Friday, October 29, 2004
Page 15
AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)
Halloween Preparations Get Downright Scary
By J’AMY PACHECO
I don’t know about other parts of the country, but where I live, it went from summer to winter seemingly overnight. Just two weeks ago, I was packing frozen water bottles in my daughter’s backpack and sending her off to school in sleeveless shirts.
Last week, I had to dig out winter clothing, coats and umbrellas to help my tiny girl fend off the cold, rainy forces of nature.
The leaves are being hurriedly ripped from our backyard trees by gales of freezing wind, tomatoes are dropping dead on our backyard vines and our sprinklers have been shut off because of repeated rainstorms.
That can only mean one thing — Halloween is just around the corner.
I’ve never been able to comprehend why it is that the local weather will stay warm far into the fall season, but will inevitably turn sour just before a holiday centered around children, nightfall and the out-of-doors.
As I sit at my sewing machine cranking out yet another satiny Disney Princess costume, I can’t help seeing the exercise as pointless. The costume will be completely hidden under a warm coat and hat.
This year, my Disney-girl wannabe is going trick-or-treating dressed as Princess Jasmine of “Aladdin” fame. But in keeping with tradition, she spurned the mass-produced, officially sanctioned versions of Jasmine’s royal wear, and insisted I once again create a one-of-a-kind princess costume.
You’d have to know me [or at least read this column regularly] to know what that entails. I’m not the most organized person in the world, nor am I an especially talented seamstress. But I’m relatively adventurous, so the past five Halloweens have seen me sitting at my trusty old [and I do mean old] sewing machine stitching up costumes to transform my daughter into Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Tinker Bell, “Christmas” Belle and even Peter Pan.
As my daughter has aged, the costumes have become more complicated, because she wants an original spin. This year, she turned down Jasmine’s harem pants and belly button-baring outfit and asked me to “convert” it into a dress that will not only cover her midriff, but will poof out when she twirls.
No pressure there.
Complicating matters, we’re having a Halloween party this year — our first. I confess I’m more than a little anxious about inviting a bunch of people over for Halloween fun — mostly because I have no idea what I’m going to do with them.
Yikes.
Our party is built around a group of books collectively called, “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” My daughter is devouring the books, which even I find to be quirky and extremely funny.
Our party invitations were written in the author’s style, and started out, “Don’t Come to This Halloween Party.” Despite our warnings for prospective guests to “throw this awful invitation to the ground and run as far away from it as possible,” and admonitions that those attending the party would likely experience “extreme despair and discomfort,” people have been calling to say they’ll come.
I don’t know what is scarier — the fact that several of my daughter’s teachers will attend our party, or knowing that one of the guests is famous for her theory that it’s okay to look inside cabinets and closets when she is a guest in someone’s home — as long as she tells everybody she did it.
You’d think I would welcome the party as an opportunity for my Jasmine impersonator to wear her costume without coats and hats. Not so.
See, she decided to save the Jasmine costume for Sunday’s trick-or-treating, and go to her own party as one of the “unfortunate” book characters, Violet.
Violet’s costume is a lot simpler than Jasmine’s. It consists of an ordinary school dress and a purple ribbon to be tied around my daughter’s hair.
If only it could all be so easy. But it’s not, and at the moment, I’m trying to figure out how to transform a bag of purple satin into a Jasmine-like, midriff-covering foofy dress and wondering where I can scrape up some fake eyeballs to toss into party punch for effect.
So, while I’m a little frustrated, anxious and nervous about this weekend, it’s good preparation for something else I just realized: in less than two months, Christmas will be here.
Now that’s scary!
Copyright 2004, Metropolitan News Company