Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.

I have been dressing up for Halloween for yeeeeaaars! Even now, a good dressing up is a great way to let your alter egos out. (hence my stint as a drag king for a while)

As a youth the local parks and recs would put on a very lovely Halloween festival. While it was a kick to go and see the festivities, it was my competitive self that longed for the main event!

The Costume Contest

We would take a gander at the booths with tests of skills like fishing for a ghoul goodies bag, tossing the skull bean bags through a monsters mouth, and prizes of plastic spiders and wax vampire teeth. All the while, trying to size up the competition that could be in our age group.

This is where we three sisters, with a creative mom, would excel!

Like the year we were the scarecrow family; mother, father and kid 'crows. I was, of course, the dad. My mother painted these burlap type sacks she made with cute lil scarecrow faces. Stitched on to the top of each went straw hair, braided at the sides for the kid 'crow. On top of my head, a cowboy hat that was my dad's. It had seen better days; sweat ringed on the brow, holes in the straw brim, and a shiteous, '70 styled, woven headband holding it together.

We took first place, of course.

Side Note: I was actually offered an entire bowl of mini candy bars in exchange for the hat at one house during our trick or treating. One look back at my dad lead me to believe that he wasn't open to negotiations. It's the deal that "could have been" that still hunts me to this day.

Then there was the Halloween Coloring Book year. My sister and I were a coloring book and crayon. Of course...big girl was the book. It was an enormous box, covered in contact paper and decorated with images of Halloween. My face peeked out of a hole in the front, my arms out the sides...unable to span the distance to scratch my nose.

My sister, rolled up in poster board, wore a purple dunce cap to resemble a sharpened crayon tip. Not only did she have a hard time walking, but she tripped at the top of a hill and rolled to the bottom, and couldn't get up. There she was, arms and feet flailing, unable to bend in the middle to get herself up. Her bag of candy, littered the front yard.

I peed my coloring book pages laughing so hard.

Side Note: At one house I couldn't fit down their walkway, so my sister took my candy bag and said it was for her sister. The home owner, of course, doubted her. Till they looked down the path and saw a huge green coloring book in the yard. This feeling still haunts me.

We enlisted our friend next door to round out the Marx Brothers one year. Since I already sport Groucho eyebrows, I had a lock on that character. To make my costume authentic, my dad handed me a cigar he had bought, still wrapped in it's protective cellophane.

"Do NOT take the cellophane off!", was his stern warning. Partly guilty he was handing me a real cigar, I'm sure.

We took first that year as well.

Side Note: By the time we were half way done, trick or treating I had chewed through the cellophane and was turning green. It was the first and only time I didn't eat candy on the route...cuz I thought I was going to hurl.

Fruit of the Loom got us first place again, two bunches of grapes and that sassy apple. My mother, who really should have worked in Hollywood, came up with the idea to paper mache balloons, spray painted green and purple and attached to black garbage bags. By the end of the night, I had left purple grapes all over the neighborhood.

Every year we racked up yet another win for the Gilbert Girls. With every win came a picture in the town paper. It was like we were Halloween Rock Stars! Other kids could try, but we crushed them under our boots year after year.

No store bought goods here! No sir. Take your boxed Scooby Doo and go home. Don't even try with that Strawberry Shortcake you got at Sears. Why don't you armatures come back when you can take a bedspread and make a senorita costume one year, then a pirate costume the next.

Halloween ain't for kids....it's for masters of illusion!

I'll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.

We took this past weekend, without a activity choked schedule, to clean and put up some house decor de gore. I tried to convince Laura that dust and cobwebs added to the feel, but she insisted that they go. Sigh...it's hard being a misunderstood, visionary genius.

Up went the display for the side window. Monster head in a crystal ball, old books, purple skull goblet, crystal skull with changing LED lights.

Up went the various candle holders, stocked with fresh tea lights.

Away went my tombstones outside with a windstorm outside. (I manage to get them back and stake them into the ground again)

I cut the word "Vacancy" out of my homemade tombstone this weekend. It will have flashing red lights inside when it's all said and done.

Did you know there is such a thing as a Styrofoam cutter? It's awesome!

It's really like an electric ice pick, a thin wire sticking out of a handle with an on/off switch. The wire heats up and cuts through the Styrofoam like buttah! I can't tell you how long it took me to cut my letters out of my cemetery sign 2 years ago, OY!

Tonight I want to get the Vacancy Stone painted and the lights popped through the backer "slab". All the hard part will pretty much be done. Just some f/x painting after that.

Saturday will be the official set up day. I'll put most the yard stuff out. You never know what might happen at night, with random goblins walking up and down the street BEFORE Halloween. I don't want Lenny, my corpse, to 'walk away' before he gets to scare the kids.

I have a good idea about my costume. I've had to put away my goth vamp (like my profile pix) since the death of my white contacts. Those added sooo much to that look. I loved when the kids would come up and say trick or treat, they never looked at me. Then I would say, "Smell my feeeeeeet....???" in a deep, scary voice...trying to make them look up and finish the phrase.

Then their lil faces would turn upward, "Give...me...something...um....good to eeeeeeeeeeek!" then they would see the eyes!

It was awesome!

We'll see how the new "Look" goes this year.

Scoot. More. More More. GOOD!

I have, for the last couple days, been under the weather. I should just leave it at that, but anyone that knows me, knows I find that line of civility and take a pogo stick size jump up and over it to make everyone around me uncomfortable.

It's just the way I am.

After working in the yard I manage to get a killer allergy attack. (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!) Then I got hit with the worst case of girly bits complications known to mankind...er...womankind.

I'm at that age, you see, where the word whispered around you is "pre-menopausal". Oh...you think you're already squeamish bracing for the details in my blog? Thank the man-in-the-sky you're not going through it.

Cycles being what they are, they should come around like clock work. But when they don't, it throws your life into a mess of doctor appointments and tests and probes and "pee in this" and "scoot just a liiiiiittle further".

The fun started this time around when I had to meet my new doctor, just as I was about to mount the stirrup table. Nice "how do you do" if'n I ever saw one. That awkward moment was punctuated by her nurse stumbling through the door, spinning in the middle of the room with one foot in the trash can and ending up spread eagle on the far wall. Speculum in hand.

My mortification continued, as I laid with nothing more than a Chernobyl sized Kleenex as a poor excuse for coverage, as they had me sit up cuz the light didn't work. Seems the genius that is the nurse forgot to plug it in. Then back down again, scooting.

Then when it came to the procedure, the doctor couldn't complete it.

AWESOME! Just FUCKIN' awesome!

"I'm soooo sorry. I can get you scheduled with a doctor in the practice that does this sort of thing all day long. She could do this blindfolded."

"Soooooo...that's it?"

"Yes. And of course, no charge for today."

"I don't even get dinner?"

Long stare......"Um....ha...yes...I mean...NO...I...uh....I really appreciate you keeping your sense of humor through this."

Lady....when you're a woman with a tissue skirt, on your back, with your heels up to god, and two people are lookin at your neither regions like a Bear's game on a 13 inch black and white.....all you got is your humor.

Can't WAIT to do this all over again for the next stranger.

Sing with me...."I loooooove....being a girl!"

A couple projects...

I've been trying my hand at a few lil projects this year for my yard haunt. I had created a ghost for last year, but she needed a lil LED help this year. So she went from this:

To this...after searching e-bay for "LED ghost eyes". (you really CAN find anything on e-bay!)

Can't wait to float her over the graveyard! Which I got the basics set up this weekend as well. I still have to add the new stone I got from Target that has a hole for the fog machine to blow smoke through a demon face etched in the stone. And I want to create a blinking "vancancy" stone to add as well.

The gates to my graveyard:

And the hardest thing...my corpse! Inspired by pumpkinrot and instructed by spookyblue, I'm finding my graphic art background challenged by the 3D medium!

This crusty creep will be peering though my ground-breaking coffin that I made 3 years ago. I've had his arm, clipped to a stake, inside the coffin reaching out for 2 years. It was time the arm had a body to cling too! I just need to age it and seal it and he'll be good to goul!

"And when they pulled the body from the wreakage...it looked like THIS!"

I've been collecting lil bits and pieces of Spooky Town for a few years now. I got the bulk of the pieces before they got kinda cheesy. They don't seem as well made anymore. I'm very selective about what I add to my lil spooky cityscape, one small item at a time, and only if something strikes me.

The center of town is a skull fountain with a mister in it. Lights and fog and water, oh my! It's the show piece of the creepy village, perched on top of a chest of drawers in the dinning room. Every year I set it up, fill up the water and pray, that when I flip the switch, it works for one more year. And lo...it does!

The other large piece is Dr. Tingles Lab. It has its own lil soundtrack that plays, haunted music with accents of flashing lighting strikes and claps of thunder. Once I power it all on and turn up the sound on Dr. Tingles, I like to just sit and enjoy. It's not an easy task to set up the 30 or so pieces and all their wires and plugs and adaptors. So sitting back, in the darkened room, to take it all is, is my moment of accomplishment.

As I was soaking in the scary....I voice blasted out of Dr. Tingles that made me come out of my chair to recover my heart which had jumped out of my chest!

"Breaker breaker rollin' up on in har wit da big trees, yazir. Got me the big ol payload of big ol trees. Come back."

WTF?!?!

It seems the frequency that Dr. Tingles operates on....also picks up truckers. Yes...truckers. Loud ass, mouthy, painfully NOT Halloweeny MF'r truckers!!

It was like a bully walked up to my haunted sandcastle and kicked down its turrets and peed in the moat. Now I would have to enjoy Spooky Town with a lil less spooky OR a lot more Smokey and the Bandit.

Sigh....we can't have nice things.

The more Christian...the more un-Christian like.

I just came back from marching with 200,000 like minded individuals, down the National Mall, up to the Capitol, in Washington, DC.

It was moving. It was spirit lifting. It was awesome.

I came home to a mother who, over the past few years, has become a scary republichristian. She's always been conservative, but she's walked up to the edge and jumped!

Reality check was when we went to the inauguration and her suggestion was to duck when they started taking shots at "Barrak Hussain Obama". I was SHOCKED! I knew she wasn't going to be crazy about the fact we were going, as her love for Bush was all too well known and she thought Palin was a great mom. I just didn't realize that to her list of "issues" she had added bigot.

A steady diet of Rush and O'Reilly will do that to a person. (I believe both of them should be brought up on treason and intent to incite)

So I saved mummy the pain and suffering of letting her know that we were going for the National Equality March and that my sister Marlo, who jumped at the chance to support me and my partner of 13 years, was going as well. My youngest sister, who still lives by my folks, informed me that when my mom found out I had gone, not only was she unhappy, but said I was "corrupting" my sister.

She's 38....I'm pretty sure she knows what she's doing.

"Our goal in this life is to help people get into heaven. Cabrina isn't doing that for Marlo."

OH REEEEEAAAALLLLYYY??

Let's break this down....so not only have I kept Marlo out, but I'm not welcome either? And I suppose the gates will fly right open to a woman who, hates her gay daughter? Or hopes someone kills the president of her own country? Or doesn't want the poor to get health care on her dime? Or uses words like 'nigger or wetback'? Or sends out emails how the blacks were lucky they were owned by whitey? Or stirs up fights with family members over politics and then blames the family member?

Ya...I'm sure God is just waiting for you, and your hate filled heart, to ask to be let in. I think for Mother's day this year, I'll get her a new heart. One that believes that all people are created equal and we should feed and clothe every person and care for the poor and the weak.

I might not be a church going person anymore, but I have a gut feeling that a person that lived a good life treating others as they would themselves, is gonna sail right by someone like my mother, who is white, rich and if you're not living up to her standards, you're not right.

Suite for 1 in the Hades Hotel please!

"Ohhh I'm so Huuuungry!" ~Heimlich, A Bugs Life

I've managed to kick off my third week in a row of working out. That is amazing! No...really. I'm proud of myself and that NEVER happens!

While the workouts aren't huge, or grand, they are steady at about 40 min a day, 5 days a week. And I did up my reps this week and things are coming easier.

But here's the catch....since I'm burning calories, now I'm STARVIN' MARVIN!

I want to snack all the time! So I've surrounded myself with healthy snacks, nuts, fruit and 100 calorie packs to try and ration my intake. You'd think if you were doing something good like this, it would get easy somewhere along the line.

The one other time I really took to trying to slim down was back in my days of competition flag football in CA. I paid for a low carb program, way before Atkins was making folks eat cheese and salami at every turn.

It did its trick, I was the number one loser for that center. I dropped 50 lbs in 8 weeks and felt light as a feather, doing ordinary things like when I stepped up on curbs. Then I got gallstones and my period lasted for a month and my hair thinned.

All due to rapid weight loss.

Sigh.....

And while I've tried and tried and failed again, I've always carried the lesson that you have to take your time to do it right.

I'm actually looking forward to week four....baby steps...and crunches...and curls...and walking...and

Tickled P!nk

I felt like a dirty ol woman at the P!nk concert in Philly this weekend. She is HAWT!! And she knows how to use it! Keep on teasing the Lesbanese crowd girl. We love it!

You're doing it right.

Her Fun House tour is AMAZING! If you get a chance to see the woman, DO IT! It will be worth every penny.

We managed to get GA tix. (General Admission) Have you done this? It's where everyone gets a seat but those folks on the floor who are then required to stand all night.

I'm too old for this!

Now, I know...I know...I stood for 13 hours during the inauguration. But when it's 33 degrees your feet freeze and you don't realize how much they hurt. This was only 4 hours (with the opening act) and my puppies felt like ground round stuffed into a shoe 3 sizes too small!

The other factor, that will make me sound like a grumpy ol' fart, other people! We were packed in pretty tight and the drunker they got, the more I couldn't stand them. One blond, in her haze, must have thought she had a LOT more room to spin and wave her arms. She didn't, I have the bruises to prove it.

There were the folks that thought they could leave the floor and then even attempt to find the people they left behind. I thought we were in an exit row for a while. Everyone seemed to need to go by us to get somewhere else! One group actually circled around me and bumped into my ass and my boobs!

OH...speaking of boobs...one girl stumbled by, and when she realized her friend following her went another way, she went to change direction in front of me and ended up with her hand and her drink planted on my left tit.

No...really....like her drink was on top of my boob and her hand was resting there as she hung on. I didn't move, just to look down to see if it was sloshing over onto my chest. She looked up at me, since I towered over her.

"It didn't spill! I swear! I didn't" her hand still on my boob. I looked back down at her mit on my tit and, once she realized she was still violating me, she lifted her hand and started to stumble away.

Then there was the chick fight. Two girls started to go at it right behind us, I simply put myself between then, my hand in the face of the girl in front of me. The girl behind me reaching over my shoulder for the other one. I pretty much kept my eyes on P!nk. Their friends finally pulled them away, they calmed down, since they couldn't see each other beyond the "wall" that is me.

We had some folks get pulled out by security. Someone hit the cement floor and had to be taken out by medics. And while it seemed the real show was in the crowd on the floor, the star of the night, P!nk was simply fabulous!

I have enough memories from the stage show to drown out the side show every night when I close my eyes.

Sigh....so I'm a dirty ol lady.

Do cat ghosts wear sheets?

The day after Jez left us, I had a strange 'happening'. I was in the kitchen and could have sworn I heard her sonic mew. Her mouth would open and nothing would come out till the very end of the meow. It would sound kind of like the very second a needle would go on a record. (am I dating myself?) More of a crackling than a meow.

There I was, in the middle of the kitchen and I heard it. Like it was right in my ear. I turned to the dinning room and just as I looked at the floor, probably just old habit at this point, I saw a grey streak go from under the dinning room table and run into the living room.

My first thought was our tiger striped "kitten", Doolin, was dashing through the house like her tail was on fire, as cats are known to do. But then Doolin came galloping out from under the table, as if she was chasing the other "cat" I saw shooting out from under the table.

Great...we have a ghost cat now! It would be just like our ditsy Jez to not know she was suppose to go towards the light!

To add to that, there was a strange incident this morning as well. Jez had a habit of walking the house and making this strange caterwauling sound. It was a very sad, lonely sound. She would meow at the top of her lungs and whine, usually with her favorite toy in her mouth. This occurred when you were fast asleep and would rather it didn't. Or if she thought you weren't home.

I often joked it was her crying cuz she thought she was left alone. Being part Siamese she didn't see so good and I did mention she was a bit ditsy. So it would be easy for her to look up and, even if we were sitting right there, think we had left the room.

Neither one of our other two cats have done this, or anything like it. Ringo has a barf alarm, but that's a story for another day.

So this morning I was very much asleep when, right outside our bedroom, I was jarred awake by the siren call of a cat! I woke up, cursing Jez, as I would usually do when this occurred. That's when I really woke up and realized...there is NO Jez in the house!

"Did you hear that?" I said to Laura

"Yes! What was that? Who was that?"

"I think it was Ringo."

"She's never done THAT before."

"I swear...if I get up and find Jez's toy in the hallway...I'll poo myself!"

There was not toy, but it did make me sad that maybe Ringo was calling her ol' pal. She's not been quite right since losing Jez.

I guess we pink shiny skinned folks aren't the only ones that have a piece of us missing these days. The fuzzy kids still have some adjusting to do as well.