Friday, October 30, 2009

I started the flap on the "Fortune Cookie" bag last night. (I remain unconvinced that it will "work," but I am following the instructions as written). I also worked a bit more on the endless-seeming cuff of the Mini Mochi socks.

All my projects seem kind of endless right now.

But that might just be the weather, and the fact that it's been grey most of the week, and I'm tired.

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Finally, a NYT story that doesn't "upset" me: I actually probably worry TOO MUCH about how healthful my diet is. Yeah, the guy essentially lives on candy. And he's healthy. And he's a "reasonable" weight.

Oh, and the whole "Halloween" idea of the article: I tend to agree. I have a big bag with Three Musketeers bars, and little packs of Skittles, and Whoppers and M and Ms and some other things to hand out to whatever kids roam by Saturday night. Even though they have already begun the "Here's how to avoid gaining weight over the holidays!" barrage of news stories.

I don't know; I remember Halloween as a kid and it really wasn't entirely about the candy - for me, it was mainly two things:

getting to dress up in a strange outfit
getting to go out and run around the neighborhood after dark.

The candy, really, was secondary. The main excitement was walking around the place where we lived at a time of day when I normally wasn't outdoors. (And granted, my brother and I had either our mom or our dad with us, but still). And we did really go ALL OVER the neighborhood - we lived on a very long street and we probably walked a total of two miles or more - all the way up nearly to the country club on the one side, and all the way down to where our street technically "ended" (at least, as a residential street) on the other. We saw people we normally only rarely saw. And most everyone handed out candy - practically every porch light on the street was lit. And really, I think for me - as a shy little kid - getting to go and visit people (if only for 20 or 30 seconds each house) with a 'sanctioned' reason, was every bit as exciting as the candy.

Oh, we enjoyed some of the candy - we never ate to the point of being ill (as some of my classmates obviously did; usually the day after Halloween there were at least a few kids out of class), and usually we spaced out the consumption of the "good" stuff (chocolate, the brand name candy bars, the "big" swee-tarts, and a few other things) over the next couple of weeks, but once the good stuff was gone (heh. Once we had "optimally foraged"), the rest of the stuff hung around until Christmas, when our mom usually threw it out. (Lots of people gave away junk like sour balls or those wrapped peppermint starbursts. Peppermint starbursts are fine if you've just eaten a lot of Chinese food and need to get the garlic and stuff off your breath, but they're not really Halloween candy, in my eyes.)

So I always kind of cast a jaded eye on adults who claim that Halloween is simply "training kids in gluttony" and suggest it be banned or something. Even though I don't remember our parents strictly limiting what we were "allowed" to eat on the evening, we'd have a couple of fun-sized candy bars, and maybe a caramel or two, and then decide we were done. (I suppose the fact that our parents insisted on the typical "healthy" supper before we went out trick-or-treating helped with that; it seems to me that when I'm eating more healthfully I seem to crave the not-so-good-for-you stuff less).

The only thing I'm doing for Halloween this year is handing out candy to the kids. I've never been a big celebrate-Halloween-as-an-adult (one year I did go to a "grown up" party and it was OK, but I'm not really a party person). I think that's because my first observations of "adults" celebrating Halloween were the drunken routs (rather than what I termed a "grown up" party, earlier) that used to happen on my college campus (waking me up as they came back from whereever) and I was rather turned off by the whole thing. (Well, that, and the idea that the costumes featured for adult women seemed to follow the mode of "Sexy [X]" where X could be any quantity from Vampire to Little Red Riding Hood. There are some of us who are adult women for whom the "sexy" vibe is simply ridiculous and undignified...And it would have been even when I was in my 20s.)

I know for a lot of people, Hallowe'en has become a favorite holiday. And that's fine, for them. It's just, I don't quite have a Hallowe'en "niche," so I probably enjoy the day less than I might.

3 comments:

Lynn said...

I'm not really a Halloween person either. I can remember one Halloween as a kid that I enjoyed. At first I was excited about experiencing Halloween as an adult, being the one to hand out candy and see all the kid's costumes. But I soon got tired of it and now I guess you could say I'm a Halloween scrooge. I'm glad that we have a really long driveway and our house is not visible from the road so we don't get any trick or treaters. I always buy candy though, "just in case".

Mom on Health Patrol said...

I always insist on a "real" supper and then they are free to get as much candy as they want. It turns into a week or two of gluttony, but that's OK...they don't feel deprived, and when it's over, it's over.

dragon knitter said...

i miss taking the kids out to trick ortreat. sean's last year was 2 years ago. i think i get a bigger kick out of people guessing what the boys were than anything else (the year liam was a barrel of toxic waste was PRICELESS)

i still dress up every year, but this year was harder. i've been working full time, when the last 3 years ididn't, and i just didn't have the energy. we even didn't carve pumpkins until thursday.