Halloween roundup.

I know you're probably thinking hard about Christmas now, but before we say farewell to Halloween I'd like to just compare notes. I didn't do it yesterday because of I was focused on All Saints' Day and the hollow excuse for a human being who committed the attack in Manhattan. Today let's put aside the religious and moral element of the holiday and of current events and cut to the other stuff:

DECORATIONS
Like a lot of Americans, I tend to treat Halloween like spring training for the Christmas season. Instead of a lot of lights, I put up one string of sickly green or orange on the porch. Instead of decorations all over the house, I put a few pumpkin things in the window. Stuff like that. And instead of getting the decor in place ASAP following Thanksgiving, I might put up the Halloween things a couple of weeks in advance of the day. This year I had no time and little inclination as we have been doing several home projects. So I waited until Halloween itself, grabbed a few must-haves (including the string of lights), and got it all in place that afternoon. Not one kid remarked on my lack of preparation.

Even though my pumpkins looked
a little droopy.

WEATHER
The day before Halloween was rainy, windy, and quite cold; really good for actual ghouls and spooks and witches but terrible for children. Fortunately it cleared up and was just chilly. Did not see one single child who had to wear a parka over his or her costume, though.

COSTUME
Meaning my costume. I usually have a funny hat or mask available for door opening, but skipped it this year. Briefly during the day I drove with a mask on, but that wasn't as much fun as I'd expected.

TRICK-OR-TREATERS
When we first moved into this neighborhood everyone had at least one child under ten and they all demanded candy. Since then it's been a big decline. However we have bounced back some after the nadir of 2014, and the pond has been restocked with little squirts. We had many a ring on the doorbell. Which annoyed the heck out of the...

DOGS
At first the big guy, Tralfaz, and the little guy, Nipper, were getting all barky every time a small pair of shoes thumped up the steps. I had to keep them quarantined from the foyer, as I do when the FedEx man has something for us. (They think he's up to something.) One of Nipper's tricks is to run into the room next to the front door and bark through the window. A little boy saw Nipper, and rather than be scared, the kid rushed to the window to see Nipper, who really has a cute I-wanna-play face even when he's using his big-boy bark. The boy was thrilled; must be a dog lover. After a while our guys started to calm down, and hardly fussed at all for the last half dozen doorbell rings. And speaking of the dogs...

LAWN
One thing I realized four years ago (Tralfaz's first Halloween) was that, to be a decent human being, you have to be particularly careful that all dog poop is off the lawn, because no matter how good a kid is, they know on Halloween that time is candy, so they're going to cut across the front lawn if it gets to them to the next house faster. I successfully performed my lawn examination this year. I don't bother checking the back that closely, though. Any kid cutting across my backyard deserves what he gets.

CANDY
We went through two bags of Nestle's Crunch, one Butterfinger, one Baby Ruth, and the majority of a big sack of Milky Ways. Not bad at all. Left with a small bag of Snickers, the rest of the Milky Ways, and a dozen emergency popcorn balls. We've had years of running short and years of way overbuying; this is about as close to right-on as we've ever gotten.

TRICKS
No tricks pulled on us. Trees safe. Nothing mysterious on porch. All clear.

CURFEW
The town's curfew for kids had been eight o'clock since Saturday, and our last callers came at 7:30. Unplugged the lights at eight and ate candy. Whee!

AFTERMATH
Nothing much to report -- the dogs were psyched outside, sniffing the scents of the army of children and their escorts. No sign of any mean tricks having been played on anyone. No visits from surly teenagers with perfunctory costumes. Success!

NEXT YEAR
I have to say, barring any major life changes, I'm just going to follow exactly the same plan again next year. It went great. If the weather is warmer we might get more kids, but what we had leftover candywise would handle them.

YOU
So, how'd you make out? Love to hear your comments below. Or drop me a line at frederick_key AT yahoo DOT com. Always glad to hear from fiends --- uh, friends. Mwah ah ah