Typepad just ate my longest post EVER, I think. So. Here’s the skinny, no details.

Friday: Mom arrives, we clean, and eat pizza.

Saturday: My period starts, I cry, Dave confesses that he was “really excited this time” and is sad too, more cleaning, Mom buys us beadboard to finish off the Sewing Room, I have an internal anxiety attack in Home Depot, my coworkers throw us a fabulous housewarming/anniversary party, my fingernail fallos off, I spend the evening with old friends and new ones in a gay bar cheering on my oldest friend in a costume contest, I have a vodka collins and a beer, which is unusual because I never drink, but fuck it, I’m not pregnant!

Sunday: Happy Anniversary, breakfast with Amy and Andy, off to the school halloween party, hurry hurry, off to home, into my spidery old woman costume, Dave is a zombie, we get mad props from trick or treaters, terrify a few people, I call in to work because I have NOT STOPPED since Friday morning, and go to bed.

Today: Tea and FatKitty keeping me warm, ordering more OPKs and HPTs, finding out the Redskins lost to the Packers which is a good sign that the end is nigh for the Bush Administration.

On Halloween, though, I’ll elaborate on that.

Dave got cardboard and cut out random triangles and tacked them into the windows on the front of the house. He set up strobes behind them, blinking at different speeds. We had some tombstones and bone lights in the front yard, a spider on the front of the house, a haunted tree face on the maple, and “CAUTION: FRESH GRAVES” tape from the fence, around the basketball hoop, and to the post on the porch. I stood on the porch with a candle lantern while Dave crouched near the hedge. As kids approached, I stared them down, which freaked them out enough that they didn’t even look at Dave. As they would leave, Dave would scurry across the lawn to the tree, and it was enough with the crunchy leaves to get their attention. When they looked and didn’t see anything, then Dave would pop out and they would scream. It was AWESOME.

We didn’t get TONS of trick or treaters — maybe 35-40? — but more than we’ve ever had. We did get tons of compliments, though. The cardboard/strobe light combo made it look like we had really boarded up our windows, and people said as much. More than one said “I’ve never seen anyone ACTUALLY board up their windows.” WHo am I to give away trade secrets? People were taking pictures and filming the place, and our next door neighbor came out to see what the commotion was. “You ARE the owner, right?” she said, and I laughed and explained I was, and the zombie at the hedge was Dave. She thought it was neat, and I said “well, it’s our favorite holiday, and it’s our first anniversary!” (Got that little factoid out into the neighborhood, now.)

For next year, we have some updates, but we’ll probably keep the same theme. We need a dimmer light onthe porch so that the Unversal Symbol of Candy is still there, but it’s creepier. We also need to spotlight the haunted tree face a little more. It was creepy, but I don’t think anyone saw it. We need more tombstones, and a rocking chair for me to sit on. That would be some spooky shit.

And, it would be cool to get together with other cool houses and have some sort of scavenger hunt or something… we heard there was a cool one on the next street over, and people who do “cool houses” are wanting people to come, so if we got together and could send kids who wanted to be spooked to other houses, that would rock, you know? Increase the foot traffic!

Dave asked if I was okay with our anniversary celebration, and I totally was. Maybe next year we can go for an anniversary eve dinner or something (we had the party this year, so we had some celebrating) but that definitely, a haunted house was a cool thing to do on Halloween.