Now Playing: Road to Nowhere by Ozzy
Topic: Family Business
Relaxing days, yesterday & today, yesterday we did craft stuff, I had picked up halloween figures, houses & a crypt, at a resale shop in town back at the beginning of the summer for a dollar fifty each & have been holding on to them since then. Monday turned out rainy & miserable so the kids & I painted them, they came out pretty nice as you can sort of see from the picture
we painted these & also some wooden things which will become a welcome sign for beside the door if I ever finish it, I've been thinking about how I wanted it to be & how to set the welcome sign up for months, I bought the pieces months ago & had been considering ever since, they're still not done, just the base coats applied, I was going to do the whole thing but decided I was better off taking it in small steps. Especially since in annother 3 weeks I'll want to put up halloween decorations & won't want some light & fluffy pretty thing beside my door. Halloween has been one of my favorite holidays as long as I can remember, unlike Christmas, which carries so much baggage (not to mention that some of my mother's worst depressions were during that holiday- making it uncomfortable to me) It's all for fun, from the time my best childhood friend (we were friends from 3 to 14 & then her father became an at home alcoholic so she cut all her friends out of her life) & I would make these walk through haunted houses through my house, I have memories of all these decorations we made for the walls on the staircase & fortunes we put in a black plastic cauldron & had my grandmother, dressed as a witch stir & give to people, one time we had a seance in the back room of a building we had on our property, there was a round hole cut in the wall which had been for a stovepipe but there was no pipe there & some enterprising person had placed the piece of drywall back in the hole, we heard a noise back there & turned to look & suddenly this hand & arm thrust itself through the hole! It was my father who was quite a joker & prankster! We hadn't planned this but it went off wonderfuly. Once when we were younger on Halloween night, with out any warning my parents & my friends parents put us all in the car & drove us to a neighboring town to a 'haunted house' my friend's parents milkman (yes, I'm old enough to have grown up with a milk man) & his friends had set up a haunted house & were making money for some charity having people pay a dollar or something to walk through, there was a gypsy telling fortunes, pirates & assorted ghouls standing or sitting around, so still you thought they were mannequins then they'd jump at you or yell, in the basement there was a stone doorway & someone standing against the wall on the other side swinging a large broadaxe down across the doorway I was on my way in when they swung it & stopped short, I was never so scared in my life (I was 7 or 8 at the time) they had it set up very well, once you walked around upstairs you went down to the basement & through a little more & then out through their bulkhead- very convenient. I always used to love watching Roseanne because they always had great halloween shows & did similar things to what we used to do & what I had seen (you see, in Massachusetts by 1975 or so there was no trick or treating because of the razor blades in apples, angel dust in pixie sticks freak out urban legends which went around- the kids who went to public school went to a school sponsered party but most of my friends were catholic school kids & of course I was either in the school my mother sent me to back then or taught at home so no party- our parents started doing things for us so we'd have something to do for halloween & we took it over ourselves once we were old enough. ) I really love halloween still, there's been years where I took 16 trick or treating in Mass (nowadays, they do this by neighborhood rather than all over town) & then all 3 of them here trick or treating, last year & the year before I hung out at my ex's aunts house & his cousin & her daughter kindly took the little ones out with them which I really apreciated- (miss 16 is over the whole thing & stays home handing out candy - though here at the new house no one shows up to get any) I always feel like such a beggar running the kids from place to place, waiting in the car for them to run up & back down, theres too much space between houses here for walking between houses for trick or treat- unless you do it just right in the center of town. I considered briefly having a halloween party here at the house, a little house of horrors tour like J & I used to do & then a little party in the garage, just for 10 & 7's school classes, not tons of people, just give everyone in the class
es a note to stop by for a scary tour etc. but when I suggested it to 16 & wanted her to ask a couple of friends to help out she was shocked & appalled. How could I think of doing something so crazy? so weird, she'd be the laughingstock of the high school! So we didn't do it, as it turned out halloween time turned out to be a pretty financialy low time of the year last year so it's just as well that we didn't plan any such thing last year. There's always this year or next though... Right?
well, probably not! it's a nice idea but it takes a lot more time & money than I have to spare- it's too bad though, it would be a lot of fun.
In painting the buildings I ended up, as usual, all alone at the table, mr 7 went to watch tv, miss 16's boyfriend called, miss 10 was back & forth between watching tv & making something to eat, I sat quietly, painting & thinking of the Christmas village the ex & I painted which was similar to these halloween pieces, thinking of the wooden boxes I used to get from my father who talked people at the liquor store into giving him for free (they sold wine from them & were just tossing the boxes out, after he got maybe 10 of them they started selling them to people for $5. each & he wouldn't get any more because he was mad that they took advantage of his idea to re-use the boxes) I still have 4 of them, 3 painted, 1 I've never gotten to but may soon. My mother & grandmother also each have one I painted for them. 1 with scences from my childhood home & 1 with scences from Whittiers Birthplace. There's a few other boxes which my father made which my mother still has I think. I'll have to ask I guess.
