Happy Halloween!

 

AI elephant cavorting in autumn leaves

I'm not doing anything special to celebrate the day, but if you are, I hope it's all good and no ghouls (unless you like ghouls). This week I've been making notes about the romance novel (novella?) I will be starting tomorrow for NaNo2. Generally, I'm a "pantser" not a planner, meaning that I have a vague idea about my story and let the words flow, which usually results in a gigantic mess. I often dump the whole thing or change it massively later. But this time I have a structure outlined and seven pages of notes for characters and scenes. Whoa. Who am I and what have I done with Paula Light?

Cottage by the Sea has shared some questions for today, themed to a song ("I've Written a Letter to Daddy") from a movie (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane), neither of which I have never heard/ seen, but I thought I would give the questions a go.

1. Do you like scary movies?

Generally not, with a few exceptions. I especially don't enjoy movies where the entire purpose is to make the audience jump in fright or recoil in horror. I do like psychological terror if it's done well ~ The Shining is a good example.

2. Tell us about one of your favorite childhood toys.

It's a tie between Barbies and Super Spirograph. I liked the Barbie dolls back when you bought a few and then collected cool outfits and accessories (or made them). It was fun to peruse the catalogs and mark which outfits to get next, while now when you want to switch outfits you basically buy a whole new doll dressed up as whatever with accessories. My mom made a giant doll house for my Barbies out of a moving box (and one Ken ~ he had a harem, lol), wallpapered it in purple floral to match my new room, and crocheted little rugs to go inside. 

Super Spirograph was much better back in the day when the disks came with tiny holes and pins so you could anchor the disks firmly onto your paper in hopes of making a perfect design with no wobblies. I find the new Spirographs impossible to deal with because there are no pins and you never end up with a perfect design. They have PUTTY for attaching the disks to your paper now (even when they call the set the "original" Spirograph ~ it is not!), and the disks inevitably move. I would sit for hours creating abstract patterns with colored pens and do them over if there was even a tiny mistake. But god forbid a kid pokes her finger with a pin and sues. Bah.

3. Did you ever go through an awkward phase? 

My whole life is an awkward phase! I've always felt like I don't really fit in anywhere and struggle to be part of whichever group I'm currently hanging out with, whether family or friends or coworkers. I don't look awkward usually (I did as a child because I was overweight at a time when most kids were skinny), so that's helpful, but internally I feel like an emotional klutz. I am constantly censoring myself, which is good in a way because most people like me (I think), but it's also stressful. I don't believe people should let themselves be completely uncensored, but for whatever reason I am extremely cautious in person.

4. Can you think of another movie where scary things happen in a big old house?

As I said, I avoid scary movies, but The Shining was full of fright (in an old hotel). Hereditary, which I hated, was full of scaries in a house and outside it too. What a horrible movie! A friend treated a bunch of us, so I went against my better judgment. Oh, and of course there's the old classic film Rosemary's Baby, which took place in an apartment building. I sometimes can enjoy a vampire movie, and usually they are set in old houses or castles. Frank Langella's portrayal of Dracula was great, imo. I also loved Johnny Depp in Dark Shadows.

5. Tell us about a Halloween costume you really enjoyed wearing.

Let's see... most aren't too memorable. When I was a child, I had the standard store-bought clowns and witches, but one year at age 12 I wasn't prepared (because I thought I was too old for such nonsense), and a couple friends insisted we all go T&T. I tried to improvise a gypsy with a full skirt, white blouse, headscarf, jewelry, and tons of makeup, which apparently made me look like a hooker, which is what one man said when he opened his door. As an adult, I had a ghost costume I liked for a few years because it was loose enough to wear a shirt underneath, and until recently October 31 was a cold day in SoCal. I was a pirate a few times, once with my little daughters as pirates too for a party we threw at home. That was fun! I was a 1920's gangster for a murder mystery party. Once, I created my own "clever" costume as a tribute to the song "Devil with the Blue Dress On" (Mitch Ryder): blue dress with ragged-cut hem, red shoes, red stockings, red devil horns, etc. I was proud of that one. My favorite would probably be when a bunch of friends and I did costumes in sync from "Hotel California" (Eagles) ~ there was the hostess at the door, the night watchman, etc. I was "pink champagne on ice" with pink pants, a pink sweater, and a necklace that kinda sorta resembled ice cubes.

6. Which kind of spooky movie villain do you find scarier: supernatural monsters (Dracula, Wolfman, ghosts, etc.) or human monsters (Baby Jane, Michael Meyers from the Halloween franchise, etc.)? 

Humans are always the scariest creatures because they're scary in real life, while you can tell yourself that the fictional monsters aren't real. That said, the bees in Candyman totally freaked me out. There was also what I call "the coconut monster" in a Creature Feature movie my mom and I watched ~ it was about a sailor who turned into a monster from submarine radiation and began to kill his crewmates. As I recall, he was a giant white shredded blob, but I could be misremembering. I still love coconut!

7. Orange and black are the traditional Halloween colors, with orange representing the autumn harvest and black symbolizing all things scary and mysterious. Are you wearing either color as you answer these questions?

I'm wearing a black shirt with a motif from Alice in Wonderland. It's one of my favorite shirts, and I wear it year-round, not just on Halloween. Btw, I don't think black is necessarily scary, and my black kitty Inky is an absolute doll! 

8. Jack-o-lanterns originated in Ireland, though instead of pumpkins, they carved gourds. When Irish immigrants arrived in the US, they used pumpkins because they were more readily available. Did you decorate your home with a jack-o-lantern, or anything else, for Halloween?

Not really, but I did have a Michael's coupon, so I bought some fake fall flowers, and there is a teeny tiny pumpkin in the bunch. I'm tired of my plants dying (except for the hardiest ones) due to lack of real light in my condo ~ I have patio doors, but it's not convenient to put plants near them ~ so I am slowly replacing dead plants with fake ones.

9. Think back to your trick-or-treating days. Which candy were you happiest to find your bag?

Well, it's all kind of silly because we can buy our favorite candy whenever we want. That said, I love any type of Reese's PB cups, Snickers, Milky Way, regular and peanut M&Ms, and Almond Joys. The little Hershey's minis are good too. I'm not a fan of licorice or sour squishy candy. Oh, I remember when people would throw in those cheapo tubes of Smarties, yuck! Who even likes those? Right in the trash. Bubble gum was fun to get since I didn't usually buy it.

Enjoy the day! I'll be doing my usual Saturday grocery shopping and chores with a stop at the library. I may bake a loaf of pumpkin bread (cake) ~ I picked up the Trader Joe's mix the other week. They put caramel baking chips right next to the pumpkin bread mixes, so like a sheep I bought those too. I guess I should dump them in there? I don't know. It's scary to mess with the recipe like that. Boo!