Geeks and Vampires, Ghosts and Ghouls

I love Halloween. As a kid I always wanted to have great costumes but I never really did. At first my mom tried to get me to be what she thought I should be rather than what I wanted. That always ended up with me being embarrassed. Imagine having to wear black panty hose on your head with each of the legs cut into three strips and braided for braided pig tails. Sigh. Why didn't I just have my own braids? Because I had short, permed little orphan Annie hair remember?



When I finally was allowed to choose for myself what I wanted to be I had very little help. Some of the kids at my school had mothers with amazing sewing skills who would whip them up any costume out of their wildest dreams. I remember being green with envy upon seeing my friends absolutely gorgeous Rainbow Bright costume. I think I ended up being “a punk rocker” for about four years in a row. That basically entailed wearing ripped up stockings, spray painting my hair with pink and making it as big and crazy as I could. Not much of a costume but at least I liked it.

Needless to say that as an adult I have really enjoyed the freedom I have in deciding what my costume should be. A few years ago I invested in some very realistic looking vampire fangs. I am fascinated with that genre and have dressed up as a vampire at Halloween on many, many occasions. Often times I am disappointed at Halloween because there seems to be very little to do. But this year one of my super cool clients invited us to her Halloween party. If I am not mistaken I believe she throws this party every year.

Now although I was terribly excited to have the opportunity to dress up and go to a party my wonderful, but introverted husband was not nearly so thrilled. We did have fun getting ready to go. He decided to go as a 'geek' without any prompting from me. He kept asking me if it was enough of a stretch from what he usually looks like. You be the judge. I think he looks adorable. The best part of his costume was his 'geek' role playing. “Now by my calculations it should take us approximately 3 minutes and 45 seconds to arrive at our destination...” I did the obvious and dug out my fangs. I figure now that we have a baby I'll be dressing up in 'cute' non scary costumes for a few years anyway. Although that doesn't seem to be the case at Bon's house.



We planned it so I had Miss A in bed and my niece and her buddy came over to hang out and watch a movie. And out we went like a couple of teenagers on a date to a real grown up Halloween party. As we walked up to this absolutely gorgeous character home I must admit that even I, extrovert to the extreme, was a little nervous. Timing was on our side and my client 'J' happened to be right near the door when we walked through it. She looked amazing and welcomed us very warmly. We stood awkwardly by the door for a few minutes taking it all in. There were big speakers set up and the living room/ dining room was being used as a dance floor.

A guy I used to do TaeKwon Do with appeared. I was happy to see someone I knew but he was dressed as 'Silent Bob' and was totally in character. Ahem. That meant having a nice conversation was not a possibility. I couldn't help but notice how painfully uncomfortable Peter was. I felt pretty guilty about dragging him to an event that I knew was so far out of his comfort zone. We slowly made our way further into the house and gravitated towards the room that everyone seems to gravitate towards at every party. The kitchen. There we found another client of mine 'C'. He acts in local theater groups and was dressed as the character he'll be playing in an upcoming production of 'The Music Man'. He was totally in character and it was funny. We spent quite a long time in the kitchen with him. We were introduced to a lot of really cool people. My fangs were a huge hit. One woman in particular was totally mesmerized by them and kept telling me how real they looked.

We struck up a conversation with J's brother who ended up giving us a tour of the house. It was so amazing. It had the original stained glass, hardwood floors and woodwork. He told us about the renovations they had done. Peter and I loving hearing about that kind of stuff since we have a character home as well which we dream of some day being able to renovate.

We stayed for almost two hours, most of which I'm pretty sure were excruciating for my husband. I did manage to steal away a few times and dance. (Oh how I miss dancing...) Finally I put my husband out of his misery and we bid our farewells. We arrived home to find things as we had left them. Baby sleeping, girls still curled up on the couch watching their movie. It was like a dream. Had we really been out at all?

Here I am looking spooky, peeking around one of the amazing marble pillars at J's house.