Posts Tagged ‘Halloween’
From Here
There are many days when life around here feels like we should be mentioned in a Prairie Home Companion Lake Wobegon monologue. Oftentimes, that is because nothing particularly noteworthy has transpired. I could start out with, “It’s been a quiet week at ranch Wintervale…”
The sun came up about when we expected. The unseasonably warm weather that is becoming more seasonable every year hung in there to the last minute before a front of clouds and cooler air showed up yesterday afternoon. Cold rain is expected this morning. Last I checked, the conditions didn’t look all that promising for comfortable trick-or-treating tonight.
I miss being able to say that our phones rang off the hook. They buzzed and pinged with dramatically increased frequency from messages related to the election campaigns. I have no idea what any of them were because I instantly report them as spam, block the number, and delete the calls and texts in every instance.
It brings me great pleasure to not look or listen to any of them.
There are a lot of things that I get pleasure out of not doing. Plenty of them would be obvious, like not falling off a cliff. I love it whenever I don’t do that.
I like not picking up after the horses in the fields.
We took some time on Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon to give the horses extra attention. We brought along some carrots, which they seem to like more than the dry processed treats we keep in a cupboard in the barn.
Cyndie believes Mix may be experiencing arthritic pains. The last time the farrier was here, she thought Mix was showing some muscle knots. The farrier doubles as an equine massage provider. A few brief moments of her technique produced a quick response of approving signals from Mix, such as a big release with an audible exhale and dropping her head down.
Mia continues to be the odd horse out. The other three horses are very consistent about keeping her aware she is at the bottom of the herd hierarchy. Her response over the years is to simply spend more time grazing in the fields while the others choose to stand around under the overhang.
Now that we have some chilly rain happening, our concern will be whether they allow her to get under the shelter or not.
If not, we will intervene on her behalf.
That’s the news from here on this final day of October. Happy Halloween to all the little costumed candy seekers and their parents! (I love not taking kids trick-or-treating.)
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Sweet Treats
Just three days to go until the great trick-or-treat traditions burst forth on countless doorsteps. In the twelve years we’ve been here, only one time did someone show up at our door. It was a neighboring couple and their young son from a mile or two down the road. After that, silence for all the years since.
This is just fine with me. It’s a good event for kids, but there aren’t many kids I know about in the surrounding vicinity. It would be an extra burden on my sugar addiction to have an excess of candy in the house for possible giveaway. I have not been very diligent about managing my daily sugar intake lately.
Just a few repetitions of allowing myself to cheat triggers the return of cravings that are so much easier to succumb to than exterminate. I am my own worst enemy.
Since we don’t keep a lot of candy in the house, my brain simply points me to alternative carbs that I love dearly and will happily binge in excess. The healthy choice of snacking on unsalted nuts, which I am also a fan of eating, interestingly becomes less satisfying when my good practices lapse.
Bagel chips have a much greater allure to my addicted brain.
My mischievous mind lets me think I’m getting away with a few days of consuming an increased percentage of unhealthy sweetness until an expanding paunch around my middle soon exposes the inevitable outcome. When my mirror reveals the return of a growing belly, my awareness of the relentless craving comes back into focus.
Thankfully, I don’t fool myself indefinitely.
If we somehow do get surprised by a costumed trick-or-treater Thursday night, I have a half-bag of bagel chips left that I’d happily share.
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Solar Warming
It’s official. The growing season for 2023 ended for us yesterday with temperatures dipping well below freezing overnight Sunday into Monday. The moon still looked plenty full and the cloudless sky made it appear as if a giant floodlight was illuminating everything.
That clear sky remained as the sun showed up over the horizon in the morning. When the horses had finished gobbling up all the feed in their pans, I noticed all four of them assumed the classic position of standing perpendicular to the warming rays of the sun.
They closed their eyes and got very quiet, waiting patiently while absorbing every morsel of solar energy coming their way.
The air was calm, the horses were calm, and I couldn’t resist pausing for a while to stand with them and enjoy the serenity.
Suddenly, the blessing of having nowhere else I needed to be seemed doubly rewarding.
I can tell you this: it sure felt a lot warmer than what the thermometer was indicating at the time, and a lot different than what it is like this morning after snow blew in overnight last night.
Is this a Halloween trick?
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Holding On
Sometimes it feels like sanity in public society is precariously hanging on by mere threads. Scaremongering. Election deniers who are unable to provide evidence to support their wild range of accusations of widespread fraud. Crazy claims continue to survive the passage of time without losing momentum over the lack of reality-based proof. No, they just seem to grow the way wind-blown wildfires do.
I don’t understand it.
Why doesn’t truth snuff out the flames? Why aren’t healthy-minded people able to drown out the extremely offensive antisemitic and racist noise emanating from too many varieties of modern media?
It’s spookier than Halloween, I tell ya.
A full-sized Snickers would go a long way toward distracting me from how thin the tenuous line of healthy thinking is holding society together.
What should we believe? That kids will don wild costumes and roam door to door in neighborhoods to holler for tricks and treats?
Preposterous.
There is something else I don’t understand. How does a quarterback heave a football sixty yards downfield so that it reaches a racing receiver who is running at full speed and still able to look up at the last second as the ball drops perfectly within easy reach while all manner of defensive mayhem is unleashed around both guys?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if NFL players dropped to the ground, writhing in pain each time an opponent committed a penalty against them? I’m poking fun at you, FIFA Men’s World Cup contenders.
I have yet to figure out how to reconcile the discontentment over the questionable (ahem…bribes?) award back in 2010 of this year’s World Cup to Qatar. Add to that the controversial treatment of immigrant laborers needed to build the infrastructure of stadiums and other facilities to support the global sporting event and the need to reschedule the tourney to the northern hemisphere winter season due to the average high temperature of the desert nation. It all feels just plain wrong trying to fully enjoy the game competitions under the tarnished situation of awarding Qatar the honor of hosting.
I suppose I could wear a black band on my arm while watching the games.
All these issues are meaningless to our horses. They are holding on to their sanity by simply being horses. I’m not sure they sense the climate is changing but they are vividly aware of how many warm, dry, and sunny days in a row we have been experiencing for months. It has become common lately to find the four of them gathered along the far fence of the hay field taking turns laying down to nap in the mid-morning sunshine.
When I feel like I’m barely holding on to my healthy mindset, my favorite remedy involves an extended quiet visit with the herd of horses.
Even though it feels weird to be outside in short sleeves at the end of October.
Happy Halloween!
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Scrambled Fiction
It wasn’t dark, or stormy, or even night, but that didn’t stop the hero from completing his appointed rounds. He was trying to figure out how to test his Halloween costume before the big night. It was the Emperor’s New Clothes, but would it work with a COVID mask? Probably wouldn’t matter. None of the classic costume houses were able to fulfill his request. Nobody would admit they couldn’t see the fabric.
There were no reasons left to seek an alternative. Half the people in the city would be sheltering in place. The rest would be out pretending there is nothing to worry about under the rare second full moon of the month. The only reason any of them would notice the mysterious greedy bastards had locked up the computers in all the hospitals was because it was all over the news. Filtering out the endless barrage of political ads allowed a few other strands of news to trickle through.
Nobody pays attention to that stuff anymore. After years of ridiculous daily distractions from the misdirection machine obfuscating reality, the masses have grown numb. Their stamina has been sapped. In is out and up is down. It’s easier to just make shit up than bothering to figure out what is actually going on.
Humans could take a lesson from chickens. They don’t get distracted by things that don’t matter and they won’t believe anything that isn’t visible to their glaring side-eye stare. There is a certain strength of character reflected in that.
All that character probably helps them to avoid the Halloween candy so readily available during the month of October. Now, mealworms, that would be a different thing. No chicken in its right mind could pass up that treat.
Things are a little twisted when you need to wait for snow to melt in order to finish raking leaves. But twisted is the new normal, so why not? The point isn’t to figure it all out, after all, it is to simply have a point. Otherwise, it’s all pointless.
Watch out for that guy in the Emperor’s costume. Make sure his nose isn’t hanging over the top of his mask.
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Spooky Costume
One of our Golden Laced Wyandottes chose a spooky-looking zombie costume for Halloween this year. A walking dead zombie chicken?
I’m not sure where the hens are planning to go Trick-or-Treating, but I won’t be surprised if Cyndie tosses out some gross looking morsels from our food compost which the chickens will be thrilled to gobble up for treats.
Happy costumed toddler trodding and multiple doorbells responding to those of you in the U.S. participating in the All Hallows Eve traditions tonight!
I’ll just be happy to get this day behind us so we can finally start preparing for Valentine’s Day in February. So many special days, so little time. It’ll be here in a blink!
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Surviving Halloween
Today is the first day of November, so that means last night was candy-stravaganza! It also means the next week or so will consist of people trying to unload leftover treats.
All holidays are challenging for those of us striving to conquer cravings for sweets, but Halloween is particularly ominous. There tends to be an overwhelming amount of bite-size treats in seductively colored wrappers well within reach at every turn.
I have been enjoying uncharacteristic success with my self-control in the days leading up to last night. I celebrated by raiding Cyndie’s secret stash of Reese’s Peanutbutter Cups hidden in a drawer. I ate exactly one and was just fine with that.
I think I’m getting the hang of this routine. The longer I go without consuming more sugar than is healthy each day, the less my body craves.
On the way to the airport on Tuesday morning, I mentioned that I would be home alone on Halloween and Cyndie told me where I could find candy if anyone decided to venture up our long driveway and knock on the door. No one did.
In the six years we have been here, we have received a total of two visits on Halloween night. Both were by the same family that lives around the corner –a couple of miles away– on two successive years. It’s the only time we have ever talked with them.
I’m guessing their son is old enough now that he doesn’t want to be dragged to all these strangers houses by his parents, just to listen to them gab for 20 minutes at each stop. It wasn’t as much trick or treating as it was social networking.
Now, after the sun comes up, if there is no toilet paper hanging in our tree branches, and no egg stains on any of our structures, that will be the true, full measure of surviving Halloween.
The next thing I need to do is survive the days after. In the end, that’s possibly the bigger challenge.
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Rare Find
Very few people ever get a chance to see the rare skunk tree in its natural environment. I was taking a shortcut through our woods now that the leaves are down and snuck up behind this specimen before he was able to hide his stripe.
Actually, I think it may have been a Halloween costume. Ever wonder what the trees in the forest are up to when no one is around?
The woods did seem a little spookier than usual last night.
At least it didn’t smell like a skunk outside.
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Relative Something 