the witching hour

it is that time of year again, where our thoughts are filled with costume ideas, scary stories, and black and orange. our apartment has gotten into the full swing of halloween. we prepared our costumes early (twenties wear to satisfy the requirements of the ward party last friday night), we have looked at decorating and creepy food ideas (meat loaf hand? we are all over that), and we read agatha christie's very creepy, very a propos murder mystery and then there were none. aloud and often at the stroke of midnight. and every night after we finished reading we had to run up the stairs to our beds, too afraid to stay downstairs in the dark.
i was talking to berg the other day and i asked her what she was going to be for halloween this year. she said she didn't really know yet, and she didn't know what the freshman festivities would be. i remembered my own freshman halloween. i didn't dress up, i didn't celebrate really, i didn't trick or treat through helaman halls like some of my friends did. but then, a couple years later, my roommates and i went all out--we dressed in theme, hit the stake dance party, and went to a concert at the riverwoods. we had a busy halloween. i wonder if everyone goes through a little halloween dry spell, a lack of enthusiasm for getting dressed up and engaging in pagan merriment. the last couple years of high school were the same.
now, though, i love halloween (aside from the creepy stuff that some people are into. i do not do haunted houses, forests, asylums, or warehouses, and i do not do scary movies, except in very rare cases, like a couple of years ago when i really, really wanted to see psycho at international cinema the weekend before halloween so i planned to go with my study abroad friends and then through some crazy circumstances which i don't remember none of them ended up coming so it was just me and i had to walk to the car alone afterwards and when i got home i had to tell meredith everything because i was bursting to talk about it with someone. that's one of my few exceptions.).
but anyway, after that long aside, halloween is pretty awesome and i'm going to be rather bummed when the season is over. thanksgiving is great, and i am looking forward to 1) a break and 2) good food. but we are finding that it is difficult to think of good thanksgiving themed books for our nightly readings. so for now, i'll have fun getting ready for halloween and all the mischief that comes along with it.