“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” ― Alexander Pope

There is this small window, where the Halloween stuff starts to trickle into the marketplace. The William Sonoma Collection, Michael's and the holy grail: Martha's mag finally hits the shelves.

Well....I gotta tell ya....I'm already a lil disappointed. And that doesn't bode well for my favorite holiday.

Martha's Mag was a re-tread of all her "greatest hits". Thanks for phoning it in, Stewart!

The cornerstone of my Halloween inspiration, a locally owned costume shop called Daugherty's, relocated to a mall and about one quarter of their floor space. What use to be a maze of wigs and costumes of theatrical quality and rooms of rubbery faces and forms is no more. They even had a giant gargoyle standing guard outside their stoney, castle like facade, setting the mood from the first steps through the front door. But now, the life sized ghouls and floating phantoms are lost to downsizing. Not to mention the mall air that tends to drain one of any Halloween spirit.

So you can imagine my horror when I looked up the ONLY Spirit of Halloween store they allowed to open in my area this year, and it was smack dab in the middle or our OTHER mall in town.

Ok...I can work with this. This mall is in the midst of a be re-do and there is a section that is open beams and creepy corners. I can see Spirits zombie display a midst the raw 2x4's covered in wispy spider webs.

This could work.

But alas.....there it stood, in the old CompUSA store, in all it's bright, florescence glory. Nothing but costumes. No Frankenstein's reach. No zombie's growl. No spirit alive at Spirits.

sigh.......

" Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." ~Albert Camus

There is a moment when the air is just a lil crisper. Smokey fumes curl through the bright blue skies. The tips of the trees appear to be dulling, just a lil. And the word on the street brings a pulse to my heart that makes it skip a beat: Pumpkin Spice is at Dunkin Donuts.

I had thee most perfect pumpkin latte yesterday for breakfast. It was hot and sweet and pumpkin-y. It's the indicator that we are entering into my favorite time of year. The season that I missed out on for 30 years of my life, living in Southern California.

Most the time, when we started back to school in the beach cities, you couldn't even wear your school clothes. It was still too damn hot! There was never a time where I kicked my feet through amber, orange, yellow and blood red leaves. You could go pumpkin picking in your shorts, if you wanted. And there were NO $1 pumpkin patches where I grew up. Although you won't find those much now either. We would pay HUGE prices for a big pumpkin. And never did we go to an actual patch, wandering the vines for the perfect squash.

My dad would get the biggest one out of the "patch" (re: over priced nursery). His job was to make the scariest pumpkin. I would usually make the most interesting face. My sisters more traditional triangle eyes and smiles. Then there is my mom. She would find the oddest shaped pumpkin and then try to make it into something. One year she scored a long, oval, dark green pumpkin, she laid on it's side, and it became a school bus.

Yes...I said a school bus. I don't get my creativity off the wind ya know.

There is just something about the tradition of the pumpkins that represent the fall season for me. Even on my trip to visit, my now wife, for my first October on the east coast, sealed the deal of my moving from my seaside home. We picked pumpkins and carved them, went apple picking. (it was the most amazing thing to pluck a delicious apple from a branch and eat it on the spot) and got fresh cider pressed on the spot. And you could keep things on the porch, cuz it was cool enough!

It was like my own lil autumnal Disney World! I fell in love. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, but to be wrapped in east coast autumn only makes it even better.