Halloween Nostalgia and The Moving Story of 2009

Things that make me nostalgic might not do the trick for you, but here's my attempt to give you some warm fuzzies. 

With the "Holiday Season" around the corner, and by that I mean fall, Halloween, Turkey Day, Christmas, and New Years, there are plenty of chances to remember fun holiday times from your childhood, carry on old traditions, and make new ones.

Fall
First off, fall is a time to pick apples, make caramel apples, bake pies, and hang out in pumpkin patches.  Having grown up surrounded by these things on an orchard, the cool weather brings back memories of these fun times.  I highly recommend taking a trip to your nearest orchard! 

Halloween
Halloween always included three very important traditions:
1.  Carving pumpkins and baking the seeds, salting them, and eating them.  Yum!  I have big plans to do this these next two weekends. 

Halloween 2009

2.  Going trick-or-treating.  We lived out in the middle of no where, so my mom, brother, and I used to travel to town to Cousins Cassie, Nici, and Ben's house to go trick-or-treating in the 'burbs.  We had so much fun getting dressed up and collecting bags filled with candy, then sorting it afterwards on the dining room floor.

3.  Watching "Disney's Halloween Treat".  Folks, this is a classic compilation of the scary parts from all of the Disney movies before 1982 strewn together in a cute way and narrated by either a pumpkin in later versions of this, or by the magic mirror in my favorite version.  A good friend got me a copy of this a few years ago, but it can be hard to come by the original!  This goes for $200 on amazon, but luckily for us, we can watch it on youTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyuwSOqcnrk 

The Big Moving Story
And finally, as long as we're taking a trip down memory lane, in recent memory, last year about this time, Dave and I moved in together!  I spent a week or two packing everything I owned into boxes in my living room, and then the big moving day came.  Good friends Matt, Yolanda, and Josh helped with the big move.  We rented a Uhaul, grabbed a load from Dave's place, unloaded it, grabbed a HUGE load from my place, and just as we pulled up to our new place, it started raining... and then the rain turned into snow.  By the next day, we had almost two feet of snow at our new home! I had to clean out the old place because new folks were moving in that very next morning.  I spent the whole day scrubbing and getting rid of the last of the odds and ends at the old apartment. 

Wedge the chinchilla.

The interesting part came when Dave left for a Phish festival in California the day after the snowstorm.  Luckily, he was able to get out, although I believe he was delayed a few hours.  The thing is, before he left, while we were unpacking, we realized that we had a little spider problem in our new place.  Okay, it wasn't little.  We pretty much had aggressive hobo spiders running out in all directions, as well as webs  and sacks just about everywhere.  It was straight out of a horror movie.  Rather than continue to unpack, we agreed that chemicals might need to be involved.  Now, we are both educated people, and we realize that these these chemicals are not only toxic, but may be linked to certain types of cancer.  We took a trip to McGuckins, got some help from the men who know everything, and decided on the least dangerous fogger we could find.  Dave left for his trip and I evacuated our plants, covered our fish, and took the chinchilla in his carrier to my car.  I put a fogger in three rooms, most of which had just furniture and boxes, let them off, and left with nothing but a change of clothes, plants, and the chinchilla, Wedge.

It was late, I didn't really have any plans on where I was going to go, so I went and grabbed a pizza, then realized that I'd be welcome at Dave's place, which still had lingering supplies that hadn't been moved.  I showed up on their doorstep with Wedge and they welcomed me.  I hung out, ate my pizza, and showered.  Oh did that shower feel good!  I blew up Dave's air mattress and slept a good night's sleep with Wedge hanging out in a makeshift cage next to me.  The next day, I was ready to return to the house and get rid of the spiders that should now be dead.  Unfortunately, I had left all of the plants in the car overnight, and most of them froze overnight and died.  Oops!

From there, things got better.  I aired everything out and vacuumed the whole place and was finally ready to start unpacking.  I went out with friends for Halloween and had a good time.  I also saw a VERY scary movie at the theater with friends and was a bit scared to be at home alone in the new place.  Dave returned a few days later from his trip and we finished moving the rest of his stuff in between working.  

The whole move was well worth the trouble.  I went from a very small place downtown to a cozy place near open space and the mountains, with lots of room and a garage, and of course I get to come home every day to my goofball boyfriend who still makes me laugh.

View from the back of our building.