Monthly Archives: October 2025

Over the next week or so, my friends with school-aged kids will have the opportunity to go to a school carnival. At least, I hope they do.

I loved school carnivals.

Early in elementary school, when we still lived in the desert, the school carnival was the community’s solution for keeping kids safe while trick-or-treating. No going house to house, just going classroom to classroom. No need to worry about wayward desert creatures (or weirdo desert people), everything was contained within the confines of the chain link fence surrounding the school.

There was a costume contest, maybe a cake walk, some other games, too. And always, there was a haunted house.

My mom was always the witch in the haunted house, a fact I have long been proud of.

It’s not often that I regret not having kids, but I’d sure like to go to a school carnival again without being the creepy kidless lady from the neighborhood who just shows up to gawk.

What we need is school carnival for adults. We could have that fishing game (you know, where you cast your fishing line over a curtain or whatever and someone clips a prize to it and tugs on the line to let you know you’ve caught something). Instead of kid prizes, we can have little airplane bottles of booze or lottery tickets.

We could do a cake walk, but the prizes could be discount cards for oil changes or gutter cleaning services. Or cake. We could just stick with cake.

Pumpkin spice everything.

It starts in August with the grand poobah: the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte. With minutes, there’s a small but vocal group of folks insistent on telling you THERE’S NO PUMPKIN IN IT.

I don’t care. There’s plenty of pumpkin to be had elsewhere.

The pumpkin spice Frosted MiniWheats were pretty great a few years ago. I will forever miss the Odwalla pumpkin smoothie, but the Jamba Pumpkin Smash is pretty good as a replacement. The Planter’s pumpkin spice almonds were not great, but there were some pumpkin spice yogurt pretzels I had a while ago that were great. They might have been from Costco. Or maybe Trader Joe’s.

Most pumpkin spice things don’t have pumpkin. It’s fine, it’s the combo of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger, and allspice that we’re really looking for anyway. Warming spices. Spices that weave a protective spell as we journey into the darkness of autumn and winter. Sprinkle cinnamon and sea salt on your doorstep to create a barrier evil (and ants) cannot cross. Hang a cinnamon broom by the door for protection and prosperity.

Nutmeg will bring you luck and good fortune. Put a bit in your cocoa. Put a whole nutmeg in your pocket.

Clove will bring you strength, courage, and passion. And it will give a little lift to your seasonal fruit pies. Ginger brings life and vitality (and aids digestion). Allspice will bring you peace, but also determination.

But if you still want pumpkin in your pumpkin spiced treats, Mike’s Drive-in has pumpkin soft serve and it’s a damn delight.

It’s the part of October when I can’t remember what we’ve covered and what’s still to come. See, there’s no plan here. Just October chaos.

So much of October for me is interwoven with the memories of Halloween celebrations during my childhood.

I think often of the Halloween party we hosted when I was maybe seven or eight. My whole class was invited up to the house on Hill Ave., up in the canyon, on the dirt road past the end of the pavement. The house is still there, the road is still unpaved.

I don’t remember what my costume was that year, but my grandmother had just had cataract surgery and dressed as a pirate. My mom, no doubt, was a witch (I think she had three or four full witch costumes over the course of my childhood).

Plastic spiders were strung on fishing line across the opening from the kitchen and dining area to the living room. The coatrack in the corner by the fireplace wore an overcoat and a Frankenstein mask. My mom made a million donuts in our donut maker, two at a time.

It’s still the greatest Halloween party I’ve ever attended.

I need some donuts.

Soup.

Potato soup with a little bacon.

Curried butternut.

Chicken noodle.

Beef barley.

Vegetable beef.

Egg flower.

Clam chowder.

Tomato bisque.

Lobster bisque.

Tortilla soup.

Corn chowder.

Lentil.

And a big chunk of bread to dunk in it.

I’m not going to the protests tomorrow. Not because I do not support them. Not because I fear violence or reprisals. I hope everyone stays safe. I hope their voices are heard. I’m just unlucky in scheduling.

Tomorrow I’m heading out into the Gorge to see She Who Watches, a female chieftain who was turned into a petroglyph so she could forever watch over her people after Coyote told her women would no longer be chieftains.

It’s this time of year when many cultures, as the nights grow longer and the temperatures colder, gather their loved ones close. We tell stories of our ancestors, of those who came before us. I’m keenly aware of this as my own family has suffered so many losses over the last several years. And I think of a gathering of my beloved Shea family at this time a year ago. Memories of those who have gone ahead of us weigh on me.

This is the time when the more mystical among us will say the veil between worlds is thin.

The chieftain She Who Watches, Tsagaglalal, is an ancestor of this land and, though I have no claim of familiarity, this feels like the right time to seek her out.

And I’ll tell her that women are in places of power now and more will be in the future.

I went to work in the office today because that’s part of pretending the world is entirely normal. Commerce and capitalism continue even as society marches slowly toward the abyss.

Anyway.

I went to work in the office. I get there early. Sometimes, when it’s just me, I don’t even turn on the lights. I work in the dark, with just my laptop and monitors lighting my desk. I can watch the sky lighten. I can feel the city wake.

Part of getting there early is the opportunity to forage without interruption. Yesterday, I found a Rice Krispie Treat in a package made to look like a cartoon Frankenstein. Last week, I found a Little Debbie snack cake shaped like a pumpkin.

Today, I found a bowl of popcorn balls.

These were not the popcorn balls of my youth. These were perfectly round, factory made, packaged with the calorie counts and ingredients printed on the outside.

I brought an extra back to my desk to give to one of my coworkers who was also there absurdly early and who does not mind that I don’t turn on the lights.

I’m GenX and old enough to remember a time before we had to have our trick-or-treat haul x-rayed lest we find razor blades in apples or staples in our Snickers.

I remember clearly the struggle of the homemade popcorn ball vs. plastic pumpkin treat repository. There’s no way that’s going in there. You’re absolutely going to scrape your knuckles if you try and then if you cry, everyone has to go home and Halloween’s over.

The popcorn ball would nearly always come from a lady your grandparents’ age. If you were lucky, it was covered in plastic wrap. It was undoubtedly so stale that there was no way to tell if it had been made for this Halloween or one past.

And you took it because it was a Halloween treasure. And you tried to stuff it into the pumpkin.

And it was then, as children, we learned the concept of futility.

The soundtrack to October used to be simple: Walt Disney’s Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House, played on the record player in the big living room in the house in the desert. Over and over.

When I was older, it was still simple: two weeks of the Best of Van Morrison followed by two weeks of Concrete Blonde’s Bloodletting.

Last year, I made an attempt at expanding this soundtrack by creating a playlist on iTunes. It is a mess.

As it stands, it’s still Van Morrison, still Concrete Blonde (inexplicably just half of Bloodletting along with “Jonestown” from Mexican Moon), Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”, like six versions of “Season of the Witch”, and November Rain. Because why not.

Please help me. We have to fix this.

Do not say “Monster Mash.”

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/october/pl.u-AkAmPAkhlZ4Kg

We talked a little yesterday about the quintessential, but also likely most-hated, October candy: the candy corn.

I would now offer for you consideration my two least-favored Halloween candy.

We all like a fun-size chocolate bar. Pixie Stix and SweeTarts have their place. Little boxes of Milkduds are just fine.

But do not approach me with those weird peanut butter taffy things in the orange and black wrappers. Make no attempt to give me those sesame seed things that are neither chewy nor hard but were something in between. Those only came from the carob houses and I want no part of that, either.

Bring me a Bit-o-Honey any day. Or a tiny box of Nerds.

This is your reminder to stock up. We’re just over two weeks out from the Night of Great Begging. Be the good house on the block. Get the full-size Twix.

I’m one of approximately 17% of the population that likes candy corn.

I like the traditional orange/yellow/white. I prefer the rarer white/orange/brown. I do not want candy corn in weird pastel Easter colors or red and green for Christmas. I don’t know when or why we started doing that, but we should stop. That might be the first step toward becoming a civilized society again.

I picked up a bag of Brach’s Autumn Mix a couple weeks ago. It’s got the little pumpkins in it, but not the little corn cobs. Does anyone else remember those?

Anyway, here’s a brief history of candy corn: https://www.history.com/articles/candy-corn-invented

And I totally forgot that it has its own day, Oct. 30. Plenty of time to stock up.

I wore Tevas all summer. On days I had to work in the office, I swapped them out for the DM Voss II.

It’s been so long since I wore socks that I don’t even know where they went.

And now, quite abruptly, it’s sock season again. I love socks. A light merino, a Columbia hiker, Saucony no-shows. Those are my go-tos. I’m forever looking for a knee-high cable knit that will accommodate the calves I’ve inherited from my parents.

Ohhhhh, the e.g. smith space-dye. Those were amazing. I miss those.

It’s been a rough transition. I’m still throwing on Tevas to run out to get the mail, but the rain is increasingly colder and it’s only a matter of time before full-time whole shoes are necessary.

I need new socks.