Fowl Territory

Greetings, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea!

While all of us pilgrims are enjoying Thanksgiving with our families, we have another pundit sitting in my chair for this week, with a seasonal tale of epic proportions, and it goes without saying, all the trimmings. It's true that the Holiday Police might not approve, but you know I always say there's no wrong way to celebrate Thanksgiving, and that's not just a lot of cranberry sauce, believe me. So I say go ahead and celebrate the occasion any way you like, from the most hide-bound traditional to the most radically outlandish, and the heck with the Holiday Police, or my name isn't -

John Q. Pilgrim

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Cooking the Thanksgiving turkey

by Rachel Howells

I felt steamy resentment grow as I knelt before the stove basting my fowl traitor.
"I hate you," I hissed at him while I poured hot drippings over his pasty, wrinkled skin. I poked him hard, right in the gut with the tip of the baster to illustrate my displeasure. He appeared to have some sort of invisible shield protecting him from the heat of the oven. In mocking silence, he did not even flinch at either my verbal or physical assaults.
"It's getting late, do you need my help?"
It was my sister-in-law's deceivingly saccharine-like voice coming from behind me. Her unexpected arrival in the kitchen, and seemingly innocuous question startled me, and I dropped the baster on my foot. It spewed its greasy remnants down my leg in its descent.
"Oops," she snickered. At that, Isabelle spun herself around and went back into the living room to join the men, who were all watching television.
Our family had a tradition in which the women prepared the Thanksgiving meal while the men chatted in front of the game. After dinner was over, the women would retire to the living room while the men cleared the table and washed up all the dishes before serving pumpkin pie and coffee.
At the first Thanksgiving dinner my brother, Simon, brought his new wife to, she told us straight out that she thought our tradition was sexist, and she would take no part in it. She refused to help out in the kitchen in any way.
Isabelle would sit with the men before supper and then converse with the women afterwards while the men cleaned up. She did not see any problem or faulty logic with this whatsoever, and the rest of us held our tongues for the sake of my brother and familial harmony.
Other than her disdain for our family traditions, Isabelle was not too fond of me in general. When she heard that for once everyone had voted to celebrate Thanksgiving at my house, she snidely remarked, "Okay, if you want to honor Thanksgiving with dry, over-cooked turkey served 2 hours late, that's fine."
Through a series of phone calls relayed along the family gossip chain, I caught wind of Isabelle's comment, thanks to my cousin, Valerie. By the time the comment reached me, all I heard was, "You're a loser and a joke, who can't even cook a turkey."
I defensively told Valerie, "Maybe I am chronically late, and maybe I'm more familiar with the menu section of the phone book than my KitchenAid food processor, but I'm not an idiot! I can certainly cook a stupid turkey!"
I decided then and there that I would cook the best, most succulent, flavorful bird any of my family members had ever sunk their teeth into, including Isabelle herself! All of them would ooh and awe in a chorus of praise and appreciation as they partook in a Thanksgiving feast that showcased my perfectly roasted turkey. I consulted the internet for tips on how to do this. I did not want to ask my perceptive mother, grandmother or great aunts for cooking advice, because I didn't want them to know how ruffled my sister-in-law made me.
One of the tips I read suggested injecting clarified butter under the turkey's skin throughout the roasting process. I had fully intended to follow this suggestion, as well as others I had read, but my concentration kept being interrupted by Isabelle, her unruly children, and all of the other females loitering around the kitchen.
I told the women, other than Isabelle of course, that they could busy themselves with setting the table and prepping the side dishes. But, under no circumstances, were they to interfere with the turkey. The turkey was all mine!
However, I was finding Isabelle's very presence in my home disconcerting and it was making me sloppy with my turkey. I could see her lounging on my sofa from the kitchen. It did not escape my notice that she periodically cast blatantly smug glances at me and the clock that hung near the stove.
In addition, in between throwing knowing looks in my direction, she judgmentally eyed my children laughing and playing, while oblivious to her own children's whines and dangerously disruptive grabs for attention. At one point, as a wine glass plummeted to the carpeted floor, my uncle, Herb, snapped at Simon, "Hey, control your kids!"
Isabelle was clearly not impressed by Herb's scolding, but for once kept her opinions to herself. Instead, she ordered Simon to take the children into another room to play a game until dinner was ready - whenever that would be.
Fuming, I went back to work on my turkey. Unfortunately, all my prodding and poking to inject butter under the turkey's skin had caused some tearing. With only half-an-hour to go before dinner was to be served, my turkey was not looking very appetizing. In fact, he looked kind of sickly with his sallow, mutilated skin.
I started to feel a bit panicky and out of desperation turned the broiler on high. I reasoned that I could quickly broil the turkey to a golden brown before removing him from the oven. While he rested for 10 minutes, I would have enough time to make the gravy. I took deep, meditative breaths and told myself that everything would work out.
Just then, there was a terrible crash from the room where Simon was playing with the children. I went running to see what the damage was, and in doing so temporarily forget about my broiling turkey.Simon and Isabelle's kids had knocked over my glass showcase of limited edition porcelain dolls. Before I could really react to the situation, someone yelled, "The turkey's burning! The turkey's burning!"
Not long afterwards, I indignantly placed a platter with my partially charred, partially pallid turkey on the silently seated table of twenty. By this point, I did not even bat an eye at Isabelle, who had positioned herself at the head of the table - a spot traditionally reserved for my great-grandfather.
Resignedly, my morbidly obese uncle, Herb, used the edge of the extended dining room table to push himself up to sing grace. This was yet another tradition that Isabelle rolled her eyes at.
Regrettably, when my husband extended the table earlier that day, he failed to lock in the leaves properly. As a consequence, when Herb pushed himself up from the table, one of the leaves buckled and folded upwards, thereby causing the recently placed turkey to catapult forward and fling straight into Isabelle's big head.
To this day, everyone agrees my turkey was the best turkey they ever had.

Cat Nap

Hello World,

Well, I know it doesn't seem remotely possible, but we're already past the midway point of November, and heavens to Murgatroyd (now THERE'S a quaint expression that's lost on young people nowadays) it will actually be Thanksgiving next week, of all things. Not to say that the weather around here has been altogether unseasonable lately, but on Friday, I had the ice cream truck outside my window all afternoon, and don't forget, that was the 19th of November, and no joke. That's generally the time in these parts when the frosty stuff is on the pumpkins, as it were, and not still being sold out of trucks in waffle cones to people wearing tank tops and shorts. I can tell you that if it ever does get cold around here, like it's supposed to at this time of year, the flip-flop purveyors are going to be very upset.

Speaking of the weather reminds me that we've been putting out food for some of our local feline visitors, and they're always happy to come to the front or back door for a handout, and often go from one door to the other, hoping for two separate handouts while they're at it. In fact, a couple will go so far as to meet us right at our cars when we get home, and "escort" us all the way to the house, making sure that we're aware of their presence, in case we were prone to forgetfulness, and might somehow overlook them when it came to handing out plates. There's about six of them, and they're all pretty friendly for the most part, and likely belong to the neighbors and not actual strays at all, because we notice that in really bad weather, you don't see hide nor hair of them all day, when you would most expect to see hungry strays desperate for some nice warm food. Two of them, including the locally famous Cinna-Mooch and her younger brother, we already know that they belong to the people next-door, who apparently never feed them, based on how much they eat at our house instead. The other four may be indoor-outdoor companion animals, or former house-pets that have been abandoned, or just very friendly strays after all. After a while, we noticed there was one intrepid soul that we would see at all hours of the day or night, and in all kinds of weather, no matter how miserable, and we figured that he probably had no other home to go home to, unlike some of the others. He's a large and peppy orange tabby with dark copper-colored eyes, and we call him Rusty, because when you open the door, he paces back and forth, making screeching noises that sound like an old rusty gate. If he does belong to someone else, they're going to be looking for him now, because last week when I opened the back door and Mooch came running right into the kitchen, Rusty came right in behind her, and he's been here ever since. He's settled right into the armchair in the library, and so far, he really likes this idea of being indoors and having people just give out food three times a day, plus milk, which seems to be a novel and exotic treat for him. So far, no one has come around looking for him, although I'm pretty sure our reputation as cat-nappers has been pretty well established in the neighborhood by now, I'm thinking.

Of course, the previous week included Veterans Day, and a good time to recognize the contributions and sacrifices of our fellow citizens in uniform, and long may they wave. Alert readers will recall that it's also Bill's birthday, and a big one for him this year, as he finally turned Sweet 16, and they just don't come any sweeter than our Bill, by golly. Where he works has historically closed for Veterans Day, and I would take the day off as well, although it's not a holiday at the hospital. But this time around, we were both so busy at work that we didn't dare stay home all day, so it wasn't as festive an occasion as it might have been otherwise. But there was breakfast in bed, and presents, so the day was not a total loss after all. Around here, we say that any birthday you can walk away from is a good birthday, so this fits the bill, and all without resorting to ejection seats, parachutes, or foam-covered runways, which is even better, or so I've been told.

Every so often, when Bill and I have an appointment after work and come home late, we already know that we don't feel like cooking at that point, so instead we pick up something on the way home as a quick and easy substitute for a home-cooked meal, and the speedy clean-up is even better, because you can just throw out the paper plates and plastic forks that came with it. We had finally gotten tired of French fries at McDonald's, and were scouting around for some place different to get calzones or sandwiches as a change of pace, that would be close to home, and simple enough to just grab and go. I was flipping through an old yellow book for New Rochelle, and happened upon a hidden treasure that came as news to me, seemed way too good to be true, and I figured must have long since gone out of business. Not so fast! It seems they are still going strong, and if you're in the area, I do wish you would stop in and greet our friends at Jolo's Kitchen (and please feel free to visit their web site at http://www.joloskitchen.com/ and see for yourself) and we appreciate your support in keeping this enterprise afloat. They describe themselves as "Westchester's Own Vegan Vegetarian Restaurant" and "Forever Natural," with a menu full of soups, salads, sandwiches, pasta, drinks, desserts and hot entrees, that would seem to belie the tiny storefront that they have crammed themselves into on a busy thoroughfare. They also have a wide-ranging juice bar, where you can design your own healthy juice combinations or smoothies to order, with fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as herbs, nuts and seeds. Bill tried their "chicken" strips with brown rice, while I took a chance on their "ham" with mashed pumpkin, and they were so incredibly delicious that it would seem impossible for them to be really vegan besides. Not everything on their menu is available every day, which is just as well, because I said to Bill if we ever tried their "ribs" or "duck," we'd probably have to just camp out in the store and never go home again. They said they've been in business for two years, which surprised me that we had never heard of them, although they are in a tiny cramped spot under an overpass on a busy street, surrounded by liquor stores, dry cleaners and the family court building. But we were certainly glad to find them, and eager to support the local economy, and have already been back for more, which is not just the banana cake and brownies talking, believe me.
Meanwhile at work, I will admit that this could be just my over-active imagination, but I seem to have detected a new and disturbing wrinkle in the whole new-fangled HIPAA policy, and the privacy stipulations that are built into it. I understand that they don't want to compromise any sensitive personal data, by providing too much information to people who have no need to know, including the patient name, in situations where it isn't required. In the Purchasing department, we often place orders for patient-specific products, and as much as they don't want to, the nursing units have to give us the patient information so we can make sure that the items are delivered to the right person. Now I'm thinking that they've finally figured out a way around this, and they've decided to just make up names instead. Last week alone, I ordered a back brace for someone with the name of Tony Bennett, ostomy products for another patient called Charlie Brown, and a specialty mattress for a third person identified as Glen Ford. Now, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck around here, and I don't mind saying that I've been around the block and back, so you have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on me, I can tell you that. So if anyone thinks that I'm falling for this business with Tony Bennett, Charlie Brown and Glen Ford all in the same week at the same hospital, well, all I've got to say is that they've got another think coming, believe you me. What's next - Long John Silver with a broken leg and Mr. Spock with an ear infection? I tell you that I will not stand for every Tom, Dick and Harry going all the way around Robin Hood's barn to pull any Sneaky Pete on me, and that's not just a lot of John Bull, believe me.

In other work news, or at least it came as news to me, last week there was a big front-page story in the newspaper about a major expansion plan that will keep the doors open at Mount Vernon Hospital, after months of dire financial reports and predictions that it would finally have to close down after more than a century of serving the community. Frankly, I was surprised that I had to read about it in the newspaper, when you'd think I would have already known about it through the normal channels on the job, having worked at the sister institution for over 20 years, and feels like every bit of it, I can tell you that. Apparently this plan includes millions of dollars in federal and state funds, plus partnerships with other local organizations, such as the Wartburg Home, which provides various levels of senior assisted living on their vast secluded campus. However, it seems that something about it must have upset the more apoplectic bigwigs in the union leadership of SIEU 1199, because the day the story appeared in the paper, they had the rank-and-file picketing outside at our hospital, as if they had some serious grievance to protest, and not just a bunch of drudges who were happy for a chance to get outdoors and enjoy the nice weather. I'm thinking that it might have had something to do with calling it an "expansion plan," which nonetheless included about a hundred layoffs, so it would be safe to say that this would not be among the most popular ideas to come along in recent memory, that's for sure, and in fact, might even give the horrendously ugly temporary boiler house a run for its money, even with the ugly green plastic fence. And let's face it, I ought to know a thing or two about popularity, just ask any of our neighbors, who have had their precious pussies snatched right out from under their very noses, and you can just imagine the names they must be calling us, of which the cat-nappers would be the least of them. Of course, they can't use our real names due to HIPAA regulations, but you can bet they're heaping imprecations on the likes of John Doe, Jane Doe, John Q. Public and Yankee Doodle Dandy, I shouldn't wonder. As for me, I'm taking a page out of the hospital's book, and using a made-up name instead, so you can just call me -

Scarlett O'Hara

Beat The Clock

Hello World,

I don't know where the time has flown, but suddenly we look up and Veterans Day has come and gone already, and all of the war movies on television right along with it, by jingo, and no turning back. You can't tell by the local weather, where it's been sunny and close to 70 for a week, but it's nearly the middle of the month and pretty soon it will be time for ol' Tom Turkey, ready or not. And speaking of things we weren't ready for, we recently had a new and vigorous landscaping service come to our property, who did such a bang-up job of cleaning up the yard, that they threw out all of my old firewood along with everything else, and thanks so very much not, I'm sure. Some of that wood I had for years, and I won't say that I had gotten to the point of naming it, but I honestly believed that eventually I would get around to actually cutting up good old Woody, Corky and of course, tough old Bark. But all of that is behind me now, and nothing but a neat and empty space where the woodpile used to be. Not resting on their laurels, they also cleared out a huge accumulation of brush and overgrowth that had taken over an entire corner of our backyard, which was an enormous improvement in the outdoor ambiance around here, I can tell you that. Unfortunately, they turned up no sign of either Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater, which I know was a bitter disappointment to the Justice Department.

Alert readers may recall that the boring pastor at my church has been on a study sabbatical abroad, and we've been having an interim pastor in his absence, who actually works in the fire department and has gone into the clergy as a second career. He's an industrious fellow, and sort of a hard-charging Type A kind of personality, with no grass growing on him, and no long and boring sermons for him, thank heaven. I noticed that worship has been starting early on Sunday, and not late like we're used to, so even getting to church on time isn't good enough anymore. I figure he would be the type to set his watch five minutes ahead, so he would always have a jump on things, and there's no snoozing while he's on the job, that's for sure. Now you'd better get to church at least five minutes early, or miss the opening hymn and half of the readings before you ever get to your seat. When I mentioned this to him recently, he was surprised, and assured me that he was starting worship right on the dot, using the clock in the church office for this purpose. Well, no wonder we're off the mark here! After all, I'm the person who set that clock in the first place with the switch-over to Daylight Saving Time in March, and I just took a wild guess at the time back then, which I'm sure was wrong then and it's probably been wrong ever since. We had a good laugh about that. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the old joke about the frontier radio station that announced the time at noon when they heard the siren at the fire house, and the firemen said theirs was based on the noon whistle of the freight train passing through town, while the railroad claimed that they set theirs by the noon signal of the radio station. With that kind of circular logic, anyone can see where it would be very easy for this sort of thing to get completely out of hand, and I ought to know.

Of course, everyone knows that I don't like to complain about the odd errant language mishap along the way, but when they happen in bunches, well, it just gets to be too much for me to bear in silence, and I simply have to cry out in protest. These two appeared one right after the other on the AOL Welcome screen last week, and I would love to blame it on the full moon, but a quick glance out the window indicates otherwise, so we don't have that to fall back on.

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Tara Lipinski says she remembers a lot about
winning gold medal during the 1998 Winter Olympics
but one tiny thing still alludes her
============================

I suppose that could be true, but only if this one tiny thing was able (according to our friends at Random House Webster) "to refer casually or indirectly; to make an allusion (usually followed by to); to make a passing or casual reference to something, either directly or implied; the act of alluding." I admit that I did not follow the story to find out what the one tiny thing was, but I still doubt that it was in fact "alluding" her in any way. I may not know anything about figure skating, but I know homophone trouble when I see it, by golly. The next one hopped in its time machine, and somehow took a wrong turn from the present to the past - tense, that is.

================
Katie Couric shined
in colorful print top
================

Now I realize that "shined" is not technically wrong in many instances, but I have to say that it really set my teeth on edge when I saw it in that context. For example, you could say that someone shined their shoes, or even shined a light in a dark place, and I would have no problem with that. But in the sense of something that is illuminated from within, I think "shone" is the better choice, and I have to say that dear old Katie in her colorful top did nothing to change my mind about that in any way whatsoever, full moon or no.

Meanwhile, these two flubs appeared in the Best Bets segment of the newspaper TV listings, the first one for the A&E program "Dog the Bounty Hunter" -

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Dog calls on his old friends Tim Chapman
and Sonny Westbrook to help the team track
down a disprectful fugitive with violent tendencies
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Well, "disprectful" is a new one on me, and no bonus to the English language as far as I can tell. And unlike the usual typo in this section of the paper, you can't even add a letter to this and make it right, which might be understandable in a cramped spot where space is at a premium. In fact, if you want to turn this into "disrespectful," you not only have to add a bunch of missing letters, but change the order around besides, which takes the typo to a whole new level, and not in a good way, I can tell you that. The other one from the USA show "Burn Notice" sounds like the crew from the Tara Lipinski story has once again lost their thesaurus and just grasping at similar sounding straws, as it were -

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A rancorous lawyer hires a bomb-maker
to reap vengeance on the members of a
local gang
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And yes, they came up with "reap" vengeance, of all things. No, I'm sorry, please step out of the booth. Now it's true that "reap" is a word, and they actually spelled it right, and there are many sentences where the word would be perfectly acceptable, or even more precisely apt, but this isn't one of them, and not by a long shot. Alas, there is no Grammar Police to take these offenders to task, but as it says in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye wreak," or something like that anyway.

On the retail scene, we have our friends at Hammacher Schlemmer to thank for their Last Minute Gift 2010 catalogue - that is, for all of you people who needed gifts in time for Take A Hike Day on November 17th, or Absurdity Day on the 20th, or perhaps Game and Puzzle Week, which is starting on the 14th - because it's certainly not my idea of last minute for Christmas, which is still 6 weeks away, believe it or not, in spite of copious store displays and non-stop advertising all around us already. Of course, if you do need a last minute gift for the middle of November, please feel free to go right ahead and visit their web site at http://www.hammacher.com/ and see for yourself. In any case, one of their signature items that caught my eye was a miniature version of what they described as [[ THE WORKING MACK CEMENT TRUCK ]] and here I'm thinking: gee, I sure hope not, what kind of a mess would that make on your desk, by golly. And I can tell you from experience that unlike soda, or even ink, cement is one of those substances that is almost impossible to clean off of anything once it spills, which is probably one of the reasons that it is beloved by Mafia hitmen the world over. It's no wonder it comes with this disclaimer: [[ WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD - Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs. ]] Well, at $90 a pop, I would certainly hope it wasn't for children under three, not that I would want toddlers mixing cement at any price, to be honest.
Fortunately, it turned out that cooler heads prevailed at the Bruder toy factory in Germany, and according to the description, what we actually have here is a 26" model truck that you can "fill the drum with sand, rotate it with the easy-to-turn crank, and use the moveable chutes to channel 'cement' to a specific location." I do understand what they mean by the term "working" in the sense of having moving parts that you can use to perform various functions, as opposed to a collectible item that just sits still and is decorative. But to describe something as a "working cement truck" that doesn't mix cement, I think is about the loosest interpretation of "working" that you could possibly get away with, and I personally object to it as an affront to the actual meaning of the word. On the other hand, I don't see any reason why a person couldn't actually fill the drum with sand, water, clay and limestone, rotate it with the easy-to-turn crank, and make their own concrete after all. But here again, I can't condone the idea of toddlers doing this, where the biggest choking hazard would likely be from their own parents, after having successfully used the moveable chutes to channel cement to a specific location, such as a laptop, cellphone or MP3 player, for instance. Take THAT, T-Mobile! I was going to close by saying something about reaping vengeance on high-tech gadgets in a whole new low-tech direction, but I'm afraid it alludes me now.

Elle

Fall Back

Hello World,

Happy November! We left October behind on Sunday, which was not only Halloween, but Reformation Sunday for Protestants the world over, and a red-letter day for all of us Lutherans especially. The new month started off with a bang on the first with All Saints Day, followed by All Souls Day on the second, which was also Election Day, although I'm sure that any connection with the dear departed of yesteryear is strictly hypothetical in this case. Meanwhile, this weekend is when we finally get to throw off the shackles of Daylight Saving Time and fall back to another temporary foray into the bosom of Standard Time, which since it only comprises a tiny fraction of the year any longer, should probably be called Non-Standard Time nowadays, I suppose. Or since it only lasts four months, they may as well call it Winter Time, and leave the Daylight Savers to have the other eight months, which they can call Ordinary Time. After all, these are certainly ordinary times that we live in, heaven knows.

And speaking of changing times, there was certainly no joy in Mudville around here lately, as the fabled Yankees of lore and legend were eliminated in the baseball playoffs by the unheralded Texas Rangers, in a surprising development, especially to the wide-ranging pinstripe faithful, who expect their high-powered franchise to automatically win the World Series every year, as it should be. The second round of the playoffs included match-ups between the winners of the first round, with the Phillies-Giants in the National League and Yankees-Rangers in the American League. As the playoffs progressed, I could see the way things were going, and I said to Bill that the media moguls must be tearing their collective hair out, because no one wants to see San Francisco and Texas in the World Series for heaven's sake, the ratings would be right through the floor. It would be as bad as the Stanley Cup playoffs in hockey, which have been known to go into negative numbers, and make congressional hearings look like a ratings blockbuster. It turned out to be just as well, since the local cable operator and the Fox network picked this of all times to get into a bureaucratic donnybrook over licensing fees, and all of the Fox programming on all of their channels was summarily yanked off the cable system for several weeks, including the Fall Classic, which you would think would be against some kind of law, or at least the "cruel and unusual punishment" provision of the Bill of Rights. So it turned out that the World Series that nobody wanted to see, ended up being the World Series that nobody could see anyway, and the last I heard, Detroit was leading by three lengths, but Charleston had brought in a replacement kicker, while Pasadena had cleared the bar at 16-feet, and was planning to bring in Nashville for the last lap. Of course, that's the whole problem with baseball, it's so predictable.

Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day for Halloween around here, it was clear and crisp, like those classic fall days of yore, back in the times when weather did what it was supposed to. I had a nice and relaxing day, starting with church followed by a meeting, then the bank, lunch and feeding the birds, before starting to set up for the holiday in the afternoon. I'm beginning to think there should be some sort of law that Halloween is always celebrated on Saturday, giving us all plenty of time to get ready, so at least I'm not running around at the last minute to sweep the steps and move obstacles out of the way before people start ringing our doorbell. Fortunately for our guests, the gigantic spider that we usually find on our front porch (AKA "The Rock") decided to make himself at home inside the house this year, rather than being a hazard to delivery people and unwary visitors to our front door, which could be described as a mixed blessing, if you know what I mean.

I set up the pumpkin lights and threw a seasonal tablecloth over the more unsightly clutter in the area, then went to grab a table for the goodie bags - but forgot it was the wobbly three-legged one that the cats kept knocking over, so I attached it to the piano with bungee cords, and now it seemed like way too much work to undo all of that and then have to tie it back up again later. I ended up pressing another table into service, but it was a pretty tight squeeze for everything to fit. I was upstairs when I heard a first tentative knock at 5:00 PM, but we were still opening presents at the time, and I hope they took some candy from the bowl that I left out in the vestibule. After a quick dinner, we had our first callers at 6:00 PM, who were wearing coats against the chill, so that I couldn't tell what their costumes were. Of course, sometimes I just don't recognize their costumes anyway, even if I can see them or they tell me what it is, like Captain Rex, whoever he may be. One of the first to arrive was a toddler in a witch costume along with an older escort who said she was a cat burglar, except as I pointed out, she was carrying a broom - she said it belonged to the witch, and I had figured as much, although I did say that the prospect of burglars sweeping up after themselves was not such a bad idea after all. Then it seemed that I was having a run on monkeys, including one of my favorites, the toddler in a monkey outfit who arrived with his mother, who was dressed as a banana. Did I laugh!

Someone who needed no introduction was one of the neighborhood youngsters, Emmett (alert readers may remember Emmett the Elephant from a previous Halloween) and although I didn't recognize his costume, I could tell it was him because his parents said hello to me. This is Emmett's third go-round in this event, so I figured he was old enough now to ask him about his costume, so I asked him who he was, and he announced in a loud voice, "EMMETT!" We all laughed. Luckily, the father explained the Buzz Lightyear costume that had baffled me, and I also met baby sister Fiona as a bumblebee, who was too cute. Although in the cute department, I would have to pick the toddler who came as a hula girl, complete with the junior version of the coconut bra, who was simply too adorable for words. Another toddler who came to the door was being prompted by his parents with whispers of "what do you say," and rather than coming up with the expected "Trick or treat," instead blurted out: "THANK YOU" before I ever gave him anything, and we all got a kick out of that. Of course, I always say there's no such thing as too much politeness, but this might have been carrying it just a bit too far.

Considering that we started at 6:00 on the dot, I was surprised that it took until 6:45 to give out my first 20 bags, but by 7:45, there had been 50 callers, so it picked up a bit after the first hour. It was basically all over by 8:00 PM, except for a couple of late stragglers, suddenly it's like shutting off a water faucet, they all just stop coming as if by some telepathically transmitted message throughout the region, even if you still have plenty of candy and your lights are all turned on. I can tell you that back in the day, when I was on the other side of the door, nothing short of being carted off in handcuffs by the Police would have gotten me to stop at that hour, and don't think they didn't try it, believe me.

In the end, we wound up with a total of 68, which I thought was disappointing, considering it was a Sunday and the weather was fine. In terms of costume choices, witches once again won the day with 6, followed by 3 cats, 3 vampires and 3 princesses. In the broader overall category of heroes, there were 12, which included Superman, Supergirl, Batman and Zorro, while we had 4 villains, including Michael Meyers, the Grim Reaper and the Wolfman. Among the doubles were 2 monkeys, 2 burglars, 2 devils, 2 Darth Vaders, 2 bumblebees, 2 cheerleaders, 2 mouses, and there were individuals as Igor, Harry Potter, ninja, fairy, jester, fireman, ghoul, banana, bunny, gnome, skeleton, butterfly and of course, the tiny hula girl. Yet another 10 came with no real costume, identifying themselves as "a mom," "a cool kid," or "a loser" and things of that nature. Of course, it's true that we have no standards here, and are happy to hand out goodie bags to anyone who comes to the door (just ask the UPS man who made a delivery one Halloween and got a goodie bag for his trouble) but it's a lot more fun when they have actual costumes for the entertainment of the tireless Treat Brigade, that does all of the hard work for the event. On the other hand, the Treat Brigade does wind up with all of the left-over candy when all is said and done, so I guess this could be considered a job with its own reward built right into it, and the compensation is exactly the perfect size. Fun-size, that is.

Elle