Holiday story

Tis the season and all that. So here is a story from my childhood.

One year my Grandma came to stay with us for Christmas. By that point in her life she slept maybe five hours a night. So she was in bed by ten and up by three or four in the morning.

So naturally she was up by the time myself and two of my sisters were awake. (At this point there were only two official Sisters of Professor Matthew. The Youngest was yet to join the party).

Somehow we convinced ourselves that rather than waiting the relatively reasonable amount of time for our parents to wake up that it would be acceptable for us to begin since with the presence of Grandma we had an adult observer. Surely that is all that is required on Christmas morn.

And somehow we convinced Grandma this must be true.

Shortly after we began opening the offerings under the tree, our mother struggled halfway down the steps. Not surprisingly, she was in no way full of Christmas cheer.

We were ordered to re-wrap all of our presents and then to return to our beds until released.

Let us just say that I was particularly ... enthusiastic that year about the unwrapping. And in case you were wondering it is a huge pain in the ass to try to cover presents when all that is left is scraps. It took a lot of time and tape just to get them up to half-assed.

Once my parents actually got up they took extra time preparing coffee before we were summoned from our rooms.

To this day I am still not sure how we decided that it was okay for us to unwrap without our parents there. And I am really not sure how we managed to trick our Grandma in to this (pretty shitty that we took advantage of an old lady like this).

So happy holidays to y'all.

And I'm sorry Grandma.

Groundhog

This is pretty lame to just post links to other sites but considering my love for the more peculiar of the holidays (previous posts about Halloween and April Fool's Day) then you got to know I love Groundhog's Day as well.

So watch this while you ponder the impact of Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow today.

In hindsight I could have told you this would happen

So after all my posts about how much I love Halloween, how did I spend it? Let's just say there was no need to warn the authorities.

I did wear one of my very fine smoking jackets to work and it was successful. Or at least a bunch of folks lied to my face about how much they liked it.

Then Wife and I tried to go to a southern diner for dinner only to find out that it had gone out of business. So instead it was a trip to Cracker Barrel where we did buy some candy after the meal. During the meal I also had the joy of convincing her it was not the best idea to spend nearly 500 dollars you kind of don't have on eyeglasses you kind of do not need. Always fun to have to be the spoilsport asshole responsible one (I have a much longer post I'm working on about that topic).

This was followed by sitting on the couch while we listened to a remake of the War of the Worlds broadcast celebrating the 70 year anniversary of that historic event (I'll get to lecture on it this week in my Mass Communication class. Ask me about it if you're interested). Wife enjoyed it so much that she slept through most of it and then was too tired to sing Karaoke with me.

Yep, I'm a wild man. How did you celebrate?

Memories

I thought maybe some folks would have some good costume stories to share. Oh well.

What prompted me to write about costumes in the first place is a trip Wife and I made to the store. We were wandering the aisles and noticed some pet costumes and started looking through them to see if there was anything for Dog. Forcing your pet to wear stuff that makes them look hilarious is one of the best parts of pet ownership. I highly recommend it.

What we shortly realized is just how nice the pet costumes actually were. For costumes for a pet to wear once a year, these were surprisingly high quality. We then realized we were right next to the kids costumes in the store so we wandered through briefly.

These costumes were so nice. Even the cheap ones were pretty decent quality. It was messed up.

When I was a kid, my parents would never spend the money to get us store bought costumes. They were some sort of holy grail that only the rich kids got. But thing was, they also sucked for the most part. There were some top of the line ones or decent rubber masks. But most of them were cheap plastic masks that you were lucky you could see out of. They were also notorious for scratching your eyes. That is if the elastic band that held it on didn't break.

The "costume" portion consisted of a plastic jump suit that often had the name of the character you were supposed to be across the chest. In case the mask wasn't obvious enough I suppose. They were one size fits all. Which of course means one size fits none. They were also extremely easy to rip.

I'm guessing they stopped making them because they were also likely to melt and burn kids. Kids today don't know what they're missing by not having costumes that can injure or maim them.

Rocktober has started

I love Halloween. Shocking, I know. A guy who loves April Fool's Day also loves playing dress up. I'm sure you're dumbfounded right now that this could be the case. But I do.

One year in undergraduate (I almost wrote one year in college but that does not narrow things down too much does it?) I even went so far as to shave one of my eyebrows for a Vanilla Ice costume. Sadly for you that while I have pictures of this event, they exist in the days before digital cameras were commercially available. It took weeks to grow back properly and itched. A lot. Totally worth it.

I'm just that dedicated to my costumes. Last year Wife and I dressed up as the scariest thing imaginable in our little town. Homeless people.

We went to a party where folks were possibly even more dedicated than I am to creating their costumes. Or they just have loads of money to spend on them. Who knows? The funny thing is that I think Wife and I were a little too convincing. We mostly just got stared at by people as if we were there to steal food and beverages. And since no one wanted to talk to us, ended up just eating their food and sneaking out. Like I said, dedicated to a theme.

I have more thoughts on costumes but I think I can get another post out of it tomorrow. So, on the outside chance that I still have readers, why not post in the comments section your favorite costume memory of all time?

Gimme some candy

Happy Halloween everyone. In some ways this has become my favorite holiday. I mean it is hard to top Christmas cause you get presents and maybe that family and friends aspect. And Valentine's day is the anniversary of when me and Wife started dating so that's much more important.

But come on, Halloween you get to play dress up and hopefully get candy. Not from me because I turn off lights and hide from the doorbell (much easier to do in Chicago where many kids only trick or treat in their building). Dress up! Candy! Too cool.

Possibly my best costume ever was the year I went as Vanilla Ice. Wish I had a digital scan so you could witness the majesty. For it was majestic. I even shaved my eyebrow which took days to grow back. For I am willing to sacrifice to make people laugh.

Now I just enjoy one day a year where I get to dress even more casually for class. One of the perks of being a professor is that I get to wear sneakers every day if I want to. And believe me, I want to. But for Halloween I take it a step further and drag out my Misfits skull shirt and other such accessories. I also throw on a cool sports coat cause I'm not a slob after all.

This year the sports coat is a bit warm though. It's still in the low 80s today. I can remember wearing costumes as a kid with a winter coat over it. This year I could wear shorts. Much better. It just doesn't feel or smell much like fall. But the candy still tastes as good.

As a bit of a PS for anyone who reads my blog but not the Wife's, she broke her leg on Monday. Expect a post down the road where I detail what my life as become as caretaker for an invalid.