Halloween: A Holiday Hemorrhoid.

The end of September is drawing near.  Slowly we are adjusting to a new fall schedule and my oldest son is settling into school.  The weather is unpredictable and sporadic and will feel like the dawn of winter one moment and the heart of summer the next.  The back-to-school sales have ended and in a desperate need to fill every season with an insane marketing scheme the Halloween enticements are out in abundance.  It is not only the stores that are trenched in for the rest of September and through October, but the houses, sprinkled through out the town, have begun to morph into wax museums, haunts, and general gaudy holidayness. 

It is a damning indictment of our culture that we can spend well over two months (in Costco Halloween paraphernalia was out at the end of August) on Halloween and go straight to Christmas, letting Thanksgiving fall as an after thought, the bastard holiday between the start of school and Christmas.

So, here is the thing, I hate Halloween.  It is with no small amount of trepidation and dread that Halloween approaches.  I was never scared by a hideous costume or yelled while trick-or-treating by surly homeowners.  I was never beat up and ransacked for candy by the neighborhood bully.  There is no trigger in my past for my dislike of Halloween, but a slow progression away from costumes and candy and disgusting masks and public foolishness.

I am not opposed to all public foolishness but I can't think of any I support.  It isn't just Halloween, i struggle with the "christian" derivative, the harvest festival, as well.  A harvest festival, where your encouraged to put on a costume, consume massive amounts of candy and treats and socialize in a group with other people who have been similarly encouraged and have cheerfully complied?  Yeah, Halloween!  Call it what it is and give it a rest.  There is nothing, at this point, to suggest that participation in Halloween makes you a pagan just as there is no reason that celebrating Christmas makes you a christian or celebrating thanksgiving makes you thankful. 

At the heart of it I don't like putting on a costume, I would rather withdraw, than draw that sort of attention to myself (I know, everyone else is in costume to thus the attention spread out over a large number of people.  It doesn't feel that way.)  My dislike of costumes, or dress-up for all, has morphed into a general dislike of Halloween and all the accouterments that make it such a big deal.  As for the unspoken contest of who can be the most grotesque and shocking?  I have small children.  I am disturbed by the masks I see I can only imagine the effect it has on young, imaginative minds and I can not imagine a scenario where I would let my child wear some of the masks I see during Halloween.

Halloween has become my holiday hemorrhoid.  Annoying, somewhat uncomfortable and if I ignore it, maybe it will just go away.

As Summer Changes to Fall

Its dark out and I've got a cup of coffee.  Soon, I'll have to get up and finish getting ready for the day--eat, dress, commute, etc...--but right now I'm clinging to my coffee and the restful silence of the morning.  It wasn't too long ago that there would have been light this morning, summer seems like it is just behind us but we are around the bend now.  The afternoons are still warm, when the sun is out, but the mornings are dark now and evenings turn to night much faster than they used too.

Bellingham usually has a really nice September but this year it almost feels like October has come quicker than usual yet is still a week and a half away.  It is the clouds and the constant threat of rain and the changing leaves and the school buses passing me while I ride to work in the mornings then ride home again in the late afternoon.  This changing season invokes melodies of slow, sad country songs--there is an essence of nostalgia and sadness in the air as summer changes to fall.

And yet I look forward to this time of year, I enjoy the layer of chill that is in the air and the way the colors change and the promise of school.  Even though I am not a student (I had to drop the class I was taking...for a variety of reasons) there is something rich and exciting about the new school year that still effects me.  And, it could be the returning college students, there is a buzz in the air and more people out on vintage bikes and long boards than normal, people out, just killing time.  Killing time, not something I do a lot of, or, not in the leisurely fashion of a student.

So here we go, a fall Friday.  A 30 percent change of rain, most likely cloudy, but so long as it isn't raining there is always a chance of sun.

Fall is Here

It is early, I woke up late.

It is dark. 

The sun is just begining to make an appearance with a faint, orange glow out the dining room window. 

The sky fads from the orange glow to a clear blue to the dark, lingering night to remind me that it is early and fall is here.

A New Grind

When I started this blog it was a daily thing.  Every morning, as part of my routine and regiment, I was up, grinding out this blog.  Writing about writing, coffee, my depression as I faced certain lay-off.  I wrote about my thought process as I looked toward career paths.  I wrote that I had made decisions on this or that career path only to change my mind.  I don't know why it is so difficult for me to make a decision.  No, that's not true, I do.  I am afraid of making the wrong decision.

In most everything I do, if the outcome isn't certain success or accomplishment or fulfillment I choose a different way.  I am a careful, cautious card player and only loose when I abandon all caution.  I am a careful, methodical mountain biker and carpenter.  I hate to pick the wrong answer, the wrong path, the wrong method.  As I struggle with settling on a career I am horrified of making the wrong choice, horrified to the point of inability to process.  So many interests and possibilities careening through my head with a limited "brain triage" to filter them through.  I only know that I don't want to be a carpenter for the rest of my working life.  But that is where I always find myself:  employed utilizing my most marketable skill, carpentry. 

Today I'll go to work, fitting together tedious trim pieces that are down stairs then up a ladder, a long way from the table and chop saws.  Cut, fit, modify, prime, fasten.  A lot of down the ladder, up the stairs, down the stairs, up the ladder, etc... I'll be trying to stay focused and committed to quality and precision in midst of tedium and boredom.  When I'm done with that I start a class at Whatcom Community College, chemistry 121.  I am taking preliminary classes that are pre-reqs for Physical Therapy a career path that was a tangent from another career path. 

This is not my final answer, but I have never been good at multiple choice.

Dawn is a Long Time Coming in September

September is winding down.  The weather has shifted from the dry-ish heat (in Bellingham it is always a little muggy) to alternating between rain and a heavy, muggy heat like cloths coming out of the dryer that are not quite dry.  College students have descended and the number of drivers making the roads dangerous for local drivers and bike commuters has risen exponentially.  My oldest son is starting kindergarten, I'm starting a class at the community college, the leaves are changing, and we have just moved for the second time in seven months.

Second time is seven months does not sound quite as dramatic or challenging as it really is, packing and sifting through stuff and letting go of where you have lived and watched kids grow is emotionally and physically demanding.  And after a full weekend of moving its back to the grind on Monday morning.  So, here I am.  Incidentally, the beginning of school also marks a return to my blog. 

It has been a rather long sabbatical from blogging, the challenge of sticking to a routine while I was unemployed has changed now that I am employed.  It has been hard to revive the quite, early mornings I was so accustomed too just a year ago, as life changes so do habits and routines but I always find a way back to quite mornings before the family and the day has risen.  In many ways its frustrating that my morning regimen slipped away during the summer, I missed the early morning sun, the cool summer mornings, the subtle change from 5 a.m. light to dark, dawn is a long time in coming at the end of September but the day is quick to start.

Summers Dusk.

5:45 am and dark outside.  The sure sign of changing seasons for me is the dwindling morning light.  As summer fades into fall, this long dusk between seasons, the light in the morning is my litmus for falls progress as it encroaches onto our lives.  The leaves haven't begun to change, in earnest yet.  But there is a strange bite in the air in the mornings that seems to feel like fall mornings.  It is vague and barley discernible but present and very real all the same. 

I look forward to fall as a season of new beginnings.  My oldest son will start preschool and I'll be taking a couple of classes at the local community college as well.  My wife is working, part time, but this is new for us, a new beginning, and it began on the cusp of fall.

What I look forward to most are the cold sunny days of fall.  The barren trees set against a deep blue sky that slips into the ocean seamlessly on the horizon.  The bright sun acts in gentle juxtaposition to the crisp, cold, air and just off the beaten path the leaves gather in nooks and crannies and have found their resting place until the winter when the rain and snow will cover them and speed up their decomposition.

And this year is no different, I hold onto the last, long gasp of summer but look forward to the imminent fall season.  This year I am ready for the summer season to end, symbolically.  Our summer has been fraught with stress and change.  Our youngest son has spent time in the emergency room and our doctor trying to control breathing problems.  Our oldest has discovered a stubborn eagerness to assert his will over the world.  I have searched and been rejected for an uncountable number of jobs until this one (carpenter with a local remodel company) came available.  My wife has put up with unemployment, strong willed son, and the health problems of the other with admiration and grace--I can say with complete honesty that as a family we would not have made it through this summer with out her.  She, in turn, has also started working.  The summer has been chaotic, if not entirely busy, and we are ready for it to end.

In addition to the seasonal qualities of fall, it also grounds the schedules of our society and the free-for-all of summer is replaced by the constraints of school, it seems to settle our schedule and that gives us a certain freedom from the pressure of creating a productive summer.