Kate Collins's Blog, page 288

Playing Dress Up

By Heather Webber / Heather Blake

It's true that I'm not a big fan of Halloween. I don't decorate, but I don't turn off the lights and hunker down for the night, either. For two reasons.

One, the candy. It's the one time of year I can buy, guilt-free, loads of candy. And start picking at it two weeks ahead of time (the Almond Joys are already gone from the Hershey's variety pack).
Circa 1999
Two, the costumes. I love seeing little kids, especially toddlers and babies, dressed up. I love seeing the excitement on their faces, and their pride at their outfits. It's just so darn cute.

Some of my favorite pictures of my kids when they were little were when they dressed up for Halloween. Hands down, my favorite costume of my daughter's was her Dorothy outfit. Wasn't she so cute? And we borrowed her grandparents' black Yorkiepoo for Toto. So much fun.

And my boys? I think they've been through every superhero costume there is, from Superman to Batman and Spiderman. Then there were the Star Wars years, and all the TV characters, Muppets, etc. I think we still have most of the costumes up in the attic somewhere.
 
[image error] Circa 1998This year, though, there are no costumes for them. So I really hope there are some cute babies in the neighborhood who knock on my door. I just hope they're not expecting any Almond Joys.

Do you have a favorite costume of yours? Or your kids?

Halloween: Will You Turn The Lights Off?

Ellery Adams
My friends don't get my zeal for Halloween, but I've loved the holiday since I was a kid. I love to dress up, I love candy, and I love the idea of kids being able to run around a little wildly one night a year.

To get ready for All Hallow's Eve, I buy the good candy. That's right. No dum-dum pops, no rock-hard bubble gum, no raisins, pretzels, or fruit chews. I buy the chocolate blend that comes with Hershey bars, peanut butter cups, Rolos, and Kit-Kats.
And I decorate. What fun is a spooky night without a giant spider? (I'll add a strobe light to this bad boy on the 31st) and if the bubble fogger goes on sale, I'll set it up in the middle of our suburban graveyard. I also have a tree covered with light-up eyeballs, bats, pumpkins, and ghosts.

I'll carve pumpkins. This year, my pumpkins will read, GOT CANDY ?
I'll pay spooky music and while I wait for trick-or-treaters, I'll watch a scary movie on TV.
How about you? Will you answer the door wearing a witch hat or will you turn off the lights and pretend not to be at home?
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Cemeteries, Inscriptions, Obits, Oh My!

by Deb Baker/Hannah Reed


Sometimes I worry that I have an unhealthy preoccupation with cemeteries. They fascinate me. Especially at this time of the year – fall leaves, carved pumpkins, short days, dark nights, Halloween right around the corner.

Driving down an unfamiliar road, I see an old graveyard ahead and can't resist. I have to stop and wander through, reading the stones' epitaphs.

Remember these gems?

Here lies Lester Moore
four shots from a .44
No LesNo more
I Told You I Was Sick
Here's to Johnny quite a guy
Very sad he had to die
All was well could not be better
Till he wrote my girl a letter.
Wherever you be,
Let your wind go free.
For holding it in,
Was the killing of me.
Will reading the obituaries be next for me? Yes, I can see it coming…
"I get up each morning and dust off my wits, Open the paper, and read the Obits. If I'm not there, I know I'm not dead, So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed!"  
So please tell me these aren't morbid preoccupations. You like old cemeteries and reading the obits, right?
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Old Friends and New Old Friends

by Maggie Sefton

Last Saturday I went to my first high school reunion. My high school was Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, VA. I'd never been to any of the previous reunions, mostly because our family no long lived in the Arlington, VA (Northern VA) area. We lived out of state and it was either impractical or too costly to spend money on a class reunion trip involving airline travel years ago. But my dear friends, Nancy & Diane, who grew up across the street from me in Arlington, VA, had gone to their first reunion a few years ago. They told me how much they enjoyed the occasions and encouraged me to attend the next scheduled get-together. The timing was perfect this year because the reunion date fell right in the middle of the time period when I planned to return to Northern VA to work on the Molly Malone mysteries and visit family and old friends.
I had read through the list of attendees and noticed several names jumped out at me, indicating that those people were most probably class leaders or members of the Student Council. Our high school class was large like most of the Baby Boom Generation, over 800 students. I made most of my friends from my music activities, specifically the High School Choir. I had a lot of acquaintances in classes, but, most of my friends were in the choral groups.
I figured I wouldn't recognize anyone that evening, and that was true. Hey. . .we'd all aged, so we looked a heckuva lot different than we did years ago. But I did what I always do when meeting a group of strangers: I wandered around and spoke to people all over the hotel banquet room. There were nearly 200 people who showed up, not a bad turnout. I've always met great people in my wandering and chatting, and I wasn't disappointed this time.
When I chose a seat at one of the dining tables, I learned the husband and wife to my right, Jim and Rita, grew up close to my old neighborhood. Jim had attended the same elementary school my friends Nancy & Diane and I had. His house was several blocks away, so we never saw each other walking to school. Rita lived closer but attended the neighborhood parochial school for St. Charles Catholic Church. So, we never met either. But she did know my next door neighbors quite well because they all attended the same parochial school. She'd transferred to Washington-Lee High School when we all did, and that's how she met her future husband.
We really enjoyed sharing old memories and establishing new connections. The lady to my left, Sandra, kept me laughing with her memories of former classmates. Add to that a surprisingly good hotel banquet dinner (I have to eat a lot of those in my line of work, so I've gotten pretty tired of the usual fare) and an excellent Golden Oldies Rock band making music, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. And---I made some new friends.
How about you? Have you attended a high school or college reunion yet? How was it?

The Best Lipstick Ever Made

by Kate Collins
And I mean THE BEST lipstick . . . is no longer inproduction. Sorry. This item is unavailable/out of stock/retired-and-gone-to-lipstick-heaven,so suck it up, Lady Pale Lips. Oh, and don't get too attached to thatsubstitute color you just bought, because it'll be gone a year from now. 
Why is it that my shade is always the onethey retire? Why is that ugly orange-purple color still available? Hasn't that exactsame tube been in the make-up display since about 1985?  And this lovely rose hue, this not-so-red-as-to-be-garishbut not-so-pink-as-to-be-cutesy one that I have been in raptures over for thepast two years, THIS is the one they chose to cancel?
Take out the word lipstick and substitute eyeshadow, or eyebrow pencil, and that's happened to me, too. I found thisglorious eyebrow pencil that I loved and used for a year until a sales clerktold me it was going to be phased out. So I bought 6 of them. Same with a crayoneye shadow. For that one, I went to the manufacturer's website to buy theirentire stock – 3 – so I'd have at least half a year of looking good.
The trouble with that plan is that in the back of mymind, I knew I'd run out eventually, so I tried other brands and types andfound something I liked just as well, if not more. Then I'd keep using it andthe back-up supply would stay backed up, until after a few years I'd comeacross those 3 crayons or 6 pencils and think, "Huh. I don't like those so muchanymore. I've moved on to something more current."
And that brings me to the point of my rambling blog.I – and by that I mean we – try veryhard to hold onto the past even when the past is telling us to let go. Go forthmy pale lipped lady and find a new shade. Try that new eyebrow powder. Do notbe afraid of letting go of the old to try something new. 
I've had to let go of a lot of my past over thecourse of these last 12 months. I've done it reluctantly, kicking and screamingin fact. But new ways aren't all that bad. In fact, sometimes they're better.And then sometimes they're just about even. But life keeps moving forward,brands get discontinued, and colors go out of favor. We have to either keep upor suffer the curse of pale lips. I don't know about you, but I'd rather becolorful and just a little daring. In fact, I recently found THE BEST lip glossever. I'm just not going to tell anyone lest I jinx it.Can you relate?[image error]

I Can't Get My Toys to Work

by Leann

[image error] Now that the work in progress is again with my editor after my rewrites, I now have time to solve a problem. Or so I thought. I got a new router about a month ago because ours was fading fast. I had no trouble connecting our laptops to the network, my iphone still works, but my fancy-schmancy ipad and my fancy-schmancy wireless printer-fax-scanner WON'T connect. No matter what I do, I cannot make them connect to the home network.

I am not a complete luddite. I do know a few things. I've downloaded the newest software. I've reset everything. I even went back to factory defaults. I put in the password from the bottom of the router about a hundred times. WILL. NOT. WORK.

Tomorrow I am leaving on vacation and hoped to use my ipad for fun stuff during the long car ride--like play scrabble. I am hoping if I take the ipad out of the house it will work, but for now I am out of luck. The urge to keep working on this is strong. I HATE computer problems and tend to be very stubborn about spending endless hours fixing what's wrong. Still, I will need to pack a few things for a nine day trip. Priorities. But in my mind, all I can think is grrr.....

This ever happen to you??[image error]

Saying Goodbye to a friend

by Lorna Barrett / Lorraine Bartlett / L.L. Bartlett

[image error] Last Friday was not a very good day.  I had to say goodbye to my little fluffy friend Jessie.

Jessie was about 14 1/2 years old and a terrific companion for my Mom and Dad.  Jessie was their second West Highland Terrier and a little cutie-pie.  They bought her from a breeder near our family's cottage, and her first days were spent there.  Somewhere I have pictures of her taken on the first day she arrived, just a tiny ball of white fur.  My Dad would take her picture every week to chronicle how much she grew.  She'd sit on a stump at the corner of our cottage deck and if you flipped the pages in the album it was like magic to see her grow from puppyhood to a great big girl.  (Well, for a Westie.)

My younger brother and I have never had dogs as pets, but my Dad would say we (especially my brother) would come over to visit just to see Jessie (and before that Mac, Buddy, and Alfie).  He called her Rent-A-Dog because we could enjoy her, but didn't have to clean up the yard after her. (Well, I inherited that job these past couple of years.)

She was a sweetie pie who loved M&Ms, liverwurst, and cheese and crackers.  When my Dad's health was failing, she would sit on his lap for hours and he would scratch behind her ears.  That dog loved my Dad. (What makes this even harder is that my Dad passed away just two years this week.)

Jessie's heath began to suffer earlier this year and we knew her time was short.  But somehow I expected her to last just a little bit longer.

Rest in peace, Jessie.  We love you.

Hot Topics

By Heather Webber / Heather Blake

Earlier this week I was thinking about what to blog about, and was coming up with nuthin'. Nuthin', I tell you.

So I did what any desperate blogger would do and went to Google. I typed in "blog topics" and came across a website that offered a random generator of blog topics. (Insert hallelujah chorus.)

[image error] Happily, I clicked the "all" button for topic genres and then clicked "generate."

First topic? Best American Zoos.

Okay, well, I've only been to a couple of zoos. The National Zoo is nice, but I prefer the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Really, the flowers are amazing. Zoos kind of upset me, though, if I'm being honest. I like seeing the animals, but get sad seeing them caged up.

Next topic? George W. Bush's love life.

Yeah, no way. Not talking about that.

Next topic? Foot fungus.

I kid you not. What can I say about this, other than I've never had foot fungus and hope I never do.

Next:

-Chord symbols. Hmm. I've got nuthin'.
-Back pain causes. Don't get me started on my back troubles.
-Nintendo DS or PSP. Huh. Well, in my family, we have both. Kids use DS much more.
-The Geneva Convention. I'm back to having nuthin'.
-Sleep paralysis. I don't have anything on this, but would like to know more. Sounds fascinating.
-Old movies that rock. Aha! This is a topic that I love. But I think I've already covered it.

I could keep on clicking on that generator—it's kind of fun, but this blog would suddenly get very long. If you're interested in checking it out here's the link: http://www.blogtap.net/blogtopicgenerator/

And if there's a blog topic you want to suggest, let me hear it. Just as long as it's not about George W's love life.

Ellery's Top Ten Scariest Things

Ellery Adams

Halloween is days away and the movie channels are featuring their spookiest shows. Pumpkins of all shapes on sizes are have been placed on front stoops, waiting to be hallowed out and transformed. Costumes are on hangers and bags of candy are in the pantry (unless a bag or two has been eaten by a hungry ghost...hem, hem). I'm getting ready for the holiday by thinking back on things that have truly given me thrills and chills.
1. Scariest Novel - Without a doubt, It by Stephen King.
2. Scariest Movie - I saw Poltergeist when I was 13. I still haven't recovered from that clown under Robbie's bed. I obviously have a clown phobia.
3. Scariest thing I found in my trick or treat bag - Circus peanuts (what are they really made of?)
4. Scariest costume I've ever seen - a grim reaper on stilts
5. Scariest haunted house - an abandoned boat house where I grew up. My friends and I would dare each other to go inside for 60 seconds after dark. I did it once.
6. Scariest song - The theme music from Friday the Thirteenth
7. Scariest food - raw oysters - they give me the heebie jeebies
8. Scariest celebratory couple ever - Rose McGowan and Marilyn Manson [image error][image error]
9. Scariest children - the twins from The Shining
10. Scariest creature/monster - Alien (but when I was younger, The Creature From the Black Lagoon).
Your turn: Tell me some of your "Scariests"

Ellery's Mystery Cozy Contest - Answer

Congrats to Shirley Landes for guessing the correct answer! The mystery cozy was Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body by M.C. Beaton.
See you next month when the prize will change. I will now send you an e-gift card for $20 to the bookstore of your choice (as long as they do ecards). This will help our international friends play the game and use book depository.