Halloween 2009

I used to hate Halloween. I've never been creative enough to come up with cool costumes. With my addictive personality, I gorge on chocolate and feel like crap the next day. And then there was the Castro fiasco. So ghetto unfabulous.

The ill will goes back to the first time I had to dress up in kindergarten. I picked through the costumes at Long's Drugs and found a Raggedy Ann getup complete with plastic mask. I was so excited to find such an original costume! Then I got to school and was totally embarrassed to walk in the parade. My classmate Cindy had thick moppy red hair and a homemade outfit with striped leggings. She was Raggedy Ann and I was a poor impersonation. I walked around in the parade, glad to be hiding under a mask--totally ashamed.

I've started to warm up to Halloween, probably because I'm an adult now. I can hem and haw at all the cute young-ins dressed as princesses, robots, pirates. Everyone's so cute! Dean and I headed to Brisbane and went trick-or-treating with the whole fam: my parents, my sister, my brother-in-law, my two nephews, my brother-in-law's mom who flew in from Virginia. I carried chocolate in my bag and distributed to my favorite costumed munchkins I saw along the way: the bumble bee, the ninja turtle. I think the best is when the parents dress up, too. The dad in a mullet and the mom in a sixties dress.

A bunch of my friends were at the big Ghost Ship party on Treasure Island. I'm so overworked and too much of a stress case to deal with the Bay Bridge closure, parking, porta-potties. Maybe I'm getting old, but right now, I need to pass on the large-scale chaotic parties. I just want to trick-or-treat with the kiddies.