Where Did Halloween Go?

 

Nobody warned us that one day Halloween would become a place we could never actually go back to.

Not the date.

Not the decorations.

The feeling.

Halloween felt enormous.

October seemed to last forever.

You’d spend weeks discussing costumes at school like you were preparing for the Met Gala, except somebody’s entire costume was a black garbage bag and vampire teeth.

There was no overnight shipping.

No scrolling through 900 costume ideas.

You worked with whatever your mom could find at Walmart, Kmart, the drugstore, or buried in a plastic tote in the basement.

And somehow?

You were THRILLED.

The cheap vampire cape.

The witch hat that refused to stay on your head.

The face paint that started itching approximately eleven minutes after application.

Those plastic fangs that made it impossible to speak without drooling.

You didn’t care.

You looked terrifying.

At least you thought you did.

And that was enough.

Halloween afternoon at school was practically unbearable.

Nobody was learning anything.

Your teacher knew it.

You knew it.

The clock knew it.

Every minute between lunch and dismissal lasted approximately six years.

Then that final bell rang.

You went home.

And the house felt different.

Mom was making dinner, but nobody actually wanted dinner because there was CANDY COMING.

The local news was talking about trick-or-treating weather.

Some Halloween special was already playing on TV.

Outside, daylight slowly started disappearing.

And then came that very specific moment.

That October-blue sky.

The temperature dropping.

Leaves scraping across the driveway.

A jack-o’-lantern glowing on somebody’s porch.

And suddenly the neighborhood belonged to kids.

You didn’t need directions.

You didn’t need a group chat.

You didn’t need somebody sharing their location.

You saw costumes coming down the sidewalk and you RAN.

There was always somebody’s older sibling who mysteriously became responsible for six children.

There was always one kid whose costume required explaining.

“What are you supposed to be?”

“NINJA SKELETON.”

Obviously.

You traveled in packs.

Across lawns.

Through piles of leaves.

Up driveways.

Down sidewalks.

Your plastic bucket banging against your knee while you tried to keep up.

And there was an entire unspoken neighborhood economy.

Some houses were legendary.

Some houses gave you one tiny piece of candy.

Some houses told you to take two.

And occasionally…

you found THE house.

The house where the person holding the bowl said:

“Go ahead. Take a handful.”

A HANDFUL?

You had just encountered royalty.

There was no online neighborhood map telling you where the best candy was.

Information traveled the old-fashioned way:

a breathless kid sprinting down the sidewalk yelling something important.

And eventually your bucket became heavy.

Actually heavy.

Your fingers were freezing.

Your costume was falling apart.

Your hair looked insane.

Whatever makeup had started on your face was now somehow on your coat.

And you still begged:

“One more street.”

Just ONE more.

Eventually somebody’s mom decided civilization had ended for the evening and marched everybody home.

Then came the second half of Halloween.

The floor dump.

You know the one.

You turned your bucket upside down and suddenly the carpet disappeared beneath a mountain of wrappers.

Now negotiations began.

You had inventory.

You had leverage.

You had enemies.

Three things nobody was trading:

Reese’s.

Kit Kats.

And anything full-size.

Meanwhile the weird candy nobody wanted slowly migrated into one sad pile.

Your sibling tried to convince you that five pieces of terrible candy were somehow worth one Reese’s.

Nice try, criminal.

Your parents collected their completely unauthorized candy tax.

You complained.

They ignored you.

The television played somewhere in the background.

Your costume lay crumpled on the floor.

Your cheeks were still cold from being outside.

And for one night, staying up a little too late eating chocolate felt like absolute freedom.

We didn’t know there was anything special about it.

That’s the part that gets me.

We weren’t thinking,

“I need to remember this.”

We assumed there would always be another October.

Another costume.

Another night running through leaves.

Another candy pile on the living-room floor.

Another year when Halloween felt impossibly far away until suddenly it was HERE.

And then somewhere along the way, without any ceremony at all, we got older.

The costumes disappeared.

The plastic buckets disappeared.

The neighborhood somehow got smaller.

October started moving faster.

And eventually we became the people standing in the doorway holding the candy bowl.

That part is still strange.

Because sometimes I’ll open the door on Halloween and see a group of kids tearing across the lawn, costumes crooked, buckets swinging, somebody yelling for everybody else to hurry up…

and for half a second,

I remember exactly what it felt like to be on the other side of that door.

To be little.

To have nowhere else to be.

To believe the night was still young because there were porch lights glowing three streets away.

Maybe that’s what we actually miss about Halloween back then

Not the candy.

Not the costumes.

Not even the decade.

We miss having an entire night ahead of us and absolutely no idea how quickly it would all go.

We thought we had endless Octobers.

Turns out, we were spending them.

And damn…

they were good ones.

I'll Take One Yard of This

 How many of you have gone to the fabric store and found fabric you like but you have no idea what you make out of it so you get just one yard.  Well I have a ton of those just one yard pieces.  What to do with them.  I don't quilt so....

 I am taking this class on Saturday.  I had bought the pattern in case I could not attend the class. It is super easy to make, 2 pieces to the pattern.  The hardest part is picking out fabric.  I am making mine reversible which uses up 2 of those 1 yard pieces.  

Pattern is on Etsy: Sully's Upcycled Box Top Sewing Pattern.  Go get a copy it comes in a ton of sizes and have fun.  I have some scraps of fabric kind of like abstract art that I want to sew together and make a top out of it.  But that will be later.

I did a test run cos I wanted to see what size I needed to make. I made the small and there is plenty of room but then it is to be oversized.  I decided I wanted mine longer and the sleeves a bit longer too so I added to the pattern and made another one. I like this one much better and the sleeves could still be a bit longer.

Sorry I do not know how to turn the pictures upright.

 

How Long Can I go Without Water

 This morning I get up and see a lot of water and mud in the street, I knew it wasn't the neighbor across the street watering again and thought maybe the fire hydrant, it is in my yard.  Nope it was up the street from there.  I went outside and the neighbors on the side of my house across the street were all standing around.

There was a large buckle right by the fire hydrant and a pool of water right as you head into my cul de sac.  Water main break started at 2, here it is 7 and no sign of the city.  It took 4 neighbors to call and finally they came out after 9, shut off our water, said they could not completely shut off the main break and brought in 2 large steel plates to cover the hole that the water was creating.  

So here we sit 6 hours later, still no water and no sign of the city, really?  It is not surprising knowing our city, we have FIFA in town and I am sure they take preference although they dont pay the water bills or taxes or anything else.  

I have jugs of water, along with bottled water for the cats and I. I did manage to get a shower and wash all the dishes from yesterday and fill a tub for flushing a toilet, but the tub wont last long.  I thought about making myself a litter box out in the garage.

So how long will it take the city to fix this.

At one point before they came we had a guyser that sprayed a neighbor house. I am pretty sure if that tall tree had not been there they would have had broken windows.  

At least it is not winter and ice and we still have electricity. It is supposed to rain tomorrow night maybe we will all be out in the street taking a shower.

 

 

Licorice

 No not the candy, but I do love licorice even the black stuff.

 Licorice is one of my feral toms. I got him trapped 2 summers ago and got him fixed. He was Charcoal's dad, one of Lila's babies, a girl.  She got hit by a car and was only 6 months old. I never got to pet her.

It has been almost 3 years since he has been coming to hang and eat.  Lately I have been able to nose bop him but tonight he let me pet him for about a minute as long as I stayed in the house and reached my arm out the door.  

Lila let him hang with her and the kittens, I often wonder if they recognize him, cos when they see him on the deck they run to the window and make little chirpy noises, especially Lila.  

As we all know with ferals everything is on their terms, so I will take the baby steps with him that he lets me have. But for tonight it is a huge score.

 

Sweet Potato Sourdough Bread

 I was talking with a friend and somehow we got to sweet potato bread.  I do love them and thought I wonder if I can make sweet potato sourdough, sure enough.  Found a recipe.  It is the basic bread with cooked/cooled/mashed sweet potatoes.  

Trying to incorporate slippery sweet potatoes mashed into bread dough is near impossible.  Recipe called for 200 grams or 2 cups.  That was wrong, 200g is almost a cup, I barely got 1/2 cup incorporated.  I went ahead and let all the steps work and baked it. It is very pretty and while you can not taste the sweet potato, there is a slight yellow to the bread and it is a bit more tender.

The recipe ended in the recycle bin and I wont try that again.  Next time I will make the bread like pumpkin or banana bread. 

 

Baptism Part 2

 I was baptized this past Sunday.  It was a very emotional day for me, I might have cried a lot.  My neighbor who often comes with me to church stood up with me and several laid hands at the end of the service.  It was made even better when the pastor said it was his first baptism.  

I had been feeling unsettled the past couple of years not really knowing why.  Maybe this was it and God was just waiting for me to research and see that I had never been baptized.  I do feel a calming this week.

And to top it off I had front row seats to Greg Gutfeld/Tom Shillue.  

You are never too old to do anything in life, the only stopping you is you.   

Baptism

 When I was in 3rd grade we lived in Carlsbad, NM, went to the Methodist church.  During our 3rd grade year in Sunday School we did studies, etc and received a Bible right before school started at the end of summer.  I thought we were baptized as well.  But maybe not.  If my dad was still here he would know.  My mother thinks dad did not get us baptized because he wanted us to be an adult and make up our own mind.

Knowing my dad he would have bugged me my whole life until I did.  He did not.  Which makes me think I had to have been baptized then.  

I have looked through all the family records my dad kept, looked through all my records and  found nothing.  I emailed the Methodist church in Carlsbad but they are not the one I attended and said that church had closed and the records were probably sent to the Conference office in ABQ.  So I emailed them and now I wait.

I know you do not have to be baptized to enter Heaven, but now I feel empty that I may not have ever been baptized, it has upset me quite a bit.  When I get an answer, if I have not been baptized I will ask my pastor to do so.   

I Want My Childhood Back

 

We are often called “the elderly,” but that quiet label hides a truth most people rarely pause to consider: we are the last living witnesses of a world that no longer exists.

If you look closely, you might notice gray hair, slower steps, or the quiet patience that time alone can teach. But if you truly listen to our stories, you will discover something far more extraordinary. We are not simply older people moving through the final chapters of life. We are the survivors of one of the most breathtaking transformations in human history — a generation that walked from the slow, deliberate rhythm of an analog world into the dazzling speed of a digital one without ever losing our sense of humanity along the way.

Our journey began in a very different place.

Many of us were born in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, when the scars of World War II were still fresh across Europe and Asia and the world was slowly learning how to hope again. Cities rose from rubble. Families rebuilt lives after years of uncertainty. Childhood unfolded in ways that would feel almost unrecognizable to younger generations today. Our toys were simple: marbles played in dusty yards, hopscotch drawn on cracked sidewalks, checkers and cards gathered around kitchen tables while the smell of dinner filled the house. When the streetlights flickered on in the evening, it was the universal signal that childhood adventures were over for the day and it was time to go home.

There were no smartphones, no streaming videos, no endless scroll of digital distractions. Instead, we built our memories in the real world — with scraped knees, laughter echoing down neighborhood streets, and friendships that formed face to face, without the mediation of screens.

Music became one of the defining soundtracks of our youth. The 1960s and 1970s arrived like a wave of color and rebellion. We watched culture shift around us, carried by electric guitars and voices that dared to question the world. For many of us, gatherings like the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969 symbolized something powerful: the belief that peace, music, and community could reshape the future. Hundreds of thousands of young people stood together in muddy fields, listening to artists who poured raw emotion into towering speakers known as the Wall of Sound. Those concerts were not merely entertainment; they were moments when strangers felt like a single generation singing the same hope under an open sky.

Education looked different then, too. Our notebooks were filled with handwritten notes carefully copied from chalkboards. Research required patience, long hours in libraries, and stacks of heavy books rather than a quick internet search. We learned to slow down and think through ideas because information did not arrive instantly. Mistakes were corrected with erasers and ink, not with the click of a delete button.

Love carried a different rhythm as well. We fell in love while vinyl records spun on turntables and cassette tapes clicked softly inside plastic players. Music became the background to first dances, long conversations, and dreams about the future. Those relationships grew into marriages, families, and lives built step by step through the 1980s and 1990s — decades that saw technology begin to reshape the world around us.

Yet nothing compares to the bridge our generation has crossed. We are the only generation to have experienced an entirely analog childhood and a fully digital adulthood. We remember waiting days — or sometimes weeks — for handwritten letters to arrive in the mail. We remember rotary telephones and party lines where neighbors could accidentally overhear conversations. Communication required patience and anticipation. Today, we can see the face of a loved one across the ocean instantly on a screen small enough to fit in a pocket.

The world changed in ways few could have imagined. We watched humanity land on the Moon in 1969, a moment when millions of people sat in living rooms staring at black-and-white televisions as Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first steps on another world. We saw the rise of personal computers, the birth of the internet, and eventually the arrival of smartphones that placed entire libraries of knowledge in our hands. Machines that once filled entire rooms now exist on devices lighter than a paperback book. We moved from punch cards and mechanical tools to artificial intelligence and global networks connecting billions of people instantly. And through every shift, we adapted.

Our bodies carry the marks of the times we lived through as well. We grew up during fears of polio and tuberculosis, illnesses that once terrified entire communities before vaccines helped bring them under control. We witnessed the global challenges of pandemics and health crises across decades, including the recent silence and uncertainty of COVID-19, which reminded the world that resilience is still required in every generation.

Science itself transformed before our eyes. We saw the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, the decoding of the human genome at the turn of the century, and the early steps into gene therapy and advanced medicine. Transportation evolved from simple bicycles and steam engines to hybrid vehicles and electric cars gliding almost silently through city streets.

Few generations have witnessed such sweeping change. And yet, despite everything that evolved around us, certain things remain unchanged. We still understand the joy of a cold glass bottle of lemonade on a hot afternoon. We still remember the taste of vegetables picked straight from a garden. We still know the value of a long conversation that unfolds slowly without a keyboard or screen interrupting it.

Our memories stretch across decades. We have celebrated births, mourned losses, watched friends depart, and carried their stories forward. Those of us who remain share something rare: the experience of standing at the crossroads of history, holding memories from a world that younger generations know only through photographs and stories.

But we are not relics. We are living bridges. Our perspective reminds the modern world that progress does not have to erase wisdom. The speed of technology does not have to replace patience, kindness, or reflection. We remember what life felt like before everything moved so fast — and that memory carries quiet lessons worth sharing.

So when someone calls us “elderly,” we can smile. Because behind that word lies something extraordinary. We are the generation that crossed two centuries, witnessed eight decades of transformation, and walked from the age of handwritten letters to the era of artificial intelligence.

What a life we have lived. What a remarkable story we continue to carry. And if you belong to this generation, take a moment today to look in the mirror and recognize something powerful. You are not simply growing older. You are living history. You are part of a generation that will always remain one of a kind. And perhaps, in the quietest and most meaningful way, you are becoming legendary.

5 (make that 6) (Make that 7) (make that 8)

 I attend a "senior" church, I am considered one of the kids there and I just turned 70.  We have many late 80's and 90's and some so close to 100 they can smell  it.  

However this year is not starting out well. So far we have lost 5, 100-92 in age.  We know it is an older church and life happens but 5 in 2 1/2 months is too much.  The congregation feels the loss and what it means for the future.  There are a couple I feel will be adding to the list before summer.  

We hit 200 years in 2038 and I have to wonder if we will still be here in 12 years.  

 Soak up all the stories, history, etc you can from the seniors because before you know it you will be on that list.

 So we had another loss making it 6 so far this year.  Is there something in the building?  This is too much.  

Funeral #7 was last week.  Maybe God is telling us something, we better our affairs in order?   

 Funeral #8 was last week.  Please make it stop.  

Loaf #13

 I think I finally got this sourdough thing.  This last loaf was perfect.  I did get a beeswax bag which makes all the difference in the world.  I also got a cast iron oval dutch oven which makes a difference too.

I have been using up my discard, brownies, muffins, pancakes and waffles. I want to try biscuits this week and some scones and choc chip cookies.

 

I did start work at Magpie 2 weeks ago, it is so laid back, no feeling like you have to be careful about everything you do or say.  Since I worked at the place that shall not be named I know how to process so I just get to be on my own.  10 of us from the other place over here now, should be fun. I need to work on a couple of others to come over. 

RIP Vernon

 Vernon went home this morning, fitting that he went home on Sunday.  I felt kind of like I lost my dad all over again. I loved to sit and listen to the stories of his life. We had his 100th birthday party last summer. It was such a great party.  He said he was going to start over this year and be 1 again.  He had 4 boys and 1 girl.  

Vernon served, was part of the team that drew the map of Alaska when it became a state from the seat in an airplane, taught school because he did not like what kids were being taught, or not being taught.  He was full of funny stories of his life.  

Vernon was one of those men who did a lot of great things but he did not do them for recognition he did them out of love for the country and wanting a better world for future generations. He was very Republican (maybe why I loved him so much).  

I hope he and my dad can connect cos I think they would be great friends as dad would be 102 on the 16th.  

Vernon thanks for the stories and making me feel like a part of my dad was still here.  I will miss you and I hope to see you again cos I know you still have stories to tell me.   

Superbowl

 I am not a football fan and have never watched a Superbowl not even for the commercials.  But have you seen the new Budweiser ad for the Superbowl.  

Having watched the Decorah eagle nest for many years I felt the majesticness of the commercial when those wings came out as the horse lifted up to jump the log.  Like the guy in the ad I got the sun in my eyes, the tears that just came out and the goosebumps.  

 My hat's off to you Budweiser for one of the best commercials on TV ever. But no I am still not watching the Superbowl.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_mh-v02-Tw

Finally 9 is the Lucky Number

 I baked loaf 9 this morning.  It rose really great and i saw the bubbles and thought maybe this would be the one.  Each loaf I learn more and finally I got it.  This is not for the faint of heart, regular bread is so much easier but this is so much better.

Sourdough #9