Let Jesus What?!?!?

Today is the first day of autumn and I'm kind of bummed about it for a couple of reasons.

1) There is a very limited number of days left in the year that will not require the use of a heavy, winter coat or involve the scraping of ice from car windshields...and...

2) Halloween season is upon us.

Now, this gets a little confusing because fall is my favorite season of the year and Halloween is one of my favorite holidays of the year. I feel like I'm having some kind of crisis of faith, if it's possible to compare my nostalgia for the summer that is gone with the collapse of an entire belief system. My lack of enthusiasm about fall and my wavering excitement for Halloween is starting to make me question everything I've ever believed like that The Beatles are bigger than Jesus and like that women should never wear pleated pants and that money really CAN buy happiness and that I'd be happy to prove that theory if someone would just give me some damn money already.

I'm not ready for winter this year. It's cold and it's dark and it sucks. I haven't had enough recovery time since last winter when I wanted to drive my car right off a bridge round about mid-March. Normally the smell of the autumn air and the sharp slant of the light and the bright leaves are enough to make me love this time of year. But not this time, no sir-e. It's just simply not enough this year. All I can think about is my twice-weekly commute to the Twin Cities for school, in the dark, on the icy roads, to take ALGEBRA for christ's sake. That's like driving cross-country to have your fingers chopped off several times a month. And to top it off, I will be facing the cold, bitter winds of winter without my standard coping mechanism - alcohol.


Halloween is a slightly more complicated issue. Gray loves Halloween and spends the entire year "geeking up" for it. He is obsessed with all things Halloween related, specifically with horror movies. He loves to collect them. To watch them. To make ME watch them, too. It's not that I don't enjoy a good horror flick every now and again. It's just that I like to laugh sometimes, and for some reason - watching someones head get cleaved in half or some abomination come tearing out an unsuspecting belly or a little girl's head spin around, those things don't make me chuckle. I know, it's a head-scratcher.

September and October in our household are devoted almost primarily to horror movies because Gray says the Halloween starts September 1st. Apparently he's on the same calendar as all the major retailers who start selling costumes around the 4th of July. Anyway, that's 60 days of nightmare-provoking movie carnage - a bit much for my taste. This year, I tried to convince him that I couldn't watch any horror movies because they are bad for the baby. Hell, he thinks everything else on earth is bad for the baby, so I thought he'd totally buy it. But alas, he did not.

That is how I saw Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist this weekend. Also, Shaun of the Dead, but I don't consider that a horror movie as it is a spoof and I laugh more than I jump. Anyhow, I had managed to go an entire 25 and a half years of my live without seeing either of those movies. Gray ruined that record in one weekend. And had it been totally up to him, I also would have seen the balance of the George A. Romero series, possibly a couple of slasher films, and Nightmare on Elm Street 3000, just for good measure. Fortunately, I had some say and was able to sneak in some HGTV and some That 70s Show to counteract the nightmares. Dude, when Reagan crawls down the stairs on her fingers and toes!!!

OMG BRAIN HEMORRHAGING JUST THINKING ABOUT IT!!

So the entire weekend was not lost to senseless gore and violence after all. But there are 6 weeks left before Halloween for Gray to desecrate the last shred of my childish innocence and goodwill towards mankind. I'm sure by November I'll be wearing those creepy pupil-less contact lenses and telling everyone I pass, "Let Jesus fuck you!" Oh god that movie man! Maybe I shouldn't have kids after all, on the off chance that something Gray forces me to watch this month permeates the mucus membranes and invades our baby's frontal lobe and causes a predisposition to demonic possession...

Or maybe they can test for that in the amnio.