HALLOWEEN TIME AGAIN


Halloween, like all holidays, is not as busy around my house as it used to be. But business is picking up......my grandkids are getting old enough to come over now. Colin and Megan live close so i get to see them in their cartoon characters. Last year they were Scooby-Do and a purple Care Bear.

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Also last year i got to see my Connecticut grandson, Illeas, before Halloween, but he was still happy to pose in his Dragon costume.



i got a kick out of this Frankenstein Hand that moved across the table, but Illeas wasn't too sure it was safe.


Even the dogs dressed up last year.





My Tommy seems much happier about this holiday than Lara's Maddy. Looks like she thinks she may have to make an emergency call to the ASPCA.

Here's some memories i wrote about a couple of years ago.
Remember when there were no such things as store-bought costumes??? You were a hobo, or ghost, or wore your mother’s clothes….that was about it. But nobody worried about razors in apples then either.

The Halloween that will always stand out in my mind is the year i begged and begged my mother to let me wear her dangly rhinestone earrings with one of her fancier dresses and high heels (now these were her very nicest earrings, mind you) and she refused. But being the persistent only-child i was, i bugged her until she relented.

Of course, i lost one of them somewhere along my route. I just hated to go home that night. Not that i was afraid i would be punished, because i knew i wouldn’t be. But because i knew how hurt she would be….to lose that favorite earring…and that i had been so careless after i had promised and promised how careful i would be. Nothing hurts a child like that “mother guilt thing” does it? I use it on my kids all the time now..

The only other Halloween i really remember was the last one. My girlfriend and i must have been thirteen or fourteen….still young enough to want to get as much candy as we could (girls didn’t grow up so quickly then, obviously)….but aware enough of our age and height to be a little self-conscious. I remember we had a great time and were amassing great quantities of calories when we went to the last house we ever went to (these momentous occasions need to be documented, yaknow). The woman gave us candy, but guess she just couldn’t help herself from ruining our evening, “Aren’t you girls a little old for this?”

Now i wonder what would prompt her to say that to two young girls. She ruined this holiday for us forever. Maybe she had had a bad day herself, maybe she was just tired from answering the door bell, maybe she was just a frustrated old bitch. I’m sure she had problems of her own (all adults do). But my girlfriend and i didn’t understand that. We only knew we had been slapped in the face. The candy really didn’t even taste too good that night. We felt ashamed that we had been going door to door and embarassing ourselves and didn’t even realize it. Unfortunately, innocence ends so much sooner these days. days.

When my kids were little we lived in a great neighborhood and I made all their costumes. The best was the robot - two cardboard boxes spray painted silver with wire antennae on top. By that time, i always accompanied them on their forages(maybe even stole a snickers bar once in a while when they weren’t looking). Anyway, the neighbors would always invite us all in and they would oooooh and aaaah over their costumes and the kids would just preen with pride.


What memories! Now all the kids go from store to store at the mall. No meeting neighbor kids to go from door to door. No running up the street in the dark, yelling and shouting maybe even howling to the sky just for the fun of it. No discussions of which neighbors gave the best treats and which were so stingy you might as well skip their house or which house to skip because there were rumors that they didn't like kids there.....and besides they never left their porch light on anyway. Everything has changed, but then it always does, doesn't it.


But still…….i always wonder who found that rhinestone earring and what they did with it.

It’s just me, geni

p.s. sorry about the Christmas music. It is much too much hard work to change it and besides the stores all have Christmas stuff everywhere....why not my music??

Check out these

LIVE FROM NEW YORK…..IT’S ME ON LIBERTY ISLAND



CLICK TO ENLARGE


AND HELEN WITH ME AND RAMESES OR XERCES OR PTAH AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART






Hi everybody,

I keep waiting for Helen to write a blog about our wonderful five day vacation and cult trip to New York City. Whenever I think about it, an old tune seems to waft through my mind, like from one of those old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns…… “THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.”

Perhaps it would be wise to start with the GOOD.

Helen and I did have a glorious if sometimes frustrating time. We discovered we had a lot in common (besides CA, of course) since we both loved sleeping late, reading, museums, food, and makeup,(more later on this),. First of all, our prayers were answered and ours was NOT one of the 500 American Airlines flights cancelled that morning…..getting up at 3:30 am to get to St Louis was a bitch though.

Spamalot was glorious! We saw it the first night we were in ny. We had sixth row seats on the left (which we had been advised to get by previous attending clayfans.) I initially was quite upset with these seats because since there were described as four seats from the aisle, I had innocently (read; gullibly) assumed that they were counting from the left center aisle……not the left side wall aisle. The bad thing was that we couldn’t see about 1/6th of the left side of the stage. A nice (read; infinitesimal) glass of wine from the theater bar soon elevated my spirits. The good thing was that we could see Clay as clearly as if he were just 6 feet before us. I slapped Helen’s hand several times to try to curtail that grasping motion she developed early in the show. Spam was hilarious and Clay is quite the comedian. And no one yelled his name from the audience. However, a lot of us gave only him a standing ovation for the final bows to which he gave an open arms, palms up “what can you do?” expression to his fellow actors.





Yes, we did go to the stage door to try for an autograph. (yes, i became a groupie rather late in life.)After the show we were rather slow getting out of the theater and then didn't know where the stage door was......by the time we found where it was......and we had walked past it at least 4 times that day......the crowd was 6 or 7 deep. obviously we are not GOODFANS. but we did wait and see him come out but no signed Playbills for the slow....and slow witted.


GOOD AND BAD:

The location of our hotel, the Milford Plaza, was wonderful…right in the middle of the theater district……and lots of deli’s. On the other hand it was quite old with small rooms and very leaky faucets, which Helen reported to the hotel desk . Conversely, they had just installed new elevators which had no floor numbers inside the elevator. On one trip down, we properly pushed number one for the lobby, entered, and when the doors opened we were in Santa’s Workshop, without the toys and elves, however. This floor seemed to be a storage and working area for the restoration crew. Helen was a little worried, but I had her document our predicament with my brownie instamatic (see below) Luckily the buttons outside the elevators worked properly and we were soon in the lobby. Helen complained nosily, and I delighted in showing the conserirge conciurge, conseeirgh…..man in the booth, my digital pix.





More hotel woes the next day when we returned from our day-long trek through (twice) Central Park and when we finally returned to our room we found we were unable to unlock our door and had a doorknob note saying, “SEE THE MANAGER”. I felt like we were students being sent to the principal, and I knew that that Hell-raisin’ Helen had got us in deep doodoo.

Sure enough, they said they were unable to fix the faucet and we had to move to another room……..ohohohohohohoh.

I was right! This new room was the detention area, obviously……even smaller than the first, on the street side of the hotel (ah, the music of a ny night!!) and instead of a closet it had an ancient wooden armoire…..I kid you not. I kept expecting Ethel Merman to jump out of it and sing “NEW YORK, NEW YORK” at any minute…….




VIEW FROM THE DETENTION ROOM WINDOW

Well, we survived….I refused to let Helen complain any more. I have much more to tell about Tavern on the Green, Metropolitan Museum of art, Statue of Liberty boat trip, Macys and shopping on 5th avenue. My lovely daughter Lara Jean came into ny Sunday afternoon to have lunch and shop with us.

Here’s where the makeup comes in. There’s this great shop about the size of Walmart with just makeup and mirrors and samples and little brushes and q-tips and all kinds of sample applicators…and lots of employee-makeup-artists standing around to convince you how lovely you look. We all bought too much….

Then we went to the gigantic Toys R Us with a roaring t-rex……..but that’s too much to tell…..

TTYL, geni