Halloween and Fairy Tales

The Halloween party at Felix and Ana's house was a blast, although it appears that I wasn't as spooky-looking as I should have been. I started out intending to be Victoria, the vampire at the prom, who watches over Edward and Bella at the end of the Twilight movie. But the vampire teeth I bought popped out like Goofy and they made me dribble terribly. Not a good look for a vampy vampire. So I decided to go as Morticia instead - you know - from the Addams family. However because I was there with Snow White (aka Alice), people took one look at me and thought I was ... Sleeping Beauty. A logical conclusion? Yeah, right. How do you explain the trail of blood coming out of my mouth? Perhaps everyone just thought I'd smudged my lipstick.

After the party, Alice and Millicent wandered the streets of Iowa City, filming people in costume, using Millicent's felt chicken (a chicken made of felt, just to clarify) to do the commentary. They encountered people dressed up as a deranged Santa, 2 Jesuses, a birdman and a set of dominoes.

My accent is still giving me trouble. Pam asked me this morning how the Halloween party was. I said it was great, nearly everyone came dressed up, and there was lots of dancing and snacks at Ana and Felix's house.. Try saying 'snacks' out loud. Does it sound anything like 'sex' to you? Either Pam has a one-track mind after the 'deck' story or I'm the one with the problem. Whatever the case, she burst out laughing and said 'what did you say?' I'm getting a bit of a nervous twitch about my vowels.

Hee, hee.

Thanks to Alice for the pics.

Pumpkins and Puppets

This is a week of movies and celebrations. Alice and I took a ride on the bus to Coral Ridge Mall to go to see the roller derby movie Whip It, featuring Ellen Page of Juno and Drew Barrymore.

We also went to check out Halloween vampire teeth and guillotines for our Halloween costumes. There's at least one party to go to next week, possibly two. I love this attitude towards celebration in the United States. Everyone has Halloween festive decorations making a statement in their gardens, and there are Fall colours in tubs of botanical grandeur on their porches and in their hallways, in corn doll sculptures and painted Victorian chairs. As a children's librarian who loves dress-ups and performing, this is something special. It must have sparked something else in me, because when I found myself burrowing in The Haunted Bookshop, I discovered lifelike folktale puppets of wolves, jackrabbits and deer, not to mention other species that I'm sure I'm destined to revisit over the next few weeks. I did ask if they had an opossum. They didn't, but they might be able to order one. I wonder if they'd confiscate it on my re-entry to New Zealand ....