k-brow: the Halloween episode

No crows in Hawaii, but this is a blast from my Stonehenge past. I think it's fitting for the season.

I always think of Samhain as more of a season than a specific day. It starts around the 20th of October and winds up around the first week of November. So I was gratified to hear, this week, that the actual cross-quarter (midpoint between the fall equinox and winter solstice) day of Samhain falls on November 6. Halloween is such a chaotic day in an elementary school that I rarely celebrate my rites on the actual day, preferring to go home after the sugar-soaked revelries at work, and just fall into bed, or on more chipper days, scuttle off to a movie.

Today was amusing, in its exhausting way. I ate lots of candy, which has resulted in a bit of a headache. I came home from work, to find my impulse purchase of some Silk Garden #47 from Little Knits had arrived on the doorstep. No real immediate plans for this bag of 10 skeins of browns and greys, but thinking that it might just become the Clapotis that I make and love and keep for myself.
Acornbud fell prey to the same Little Knits sale, and we kind of decided that Noro maybe shouldn't count as stash, but more like chocolate or tea, a soothing necessity of life. These colors kind of remind me of winter woods; all dead leaves and grey bark, a play of light and shadow. Earthy.

I'd wanted to write about ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, but my wrist is hurting, and that story is long in the telling. So I will close this Halloween entry with 2 funny stories of our custodians at work. We have these great custodians, who really put up with a lot, from bossy demanding teachers and wild, over-indulged children. After school, they often cut loose in utter hilarity. Custodian #1 told me this great story of a Halloween party he'd been to the night before, where someone had dressed himself up as a bong, complete with a big tube of dry ice smoking off the top of his head. The mental image of this costume had us roaring in a punchy sugar-enhanced bit of silliness. Custodian #2 was marching around school after hours wearing a wall clock tied to a string around his neck, and my enormous gold sunglasses (birthday gift from DisKnit) and referring to himself as "Waimanalo's own Flava Flav". I took pix, but he's shy and so you'll have to use your imagination on this. Very funny, though, in a ghetto sort of way.

More later, and maybe even an installment on that novel that DisKnit has tricked me into writing.