Halloween

Well I don't know if anything is scarier than the current economic picture but last night was Halloween.

I generally work Friday nights, my token appearance on an "amateur night", but booked off last night to involve myself in the festivities. What a night it was. Daughter is nine now so Halloween has become a simple commercial venture, make as many calls as possible and maximize your return of "free sugar".

At 5:30 we sat down to pasta with daughter, daughter's BFF, BFF's mom, BFF's mom's boyfriend, McGyver, T-money, wife and I. Simple bolognese to maximize carb intake for the upcoming marathon. Shortly past six all others head out leaving me to side the table, start the dishes and dole out candy to visitors.

Daughter and BFF are witches, as is BFF's mom, T-Money (age 5) is a King, wife is a monk/priestess from another planet, quite disturbing actually. McGyver and BFF's mom's boyfriend are plain clothes, or dressed as Dad's escorting their kid's trick or treating if you will. The weather has actually broken, the rains gone and it is a mild overcast evening - perfect for massive acquisition of candy.

Over the course of the next hour and a half we are visited by close to 100 kids and just around 7:45 daughter and BFF return with bags full, T-Money packed it in after about 45 minutes and has just been wandering around in a sugar induced zombie state for the past hour insisting that his candy stay on the floor - better to select his next victim.

McGyver has planned a neighborhood fireworks display, permit obtained online at 5:30 pm, so the kids are now running around with sparklers while the "Wheelbarrow of Excitement" makes it's way into the front yard. A solid ten minute display of pyrotechnics wraps up the evening's entertainment before we close up shop shortly after 8 bells. Guests, and neighbours, depart and while I tidy wife and daughter sort the loot into various piles, sours here, chocolate there etc.

Daughter is always generous with her bounty, though she doesn't share her sours, so she offers up some KitKats and then is finally prodded into bed at 9ish. We've always gone with the "let her gorge" theory so sleep comes slowly but does come.

Soccer is at 12:45 today, it'll be interesting to see if the buzz has worn off by then.