Oh well.

9. Last weekend, a gay guy could not take his eyes off my husband. It was blatant and it was unabashed. (And well-deserved. Rick was nicely dressed and looked lovely.) I could tell that he was flattered and proud that he still "had it" whether it was appreciated by a member of the opposite sex or the same. The guy was only about 25.

10. I had no overtly educational kid tv when I was growing up; at least, nothing like Sesame Street, Barney, or Reading Rainbow. The shows I remember best are Captain Kangaroo, The Jonathan Winters Show, and Lost in Space.

Okay, so! I feel better! Must mean I'm done.