It's almost Halloween

While according to the calendar, it is not officially fall yet (and since it is Texas it will probably not feel like fall til the middle of October anyway), it is September and Labor Day has past. Except for the weather, the summer stuff is over. When I was a kid, this was when I would try to put up the Halloween decorations. That would make everyone else in the house nuts. But my reasoning was that if it was September then it was almost October, and Halloween was in October, so it must be time for Halloween decorations.

Anyway, if my house was not such a mess I would start putting up Halloween decorations today. That is, I would start putting up the indoor Halloween decorations that I don't already like well enough to leave them up year round. The outdoor stuff would still have to wait til October, except maybe for a scarecrow and a few pumpkins, since they also count as fall decorations. The reasoning for this is that a.) I like Halloween and I like having the decorations up longer than the one month that most people have their decorations up, and b.) by the time that October gets here I am usually too busy doing Halloween related stuff and other stuff that I don't have time to put up the decorations then.

For the past several years, I haven't put up any decorations at all (other than the ones already out). The house being relatively clean did not coincide with any days that I was not extremely busy. Last year I was out of town for a bit, and the two years before that I was out of town some, but mostly I was working at the Halloween Store and was too tired after work to do any work at home, much less do any decorating. And last year I had art class, which also left me too busy to do much decorating. I don't much remember what was going on in 2005, but the three years before that I was in college full-time. I don't remember doing much decorating then either.

I have five boxes of Halloween stuff in my bedroom. Half of that is costumes, and half of that is decorations that I bought last year and the two years before that. In the backroom I have more boxes (not sure how many) of stuff bought from previous years. The the decorations in the boxes in the bedroom have never actually been used to decorate anything. They went from the store clearance sale to my car and then into these boxes.

I hope that most of it will get used this year. I have no plans to work at a Halloween Store this year, and the pottery class that I have yet to even sign up for is a Saturday only class.

While it might be a bit too early to decorate the house and yard for Halloween, I'm afraid I've waited too late to work on my Halloween costume. I had already decided it was too late to do anything about being a Triffid, and now it looks like I've waited too late to make the Vampira/Mortica dress that I wanted, unless I want to work on the costume during all of my free time for the next two months, which I don't. So I'll have to go with one of the backup plans, probably a witch or perhaps a vampire. If I really get pressed for time, I have something of the rack, but I'm afraid it rather resembles a Halloween themed bathrobe. But I have two dresses that would easily convert to costumes, one above the knee black dress with a bit of silver trim, and one straight full-length dress that is red under black lace. A pointed hat and a corset would make either a witch, or a corset and a black cape would make either a vampire. And if I have to I can skip the corset, but it won't look as good.

I don't think that either option is good enough to competition, so I'm wondering if I might talk someone into letting me be a judge this year. I've never been a judge. It might be fun. And it might be less stressful.



Still, there is the issue of the house being a complete mess.