...and they eat us and they take our women...

I saw a movie this weekend. From the above title you should be able to figure out which one. I was looking forward to it. It was okay.

Also, I have recently seen Monsters. After being told it was being released on a certain date, and then a later certain date, and then a third later certain date, my brother found it on pay for view, so we ended up watching it at his house. You would think that watching it at someone's house would be really cheap, but it was eight dollars. This is not cheap to me, since I usually watch new movies at a nearby theater for less than four dollars matinee, and more often than that just wait til things are at the dollar theater. Anyway, after all that waiting and wanting to see the thing, I was a bit disappointed. I liked the feel and look of it, and I don't have a problem with the low budget and such, it's just that after sitting through the whole movie I know just about as much as I did from watching the previews. Which is, mostly nothing, except that six years ago we sent a probe to get samples of some lifeform, then the probe crashed, leaving the lifeform to grow on Earth, mostly in the northern half of Mexico. There were hardly any action scenes in the movie, but for all of that time talking, no one said anything. No one said anything interesting about the creatures, and no one said anything interesting about themselves. We have your average jerk guy who apparently doesn't know where babies come from til he ends up with a now six year old son, except that he still hasn't figured out what not to do cause he's still sleeping with random people. And we have daughter of the jerk's boss, trying to get home after doing we don't know what in we don't know where and we don't know why. And they wait til the last possible day, have their boat tickets stolen, and have to get home by land through this area where the creatures live. And that's pretty much it.

Also on the movie front we have Harry Potter coming up. But I can't talk about that really, cause it hasn't happened yet. I should have made a new hat last year, but I didn't, and now I'm just getting started on it, and I need it done by Thursday.

Right.

Okay, so I was all in pain with the mysterious back/hip problem. That pretty much lasted a whole month. I never went to a doctor, just kind of waited for it to go away, which it finally seems to have done. Now I just feel rather blah bad, not like really bad, which I guess is mostly normal for me now.

And then I finally went to the dentist. I had my annual checkup (which I have missed for like the last four or five years) back in August, at which time I was told what needed to be done and the estimated cost for all of that. I would need at least three more appointments, and several hundred dollars for the first two, assuming that all went well and the insurance paid half and all of that. So, in August, I did not have several hundred dollars twice over, much less four times over if the insurance did not pay, which was not very likely but something I might have to be prepared for just in case. So I did not make those appointments in August, cause I said that I would have to talk to my husband and find out when we would have the money, and when we would be in town, and so forth. My husband was also supposed to have had his "annual" checkup that day in August, but his schedule was changed and he went out of town, and so he was not there for a while to have this discussion about the money. So I told the lady at the dentist office that I would call her back, but then I did not call her back for a very long time. First, we went out of town a lot, for most of September. And then my first week home I had a lot to do and went to visit Buddy and the baby. And then the week after that, my back hurt, and I was in such pain that I could only rest in certain positions, and the dentist office chair was not one of those positions. So I did not think that I could stand being in the dentist chair long enough for him to get any work done, so I continued to put it off until after Halloween. When a week went by without serious back pain, I finally called the dentist office to make an appointment, and they said that they could see me the following Monday. I should have scheduled the crown first and gotten it over with, but I didn't. I've had two of those before, and I was in pain the whole time between getting the temporary crown and getting the permanent crown. So I just needed a bit more time to get mentally used to the idea, and also I had to schedule it so that if I were in serious pain for the whole two weeks before getting the permanent crown that I wouldn't be missing anything important. They were wondering if I could come in that Thursday.

Two weeks from that Thursday would be Thanksgiving.

I'm thinking that they would not be open on Thanksgiving, even if I wanted to do that. I didn't want to have to wait more than the two weeks, and even if they could squeeze me in that Friday, I rather think that I'll be out shopping and such on Black Friday. Not that I told them that. I'm not going to tell my dentist that saving some money on clothes and getting cheap DVDs is more important that fixing my teeth. But they did seem to understand wanting to get it all over with before Thanksgiving. So they asked if I would mind coming in that Wednesday.

I wouldn't mind that at all, I'm just surprised that they could get me in so soon. If they had suggested coming back in the next day, that might have been a problem, since I didn't get to eat much solid food on Monday after breakfast, and doing the same thing again and not eating on Tuesday would not have been fun. But having the day between to recover was okay, as long as they were going to be open two weeks later to do the permanent crown. They said that they would be, so I made the appointment.

While they were working on my teeth they found another cavity, and I said that they should go ahead and deal with that since they've already given me pain medication, so that cost another hundred bucks. But we are still a bit under a thousand dollars, and the checks did not bounce, and so far the insurance hasn't refused to pay for anything.

Oh, I forgot about Halloween. I spent most of the Thursday or Friday before making finger shaped cookies for the party, which was that Saturday. And then at the party I spent a couple of hours handing out cookies and trying to get people to guess that I was Weena. I was surprised how many of them could not guess, and I stayed in character and did not tell them. And then I was going to get really strange about half an or an hour before the costume contest, only I didn't correctly remember when that was, so then I'm rushing around trying to get one of my props ready, and I didn't get to do all that I meant to. So no one saw me eating the Morlock foot till the contest. Get it? In an alternate timeline, the Eloi eat the Morlocks.

I guess just too many people there were not familiar with The Time Machine, so I guess they just didn't get the joke. Maybe they thought that the Eloi were supposed to eat the Morlocks. You would think that people would get it. I mean, there are mundanes that know about The Time Machine and that the Morlocks eat the Eloi. But I just wasn't getting the laughs. So, I ended up winning an honorable mention for the cookies, but I didn't win any awards for the costume contest, other than the sort of joke awards that they hand out later.

So I had fun, but it was also a bit of a disappointment that nobody got it really. And I didn't get to eat much, cause a.) I was busy handing out cookies, and b.) I was trying not to get anything on my very light yellow dress.

So that was Halloween, or at least the night before, and there was nothing to do on Halloween itself or any time near Halloween, as my back was still hurting a bit and I was afraid of going to a haunting house or anything that might make my condition worse. Too late I thought of going to the wax museum, as they are usually very tame, and I'm sure that someone would have let me out early if I was having a problem. So I didn't get to do anything at all this year, other than the party.

And I'm trying to restrain myself with the clearance sale shopping. I've hardly bought anything at all, and half of what I did buy was either for Buddy or the baby.

Other than that, things are mostly just annoying. Like, I can't find my Harry Potter clothes. Or, I can find some things, but I can't find other things, and most of the things that I do find don't fit. But, I'm not quite ready to give up on the idea. I still have my scarves if nothing else works.

Another thing is annoying, which I won't talk about now, except to say that it has been a whole damned freaking month. And I have had enough of it.

Anyway, back to looking through the costumes and working on my hat.

Halloween movies

Okay, so probably nobody else would like to celebrate the season the way I would. As much as I enjoy the Halloween Party, it might be better for me if it were some other time of year, like maybe in March. They are not so much into the ghosts and such. I guess my idea of a good Halloween get-together would be if we all dressed up mostly in black, lit candles, ate weird food on my spiderweb design plates while maybe the theme to The Exorcist played in the background, and then we all watched movies like The Initiation of Sarah and the Vincent Prince version of The Last Man on Earth.



During my last trip out of town I turned on the Syfy channel, only to be disappointed in what they called The 31 Days of Halloween, which turned out that week to be some not very good movies, most of which didn't seem to be much in the theme anyway. I guess they were only choosing from movies they had made themselves (the before mentioned monster movies mainly about mutants and sea creatures passed over by Peter Benchley). Not impressed.



But it was early in the month, and I can only hope that some decent vampire movies are coming later.



So I'm going to try to locate movies that I would want to watch in October. I will come back and add links as I find them.



The Initiation of Sarah (1978 TV movie)(ending missing)



The Initiation of Sarah (remake 2006 TV movie)



The Last Man on Earth

Halloween Party 2009: and the Oscar goes to....

Well, I spent most of the day not doing much. I woke up earlier than I wanted, tried to go back to sleep but did not succeed. So I was just trying not to do anything much that would make me tired.

At some point I tried to deal with the weird food. Do to technical difficulties, the weird food did not work out. I tried three times to make it work, but it just wouldn't do. I have an idea now why it didn't work, so I will make one more attempt (for future reference, cause I might want to make that same thing for next year's party), and then I will just give up on the idea. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

Anyway, I don't guess that it matters that much. I don't think that there were cash prizes this year.

After I decided that the weird food wasn't going to work out, I started thinking about putting some flowers in my hair. My costume just didn't look that much like a costume, it was just clothes. I thought that it needed something. And I had bought flowers, thinking that I had wire and such at home to make a wreath, but I couldn't find the wire when I needed it. I tried using something else and then gave up.

Next I thought about props. I was going to make a fake menu and complain about a missing waitress (or, if someone showed up in that costume, complain directly to the waitress), but I changed my mind and put the bar's name on a wine glass. I know, most of the time the name isn't on a wine glass. On a shot glass, sure. On a beer glass, maybe. On a wine glass, not so much, though I suppose they do have them sometimes, and I used to have a souvenir brandy sniffer from a local landmark.

Anyway, I fixed my hair without flowers, put on makeup, but on a necklace that I had added a bull's head with permanent black marker, put on my black almost dress and headed out.

I got to the party and pretended to be Maryann Forrester, the maenad from True Blood, and then I asked people to guess who I was. Only one person could guess. I had clues. I had the bull's head necklace and the wine glass with the Merlotte's logo on it. Still, only the one person guessed right.

I took off my shoes and sort of danced around the place, thanking people for coming to my party. People still couldn't guess. I decided the costume contest might be a waste of time if no one could guess who I was.

I went around the room, telling people that they should loosen up and have a drink. Someone I didn't know said that she couldn't drink because she was the designated driver. I told her she shouldn't drive anyway, just stay at the party.

She thought I was already drunk.

I don't drink. At all. Ever.

It is called acting.

Anyway, we weren't supposed to open the bar until nine, but since no children came, we opened the bar at seven, and people just thought I had a few too many.

More fun. Still didn't tell anyone who I was. They would just have to guess.

A couple of guys tossed coins at my cleavage. One of them actually landed on target.

About this time I decided to do the costume contest anyway. Then I could tell everyone at once who I was supposed to be.

Taking the shoes off seemed like a good idea, but my feet really started to hurt right before the contest. I took a break.

Then we lined up for the contest, and without assigned numbers it was just whoever got in line first got to go first, so I was third. Which meant that I got to sit down sooner and rest my feet some more.

The judges went off to debate who won what. There was more dancing (without me) and door prizes giving away (I didn't win any), and then the judges came back out to announce the winners.

Without much in the way of a costume, and there not being a special award for staying in character, I did not really expect to win much if anything. I hoped I would get an honorable mention, but, no.

Miss Allergies got Most Beautiful. A chupacabra got Most Disturbing. There were about four or five other awards given away before they got to Best In Show, which I assumed would go to the pilot, since he didn't win anything else. The pilot and his wife came as these old toys where you move metal "hair" around a face with a magnet. So we spent the evening giving the two of them interesting hairdos.

So I just knew that the pilot would get the last award, until the head judge started saying something about drinking and such. I don't quite remember what he said or who he was quoting.

I got Best In Show. I have never won Best In Show at the Halloween Party, and my one time winning Best In Show at a con must have been fifteen years ago. So I was totally surprised.

Some other people were also totally surprised, and maybe not too happy. The pilot was happy for me, but people who just didn't get it, well, they just didn't get it.

So it was explained to someone that I (and a couple of other people who also won awards) had stayed in character all night until the contest (almost three hours for me), and that even though they didn't have a special award for staying in character that they decided those of us who did should get extra points for our efforts.

And here I had almost decided not to enter the contest.

So I had fun at the party, even if the rest of the Halloween season was a bust.

For the rest of the week

I shouldn't do any knitting. Or, at least, I shouldn't do any knitting when I have enough time to do something else. If I get some knitting done while I am waiting for something else to happen or right before I go to bed, that's fine. But, for the most part, I should be doing other things, as Halloween is on Saturday, and I am not yet ready for the party.

Plus, starting Tuesday, I'll spend four afternoons at the Irving Library, and that will take up a big chunk of my time.

Other things I need to be doing--I need to find a copy of my resume. I need to get out the cotton candy machine and see if it works. I need to make jewelry and props for Saturday. I need to pick up pills and maybe get that flu shot. I need to see if Tuesday is a good day to visit grandma. I need to see if I have stuff to fix my hair properly before Friday.

And, in addition to the normal cleaning and such I should--try to make a witch hat (just in case the other plans for the Halloween costume don't work out), and see about getting an oil change (which I might not have money left for since I'll have to buy extra gas for all that driving back and forth from Irving), and decide what (if anything) I should try to buy 50% off on Sunday. I don't think there's anything that I really want of Halloween decorations, but that is a good day to go and buy kitchen stuff that gets marked down because it is orange and black.

Still, it will be hard to remember to leave the knitting alone. While I was sorting through some stuff in the back room, I found that I had seven boxes of yarn and unfinished scarves. So I had been thinking that I should go and finish those scarves and do something with them. Some of them might be Christmas presents, or I might want to wear some of them, and I suppose there is always the slim chance that I would sell some of them. Selling them is unlikely, since to get paid a reasonable amount for my time and the money I spent on the supplies, I have to charge eighty dollars and up for the scarves mostly made on the machine, and the totally handmade scarves would start at around a hundred and fifty dollars.

As you might guess, I don't sell a lot of scarves.

I wear a few of them myself, and then I give a lot of them as Christmas gifts, and I've given two away for club fundraiser auctions. But I think that I've only actually sold two scarves, and both of those were the eighty dollar ones.

Anyway, I started making a lot of scarves, but I didn't finish a lot of them, unless someone was waiting for it I just put it away somewhere. For some reason I can't really explain, I really dislike making the fringe at the end of the project. Partially, I think this is because I sometimes get my left and my right confused and do something backwards, which then has to be undone and then done over again. But that doesn't happen near as much now as when I first started, but still, I tend to put off this part of the project until someone is waiting on the scarf, or maybe the scarf just goes into a box and I never get around to doing it. And, with those scarves that are mostly made on the machine, I dislike joining the ends of the panels together, and maybe I dislike this part even more than I dislike making the fringe.

I have really no explanation for either. Making fringe usually takes about two hours, and joining panels together takes two or three hours (or longer, depending on how long the scarf is), and I think to myself that there is no hurry, and that I've already done the part that takes real time and effort, and finishing the rest of the scarf would only take two to five hours, which I could do in an afternoon whenever I decided that a scarf really needed to be finished.

But without someone waiting on a scarf, without Christmas or some other deadline approaching, the scarves never get finished, which is why there are now several unfinished scarves in with the seven boxes of yarn.

For some of them I will have to go out and buy more yarn to make the fringe. I hope that I can still match all of the colors.

So for the past month or so I have been trying to finish up a scarf every week, so that I don't have all of these unfinished scarves just taking up space, and now I have about four finished scarves and I am working on two more. And, while I should not put them away, as that would mean I might not get back to them until after Christmas, or, that they would again go unfinished indefinitely, I should try to refrain from working on them much this week, at least until I've crossed off these other things from my list that should be done by Friday so that I can relax and go to the party on Saturday.

And that is just the scarves. I'm sure if I really looked that I would find I have all sorts of unfinished business.

My husband will be mostly gone for the week, so if I don't get anything done I will have no one to blame but myself.

And it still doesn't seem like October even now

Here it is, the last week of the month. Halloween is Saturday, and I'm just not feeling it.

Maybe I'm turning into my mother.

I have done nothing. I haven't made the jewelry to go with my costume. I haven't fixed the witch hat that I should take just in case I can't go through with the whole acting like a certain character on a cable tv show. I haven't made any props. I haven't checked into the planned weird food or made any interesting containers for that.

Less than a week left to do that stuff, and I haven't done any of it.

Yesterday, I did dye my hair. So now I sort of itch. You are supposed to do this allergy test before you dye your hair, but I never bother with it. And it isn't like I break out or anything, it's just the smell tends to bother me for a few days. But, since the color only last so many shampoos, I don't want to waste one just yet. Besides, having a shampoo less than twenty-four hours later is probably not recommended.

Yesterday, I also went to Judgement house. The hell scene is probably the closest I will get to a haunted house this year. There was a different Satan this year. I'm not saying that he is a bad actor, just that he isn't as into it. He tends to stand up straight and smile at people. Not that the real Satan doesn't do that. But, I think I liked the other guy better.

I wonder about the audition process. It must be really hard to decide who gets to be Satan and who gets to be Jesus.

A couple of the angels looked like they were ready for a nap, but the rest of them did pretty good.

I must remember for next time that no matter how I early I go, thinking that I will get in sooner, I will probably still have an hour to wait. There was no need to eat before buying a ticket. I can get my ticket, find out how long it will be, and probably have time to go to Sonic. In fact, I would probably have time to get in my car and go to another restaurant or even to go home for a bit. And if I don't have time to go do any of that, great, I can go eat afterwards.

Looks like I won't be going out of town tomorrow. It wasn't anyplace special, just middle of nowhere Texas in between Abilene and Midland. There were no plans, other than just getting out of the house for a bit and watching cable and doing some knitting. Maybe there would be leaves to look at on the way. We don't usually drive that direction, maybe there would be something to look at on the way, but probably we wouldn't have much time for that anyway. But I was thinking of going, but Waco has been added to the schedule, and have plans the rest of the week and cannot go to Waco.

Not that I really was dying to go to Waco either, though we might have gone to the zoo in the morning if we got there in time. And depending on where the motel was in relation to a certain haunted house, I might have thought about trying to go. But I really shouldn't go anywhere Tuesday, and I pretty much have plans for the rest of the week too. So I guess that I'm not going now.

My sister is going to Thrillvania. I have been once, though I didn't feel like I had time to see everything. And of course they have since added a few things that I haven't seen at all. I want to go. My sister isn't interested, but her friends are going to drag her out of the house to do something, and right now that something is a planned trip to Terrell.

My friends will not be dragging me anywhere. The week before the party, we are all too busy with party stuff. And a couple of them aren't well anyway. At least it isn't that damned flu. Or at least, not yet. I still didn't get a seasonal flu shot, and there isn't enough of the other shot to go around yet.

There is good news on the knitting. I have found one of my missing latch hook tools, and, I have bought some replacement "needles" on eBay, and they are already here. Now if I could just get some multi-pronged transfer tools and some glow in the dark yarn, I'd be all set. For now I am just happy that I can get back to work on the current project with a proper size latch hook tool.

Seems like I had something else to say, but I can't remember what it was. Anyway, I had better go and look for some of my stuff today, or I can't go and do what I had planned for the week even if I do stay home. And I had better make that jewelry and some props. And I should work on that hat, etc....

It doesn't much feel like October

Halloween is usually my favorite holiday, even more than Christmas. I like the costumes. I like the decorations. As a kid I liked to walk around in the dark. I like haunted houses.

And here it is halfway through the month, and I've done nothing. I've done a bit of shopping to get a costume, but really, that still isn't ready. And this year my costume isn't even the "Halloween type" of costume that I would normally wear. I'm just going to go as a TV character from a cable show and see if people can guess who I am supposed to be.

I haven't decorated the house. Well, there are some decorations up all year, cause it seems silly to risk damaging them trying to squish them into a box for storage. I like them, so why not just leave them up. No one else is going to see, and if they did see, well, if they didn't get it, why did I invite them to my house? So there are pumpkins up all year and ravens and owls and a few skulls and now a couple of tombstones. But the rest of the stuff is still in boxes, and they will probably stay in the boxes this year, cause I probably won't get enough of the place clean to bother with putting the rest of it up.

And of course I have no money, so that tends to be a problem. I'm not even looking at the haunted house ads. I can't go to anything. I bought my ticket to the Halloween party a long time ago, so I wouldn't have to worry about saving enough money to do that. But I haven't money for anything else. No haunted houses, no Screams, no Fright Night at Six Flags. Nothing. I can't do any of that.

At this point I'm not even sure that I will make it to Judgment House at my mom's church. Not that it would cost a lot (and if I literally had no money, mom would pay for it), but that is not a month long thing, and by the time it gets here I will probably be busy with other things. Being the only Judgment house in the area, it is usually a long wait.

I will have the house to myself for a couple of days. My husband is going to middle of nowhere just west of here. While I was debating on whether or not to go with him, I decided that if I went we would either have the added expense of staying over Saturday night (which the company might or might not pay for, but even if they did we would still need the extra money up front and then wait to be paid back) or else I would have to find someplace to wait all day, like maybe movie theater, and that also takes money and I find it rather tiresome anyway.

So while I was debating about that (the main reason for going to middle of nowhere is to have a place to knit without distractions other than the cable TV, and there not being a good place in the house to set up the knitting machine), I remembered that this weekend there is a meeting, so I shouldn't go anyway. So that is figured out. I'm not going. But it is only for a couple of days and Saturday, and I will already be busy on Saturday, so I don't expect to get much done. Still, it would be nice to get a couple of videos done, work on some knitting, maybe do some sorting.

The weather is not all that cold, but there did seem to be this dramatic drop in temperature earlier, so for a couple of days it did seem cold and I start to cough and get a sore throat and such. It went from what would have been a pleasant eighty if it had been dry, to a high of about sixty, which means that if you wake up in the middle of the night it is about forty. Forty is no big deal, except that I do not have an electric blanket and I hadn't yet turned on the heater. So the heater was on for a couple of days, but now it is back off. It is just so wet outside. It doesn't dry out long enough to do any gardening, so all that water is going to waste. Except that it is making the grass too tall, and it doesn't dry out on my husband's day off, so it doesn't get cut.

I really do not care how the grass looks, but this is starting to look really bad. We will get a complaint letter if he does not cut the grass soon, but it is hard to do as it keeps raining on and off.

In other parts of the country, people are going out to look at the red and orange leaves. Here, if we have a red tree, it is because the crepe myrtles are still blooming. We will probably go from having green trees to having no leaves on the trees rather quickly. We don't get a lot of the red and orange thing, and of course if we had it right now we couldn't really go out and enjoy it anyway. It is raining too much to go out and look at the leaves.

I think I may miss the entire October experience, except for the Halloween party. I won't even get to do much in the way of after-holiday shopping, cause we don't have any money. Not that I need to eat tons and tons of candy, but it was nice to get some while it was on sale so that I wasn't tempted to spend money on it the rest of the year. And I tend to buy a lot of practical things the day after a holiday, like plastic spoons and storage containers and Kleenex, cause they are half price for being orange.

That reminds me. If you like the Rubbermaid Takealongs, go out and buy some more while you still can. I think that they are going to switch to something "new and improved", which is new but I can't see how it is improved. In fact, the new ones look like the same cheap plastic that all the other brands use, which is why I was spending a little more to get Rubbermaid in the first place. So I need to go and buy about a dozen or so of those, regardless of color, but I can't because we don't have any money. So it doesn't look like I will be going out to stock up on them November 1st.

Except for the party, I have nothing to look forward to. Not even post-holiday clearance sales.

And I still don't have a flu shot.

This sucks. Business usually picks up by now, but not this year.

Yesterday's shopping

So here it is October, and I don't have my Halloween costume ready, or even mostly ready. This just won't do at all. I had to go shopping.

I had been shopping earlier and found an interesting dress. I held up the dress and asked my husband who it looked like. He thought the same thing that I did. I tried on the dress, and while it fit, it would need some work. But it was only two dollars, so I decided to buy it anyway.

Nearly a month later, I've had no luck finding fabric to match the dress, and I haven't found a bra to go with the dress, and I'm running out of time to fix it.

I very much have it stuck in my head that I was going to go to the Halloween party as a certain character from a cable TV show that was on this year. The character died, so if I don't go as that character this year, I don't think I would try to do it next year instead. I can use the dress for something else, but I think that this is the only year that I want to be that character, unless maybe some other people want to go as a group as characters from that show, and then I might just tag along with them. But as for going by myself as the character, either it will be this year or else I just won't do it.

After looking at pictures of the character, it isn't like the dress I bought exactly matches anything that she wore. She definitely has a certain style, but I think I can wear something that doesn't exactly match anything and just act like the character.

In fact, the plan is to act like the character and see if anyone can guess who I'm supposed to be.

So yesterday I decided to go shopping, and then I would make a final decision. Either a.) find fabric to fix the first dress and find a bra and shoes to go with it, b.) find a different dress that will work for the same character, or c.) admit defeat and buy some black fabric so that I can be a witch or a vampire or something.

Before I started going to this party every year and got so competitive, I would find a witch costume or a black vampire dress and just go as one of those every year. I didn't do all of this fuss over the costume, it was already done, I just had to see which one fit better or if it needed repairs or anything. The witch costume I had shrunk, and I'm not sure what happened to my first black and red vampire outfit.

Anyway, that idea went out the window after I wore a different costume one year and won a ribbon. And at this party it is rare for people to wear the same costumes year after year. So I have had a different costume every year since then. But I have started to think that this is all taking up too much of my time and that I should just go back to having the standard witch or vampire costume ready to go and wear one of those most of the time.

But maybe not this year.

So I had all these places mapped out. The first place I went to was a thrift store, and I tried on five or six things. Now, I don't need another black dress. I like black dresses, but I have several, and I don't wear them that often. So I should stop buying them. As it is, I have already bought one that I haven't worn yet. But, as I was looking through the racks, a black dress spoke to me. The character tends to wear dark brown, not black, but would anyone other than me notice?

There was a dark brown dress, but it would need work, and I already have a blue dress that needs work. So I figured if I bought that I would spend the rest of the day still trying to match fabric. I didn't buy that one. The other dresses didn't work at all.

And then the black dress turned out not to be a dress but pants. And it didn't quite look exactly like the character, but, it did look pretty good on me. And it didn't need as much work as either of the other dresses, and if I do decide that it needs something, finding matching black fabric would probably be easier than matching brown or blue.

I also found a bra and shoes.

So, that settles that. I bought the black almost dress and the bra and the shoes. Now I will just have to make up some jewelry to go with it, and decide if it would look better with a belt and do I need to hem up the pants.

My not so attractive arms are still showing, but maybe I'll wear a shawl or something with it.

After that I went to Michael's, still hoping for either some glow-in-the-dark yarn, or something to make glow-in-the-dark yarn. I have found out why I can't seem to find the yarn, the kind I heard about last year has been discontinued. I don't understand why. I don't get the whole discontinued thing anyway, but if you are the only source of a really unique thing, why stop making it? So that sucks. I bought a very small bottle of glow-in-the-dark fabric paint, wondering if it might be possible to dye the yarn, but it probably won't work. I will just have to find someone who has some of the discontinued yarn (and pay shipping) or give up on the idea.

Next, I went to JoAnn's, and I'm not sure why. Just went there on autopilot I guess. I mean, I no longer need to match the blue fabric (besides which I think that I had already tried at that particular store), I didn't buy the brown dress so I didn't need to match that, and if I wanted to match the black I probably wouldn't buy it there anyway. It's too expensive. Even their clearance stuff is at least four dollars a yard, and for clearance stuff I usually only spend a dollar or two, usually at Walmart. I used to also buy stuff at Clothworld or Hancock's, but most of those have closed.

Anyway, I should have gone straight to Walmart, but I didn't. So as long as I'm there, I try one more time to find knitting tools to go with the knitting machine. And I find that the ten dollar pocket knitter has a single transfer tool that would probably work. I'm still out of luck on getting a proper size latch hook or getting a two or three pronged tool, but if I am ever truly desperate and need to get a transfer tool without having it shipped, I guess I can buy a pocket knitter.

While I was in JoAnn's I bought a bra extender. As it turns out, I paid almost twice what they cost at Walmart, but it is too much of an effort to go back and return it to save a dollar and a quarter.

And, as it turns out, I may not need the extender anyway. But it is good to have one, just in case.

I did not buy anything of interest at Walmart. After not finding any interesting fabric, I nearly left the store without buying anything, but remembered that my husband had asked for something that cost five dollars. So I bought that, and then I went home. I was too tired to go on to Hobby Lobby, and I was about out of money anyway. Besides, I got the main thing that I was after at the thrift shop.

When I get home, I regret spending the five dollars at Walmart. My husband didn't seem all that happy I bought it, and now I don't have enough left for all of the lottery tickets I usually buy on Tuesday. I'll have enough to buy two for today and two for tomorrow, but I usually spend sixteen dollars every other Tuesday. I don't have that much left. I'll just have to spend four dollars today and get the rest on Friday.

And there had better be money on Friday or I will be really mad.

The Bionic Woman and random things

The first fourteen episodes of The Bionic Woman are on Hulu. That is, the first fourteen episodes of the real The Bionic Woman are on Hulu, not the recently "re imagined" thing done by those people who "re imagined" Battlestar Galactica. The re imagined thing was removed months ago, and now there are fourteen hours of "The Bionic Woman Classic."

If you are not a big fan of either The Bionic Woman or The Six Million Dollar Man, you might not think this is a big deal. Except that The Bionic Woman was on thirty-three years ago (and The Six Million Dollar Man was on a couple of years before that), and we haven't been able to (legally) buy or rent either series on video or DVD in the years since then. The reruns were on The Sci Fi Channel (now SyFy) about ten years ago, and I saw some of them then, but I didn't actually have cable, I was just in a lot of motel rooms where I could sometimes watch on Thursday and Friday afternoons. But mostly, I haven't seen them since I was a kid.

Now when someone makes a movie or a TV show, the subject of DVDs is just part of the deal. It is decided ahead of time what everyone's cut will be if there is a DVD and all of that, and if you don't like your cut or you flat out don't want your work to be on a DVD, then you can go and look for another job. But in the seventies the contracts weren't written like that, and if you want to release a DVD of something from that time you have to go back and get everyone to sign another contract and figure out what everyone's cut is, etc....

And some people can't be reached, and some people just don't want to play, and some people hold out for more money.

And while this sort of thing drags on, those of us who really want to see the show again look for illegal copies, and when the people holding out for more money finally do sign on, there are fewer customers wanting to buy, and there is less money to be made anyway.

Better to have a smaller cut of a bigger pie than to wait til there is no pie left.

So maybe there will be more of The Bionic Woman on Hulu, and maybe some of The Six Million Dollar Man will make an appearance, and maybe they will both be available on DVD now. Not that I actually have proof of any of that, but it does seem a step in the right direction.

Back to my usual moaning about the money situation.

So we made a car payment on both cars, which means that we are now currently only one payment behind on each car, and I doubt that anyone is going to try and take my car over one late payment. And I hope that we will be caught up on that next month anyway.

But that didn't leave us much money, as there is still a missing expense check out there, as we changed our direct deposit to a different bank so that we could close one of our accounts.

My husband is going to middle of nowhere Texas for three days next week, and while I was sitting here debating on where or not I should go with him, I realized that I already have plans for that weekend. So that settles that. Now if we could actually get paid for that expense check, he would actually have enough money to go on the trip, just he will be going alone because of my prior commitment.

It was just middle of nowhere Texas, and not even a long drive, and the main point of my going would have been knitting anyway.

About the knitting....

I should have started that months ago. In fact, I should have started it in January and been done with it. But I usually save some of the knitting for when I go on these little trips, but there haven't been many of these little trips, and of the few that there have been I ended up not going on most of them, mainly due to the money situation but occasionally because of my prior commitments.

So, basically, I haven't done any of the knitting that needs to be done before Christmas, and here it is already October.

I may be handing out IOUs for Christmas.

And then there is always this confusion about who is doing what for Christmas anyway.

After having worked with the round looms for more than four years and having had The Ultimate Sweater Machine for almost three years, I have yet to knit any sweaters. I am mainly knitting scarves, though there have been a few hats and the odd assortment of leg warmers and such. At some point I thought that I should learn regular knitting before attempting to knit a sweater. Not that I had any intention of knitting a whole sweater by hand, but I had thought that there might be some little thing that needed to be done with a sweater that just wouldn't be practical on the machine. Like I thought that I might need to do some regular knitting around the neck or at the waist or maybe on the sleeves, that the pieces of the sweater might not match up the way I imagine while working on the machine, and I would have some hand knitting to do before joining the pieces. So I attempted to learn regular knitting, but I didn't get very far with it. Regular knitting just isn't my thing.

Anyway, you would think that knitting scarves all the time would get dull, but I seem to get new ideas for them now and then. But even with the machine, they do seem to take so long.

And then there are these little tools that come with the machine. One of them is called the latch hook tool, which looks like the latch hook tool that comes with a rug kit, except that is a smaller hook. And the other is the transfer tool, which rather looks like a giant sewing needle, except that the pointy end is buried in the handle as it is the big eye of the needle that is used on the knitting machine. If you aren't doing anything fancy, you don't use these tools very often, but you do need them once in a while, especially if you've made a mistake.

On the other hand, if you are doing something fancy, you need these tools all of the time. And, if you are doing something fancy, it is helpful to have double or triple pronged transfer tools, and double or triple latch hooks.

The problem is that I have never seen double or triple latch hooks, so if I want those I will have to find a way to make them myself, and I have seen that other knitters have done just that. As for the double and triple pronged transfer tools, they used to just come with the machine, but now they don't, and if you want them you have to pay extra and have them sent, which means that you also have to pay shipping.

It seems to me that the charge for the tools is more than they should be, even before you have to add for shipping.

By contrast, the tool that goes with the round loom is easily found at any craft store, usually for a dollar. I have bought several sets of looms, and still I lose the little tool and have to go to the store and buy more. But it is no big deal. The tools are at the store and they only cost a dollar.

The cheapest transfer tool for the knitting machine is three dollars, and it is not available at the store, and so in addition to the three dollars you have to pay for shipping and you have to wait for the mail to arrive.

So to get the transfer tool and the latch hook that came with the kit (cause I am always losing things and need them replaced, or maybe something breaks once in a while), that would cost me about fifteen dollars with the shipping. And that's not counting if I would like a double pronged or triple pronged transfer tool, and they are only sold two at a time, so another ten dollars if I want the one and another twenty dollars if I want them both.

And that's if they even have them in stock, which doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

About a year ago we found another knitting machine at a thrift store for forty dollars, and we decided to buy it, just for the tools and such, not cause I wanted another machine. So I had another transfer tool and another latch hook, which would have cost me about fifteen dollars to buy online. Unfortunately, this kit did not come with the desired additional two and three pronged transfer tools, but now I also have a spare of just about everything else, and I think this is good to have just in case I should break a key plate or tear the thing that holds the weights onto the machine.

But now I have lost both latch hook tools and all but one of my transfer tools. It is time to buy some more tools, or look into buying another machine to get more tools.

That has lead to some interesting eBay searches. There just all of a sudden seem to be a lot of people selling old knitting machines. And some of them aren't selling for that much, so I am tempted to buy another one. I imagine all of the tools and spare parts that I might get for somewhere in the twenty to forty dollar range.

Now I just have to figure out which one I should bid on.

(I probably just missed bidding on the one I should have tried to get, but I had it in my head that it was over tomorrow, and I wanted to think more about the money situation before I bid on anything.)

Unfortunately, I can't bid very much. In addition to the usual money problems, there is that still missing expense check, and the fact that my husband just realized that his car inspection sticker lapsed three months ago.

Still, I do have to wonder what is up with all of these knitting machines on eBay. Is it just an odd coincidence? Are desperate people raiding there craft rooms and finding knitting machines they have decided they will never use? Are that many knitters all dying and having estate sales?

I just don't know what the deal is. Another odd thing is when someone is selling the machine and knows nothing about it. One ad for a machine turns out to just be for the carriage, and there are no hooks. But there are other spare parts, so maybe no one else will want that one and I will be able to get it.

Of course, I have no money left in the Paypal account, so if I decide to buy anything I will have to come up with some money from somewhere else and remember to transfer it before the bill is due.

Anyway, it really ticks me off that I have to think about any of this right now. If I am going to make those Christmas presents, I have to have those tools. If I am not going to make any Christmas presents, I certainly do not have the money to buy Christmas presents instead, and I'm going to have to tell people to count me out this year. And it shouldn't be this much trouble. The tools should just be in the craft stores with the other knitting stuff. Even overpriced at five dollars each, I would buy them, if they would just put them in the stores.

And while I am worrying about the knitting, I still haven't finished my Halloween shopping. I have an idea for a costume, but not all of the parts. I may have to give up and go as a witch, but since I have gained weight since last time, I would still have to go shopping. I had hoped to get a flu shot before the party, but I doubt that I will have enough money left for one shot, and of course this year there are two. Great.

Filming delayed again due to more shopping

Yesterday or the day before, a new reader left a comment on a post I made like a year and a half ago. I don't know if he is still reading. But I thought I would stop and say hello, just in case.

It was raining a bit yesterday, so we did not film the beginning of the video like I had planned. We got an early start on the shopping instead.

First, there was the trip to the bank, cause I think that the ATM was empty. I don't think that has ever happened to me before, though I suppose it must happen once in a while. But, it didn't say that it was out of money, it just refused to give us any. We could check our balance and see that we had money, and we were given the option of depositing money, but we were not given the option of withdrawing any money. Weird.

So after we went to the bank to get our money, we had to go to a different bank and deposit some money. Then I had to go pick up some pills, and as long as we were in the neighborhood we might as well go to the Only 99 cents store.

It was closed. The store is gone. I learned that was going to happen last week, but I didn't realize it would happen so soon. I was expecting a clearance sale or something. But, no. It is just gone now.

I loved that store, and there isn't another one within a reasonable driving distance for regular shopping visits.

The rest of the shopping went rather well, considering it was off to such a sad start.

From there we went to eat at Pancho's, and since the Irving location has closed we had to go to Euless. We shouldn't have spent the money, and we didn't even have a coupon, but this is one of his favorite places, and for the last three or four times I've talked him into something else. So we ate out this one time, and we will behave ourselves for the next week or so.

From there we went to Goodwill, and almost all the dresses I like were black. I love black, but I really can't justify buying another black dress. No matter how good it might look, it would just be another black dress, and I doubt that anyone would even notice that it was a new black dress. I might see all these little details that might it look good on me and make it look better than the last one, but if I want a new dress I should probably wait and buy something that really looks different. There were a few other things that caught my attention, but nothing really spoke to me enough to try anything on. We didn't buy anything at that stop.

Next stop, Jo Ann's Fabrics. Not that I bought anything there either, but I did want to have a look around. The one thing that I actually went in thinking I might buy I found for eight dollars, but I was thinking it would only cost two or three dollars, so I didn't buy it. And then there was something else that I had to look at, not cause I needed to buy one, but just cause I needed to know what a new one cost. A red knifty knitter, sold by itself, is seven dollars and forty-nine cents. I took a quick look at the Halloween stuff, and then I left.

Having come so far into the Tarrant County side, we kept going. We went to Thrift Town, and that was worth the drive even if we hadn't gone anywhere else. In September and October, they put out the clothes that they can't sell the rest of the year, just in case someone might want something for Halloween. So not only is there all this great stuff, it usually doesn't cost that much, cause if they don't sell it before October 31st, they either have to put it in storage for another year, or they have to put it in the trash.

So, I just wanted everything, but I managed to narrow it down to five things before heading to the dressing room. One item wasn't even for me. I plan to give it to a friend for Christmas, cause he never has any costume stuff to wear. Then there was a long blue dress, which isn't too different from a long black dress, but it wouldn't be exactly the same either. But it didn't fit. Then I had something short and purple, which would have potential if I ever want to be a fairy (I already have purple wings), but I probably won't do that this year. The dress fit just fine, but I could still lose a few pounds if I actually want to look good in it. And then there was this red Chinese thing, which was just a bit large and had a defect that didn't even show when it was buttoned up. And I really wanted it, but in the end I decided that since I wasn't planning to wear it to anything specific this year, I should put it back. Besides, if the idea is to look like a character from Firefly, I think the shirt is light blue, not red.

I just wanted to try on a whole bunch of other stuff, just in case I ever go to a Shindig, but I decided not to. I'm probably not going to such a thing this year, and whatever I buy this year might not look good on me next year. So no Shindig dresses. I'm not altogether sure which direction I would go with the Shindig dress anyway. Would I want elegant or pretty ruffles? I can't decide.

So one item for a friend, and one little purple thing, and then there was this greenish blue dress that spoke to me. It made me think of a certain character on a TV show I've been watching, and with some minor fixing, I could wear it. The main thing is that I would need a matching bra and some good shoes. So I think that I might have found my Halloween costume after all, though not for the character I had originally planned.

Three costume pieces cost me eight dollars and some change. Nice.

From there we went to Town Talk, where we bought odd sodas and really awesome white chocolate and some brie and white cheddar. And some energy drinks. But, we did also manage to buy more than five pounds of rice at twenty-nine cents a pound, so it wasn't entirely luxury items.

On the way home we stopped at a Walmart. This isn't the same Walmart as Thursday, but I was hoping that they would have the same item on sale. I knew that they probably wouldn't, since it was probably a clearance sale and there doesn't seem to be an uniformity in clearance sales for Walmarts. So, I went in and found the item, or at least, it looked like the same item to me, but it was five dollars. At the other store, it had been two dollars marked down from four dollars. So how is it five here? I can understand that it would still be regular price instead of clearance price, but isn't the regular price four? I don't get it.

Anyway, after some slight begging and a stop at 7-11 for a cold drink, we went to the other Walmart so I could look for the clearance sale item. And, display I had seen on Thursday was gone, so they had probably sold all of them, but I went to have a look on the regular shelf space anyway. And there they were, or at least, I thought I'd found them, and they were five dollars. That didn't make sense. Thursday they had been two marked down from four, and now they were up to five? This didn't even make sense at a different store, but at the same store it really didn't make any sense.

I hoped the price was wrong and that it would somehow scan two dollars. I found a scanner, but it was five dollars. I took the item back to the shelf.

I really gave it a careful looking over. This is the same item, isn't it? I know that a lot of similar things end up not being the same price, but the same item being a different price? Was there anything different about this item and the item I bought on Thursday?

And then I noticed that the item had the barcode on the side, while as far as I could remember the item I purchased Thursday had the barcode on the bottom. I had a similar thing happen the day after Thanksgiving, when I went to buy some eight dollar jeans that looked exactly like some twenty dollar jeans, and I couldn't find any that scanned eight dollars, until I noticed some of the tags were in a different place.

So, I found three with the barcode on the bottom. These scanned two dollars each. I was happy. And, now that I knew what to look for, I found a few more.

I had gone into the store hoping to buy four, but after all of this trouble I decided to buy six. I would have bought six more, but I really do not like being totally without funds, and I couldn't see doing that again for another two weeks, especially since I haven't yet bought gas or the lottery tickets.

Anyway, now that I know what to look for, I will look again next time I'm in Walmart and I have some money.

So I went home tired but happy. We decided to rest for about an hour before we thought about the video. We did finally get the beginning of it done, and now I have to go and work on the project so that we can maybe film the end of the video tonight and then try the editing on Sunday.

Just a day or so behind schedule. And there's a little more shopping planned for today, but not much.

Behind schedule again

Before I get into that, someone has read the last post and asked if I had fun at the party. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I had fun at the party. You maybe don't think so, cause I don't drink alcohol and I don't dance, but I still enjoy going to a couple of parties. I like to hang out with my friends, I like to eat, I like raffles and such, and most important I like to watch people.

I don't know if it was said that children were not invited, or if just most of the people knew what to expect and didn't bring any. Not that anyone wore anything particularly out there, but in this group there's usually a lot of costumes that prominently display the quadra-boob. I only remember one such costume this time, but it just all depends on who shows up and if they've had time to make anything new or if they'll just show up in last year's ren faire stuff.

So at some point I went to get something to eat, and I came back to find one of my friends had been told she wasn't dressed appropriately. Did she display too much boob? No. Did she have on a really short skirt? No. Did she wear something skin-tight or see-through? No.

She wore jeans, and this was a formal dance.

Okay, it says that somewhere, but I don't think that it says anywhere that jeans are forbidden. It is a party, and it is supposed to be fun, and for some people stressing over what to wear is not fun.

At our table, no one was particularly in costume. I had the black slinky dress, but I didn't do anything particularly interesting with it. No latex, no hat, just plain old me but in a dress. A male friend had nothing interesting to wear, but he did put on a tie. One girl had on a uniform top with jeans. This is a no no when one is out in public to represent a particular group, but when one is only at a party to enjoy oneself, it shouldn't matter if jeans were worn instead of black dress pants. Another girl wore t-shirt and jeans, another wore jeans and a very average looking top, and still another girl wore black shirt and pants with a lot of loud costume jewelry. Half of our table would dance a lot, and the other half didn't dance at all.

But it is a party. You should do and wear whatever is fun for you. I probably wouldn't be having much fun if I didn't wear something interesting, but I wouldn't want other people to stay home if they can't wear something equally nice. That would be almost as unacceptable as someone trying to make me dance.

After that little bit of drama was over, we went back to having fun.

One of my friends will soon be off to Dragon Con. I, of course, will not be going. I never go. I never have any money. I rarely even go to anything here anymore, so going to Atlanta is out of the question.

Anyway, my friend is going. I should think that he has to go somewhere to show off his costume.

He is Ironman.

Seriously, he is Ironman. He probably put as much effort into this costume as the comic book character put into his suit. He wore it to last year's Halloween party, having this idea that he shouldn't enter it into the costume contest. He thought that it would be unfair to the other people who wanted to be in the contest.

He has the best costume, cause he worked on it all year and spent a lot of money on it. It is a damned good costume. What the hell is unfair about entering and winning a costume contest?

Some people in our little group used to go to conventions and some of us even used to compete, but now most of us seem so focused on ren faires and our Halloween Party that we almost forget to enter other contests. And most of our Halloween costumes just aren't convention material, but Ironman fits in just fine.

At some point my friend was talked into going to a local convention and entering that costume contest, and he won first place.

In Atlanta, he will get some real competition, but I still think it is a good idea for him to try.

Back here, I have all but given up on this year's Halloween party, at least as far as the costume contest goes. I just don't have the money to do anything new. I have a new dress, but I can't buy anything interesting to go with it. I seriously have no money at all. I will have to figure out something to do, mostly with what I already have. The most I can do is fix a new hat, but I'm losing interest in even trying to do that.

So I should be putting up Halloween decorations today, but I'm not going to. The house isn't clean enough. And yes, there are already Halloween decorations up, but I mean that I won't be getting started putting up any extra Halloween decorations. The decorations that are already up are there all year.

Halloween is just two months away. There's just no time to do anything.

At this point, I am even starting to worry about Christmas. I knew from last year that unless there were major changes I wouldn't be able to do much. I considered just making an announcement that I didn't have enough money to participate in any gift exchanges. But I had so much fun last year, and I got it into my head that I could give my friends some homemade things that they would like, if I got an early start on it.

And of course, Christmas is now less than four months away, and I haven't started on anything. If fact, for the most part, I can't even remember what it was that I was going to make. I remember that I was going to make a few scarves, but that's about it. I even remember buying a lot of supplies at clearance sales, only now I can't remember what I was going to do with them.

I've wasted the whole year.

More sales stuff

Target now has clearance Halloween stuff at 90% off, though at most of them all that is left is candy corn.

Also my nearest Walmart has Halloween stuff at 75% off, though I think that clearance sales at Walmarts are different from store to store, so it may not be 75% off at your store yet, or that might have happened at your store days ago and the stuff is all gone now. It is also 75% off Halloween stuff at Kroger's and Tom Thumb, except for candy, which is only 50% off. And Albertson's has stuff marked off, if there is any left, but again that varies from store to store, but the stuff I bought was 75% off or less.

I bought too much stuff as usual, but I only regret spending about ten dollars or so, most of which went to pirate boot covers that I'll probably never wear.

I'm about shopped out for the season. That is, I won't be going to any more sales unless I have to be in the store for something else, and the clearance stuff just jumps out in front of me.

Today is a good day to die...

...by eating too much candy.

Target has 75% off Halloween clearance stuff today, including lots of candy. I have bought enough chocolate to get me through Christmas.

I would go back and buy more, but I think that I'm about out of money again.

Monday Morons--My Husband

No, we're not going to talk about that yet. Not quite.

Anyway, I've already mentioned that my mom's church is doing Judgement House and that my mom is working in it this year. Judgement House is sort of the same idea as Hell House, to do some scary thing to watch around Halloween instead of a traditional haunted house, only Judgement House is more of a play. I can't say for sure, cause I've never been to Hell House, I've just seen stuff about them on TV, but Judgement House seems to have more class, and Judgement House has a lot less gore than Hell House.

So this year Judgement House is called 59 minutes. We meet four people on a Sunday morning, and 59 minutes later they are dead. At the end of the play we see which ones go to heaven and which ones go to hell. I'm guessing that in all of the scripts that we end up with the same three scenes of Judgement, Hell, and Heaven. And I'm guessing that in most of the scripts, someone ends up in Hell for being just a good person and not an actual Christian.

I can't say how good any other Judgement House is, but the one at my mom's church is good, though I think that I liked last year's Collision a little bit better. The only part that really fits in with the whole idea of it being something to do on Halloween is the Hell scene. The music director turns out to be an excellent Satan.

So I had already gone to see it this year, and that must have been two weeks ago. I thought that they were done with it. I thought that either Halloween or the night after that was the last day, but they decided that they'd have it last night too. Seems like last year that they didn't have it that last Sunday. In fact, it seems like last year that they were so tired that there was a Sunday night that they didn't even have Judgement House or regular services either.

But anyway, last night they were still having Judgement House, and my brother called to invite me and my husband. Now, I had already seen it, so the point was to get my husband to go. My husband is not a Christian; he lied about that to get me to marry him, and until all this other stuff happened I really didn't want to get divorced over it. So we were out the first time my brother called and I did not notice that there was a message on the machine. I went out again, and wasn't there when my brother called again. When I came back, my husband tells me to call my brother, that he and my mom want us all to go to to Judgement House and then they were going to buy us dinner afterwards.

Great. Do you want to go?

No.

So I had already gone, and I didn't want to go again without my husband. That was the whole point. So I call my brother and tell him that we aren't going. My brother offers to buy my husband dinner at any place that he wants to go. They weren't just going to buy him an hamburger, they were going to buy him an expensive dinner. So I go and repeat the offer, to make sure he understands. He still doesn't want to go.

My husband isn't even supposed to be living in this house. My husband and I were supposed to get a divorce more than a year ago, and he wanted me to drop it and I wanted to go ahead with it, but I ended up cancelling the divorce because he was acting like he was going to kill himself. So he isn't supposed to be here. I was never supposed to hear from him again, but I made an exception and said that he could call me if he wanted to talk to someone at church. That didn't mean that I would take him back and that we would stay married, just that I would want to try after he became a Christian. If he didn't want that, if he wasn't willing to talk to someone at church, then there was no reason for him to even call me. Calling me that day was just cruel. But I let him come back, because I just couldn't imagine that he would do that to me, that he would call and come back here and not even talk to anyone at church.

So here it is two and a half years later, he has not talked to anyone at church, we have not had counseling, and he has not done anything to make me feel better. And my mom and my brother bribe him with a nice dinner to go to Judgement House, and he still won't go. He's not even supposed to be here if he doesn't want to go to church and such, and we can't even get him to go to special stuff like Judgement House even if they offer to buy him an expensive dinner afterwards.

I just don't get why he wanted to be with me in the first place. This is who we are. He lied to get here in the first place, he's lied several times to stay here, and he acts like we are bothering him. All we have ever done is try to help him, and all he ever does is lie and hurt me. I get that some people don't believe in original sin and all of that, but I really don't get how someone this bad doesn't even get that he has a problem and people are just trying to help him. And if he didn't want to live the life of a Christian and be around other Christians, why lie to be with one?

Review of Northwood University Haunted Forest

This is mostly a note to myself. The only thing that was good about this Haunted Forest was that it was cheap and close-by. Wonder if there was something more to my liking at the rec center, or the Boy Scouts thing off of Shiloh. Maybe next year.

Anyway, if I'd have had the time and money, I would have just gone to The Boneyard.

The Haunted Forest is not for older people who can't see well and don't like walking up and down hills, and there is very much the possibly of falling downhill or just slipping elsewhere on wet leaves. It was mostly about five guys with chainsaws, and really, I hate chainsaws. So if you are short on money, but it just isn't Halloween until after someone has chased you with a chainsaw, this is the place for you.

But the real disappointment was that they didn't do anything with the haunted forest theme. There were strobe lights and such, but no real decorations to speak of. There was a roped off trail marked somewhat by spiderwebs and such, but sometimes marked with a line of laundry. A line of laundry? And then I wasn't sure where to go from the laundry area.

So it was only five bucks, but even for only five bucks I would have expected a few fake pumpkins, fake candles, fake skulls, etc.... And maybe a haunted forest should be haunted by wolves, or werewolves, or the headless horseman, and not just guys with chainsaws over and over again.

Did a mention that I hate chainsaws?

Dead Spirits

That refers to my favorite shoes, Easy Spirit. I've found a couple of pair at a thrift store, and almost twenty years ago my mom bought me a new pair of 1 inch heel black Easy Spirit shoes, and those have been worn more or less since then depending on what job I had and how my weight fluctuated and so forth. I haven't worn them much at all these past few years because they were damaged a little bit in a flood, but for most things I would think that hiding the damage with a black magic marker would work. This year, one of the shoes also had some damage from mice, but again I decided that the damage could be hidden with a black marker.

So, those were the shoes that I wore to the Halloween party on Saturday. I've gained some weight since last year, so they were a bit tight, but they were still better than a lot of other shoes.

This year I've decided to sort of downsize a few things in my life. I feel like I'm wasting too much time and energy on stuff that doesn't really matter, like ceramics and Star Trek. These last few years I have put a lot of effort into my Halloween costume, and this year I decided that had to stop. This year I decided to just not do anything special, not enter any contests, not spend weeks and weeks making a costume, not make any weird food, not carve a pumpkin, not help with the decorations, etc.... Since I didn't spend a lot of time on a costume, this left me in a position to actually be a judge in the costume competition, which I had never done before. But other than being a judge, I decided to just show up for the party without having done anything special and just try to enjoy myself without it having to be any big deal.

About the only thing I did special was my hair. My hair was dyed really red. I don't mean red like genes from Ireland red. I mean red. My natural hair is brown, and this was a non-permanent dye, so my hair turned out like a shiny Dr. Pepper can. And my hair doesn't curl easily, so when I really want nice hair I have to sleep in perm rods. So I did that too.

My dress was black lace over red, but hardly any of the red shows through the black. And I had a black hooded cape. I was going to also wear a black witches hat, but at the last minute I decided that the hat needed a few more feathers, and I hot glued my arm. I decided I really didn't want the hat, since I'd spent so much time on my hair.

Funny thing about the hair. Two other ladies, also wearing black, and one of them also minus a witch hat that she meant to wear, also had this same curly red hair. Except that they were both wearing wigs. But we were all in black and all had nearly the same hair.

Back to the shoes. Over the years, I have put pads in the shoes and taken pads out of the shoes and put these little things on the bottom of the shoes so that I don't slip. So with the weight gain the pads have come out of the shoes, but they still had the non-slip things stuck on the bottom. So I was walking around, and I was thinking that there was something wrong with one of the shoes, like the non-slip thing was maybe coming off. But I looked at it, and it was very firmly still attached to the bottom of the shoe.

The party always does seem to get off to a slow start. Last year it really got off to a slow start because of some problem with the music. This year again there was some problem with the music, but this time it only took about ten minutes to fix.

After long discussions and debates and people getting upset, the party had changed from being a party for everyone to being an adults only party and then back to having to vote on the issue again. After almost two hours of a meeting using Robert's Rules of Order we came up with a compromise of having it be an adults only party after nine, and that from seven to nine the children were allowed, free of charge with a paid adult, but that the bar would not be opened until nine after all the children had left.

So after all of that and thinking that we had a good compromise, only the one family brought two children. So that part of the evening that usually has children's stuff going on was rather dull. And some of the adults really seemed to resent giving up alcohol for even the two hours. And of course there are several people who are just traditionally late anyway.

One thing that does not have to do with children that gets done earlier in the evening is the weird food contest. But this year there were only four entries, and for some reason the voting kept being pushed back and pushed back again. So the voting should have been done by eight, but I think it ended up being done past eight-thirty. Anyway, the idea is to vote on the weird food before anyone eats it, so that everyone gets to see how weird it is. So by the time the voting was actually done, I'd had something else to eat, and I wasn't really hungry. So I ended up not even trying any of the weird food.

Okay, so the weird food awards were awarded, and the kid costume awards were awarded to the two contestants, and then there was the children's dance contest with two contestants, and then the two kids went trick-or-treating at the tables (which did not get them much from me since I totally forgot we were supposed to be doing that and I had already eaten about half the candy at our table by then). So the family with the two children left at nine without any drama, and right about then my friend who is always late showed up.

I went to ask someone who the other costume judges were. I volunteered to be a judge several months ago when I decided that I couldn't get my planned costume done in time and I really didn't want to spend a lot of time making another one. A friend had also volunteered several months ago, when he decided that his costume was so good that it just wasn't fair to compete with it. The rest of us just weren't following his reasoning at all. If you've spent five months making a great costume, then you're supposed to win, and there's nothing unfair about it. Not like everyone else didn't have the same opportunity to work on their costumes for five months, just that most people chose not to do that. So we found someone to replace him as judge, and we made him enter the contest. The other two judges were already sitting at a front row table, so a changed seats for a bit.

We have a few Klingons in our group, but they decided that they didn't want to be Klingons for Halloween since they are often Klingons during the rest of the year. They brought two other Klingons as guests, but they didn't win anything. I have a friend who made a costume of "Sponge Bob SCARE pants" two years ago, but due to various mishaps he didn't get to wear it until Saturday. He was funny, but he didn't win. We have this woman in our club who is like eighty-five and half-blind, and on her birthday she likes to do traditional old lady type things, like jumping out of airplanes. So this old lady went as a biker-chick, with those fake tattoo sleeves and a leather vest and hat. Her daughters came as the musical group HEART. The theme for this year was B Movies, so we had three people show up as bees. We also had a killer tomato, a 50ft woman, and Sarah Palin. Then we had the usual ghosts and werewolves and vampires and witches.

And then the three of us went into another room to decide who won what award. We agreed right away that my friend's five months in the making Ironman was Best in Show, but we also had to decide such things as Best Group or Couple, Best Recreation, Best Use of Materials, Most Beautiful, and Most Disturbing. I was saying I like this and I like that, and the guy that we drafted to be judge at the last minute was doing the same thing, but we really didn't know where to start. Luckily, the third judge was sorting out the cards and picking out those who were in a group. Okay, that works. There were a few couples, but that award went to a family who all came as characters from Speed Racer.

After that we tossed some cards that we didn't think were special, and then we sorted the remaining cards that might fit in different categories. We liked the vampire, but he just didn't seem to fit in with anything. He wasn't Disturbing, and he wasn't a vampire from a particular movie, so he didn't qualify for Best Recreation. While some of our guys would have no problem walking away with the Most Beautiful award, I didn't know this guy, and that might have offended a whole room of women who didn't get the award. We finally decided that as much as we liked him, we just couldn't give him an award, because nothing fit. We narrowed down Most Beautiful to three women, and then decided to discuss other things for awhile and come back to that. There was a couple that everyone liked, and I thought that they were holodeck characters from Star Trek Voyager. My fellow judges didn't agree, so we were really having a problem with the Best Recreation. There wasn't a Most Humorous award, so we passed over the Killer Tomato and Sarah Palin and Sponge Bob SCARE pants. Most Disturbing went to the 50ft Woman. We kept changing our minds between the three women up for Most Beautiful.

Our hostess came to see how we were doing. We were half done, but we were kind of stuck with the rest of it. I asked her if she thought that a certain couple were from Voyager, and she said that they were, that they were from the holodeck program Captain Proton.

So then everything worked out. The couple from Captain Proton got Best Recreation, and since we didn't plan to give two awards to the same person, that took Queen Arachnia out of the running for Most Beautiful. So that only left two women for Most Beautiful, and I knew one of them would be just as happy with Best Use of Materials. So Most Beautiful went to the witch that came with the vampire. The name of the costume that got Best Use of Materials wouldn't mean anything to anyone, so lets just say that it was a red cape and a long red dress and a long black wig and a headpiece with black feathers. She sort of looked like Cher, if Cher ever went anywhere fully dressed.

M & J showed up after we presented the awards. This is a tradition for them, to show up in the best costumes after it is too late to be in the contest. Rarely do they enter the contest, and when they do they almost always get Best in Show. This year it would have been tough, as I still would have voted for Ironman. But they did have excellent Joker and Cat Woman costumes. The one theory is that they always show up late on purpose, so that other people have a chance in the contest. But if you ask them about it, they say that they were at home fixing something on the costumes.

After the contest there's a lot of dancing. I don't dance anyway, but a lot of people don't dance till after the contest, cause they don't want to risk damaging their costumes. And there is a lot of posing for pictures, which I didn't do much of this year as I went in the black dress and cape and didn't have an elaborate costume. But I'm afraid that I even forgot to have my picture taken with the lady who got Best Use of Materials, cause we always get our picture taken. I just forgot this year.

Someone who didn't win anything came and complimented us on our judging and said that she would have picked the same people. So it's always good to get compliments on your judging from someone who didn't win. Hopefully there are no sore losers in this bunch.

While I was walking around and talking to people, I again noticed that something seemed to be wrong with my shoe. Again, the non-slip thing was firmly attached. I sat down and took the shoe off. It wasn't that something was coming off of the bottom of the shoe, but the bottom of the shoe itself was coming off. Okay, well, maybe I can glue it back together and keep them for some later costume, but I guess that is the end of me just wearing them as regular shoes.

I was tired, but I stayed til one anyway. I did not stay to clean up. Those people were still there at like three in the morning.

Sunday morning I checked my email and there were a few emails about the party. I guess I somehow didn't check my email on Monday, so on Tuesday I had 52 emails, mostly about the party. Most of it was the usual stuff, like this was the best party ever. Every year someone says that this was the best party ever. I don't think that this was the best party ever, but I don't think that there was anything wrong with it either. I don't think it had much to do with either there not being many kids there or not having the bar open til nine or any of that other stuff that we were all talking about before. I think I just really enjoy being a contestant more than a judge or just a regular party guest. But I think that I enjoyed the rest of the month more by not being a contestant. I think that most of the time I just put too much work into it for a costume that I'll probably only wear one time. So I'm probably not going to do that much anymore, even if it means that I don't like the party as much.

Well, I should do some work now. I would like to go to some stuff later, and tomorrow I have a busy day of after Halloween clearance sales. Not that I'm going to buy lots of costume and decorated stuff, but I do always buy some, and then there is discounted candy and discounted orange dishes and discounted black T-shirts, etc....

Monday Morons--I don't want to be warned that I'm going to be hurt

My mom's church did the whole Judgment House thing last year. It isn't quite the same as hell house. Not that I've even been to a hell house, but I've seen a lot of stuff about it on TV, and they have scary scenes of mostly real life stuff, about drug addiction and abortion clinics and terrorist attacks and school shootings. Some of the hell houses have a lot of blood and gore, so that they look a lot like more traditional haunted houses. Judgment House is more of a play, with the scary "this could happen to you" type message.

So last year was their first year, and they did Collision, and I watched it and they did a very good job. This story follows three teenagers who die in a car crash, and then at the end we see who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. The scene of hell turned out to be really excellent, and not quite what I expected. The rest of the scenes were really impressive too. I wonder how much they spent on the sets and how they got some of the props. In the actual car crash scene there are two crashed cars, and I imagine that crashed cars are plentiful and you could easily borrow a few. And then there were police cars, and I suppose if you had to that you could make a fake police car by putting decals and lights on a regular car. But they also had an ambulance, and for the ambulance you pretty much have to have a real ambulance, so I'm wondering how they got one.

So I checked to see if they were going to do it again, and this years story is called 59 Minutes. I imagine that all of the stories follow a few characters to see how they end up, and that the last two scenes are hell and heaven, but I don't know that for sure. So I tried to follow the link to YouTube to watch a trailer of 59 Minutes. That didn't work as well as I'd hoped, but YouTube has other videos about Judgment House, and I watched a few of them and looked at a couple of hell scenes. I'm sure that the actual hell scenes were good to watch in person, but the video quality of most of them wasn't so good.

Anyway, there comments after one of the hell scene videos, and most of the people leaving comments were not very nice. And they wanted to know if Christians really believed this stuff and said how it wasn't very nice to try to scare people like that. And one person left a comment that yes we do really believe this stuff and that since hell is a real thing we would try just about anything to warn other people about it.

The next comment was something like--rape is a real thing, but I wouldn't want someone to say follow me or you'll get raped.

And I thought that this was just the most stupid thing to say. If I was about to get raped, and someone came to warn me about it, I would just be so happy to follow this person away from the dangerous situation. The last thing that I would do would be complain that someone is trying to scare me.

And then I realized that there are millions of girls who do exactly that every weekend. They are constantly being warned not to go to parties with older boys, and not to meet up with guys that they've met on the Internet, and to stay in very public places when you do meet someone, and don't get in a car with someone you've just met, etc....

About 1 out of every 3 girls will eventually be raped, but some of us just seem to want to get it out of the way early. Like I don't know why any sane woman would go to a frat party. I don't know why so many woman accept drinks from strangers. And I don't know why any woman would go try to find someplace more private with a guy that she just met.

But I know that a lot of people do all this stuff, because I've seen it on TV. Not just fictional TV either. I've watched men on hidden camera encourage a guy who said that he was going to have sex with a certain woman, even if he had to drug her, and then they watched while he put something in her drink and after that walk away with this woman who obviously wasn't well. And I watched another guy give dozens of drinks to women that did not know him, and afterwards when he told them that he was doing a TV program to see how many women he could trick into taking a drink that might have been drugged. All but one of the women got mad at him and were embarrassed that they were going to be part of this TV show, instead of being glad that someone had warned them that they were doing something unsafe.

And on another show we watched the chemistry students going to a party and handing out something that would warn girls that there might be something in their soda or beer that wasn't soda or beer. And they also had some test to see if the pill that was supposed to be Ecstasy might be something else. It's bad enough to take Ecstasy, but you certainly don't want to be taking a pill that is something other than that. And while we watched, someone brought over a pill and the test proved that there was something in the pill other than Ecstasy. And while we watched, the girl decided that since she had already spent the money that she was going to take the pill anyway. How stupid is that? The test can't tell you what is in the pill, just that it isn't Ecstasy. It could a sugar pill and do nothing, or it could be a cold pill and make you sleepy for the rest of the party, or it could be a very serious addictive illegal drug, or it could even be rat poison. You just can't imagine that anyone would do something so stupid, but there she was, on camera, doing exactly that.

The ongoing drama about the upcoming party

Okay, so there's been some stuff going that I didn't really know about until last year, but I guess that it's been a problem for other people for a while now. Our club has an annual Halloween party, and it's a really big deal and we plan stuff for it all year. And a few of us have children, so there are usually a few kids at this party. And then sometimes there are a few extra kids at this party, because someone invited the children of the people who work where the party is held.

So I didn't particularly like that there were these other kids hanging around the party, but it didn't really seem to bother anybody else. And then I was told that not only had these kids been invited, but that someone in our club actually bought tickets for them to be able to go. So they weren't just showing up to get free food and candy like I thought, and if someone wants them there enough to buy them tickets, I guess that's the end of my wanting to get rid of the kids that don't really belong there.

But other people have other problems with the kids. Like there are some parents who don't watch their kids. They show up and then just sort of take a break from being parents, if they even bother being parents the rest of the time. They expect grandma to watch the kids, or the person organizing the party to watch the kids, or the group in general to watch the kids, or whatever. So that's rude to begin with, and not safe either. So the people in charge of the party would tell someone that they needed to watch their kids, only to be told that something along the lines of I bought a ticket so watching the kids isn't my job tonight.

Also there have been a few accidents from kids running here and there. And people have on these costumes that they've worked on and spent money on, and they don't want to trip over these kids, and they don't want these kids running into them, but sometimes it's hard to see out of these costumes, and the kids aren't supposed to be running around like that anyway. So sometimes there are accidents and wardrobe malfunctions.

And then there is the problem of having the kids in what is normally an adults only place that serves alcohol. And until recently it has been okay, as long as the kids stay away from the bar area. But now the rules are that the kids are to stay away from the bar area, and what counts as the bar area has changed a little bit, and the kids are to stay out of a certain room where the bar is unless their adult is with them. But last year the kids did not stay out of the room, and there's even a picture of one of the kids actually sitting at the bar.

Also we tried to have some new rules about the smaller children. We had a special children's area, and the children under a certain age had to stay in that area unless their adult was with them, and the adults that brought the children were supposed to take turns watching the kids. And there was a sign-up sheet and you were supposed to take your turn, or turns depending on how many children you brought, and if you didn't want to stay that long in the children's area you were supposed to pay extra to pay the babysitter that one of the parents hired to help out for the evening. But some parents didn't take their turn and didn't pay the babysitter either.

So now there is a rule that the children of the people who work at the place cannot have their children at the place, even if the people renting the place have invited them. They just aren't allowing any children, even their own, in the place with the bar, and to be on the safe side their kids aren't allowed in at all. So that ends the problem of me not liking having kids around that aren't ours.

Not that we think that any of the children, theirs or ours, are drinking alcohol, but it would still look very bad if there was an accident or a surprise health inspection or something.

Since we were still having problems with the older children and teenagers going into the bar area, and the special children's area didn't work out due to some of the parents of the younger children, it was decided that this year should be an adults only party. And that would be better than having some people in the place following the rules and some that don't, and trying to decide who should be allowed to bring their kids and who shouldn't. Just make the new rule that no children are allowed at the party at all.

About twenty people who actually care about the party and are on a committee and such decided to take a vote, and maybe a few of them didn't vote but the rest voted for the adults only party. So that was a couple of months ago, and I thought that the matter was settled. And I think that it was announced a few weeks ago and no one argued about it, though a few said that they were disappointed.

But then someone complained that everyone should vote, or that at least the club officers should vote, not just this committee of random people. So we are having another vote, about a week before the party, just to make a few people happy who didn't get a vote earlier, but we don't really expect the outcome to change.

So now someone is saying that that is too late to decide something like this, and that we should vote now, online. So I think that if it is too late to decide something like this, we should say that it has already been decided and go with the original vote. Or maybe have the club officers vote, since most of them already voted and most have probably not changed their minds.

I personally am about as anti-alcohol as you can get. So if it were just the problem with the bar, I would ask if there was some way to lock up the bar itself without closing off that whole room, and just not have a bar. Send the bartender home for the night. No alcohol. This has always bothered me a bit anyway. Problem solved.

But that isn't the only problem, and I'm not sure that they could do that anyway. Or if they could do that, they might just not rent us the space rather than lose whatever they might make selling drinks that night, which I hope isn't much anyway. But they probably figure in some amount that they hope to make with the bar when they figure up how much to charge for renting the place, and they might not rent to us or they might charge more rent for closing the bar.

In any case, I would be curious how that would go. Would people vote to keep the kids at a party with no bar, or vote to keep the bar at the adults only party.

But that isn't the only problem. If we don't just flat out say that no kids are allowed, then we have the problem of telling specific people that we don't want their kids at the party, that their kids do not follow the rules, or perhaps we would have to tell the parents that they are the ones not following the rules. It seemed more polite somehow to just say no kids allowed instead of only the good kids are allowed, and then having to decide which ones are the good kids.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with telling someone that their kids are not behaving and that they need to step up. But then I don't think I want the job of being the one having to tell that to the parents, and I don't think that anyone else wants the job either. And I especially do not want that job during the party, cause it's our party that we've looked forward to all year, and it's supposed to be fun.

If the vote changes, then I think that other things will have to be discussed. Like if you bring kids then the kids have to stay with you at all times, the kids aren't even allowed to go to the bathroom without you walking to the bathroom with them, and if any kid is somewhere without an adult in charge that both the kid and the parent (or grandparent, or uncle, or whatever) will have to leave the party right then, and their will be no refunds of tickets. And then if that still doesn't work, and one of the kids goes to the bar area and this causes a problem and they don't want to rent us the space next year, where are we going to have the party next year? Cause if people feel that strongly about it not being an adult only party, then I think that they need to come up with an alternate plan ahead of time. It's too late to have it a different place this year, but I wonder if anyone wanting to invite kids has given that any thought.

So that's what I would like to know. Would people vote to close the bar if it meant some of the kids could stay? Would someone volunteer to tell certain parents that they can't bring their kids to the party if it meant some of the kids could stay? Would someone volunteer to enforce really strict rules on the kids who are allowed to stay? Would someone volunteer to plan a whole different party at a different place if we are asked not to come back to this place?

Or do people just want to complain until we give in and invite the kids back to the party, and just leave all the problems for the people who tried to deal with everything last year?