OK, I really don't hate Halloween. In fact, I really like the "holiday". I love to see well-done costumes and to watch my children have so much fun gathering all that candy and showing off their costumes. It's fun to watch them have fun. Even my office-mates enjoy the black-and-orange season. This morning we all walked downstairs to see the parade of three-year-old preschoolers come through in their costumes while trick-or-treating at the downtown businesses. We oohed and aahhed at the pirate, the princess, the flower and the pilot. (READ MORE)

The street we normally trick-or-treat on was consumed with kids and families last night. It was really fun because I can't ever remember seeing so many people out at once. However, with that many people parading up the street, some of us got caught in clumps. And one of my pet peeves is people I don't know walking too closely to me. I can't stand feeling like someone is literally breathing down my neck.

With The Mr. and the kids walking several paces in front of me while I dealt with some horrendous foot cramps (man am I pushing the water today!), I took the opportunity to stop and let someone pass me by.

"Hey, are you Michelle?" the woman asked as I stepped aside.

I was shocked that, first of all, someone recognized me, and that she could see me in the dark.

"Yes," I said.

"I'm Cheryl L."

"Oh my gosh!" I literally screamed. "Hi! How are you?"

"I'm great!" I think she was laughing at me, at my enthusiasm for seeing her. (READ MORE)

Look! on the skin
The symbol of what lies within.
Now turn red to tempt Snow White
To make her hungry for a bite...

--the Wicked Queen, Walt Disney's Snow White, 1937

There's nothing like a fresh fall apple. Crisp, juicy, sweet or tart, whatever your preference. Think of pick-your-own orchards, fresh apple pie, baked apples, candy apples, caramel apples, apple bobbing at Hallowe'en, Mrs. Prindable's chocolate-covered apples at Thanksgiving and Christmas...

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"Trick or Treat" came early this year.

Perhaps I should clarify. While Saturday, October 29 was the designated day for many children's Hallowe'en-themed activities — including costume contests, mall Trick-or-Treats, and the costumed American Diabetes Association Step Out to STOP Diabetes Walk, Mother Nature had other plans for us — plans that included snow shovels, flashlights, streets full of wet, slushy, ice-snow, and not a microwatt of electric power to be had for three towns' radius around us.

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Hallowe'en is a time of transformations.

In the ancient Celtic traditions (and the modern Wiccan ones), Samhain is the time at which the Goddess — old, and lonely, and missing her lover — goes to the Summerland to be with him. With her goes light and warmth, fertility, and life. The Samhain Sabbat denotes the end of summer/fall and the beginning of the winter seasons, a time when the last harvest has come in and when the herds are pared down to what the community can feed through the winter, and what will be able to reproduce in the spring.

It is a time of plenty, preceding a known time of famine.

It is also the start of the new year.

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