A treat for you, ma’am.

I’d just answered the door for the zillionth time (our neighborhood saw diminished turnout, but even so, enough that I didn’t get a five-minute break for two hours), treated some miscellaneous kids and one of Kate’s middle-school friends, who came to the door dressed as a slutty nun (why, God? Why?) and a woman emerged from the murk.

“Can I use your bathroom?” she asked. Well, this was a first. In her favor: She didn’t look crazy. I considered the golden rule. The weather was rainy and windy; it would be miserable to add a full bladder on top of that.

I showed her in. She slipped off her shoes and was in and out in a trice. I’m sure she felt treated.

It wasn’t a terrible Halloween, even with the weather. We still got rid of all the candy, save two Reese’s Cups, which I’ll put in Kate’s lunch tomorrow. And since All Souls’ Day will fall on Saturday, here’s a picture from five years ago, which I ran across while doing some memory-laning:

allsouls

I took this in the oldest part of an old Polish cemetery, and it seemed to say everything about what happens after we leave the earth. People mourn, they put you in the ground, and eventually, the ground itself forgets you’re there.

I don’t have any links today, because I’m lazy. Didn’t sleep well last night, rained all day — I’m headed for bed. Have a great weekend, all.

Posted at 12:30 am in Same ol' same ol' |
 

50 responses to “A treat for you, ma’am.”

  1. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 1, 2013 at 12:40 am

    Told spooky stories for an hour to twenty people in a haunted mansion up the road, and it was a lovely time. Meanwhile, we have to re-boot trick-or-treat on Sunday from 5:30 to 7:00 pm; most of our county and neighboring areas started at noon or just after to reschedule, due to the wind forecast as much as the rain.

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  2. Sherri said on November 1, 2013 at 1:07 am

    About 60 kids this year, a little on the low side. Our count varies quite a bit; we’ve had as many as 150 some years. Our particular cul-de-sac is aging,though; we’re aren’t the only empty-nesters. We’ll probably get more tourists next year when Halloween doesn’t fall on a school night.

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  3. ROGirl said on November 1, 2013 at 6:27 am

    The steady rain last night really kept down the numbers. Parents were standing on the sidewalk with big umbrellas while the kids came up to the house.

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  4. alex said on November 1, 2013 at 7:41 am

    Our neighborhood does its own thing and did it on Sunday. The weather was perfect.

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  5. James said on November 1, 2013 at 8:13 am

    Jeff:

    What spooky stories? Like:

    “Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.” (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)

    Sorry.

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    • nancy said on November 1, 2013 at 8:25 am

      Eh. The Old Testament was basically one long action movie. It’s what they had instead of “Call of Duty.”

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  6. coozledad said on November 1, 2013 at 8:37 am

    Speaking of horror stories, Sarah Palin’s got a fresh Christmas masturbation out as an audiobook, and from the sound of it, she read it in a National Guard Armory crapper.

    They should weaponize this thing, and call it a “full explosive penile eversion modulator”.
    http://wonkette.com/533110/your-ears-appear-to-be-lacking-in-blood-lets-fix-that-by-listening-to-sarah-palin-read-her-christmas-audiobook#idc-container

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  7. Basset said on November 1, 2013 at 8:47 am

    LAMary, could you post a link to that pic of the golden pup from yesterday?

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  8. Connie said on November 1, 2013 at 9:21 am

    A message from my daughter:
    We just got home from Ender’s Game (the Movie). It was horrid beyond words. Don’t let anyone go see it.

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  9. LAMary said on November 1, 2013 at 9:22 am

    I’ll try Basset. Not sure how my friend’s privacy settingson Facebook will work.

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  10. LAMary said on November 1, 2013 at 9:26 am

    https://www.facebook.com/pinewoodspringsCO

    It’s on the Pinewood Springs, Colorado Facebook page.

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  11. nancy said on November 1, 2013 at 9:26 am

    If you’re not a FBer, here he is. (WARNING: Clicking may cause you to die of Cute.)

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  12. LAMary said on November 1, 2013 at 9:33 am

    Look at that little guy. What a sweetheart.

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  13. brian stouder said on November 1, 2013 at 10:15 am

    Mary – Thread Win! (I think I’ll be smiling all day long)

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  14. Jeff Borden said on November 1, 2013 at 10:32 am

    Thanks a lot, Cooz. It’s going to take a solid hour of Ramones songs to erase that horrible voice from my ear canals. At top volume, too.

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  15. Julie Robinson said on November 1, 2013 at 10:35 am

    I can die happy now. All other thoughts but puppies have left my brain.

    Connie, good to know. I hadn’t gotten around to reading the book when I started hearing about the author’s homophobia; now I know I can skip the whole thing. BTW, my hubby and friends saw Gravity in IMAX 3D last weekend and thought it was outstanding. Between claustrophobia and 3D-induced nausea, I may be happy to wait for this one on the small screen.

    Refusing to click on the Palin link, why should I even give her a click?

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  16. MarkH said on November 1, 2013 at 10:44 am

    See, Jeff B.? Look at Julie’s post #15. You could have gone right to that puppy photo and saved your self an hour. Nothing against the Ramones, mind you, but…

    Julie’s last sentence nails all things Palin.

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  17. MarkH said on November 1, 2013 at 10:44 am

    “…yourself…”

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  18. Bitter Scribe said on November 1, 2013 at 10:50 am

    Giving out candy on Halloween is one of the very few things I miss about owning a detached single-family home.

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  19. Charlotte said on November 1, 2013 at 11:44 am

    It’s a good thing that puppy is several states away. It’s twilight of the dogs here — many drugs with each meal, one has a permanent brace for the achilles tendon he blew, and while they’re sweet sweet sweet, they are not adorable puppies.

    A few trick-or-treaters last night, more than usual over at Chuck’s house. It was a nice night, not too cold, and it seems people are spreading back out into the neighborhoods again instead of only going to Yellowstone street.

    Did you all see Laurie Anderson’s obit for Lou? Very sweet: http://www.stereogum.com/1549171/read-lou-reeds-obituary-placed-by-laurie-anderson-in-their-local-paper/news/

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  20. LAMary said on November 1, 2013 at 11:45 am

    The photo of Sarah Palin that accompanies the audio book posting is fixation material. To me she looks like she’s really cold and needs to pee.

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  21. Peter said on November 1, 2013 at 11:46 am

    Thank you very much Cooz and Jeff B!!! I wasn’t going to click on the link, and then when Jeff B. said he needed an hour of Ramones, I had to click out of duty of looking at the car wreck on the highway, and OMG!! AAAAAAAAAAGHHH! I needed to jam FOUR pens in my ear until the pain went away!

    But if I may be serious for a second: How about that story where she continued to play the present game until she got the gift she wanted? What an openly lousy mom. If she wanted to be as evil as Dick Cheney, she would have let the kids win, get up in the middle of the night to eat the chocolates, and then tell the kids in the morning that the Eskimos (or Canadians or Russkies or Democrats) ate them.

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  22. jerry said on November 1, 2013 at 11:50 am

    Halloween is much smaller here in England. My wife insisted we stock up on sweets to hand out but for the second year running we had no callers at all.

    Did Movember three years ago. Had to have beard and moustache shaved off so I could start smooth. Haven’t regrown the beard but still have the moustache – pictures on Flickr as Paidetres. Apart from the fundraising, which is important, getting men to focus more on their health is really worthwhile.

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  23. Jeff Borden said on November 1, 2013 at 12:02 pm

    Even with a lot of rain last night, we had 125 trick-or-treaters show up, but we’d budgeted candy for the standard 150 to 165, so I feasted on Kit Kats until sugar shock set in. Only a couple of high school age goons ever showed up, too, which was a big plus.

    Tonight, I will act more childlike than the kids yesterday. I’m joining six other guys at a steakhouse for dinner, then we’re all going to see “Bad Grandpa.” I am almost ashamed of myself. . .but not quite.

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  24. Chris in Iowa said on November 1, 2013 at 12:20 pm

    The next — and first — time I find myself playing “Eskimo Bingo,” I can’t think of a better gift to buy than a copy of the Palin audiobook. It’s sad to know so many suckers will gladly buy the damn thing. That may have been the most boring family story I have ever heard.

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  25. Jeff Borden said on November 1, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    I thought “Eskimo Bingo” sounded a lot like the episode of “The Office,” where idiot Michael gives an expensive iPod in an otherwise $10 or less gift exchange, then changes the rules when he receives a gift of a handmade oven mitt.

    The Palin clan is a not-very-bright collection of utterly banal people whose only calling card is the relatively exotic address that is Alaska. They’re the Kardashians in polar fleece minus the enormous bubble butts. I try to avoid them in all their venues, but every once in awhile, that horrible nasally twang rears back and assaults my delicate eardrums.

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  26. Dexter said on November 1, 2013 at 1:12 pm

    Shooting at LAX…at least two shot…breaking news…situation “over” —LAPD, Airport Security reporting….
    http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Los-Angeles-Airport-LAX-Shooting-230220201.html

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  27. Dexter said on November 1, 2013 at 1:27 pm

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/sscornelius/2936029131/in/set-72157605911005833

    Master or The Monster? Only The Ghoul knows for sure.

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  28. Julie Robinson said on November 1, 2013 at 1:31 pm

    Here’s a little Friday afternoon palate cleanser: http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2013/11/halloween-2013-anubis-and-king-tut.html. Talk about your CUTE.

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  29. Prospero said on November 1, 2013 at 1:52 pm

    Bernie’s moustache.

    Eskimo Bingo reminds me that down in the land of jorts and mullets, the baldheaded Medicare theft champion plays Seminole Bingo. How does a state elect a guy who presided over the biggest scheme to defraud Medicare fin the program’s history (by a mile) to be its governor? Please secede, and take the Magic Kingdom and Monaghan’s perfect town with you FLA.

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  30. Danny said on November 1, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    Interesting commentary on slashdot regarding the government hiring Oracle, Redhat and Google to fix the healthcare dot gov website:

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/31/2156233/tech-titans-oracle-red-hat-and-google-to-help-fix-healthcaregov

    Many are skeptical that throwing a bunch of programmers at it will do the trick. For one, they are all a bunch of rockstars who aren’t used to working with one another. Also someone said that maybe Intuit would have been best for this job given the type of app it needs to be. Love the one comment:

    “Nine women cannot make a one month baby”

    It is kind of hilarious that apparently only 6 people successfully signed up in the first 24 hours. Maybe Charlotte was one of them. Rarefied company.

    And here I thought that just having a state issued ID qualified one as a mensa-illuminati-ninja here at NNC.

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  31. coozledad said on November 1, 2013 at 2:23 pm

    I understand these hideous specimens from a scientific and sociological perspective; I cannot fathom them using any moral equipment I possess.

    http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2013/11/they-are-not-us.html

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  32. Prospero said on November 1, 2013 at 2:52 pm

    Danny@30: Interesting how no GOPers are commenting on the fact that the website FUBAR in the first place is another FUBARed examp;e of privatization. And nobody said it takes intelligence to get a picture ID. It certainly takes access to government offices, transportation, and money a lot of people do not have to spare. Besides, when Texas refused to recognize state university system IDs and accepted concealed carry licenses, they obviously gave their game away.

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  33. coozledad said on November 1, 2013 at 2:54 pm

    Prospero:These people are an abject lesson in the cultural myopia that produces monsters. Goya was wrong. It’s not the dream of reason that hatches rotten creatures to babble and drool among us – it’s the dream of a vengeful god that haunts the crude, underlit spaces of their imaginations. They’ll get their vicious god if they have to make him up out of someone else’s agony, and they generally have to, because mailing some slick or charlatan a check doesn’t carry the “spiritual” weight of mashing someone’s face on a curb.

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  34. Jolene said on November 1, 2013 at 3:04 pm

    Julie, thanks for the Sweet Juniper link. Amazing for a parent to put that Evelyn of effort into kids’ costumes and so great for the kids to have the museum visits and other activities that went into making tem. What lucky kids!

    Have one ear out to the cable coverage of te LAX incident. Incredible how much trouble one person can cause in the middle of a complex setting–traffic tie-ups, flight delays, cancellations of all kinds of activities, not to mention that a person has apparently been killed and at least two others injured.

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  35. Jolene said on November 1, 2013 at 3:22 pm

    Evelyn of effort? No, level of effort. Sheesh!

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  36. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 1, 2013 at 3:31 pm

    Righto. I have the Amalekites and the Crusades to feel guilty about, and atheists have the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror & the Red Terror of 1936 on their ticket.

    But I draw the line at accepting responsibility for either Tim LaHaye or Jerry Jenkins. Won’t do it. (James and I would agree, though, that the mere fact of the success of the “Left Behind” series is indeed scary.)

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  37. coozledad said on November 1, 2013 at 4:06 pm

    Stalin was the product of an alcoholic father and the orthodox seminary. Martin Amis has pointed out the many similarities in Stalin’s sloganeering and garden variety pietistic cant.

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  38. Deborah said on November 1, 2013 at 4:27 pm

    I kind of liked the term “Evelyn of effort”, I think I will adopt it.

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  39. Jolene said on November 1, 2013 at 4:28 pm

    The Post has a list of 31 things we’ve learned from the first month of implementation of the ACA exchanges. Obviously, much of what we’ve learned isn’t good news, but this is a good source for anyone trying to keep track of both political and technological events.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/01/thirty-one-things-we-learned-in-healthcare-govs-first-31-days/

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  40. Charlotte said on November 1, 2013 at 4:37 pm

    I waited 2 weeks before signing up. It did take 2-3 hours, so it was hardly a cakewalk, but then so does doing one’s own taxes on TurboTax.

    It was still better than having to go down to the office of that libertarian shitbag insurance agent I had to use the last time. Who was such a dick about tracking down my coverage that I had to call the office of the state insurance commission (who got back to me in 10 minutes).

    We’ve got a hot race for city commission going to vote on Tuesday. A batch of teabaggers who have convinced themselves and their ilk that our city manager form of gummint is Tyranny! and Must Be Overthrown!

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  41. brian stouder said on November 1, 2013 at 5:11 pm

    The closest thing to what I would have put on the list of those 31 things we’ve learned is this one:

    The botched rollout hasn’t changed public opinion.

    I would have stated that item as:

    “It’s difficult to launch a major new governmental initiative when a majority in the House of Representatives obstruct absolutely everything they can, at every chance they get, upt o and including SHUTTING DOWN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT and even risking a default on the Full Faith and Credit of the United States.

    I’ve heard a couple of dead-ender folks channeling Oxy-Rush’s very great angst about how the president is a LIAR LIAR LIAR – BECAUSE THERE ARE PEOPLE WHOSE INSURANCE HAS BEEN CANCELLED (by their insurance providers, of course) – and, in accordance with one of the 31 ‘things we have learned’, it hasn’t affected my opinion of Obamacare one scintilla

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  42. LAMary said on November 1, 2013 at 5:12 pm

    I know someone named Evelyn who could be called that.

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  43. Deborah said on November 1, 2013 at 5:34 pm

    Charles Pierce on the LAX shooting: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/lax-shooting-not-a-random-event-110113

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  44. Judybusy said on November 1, 2013 at 6:06 pm

    One of my coworkers made a great costume for his kid based on some video game where the characters are all made of squares. I shared the Sweet Juniper story on FB and tagged him. I joked that they’re dad twins, because he does a lot of cool stuff with his son, too. For himself, he and some buddies made various centaur-like costumes and headed down to fabled venue First Avenue for the night. The hoofs they made were so high they counted as stilts, so First Ave enforced their no-drinking-while-wearing-stilts policy. He said his legs were really sore this morning, and I said, “Welcome to the world of women.” My friend’s costume was the head of a rhino; he said the horn was about 8 feet high. He made plates to represent the hide, and it all looked very cool. I’d link photos, but they’re all on FB.

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  45. Prospero said on November 1, 2013 at 6:30 pm

    If the ACA rollout website was FUBAR, what exactly does that say about the GOPer grail, privatization. People in the most perfect position to FUBAR the ACA rollout hate it for exactly the same reason most people like it or will at least give it the benefit of the doubt. My parents went through this whe my brother Matt died of Leukemia over five brutal years. And our insurance plan at the time was through my dad’s employer, Kaiser-Permanente, a company in the forefront of social resposibility at the time. I can remember fights between my mom and dad over the costs of treatment and flying to Boston for treatments. My parents didn’t fight about anything but this ever. So in the end, they’d scrape up the cash aqn my mom would fly Matt out of Charleston (at great risk to their lives) to go to the Farber Center. This was my first experience with health insurance and I wouldn’t trust those crooks far as I could throw them.

    Another anecdote. I hurt my shoulder pretty badly skiing one time. My ex and I were sharing a trailside cabin and long-skiing. At the end of the day, my Beloved ex (my only ex) was seeming to warm to my friend Nancy, like GFs before the obnoxious BFF came along. I’d been accused wrongfully of some chicanery with Nancy, so I was happy about this. Nancy is spectaculatly beautiful and speaks several modern indo-European languages. She speaks Icelandic. So, I have been a bit smitten since we were riding the Green Line from Arlington to Park Central because she could read The Master and Margarita in Russian. And she looks like freckle-face on Katarina Witt’s bod, and she had become my best friend over several years. I doubt we ever touched each other. Her husband was a glad-handing right-wing shithead

    Martin Amis is the product of a more talented dad he could not resist trying to one-up, and a bunch of neurasthenic onanists like Hitchens that thought they had it all figured out and it was all dreck. Write something as good as Lucky Jim or The Old Devils Marty, then somebody might pay attention when you run your dad down. I don’t know this for sure but I’d bet some GOPer tinkering got private contracting into the PP/ACA and I’d bet some House committee had first right of refusal on who got hired.

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  46. Prospero said on November 1, 2013 at 6:36 pm

    And Danny: For Dickishness, you have buried the meter, I don’t think I’ve ever been such a dick here, but whatever

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  47. brian stouder said on November 2, 2013 at 12:18 am

    So I’m thinkin’ Sarah Palin was hitt’n us with a one of those fancy ‘double entendres’, when she told us that one of the best Christmas gifts Todd gave her was when he chopped stacks of cord wood for her, and stoked her fireplace with the wood, and kept her warm; and the wood warmed them twice, since he prepared it and then they lit it up

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  48. Prospero said on November 2, 2013 at 9:35 am

    Why a lot of this shit about Obama lied is just insurance scam merde.

    They doan like that pre-existing conditions shit. That’s where they made the big money. Off of dead people.

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  49. Basset said on November 2, 2013 at 1:10 pm

    http://io9.com/thomas-kinkades-cottage-paintings-upgraded-with-star-w-1456764815

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