This is Halloween

I've talked about holidays I used to love that now are at the very least a little uncomfortable for me before. But one holiday that never got ruined for me is Halloween.

I remember a Halloween from when my little sister had just been born, before our brother was, where Mom was Raggedy Anne and Dad was Frankenstein's monster. It sticks out for me because Dad had a very Frankenstein's monster-esque scar on his forehead from tripping and hitting his head on my little sister's bassinet, and Mom was just so damned cute with the little red dot on her nose and the red wig. I don't even remember what anybody else was, but we all went trick-or-treating and then went home and listened to a record of "scary" stories for kids before bed. It was just a really, really great night.

I don't remember when, but it wasn't long before Halloween became another holiday Dad kind of took charge of, and he had this whole, methodical process to it.

September: Start thinking about costumes. He'd sporadically stop one of us kids and say, "Know what you wanna be for Halloween yet?" as we were doing something mundane like getting a snack or going to the bathroom (I remember one time he did this and I really had to pee). Eventually, Mom and my older sis stopped going, and Dad and I stopped dressing up, so the focus became what the two young-uns were going to do. My little brother was Buzz Lightyear at least twice (I feel like it was more, though), in this exact costume, inflatable wings and all:

First week of October: Buy a bunch of pumpkin carving books and kits, almost always from Pumpkin Masters. Then he would take them to work with him illicitly make a bunch of copies of every pattern. After long enough, we had so many pumpkin saws and those little pokey-things that they filled a whole gallon-sized Ziplock, and so many patterns that they filled a whole filing box. So, y'know, this eventually evolved into "get the box with all of the pumpkin shit out of the garage and start looking through the mountain of patterns." We would also put up our decorations. Nothing too outrageous, but we had a respectable amount of stuff outside to show we were a Halloween Family, if you know what I mean.

Second week of October: Buy the costumes. I only remember one year where we waited until within a week of Halloween; Dad was usually super on top of it, even when I was in high school and most of everything else was starting to crumble. This was also the week we needed to finalize our picks for the pumpkin patterns we wanted to carve, as well. I specifically picked the skull pattern in the background in this shot from Hocus Pocus at least twice simply because it was in that shot and that movie is everything:

Third week of October: Buy candy and pumpkins. The candy and pumpkins were almost always retrieved on the same trip to the grocery store, but what's special (to me) about this is Dad would bring a copy of every pattern being carved that year, and he and I would take turns being the one to hold a potential pumpkin and the person laying a pattern on it to see if it would fit nicely. Once I got older and stronger, he'd hand me a few of the patterns and let me find some by myself while he did likewise, but we always double-checked each other's matches to make sure. If we needed more tea lights, he'd get them at this time, too.

Within a week of Halloween: Carve the pumpkins and bake the seeds. This was always a Big Thing. Dad would spread newspaper on the table and do all of the hollowing out himself; I sometimes helped him wash the seeds clean, but he always seasoned them himself. When I was a teenager, I suggested he make some chili pepper ones for himself and cinnamon-sugar ones for everybody, and that year was particularly great- things were starting to go downhill, but it made him genuinely happy to see how much everyone liked the sweet ones, and it made me really happy to see how much he liked the spicy ones. 

Halloween: Go trick-or-treating. Like I said before, the lineup kind of changed, but towards the end of my time living at home, when I was in high school and it was me and Dad taking the young-uns around, it felt special. Dad was more his old self on Halloween, and even though he didn't need me there with them, I insisted on going because I was covetous of that temporary change in him- I wasn't about to miss a chance to spend time with the Dad of the Year from my youth, so I went under the auspices of "helping out" with the young-uns. I think he knew that, too, because we'd sometimes walk holding hands and he'd hug me in a way he hadn't since I was younger than the young-uns. It hurts to remember, but in a good way.

There was one time where an older gentleman in the neighborhood, a widower, noticed me standing more at the back of the walkway up to the door and shouted, "One for Mom, too!" and tossed a bag of the little pumpkin-shaped pretzels he was giving out to me. I caught it, mortified, as Dad, who had gone up to the door with the young-uns, laughed and said, "Oh, no, that's Gab, remember? One of the older girls!" But he called me "Mom" the rest of the time we were out that night, and I lost track of how many times I pushed and punched him for it. 

I think that was my junior year of high school.

Then I went to college. As I write this, I realize I've never thought to ask how much of that faded away, and when. I'm sure it did. But since I was never home for any Halloweens after high school, in my own head canon, Halloween never changed. 

So I think that's why it became my favorite holiday as an adult. I've been rather transient because of school and moving around, so I haven't really been able to come up with my own traditions, but in a perfect world, I'd build off of what we did when I was a kid. I would carve a pumpkin, bake the seeds, and have a costume. But I would also decorate the shit out of wherever I live, since I know Dad would have loved that, and the idea of that makes me super happy and excited. I'm talking, like, flashing lights and animatronics and motion-sensors everywhere. The analogy I use is similar to the one about fireworks and Christmas displays. I would have the absolute scariest, coolest mothereffing house on the block- but I would have at least one cutsie thing to try to keep the littler, more easily frightened kids at ease. And if I could afford it, I would rotate through a few different setups/have enough stuff that it wouldn't be the same within two or three years. Props like this, that look kinda cheesy up close, but from farther out would be creepy af:

Or stuff like this; I'm a huge fan of these light effects that look like ghosts and stuff- it's really awesome what people have come up with the past couple years, and I bet my dad would have loved this crap:

Holy cow, and how fun would it be to go from a Nightmare theme for October

I'd be way more elaborate and get, like, creepy trees and stuff
from a Halloween store, but this is the gist

to something like this for December

I would just love to be able to do that. 

I know none of this house decor stuff will ever happen. I want to be a special ed teacher, and I live in Seattleish where COLA is ridiculous; there's no way I'll be able to afford this much stuff, let alone the house I would need to do it. But it's nice to dream, and to think of how proud my dad would be of me if I pulled it off.

More plausibly, when I eventually have kids, I would, of course, take them in my own costume every year, and if their dad was with me, leave candy out with a note about the honor's system and such. And I'd stay in costume once we got home so that I could give candy out to kiddoes, dressed up in whatever. I particularly like the idea of bonding with kids over their costumes, like, "I was that when I was a kid!" or, "Look, we're both superheroes!"

And if I don't have kids, I would at least attend, if not host a party with spooky music and a costume contest and dry ice in the fake cauldron with the punch; if I hosted, for sure there would be spooky board games like Betrayal at the House on the Hill and Elder Sign* and stuff. Hell, maybe we'd watch Hocus Pocus or Nightmare Before Christmas and have a drinking game of it, too. 

What's also made getting anything of my own really going nigh impossible is I've been working retail for so damned long, even while in school, that this is the first Halloween in years that I can remember where I won't be working for at least the start of the evening. I did get to hand out candy to like four kids a few years ago, but they had been stragglers, kids at the end, since I had been working earlier and got home after sunset. But anyway, I've been so busy lately with a thing that had me in the hospital a few times (I'm fine, nothing even remotely life-threatening, just SUPER annoying) and working two jobs and school, I haven't had the time to get any decorations, a pumpkin, not even candy. And it disappoints me. Like this is my one chance in so many years, and I've pretty much blown it.

Maybe I'll just get a couple mini pumpkins and some candy and put the former on the porch so kids know they can come up to our apartment and get the latter from me. Since I'm nowhere near ready to have kids (situationally- I want them, yeah, but I know I can't right now, not for some time), my best bet is to absorb what I can from the ones that would come to my door. But also, being in an apartment, I highly doubt more than one or two kids will show up, anyway. That makes me sad, too.  

So even though Halloween hasn't been ruined for me by family drama, it's certainly been disappointing, and I have no idea when I'll be able to actually make it better. But what I do know is as soon as I can, I will, and it's going to be amazeballs. Even if just for me. And that's worth smiling about.

*Not Arkham Horror. Fuck that game and its ridiculously complex rules and its nigh impossibility of actually winning. 

The Seattle School of Driving; Or, How to Drive Like an Asshole

I've learned a lot in the year I've lived in Seattle about driving. I did most of my driving before either in my hometown of Las Vegas, or Lafayette, IN. The former didn't really have a "style," as it's a city of mostly transplants from other places, so your best method is just to drive super defensively (to the point where it can actually get kind of aggressive; more on that later) to avoid the douchebags bringing in more erratic or dangerous driving styles from their place of origin. The latter is pretty laid back and calm; you may get oddly passed every now and then, but I found I got angry at pedestrians more than drivers when I was in grad school. 

Seattle drivers are from an entirely different school altogether. Some new techniques I've learned from them:

1) Try to avoid using your blinker whenever possible while changing lanes. Also try not to use it if you're turning anywhere (be it onto another street, leaving or entering a parking space, whatever). People don't actually need turning signals to know what's going on; they should be watching your tires!

2) If you do use your turning signal, make sure it's when you're already 2/3 done with whatever action it would indicate (i.e. once over half of your vehicle is into the next lane or your nose is already in the parking space). Just in case they were too stupid to think your turn signal matters. 

3) Go right on through a four-way stop if someone right in front of you is going, even if someone else in the cross-traffic is waiting. It's just one extra car, it won't make them any later or earlier, right?

4) Wait until the very last second to merge if your lane is ending, and never ever ever let anyone else merge if you're in the lane being merged into at any given time. There's no zipper, it's first-come, first-serve, dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, bitchez!

5) Don't use your mirrors when merging or changing lanes. It's their responsibility to move for you, after all- and you have every right to honk back and flip them the birdy if they honk at you to stop you. 

6) Don't wait for the lines between lanes to break, just cross over a solid if there's room. What  if someone else takes the space!?

7) If traffic on a side street is congested, it's totally okay to block an intersection when the light ahead of you is red. Just go forward as far as you can, no matter what. Every foot counts!

8) If the light ahead is red and the person in front of you is slowing down, you should totally crank it and pass them really fast. First to the light is the first to go once it's green, after all!

9) Red arrows don't mean shit. 

10) It matters not what direction you're driving when the spaces in a parking lot are angles, so long as you're getting a space. 

11) When spaces aren't angled, always block both directions to wait for a space. You don't want some asshole to take it!

12) And don't use a turn signal while waiting; again, you don't want some asshole to realize you're waiting for a space and sneak into yours!

13) And also wait as close as possible to the car about to leave its space so the driver has to guess and hope they have room; and wave an angry fist if they indicate they need you to back up a bit or if you end up realizing you're too close. It's their fault for being in your space, damnit! 

14) If someone isn't going more than five miles per hour over the speed limit, even if they're in the right lane, tailgate them. They shouldn't be driving that slow, you have places to be, gorrammit!

15) If there's traffic and  it looks at all like the lane next to yours is moving even a few more inches per hour than yours, merge into it, remembering the first two rules. Gotta get there faster, and they should know about blinkers. 

16) If someone ever has the gall to not make space for you to get into their lane, find a way to get in front of them, then break-check their ass as many times as possible. That's what they get for not letting you in earlier!

17) Because after all, less than 1/3 of a car's length is more than enough room to switch into the next lane. 

18) Speed. All the time. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

19) There are no rules for traffic circles. Just do what you want, whether you were first or not; the other person will always yield to you.

20) But actual yield signs don't mean shit. 

Ron is every Seattliete ever in Driver's Ed

I'm sure I forgot some, but the basic idea is that Seattle drivers are assholes, and I encounter over half of all of these every time I'm in my car. Sometimes all of them in one day (and a few times, it has happened on one trip). And I see people do more than one of them in a row. Just the other day, a gal cut me off without her turn signal and when not even half of a car length was open between myself and the car in front of me, switched into the new, emerging lane when the line was still solid, again cutting someone off, and then refused to let anyone else in. I should add the second person she cut off honked to try to warn her they were too close to each other, and her response was to stick her middle finger out the window and keep going (so we both had to break-slam). All of that shit is typical. I'm not surprised by seeing it anymore, but that doesn't mean it doesn't piss me off any less. Not only is a lot of shit these people here do illegal, it's DANGEROUS (which yes, is why so much of it is illegal). 

This shit is why I was in not one but two accidents. Mostly because of the last rule. My first accident was because a dude was going at least 60 in a 30 and t-boned me; the second was because a dude was going probably 70 on a 45 exchange that curved really suddenly, so he fishtailed and I went into the ditch to avoid a head-on collision (which the insurance company thus said was my fault, which is an entirely different rant- what's the point of having insurance to "protect" myself when I'm penalized for... protecting myself!?). I gotmy first ticket for doing that aggressively-defensive thing I picked up on in Vegas, too: I was being tailgated by a huge Escalade (and remember, I drive Subaru Impreza), and I kept speeding up to increase the distance, but the asshole eventually pushed me into the blind spot behind a huge 18-wheeler, so I sped up more to pass the 18-wheeler (that was also speeding) and got clocked at my max as I was getting around it. 

But if I had a nickel for every accident I avoided because I got out of the way of some asshole not using their blinker or that insisted on right-of-way somewhere, I could buy tickets to Hawaii for me and my boyfriend. And probably a hotel for a few nights, too. And some pina coladas.

Seriously, this was me my first couple months here:

I can drive defensively enough that I do get honked at a lot, but nowadays, my attitude is more like this:

Now don't get me wrong, Seattle traffic is terrible. Honestly, I think  it's worse since that study. It takes me over an hour to go 12 miles in the middle of traffic on a route that can take me 17 minutes when there isn't. I've lost way more than 63 hours in my year here. I kind of hate that I have to be out the door before 8am in order to be positive I won't be late for a 9:30am shift. And while the assholery isn't the sole cause of the problems (there are far too many choke points on each highway, and none of them were designed anticipating the volume of drivers during peak hours using  them now), it certainly doesn't help (the choke points wouldn't be as bad if people zipper merged, for example).