gourds | Runningamuck

I know I’m not alone in my love for Fall. I love the cooling weather, the changing colors, the baking and cooking that the cooling weather allows, the time with family, soup and cornbread, pumpkins, turkeys… I love almost every aspect of Fall.

EXCEPT Halloween. I’m know I’m not alone on this one either, I just feel the need to vent. I understand that other families enjoy this “holiday”. I get it that lots of families enjoy it and don’t worry about the satanic aspects of the day. Fine. I understand. But even if we did celebrate Halloween (we have a harvest party instead), as the mother of four young children, I ABHOR (hows that for a fancy-schmancy word?) the scary costumes and decorations. Fine, have a few rows in your store dedicated to this event but for the love of nightmare-free nights, do you HAVE to put the life-size skeletons, ghost and goblins just inside the entrance of the store? I walk in, with my four very impressionable young minds in tow with no clue that there is something terrifying lurking on the other side of the door from us. Why can’t it be a big pumpkin? A life-size scarecrow? A 10 ft tall cornucopia with people dressed up as gourds and corn-on-the-cobbs dancing around inside it? ANYTHING!

Course, what really takes the cake are the huge Halloween superstores that take up residence in previously empty stores for the month and a half before the fantastic event. Their windows brimming with every imaginable item of evil and terror. We were driving right passed one just this morning and what was pacing the sidewalk outside the door? The Grim Reaper, complete with skeleton face and hands was doing his best to attract attention and “entice” everyone into his store. (Umm, don’t people usually want to run the opposite way of the Grim Reaper?! Just saying) And of course, I had to stop at the red light right in front of him. I mentally willed my children not to look out the right side of the van as the Grim Reaper waved his flesh-less hands our direction.

Thanks Mr. Reaper but I think we’ll pass. See, I have a van full of precious young cargo. Cargo who, after simply looking your direction, will wake up screaming bloody murder, in the middle of the night (those would be during my beauty-rest hours and if you notice, I don’t get enough of those in the first place), for the next 12 days straight. And it’s really fun when all four wake up at four different times during the night (again, beauty-rest interrupted is NOT beauty-rest) to make it an all night activity for me; quieting the cries, slowing down the pint-sized hyperventilating lungs, wiping tears, blowing noses, filling every outlet in the bedrooms with nightlights until it looks like it’s high noon, and praying out loud over each sweat-soaked precious head of hair that it’s Creator would see fit to banish the terror and replace it with sweet, peaceful slumber.

Nope, we’re gonna pass Mr. Reaper. We will ALWAYS pass.

Oh. By the way, the munchkins didn’t see him thankfully. At least this time.

Now I have to rethink my driving routes as well as shopping routes for the next 6 weeks.