HALLOWEEN HANGOVER

I see that Stewey has filled you in on my "situation" over here.  What can I say?  I'm a weeper AND a fretter.  And when you combine those two things with 24-hour news coverage of Armageddon, you can bet that a migraine and an upset stomach aren't far behind. 

(Yes.  I will confess it.  I cried so hard and got myself so worked up that I upchucked my lunch.)

(OK.  Maybe it wasn't the news coverage so much as it was the eighteen pounds of Halloween candy that I had to eat all by myself, since I didn't have one single Trick or Treater, despite the fact that I've lived here for 10 years and have never had any Trick or Treaters ever, not one, not ever.)

(But I still buy enough Halloween candy to sink a barge.)

(Stewey, despite his own recent episodes of upchcuk, was not at all amused.)

I've had a lot of yous asking me about my stint in New Jersey.  I moved there in May of 1993 and initially settled in Smithville.  Why Smithville, you ask?  Well, it's because it looked like Indiana to me and I was far enough away from the big city that I didn't feel too out of place.  That was, of course, until I walked into the bagel place on the second day I was there and stood in line and then when it was my turn at the counter I said "Oh, hello, kind sir!  I'm from Indiana and I've come for a New Jersey bagel!" and before I could get any more hayseeds out of my mouth, the burly guy hollered "Lady, whadda ya want...I got a lot of hungry people here!" and I squeaked out my order and then ate it in the car with big fat sweaty tears falling on the steering wheel.

What can I say?  You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can't take the Midwest out of the girl.

(For the record, the gentlemen in the above referenced story turned out to be quite a lovely guy, actually, and when I returned on a less busy day he asked me all about myself and my family and what it was like to have graduated from Notre Dame.)

(He also taught me how to properly order breakfast and coffee without giving the world my life story.)

I left Smithville and moved to a tiny itty bitty little studio apartment on the beach in Margate.  I didn't have an ocean view, but I did take my coffee cup outside onto the pool deck every morning to wave at my friend Dr. Dan, who was on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Mediterranean.  The neighbors thought I was nuts, but the building had a doorman, and that made me feel like I was really swell and sophisticated.

After a little while in the tiny little itty bitty studio apartment, my dad convinced me that I wasn't getting any younger, and as far as he knew I wasn't going to be getting married any time soon, so it was time to be a big girl and buy a place of my own.  So I did.  I stayed in Margate, but moved about 10 blocks away to a wonderful condo community that consisted of about 257 summer weekend residents...and me.  They weren't quite sure what to make of the spinster that tried to grow geraniums on her balcony or who introduced herself as Virginia Woolf since she finally had a Room of One's Own, but they were nice enough to let me be me and that was all that mattered.

Someday I'll tell you more about my life and times on the East Coast, but for now, suffice it to say that I am hoping and praying that all will be well there soon and that life can get back to normal as quickly as possible.

I played with this last night:

I'm afraid that I must blame my lack of any measurable progress on my beloved Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  After I watched Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin, I stumbled across a really creepy psycho-sexual thriller in which my boyfriend Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays a really creepy psycho-sexual landlord. 

For the record, I like my boyfriend Jeffrey Dean Morgan to play warm and lovely Irish musicians or hot and studly New York firemen because it's much easier to watch him do things on screen without having to peek in between two fingers of my hand covering my face.

So that's the post-Halloween report from Chez Spinster, folks.  A whole lotta' nothin' goin' on, but that's just how we like it in these here parts!  (To borrow a phrase from The Bloggess....somewhere an English teacher just dropped dead after that last sentence).

I hope that y'all are warm and safe and dry.  I'm headed up to the studio to see what's next on the stitchy agenda!

Woo Hoo!