The Halloween That Wasn't

This is the way Halloween ends
    This is the way Halloween ends
        This is the way Halloween ends
            Not with a bang but a fever.

Apologies to T.S. Eliot.

In order to curb Halloween vandalism in the 1930's, Des Moines moved trick or treating to the 30th and renamed it Beggars' Night. It's a tradition that's still followed today, but I don't like it. I'd rather hand out candy on Halloween like the rest of the US, but I have to deal with the cards that I'm dealt.

Charlotte also had to deal with the cards she was dealt last night. At daycare and preschool, the Pink Spider was ready for action!

But when she got home, her eyes were glassy and her head and neck hurt.  I could tell she had a fever as soon as I pressed my hand across her forehead. The Pink Spider crawled into the couch, covered herself with a Halloween quilt, and spun no webs. 

I put away the pumpkin carving tools and took off my Pink Spider henchmen shirt. Char and I watched a new episode of Blaze and the Monster Machines while Mom went to the store for some cans of chicken soup and stars. 

Char agreed she was too sick to go trick or treating, and she didn't seem to be too upset about it. Later she recognized some Disney Princesses from the neighborhood at her door, and she realized what she was missing. That's when the dam broke.

We tried to console her. We reminded Charlotte that she had been at the zoo's "Night Eyes" last Saturday, and she Trunk or Treated at church last night. But that's cold comfort when you're inside the house watching kids in costumes outside waving buckets of candy and dancing from doorbell to doorbell. She dove face first into a couch pillow and wailed for five minutes.

By 7:45 the streets were dark and so was Char's bedroom. It was a tough night, but little kids are surprisingly resilient. Despite her bitter disappointment, Charlotte hasn't lost her faith in the holiday. As I pulled the bed covers to her chin, Charlotte whispered, "Next year I want to be a Bat Girl."

Four-year-olds are awesome.

Bad Dog (Movie)!

When I brought this movie home I was pretty sure I had a winner. Char enjoyed Space Buddies; she howled when Budderball farted in his space suit, and I had no reason to think Spooky Buddies would be any different.

As a teacher, I have learned that you never play any video (DVD, YouTube clip, or video streaming) for a class without previewing the entire thing first. But I thought I could just pop Spooky Buddies in and sit back. I mean, c'mon, look at these puppies. How could this go wrong? The movie is rated G for crying out loud.

Well, if I had previewed even seven minutes of this film I would have known better.

In those first seven minutes Char and I watched Warwick the Warlock summon the Halloween Hound, a demon dog with fiery eyes. The Halloween Hound appeared on the "other side" of a mirror, and the only way he can enter our world is by eating the souls of five puppies. So, Warwick the Warlock brought him puppies.

Yes, you read that right. Charlotte watched in horror as the first puppy was pushed in front of the Halloween Hound's mirror. After the Halloween Hound had consumed the puppy's soul, the puppy's body turned into stone. And no, this isn't a Halloween trick. The puppies were killed, their souls were eaten, and their bodies were turned into stone.

The final puppy to be sacrificed, Pip, did escape, but he was quickly caught by Warwick and killed in front of Joseph, the young boy who owned Pip. With tears running his face, Joseph hugged his stone dog and cried to his dad, "Look what they did to Pip!" In a later scene, you can see that the townspeople have recycled the puppy bodies into headstones in the cemetery.

The only bright spot in the movie's exposition is that the Halloween Hound doesn't eat Pip's puppy soul. Pip becomes a ghost instead, and he's left to haunt an empty house for the next 75 years.

If I had written this plot and explained it to my wife, I'm pretty sure her reaction would have been to punch me in the face.

Charlotte, as you can imagine, did not like Spooky Buddies. I was scrambling to find the remote as soon as the puppies started dying, and we quickly turned the TV off. As I put the DVD case on a shelf, a high shelf, I assured Char that by the end of the movie all the animals would be fine, and all the kids who lost their pets would get them back. But I wasn't so sure. I didn't trust the movie.

And for a little while Char didn't trust her dad. When I'd bring a new movie home from the library, Char would eye it suspiciously and ask, "Dad, this isn't like Spooky Buddies is it?"

"No, no, this one's good."

Cheap, Halloween Entertainment

Here's the Halloween display that's outside of our house.

It's modest, but fun. I found the Disney characters at a thrift store, and the lights are from Target.

To add a little originality to our celebration, I went shopping at Goodwill. I already owned the old PC speakers, but can you find a pair for less than five bucks at most thrift stores. The portable JVC CD player was two dollars.

I picked up this Disney CD for 79 cents.

Last year I hid the speakers and the CD player behind the decorations and hit "repeat". It was a cheap and safe way to bump our display up a notch. You could hear the music as you approached our house, but it wasn't going to disturb the neighbors. I put a copy of the Disney CD in the player, so if a naughty kid trashed my stereo setup, I'd be mad, but I'd out less money than what the big bag of Mars candy costs.

This year I thought I'd personalize the recording with Audacity. According to their website, "Audacity® is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds." I have used it for years to help me convert records, 8-tracks, and cassettes into mp3s. Since I'd already ripped the Disney CD into separate tracks last year, I thought it would be fun to make some vocal recordings to slip into the mix on a new CD. Here is a terribly uninformative video of how I did this.

This year trick-or-treaters will be "treated" with my bad imitations of the Crypt Keeper and Peter Lorre.

But if you don't want to go to all the trouble of making your own disc, the Dollar Store is full of sound effect CDs.

You've Got to be Kitten Me

My grandmother lives in an apartment in Moravia, Iowa. About 650 people live in Moravia, and there's not much there in terms of excitement. At least that was what I thought.

What's hiding under Grandma's couch?

Well, hello gorgeous!

Whoa! Grandma's place just got a whole lot more exciting for Charlotte!

No, my Grandma didn't get a kitten. My Aunt Renea adopted this kitten earlier in the week, and she brought the cat over to entertain Char. And boy did that work.

You can't hear it, but the kitten was purring at this moment. Seriously.

My aunt let Charlotte name the kitten, and Char immediately chose "Susie". Even though that's my aunt's middle name (Charlotte didn't know that), Renea vowed to use Susie as the cat's name. Here's Char and Susie playing with Grandma's walker.

About that walker, Grandma Jerry is 89 years old, and on Friday night she spotted a mouse sitting on her carpet. Did she scream or call for help? Nope. She tried to run the mouse over with her walker's wheels, and she was able to stun it. How? I have no idea. Grandma's speed isn't one mile per hour. Then she took a hammer to the mouse to finish the job. Seriously Grandma? A hammer? Yep. She whacked it, scooped it into a dustpan, and then threw the rodent's body into the front yard.

If you're wondering who does that kind of thing, the answer is a wife of a farmer does that kind of thing. It doesn't matter how old she is. If she's got a problem, she deals with it.

Aunt Renea also brought gifts and candles for a belated birthday celebration. Char turned four on August 18 - that's her mom's birthday, too - so Char got four candles in her birthday doughnut. Susie the kitten got two candles in hers. I still don't know why the cat got a birthday doughnut.

Although Char was warned that she couldn't take the kitten home, I think she thought she might get to keep her if the cat was in all of our family pictures.

This isn't a great picture, but look at the cat.

Let's zoom in.

"Must Escape! Now!"

In the end Char cried to keep the cat, I pried to release the cat, and the cat sighed to be safe back under the couch. It was a bit messy, and there was a lot of sobbing when I pulled back onto the four-lane. But then Charlotte fell asleep, and when she awoke an hour later she hardly mentioned Susie the kitten.

Three hours of joyful play in exchange for 15 minutes of tears? That's a bargain.

Have No Fear, the Pink Spider is Here

One of Char's favorite games is "chase". She runs around the house, and you have to pretend you can't catch her as you follow her path.

To make sure you can't get your hands on her, Char has invented two super powers. Her first super power is "speed button". When she thinks you are getting too close, she'll shout, "Speed button!" and start sprinting. Her other super power is the ability to shoot a spider web. She momentarily stops, points her bottom at you, and makes a "pew" sound. Your job is to abruptly stop, throw up you hands, and mime being caught in an invisible web. Usually I say, "Boing!" when I mime her web catching me.

Last summer her super powers morphed into a super hero persona. Now when it's time to play chase, Charlotte becomes the Pink Spider! Like her super powers, I have no idea where she came up with this name, but I like it.

Last month Char announced she wasn't going to be a fireman or a witch this Halloween. She is going as the Pink Spider. Okay, that's cool. We want to support her creativity, but that means we can't just go to Target and buy her outfit. We have to make it. Hmmm...

Luckily, my friend Tim is an artist who teaches art at my school. I asked Tim if he could design a Pink Spider logo for a super hero outfit, and he took the job seriously. First he did some preliminary sketches for us to look over.

We chose the design in the middle, and Tim concentrated on getting that design refined. Once he was satisfied with the spider and it's "speed button flames", he experimented with different fonts.

In the end, Charlotte chose the design on the left.

I made the decision to have Tim remove the word "the", and then it was time to do some screen printing after school.

Here's Tim laying down the textile ink to test the screen on a piece of paper.

Now it's time to try it on a test shirt of mine.

Looks good!

Drying time. Looks like I can now be an official Pink Spider henchmen.

Now it's time to get nervous. Here comes Char's costume.

Yea!

Daphne got a henchman shirt, too.

But wait, there's more!

Daphne thought the costume needed webs to connect the sleeves to the sides of the shirt, so she got to work.

Throw in an eye mask from Target's "Dollar Stop" (I take back what I said about Target not helping us), and you're all set.

Tonight we went to the Blank Park Zoo's "Night Eyes". And the Pink Spider was ready for action!

Did people "Ooooh and Ahhhh" over Char's costume? 

No. Everybody else was more concerned with their own children... as they should be. But Charlotte was so excited to be the only Pink Spider in the crowd. Silently I was bursting with pride.

I think I know what our RAGBRAI team name will be next year.

Bug Update: Out with the Old, In with the New

My shipment of new parts from Wolfsburg West arrived yesterday, and as soon as I had time I popped the hood open on the Bug and got to work.

Here's the old fuse box before I removed it.

To get the old box out I had to cut one wire, and I ended up replacing one female connector, but other than that it was a straight-forward job.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about using Gorilla Glue to hold the far left terminal to the fuse box, and I have to say the hold is rock solid. I twisted and pulled on the terminal once I had the box out of the car, and it wasn't going anywhere.

The problem is that I have no idea what electricity would do to the chemical makeup of the glue. For all I know it would melt, or worse emit a poisonous gas when heated. Why take the risk when a new fuse box is only 20 bucks?

Here's my newly installed fuse box. I first disconnected the battery, and then I labeled the wires before I started yanking them off. With the help of the metal clip, the box snaps in place.

I briefly considered buying a used fuse box from a Samba seller in order to keep the Bug as original as possible, but that's silly. It's like buying a used light bulb - it can't be useful for much longer. Besides, the original fuse cover keeps everything looking authentic on the inside.

The trouble with Wolfsburg West is that their minimum shipping cost is $10. It doesn't matter if your part is only a buck, you're going to shell out ten more to get it. To save money I buy parts I know I'll want in the future, even if they'll sit on a shelf for awhile.

When I bought the Bug in the early 90's it didn't have sun visors, and I bought a new pair from JCWhitney. They were cheaply made, and there was no way to anchor them to the support bars. As you drove, the vibration of the car would cause them to slowly descend until they were in your way. All you could do was push them back up and wait until they got in your way again.

Last year I rescued a used pair of visors from a junked VW, but I didn't know the padding inside of them had rotted. Any time you squeezed the visor it would cough out a spray of putrid grit and dust. I ended up tossing them away.

So for this Wolfsburg West order I threw in a pair of new sun visors in my online cart.

I think they look pretty good, "A visor for a visor!" (Sorry. I taught Romeo and Juliet for 13 years, and sometimes I can't help myself.)

I'll get to that headliner sometime...

Link to Beetle Junkyard

How 'bout Them Apples? Center Grove Orchard Revisited

As I mentioned in my last post, we took a trip to the Center Grove Orchard last Saturday morning. It was a bit cold, but that just thinned the crowd, slightly. The place sure is popular.

This will be our third year to visit this farm, and you can see how much Char has grown from the first time we were here.

2012:

2014:

2012:

2014:

2012 (name this movie):

2014:

It's strange, but looking at these pictures makes my heart hurt a little. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because my little two-year-old girl is gone forever. 

Oh man, just typing that makes me tear up. But that makes no sense. Four-year-old Charlotte is funnier, more flexible, and more independent than the terrible two version of herself. So what's with the emotions? I can't explain it. Parenting does something to your head, I guess.

Oh well, on with the photo essay.

The corn pool is a neat idea. It's a large oval of hay bales filled with about two feet of corn kernels. The corn itself is surprisingly cold, and I bet it would feel refreshing on a warmer day. 

The sign says you can't bury people, but it doesn't say you can't cover 'em up a bit.

K'pow!

Of course you're gonna get kernels down your pants when you play in the corn pool, but the weird thing was that every time we thought Char's clothes were corn free, we'd find more. By the end of the evening Daphne thought Charlotte had smuggled home about 30 kernels of corn. I wonder how much lower the level of the corn pool is at the end of the season.

Also, It's all fun and games until you put your hand on someone's used Band-Aid. Gross.

We had lunch at the Feed Bunk. I appreciate that they use charcoal to prepare the hamburgers, but the real star of the show is the applesauce. That may seem silly, but wow, that stuff is so good. It's too bad they don't sell it in the orchard's store.

The orchard has live entertainment on the weekends, but when we were there the stage was empty. That is until Char climbed up to do some ballet moves for us. She's been running around on her tiptoes since she could walk, so this isn't a stretch for her.

The orchard keeps on growing, no pun intend. This year they added a second jumping pillow, one pillow for children under 52 inches tall, and the other for everybody else. On the morning we were there a slew of college sorority girls were having a social function, and a bunch of them were jumping on the big kid pillow, but I didn't take a picture of that. Sorry, Uncle Pervie.

Instead, here's Char catching some air.

And just like at the fair, Char stuck her head in stuff.

Here's Char and I on Daphne's favorite orchard attraction, the hayrack ride.

I keep reminding myself that grey hair is better than no hair. I suppose I could dye it, but I spotted one of the sports guys from channel 8 at the orchard, and even a colorblind guy like me could see he was sporting a dye job. You can't tell when he's on TV, though.

Char got an apple smoothie before we left.

Time to write the Center Grove Orchard a fan letter and see if they'll tell me how they make that applesauce. 

Link to 2012

48 hours later:

And you thought I was kidding.