Happy Halloween

Halloween (my feast day as Tim calls it) is here, so, of course, I've decorated the house to within an inch of its life.

I've got every table (and a few couches) shrouded in black, a coven of witches, a truckload of pumpkins, and a platoon of skeletons scattered throughout the entire downstairs, not to mention a (fake) black cat or two, and my Edgar Allen Poe raven perched on top of the grandfather clock in the living room overlooking the "cemetery" in the fireplace. Welcome to 13 13 Mockingbird Lane!

Every year, when the decorations come out, Tim comes home that night, looks around with utter disgust, shakes his head and proclaims,"Well, the Great Pumpkin has crapped all over here again." It's our own little Hallmark moment.

And every year, I add or replace something to make it better or creepier (okay, partly to make it better, partly to mess with Tim's mind). And mostly, the reaction to each new addition is a grunt or roll of the eyes and a quick mental calculation of how many more days are left in the Halloween season. (Although, with the stores starting it earlier and earlier each year, I think I may actually have seen him choke back a sob the last year or two.)

This year though, I got a little more reaction than usual. Not once, but twice.

About a month ago, I was at the craft store where they were having a sale on decorative scarecrows. Perfect. The ones in my outdoor display (you didn't seriously think I limited myself to indoors, did you?) were several years old and starting to look like they had tangled with the Wicked Witch's flying monkeys and lost (don't you just hate it when that happens?). Since we were having the work done in the basement, and I couldn't get to my Halloween boxes, I decided to store them temporarily in the dining room on the floor. Laying them down, one on top of the other, out of sight, I put them out of my mind.

About three evenings later, Tim was on the phone and, as is his habit, wandering around the house while talking. The next thing I knew, he was standing next to me demanding to know what I thought I was doing. (I believe my answer was, "Um. The dishes?" with just the right touch of sarcasm.)

After an equally sarcastic response back, which I can't repeat here, he motioned to the dining room and babbled something about "bodies". Apparently, he had entered the darkened room and practically stumbled over my life size (did I forget to mention that?) scarecrows, which gave him quite a start and the person on the other end of the phone a punctured eardrum. ( What exactly does he think I do when he's not here? Perhaps he believed I took Alicia's comment about Arsenic and Old Lace seriously, and decided to start serving elderly men a glass of Elderberry wine in the afternoons.)

Anyway, after his heart rate returned to normal, and I decided to be amused rather than offended (good to know what your spouse of twenty years thinks you are capable of), we had a good laugh. And I got another one just last week.

This time, it was a spider that did him in. While out looking for more pumpkins (You can never have too many big, orange vegetables hanging around. Check with Martha Stewart. Really.) I came across these large metal spiders attached to thin chains for hanging. And they were on sale. Perfect. Three spiders, three lamps with shades just crying out for decorations in the living room. It was destiny.

A few hours later, I happened to be standing in the kitchen when Tim walked through the front door, and, out of the corner of his eye saw one of my new decorations hanging from the lamp about a foot to his left. With a leap that would have done Barishnikov proud, and the reflexes of a trained athlete, he started to swing his briefcase toward the lamp.

It was like watching one of those movies where they put everything in slow motion and you can hear someone (me) shouting, "Noooooooo!", but you know what the disastrous end result is going to be anyway.

Thankfully, he realized that the spider was only a decoration while his assault weapon was still a few inches away from my Waterford lamp and managed to pull back at the last minute(perhaps a bit of an overreaction?). This time, it was my heart rate that needed to return to normal.

Maybe next year, I'll stick with things that are a little less life-like for both our sakes.