Houston... we have achieved makeup.

*smiles* I feel good...

For those of you who celebrate the holiday in a more spiritual sense, the best of the day (and night) upon you.

For everyone else...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

(Where is _your_ costume? ;)

Raen.

In the last I can't remember how many years, I have only been able to participate in the candy handing out marathon known as Halloween... the one time of the year when it is _cool_ for me to whip out my mad skills at doing makeup, tell little kids they look cute, and give them mass amounts of sugar with which to later drive their parents insane... maybe once. There are, of course, a variety of reasons for this...

... Halloween not being held _on_ Halloween...
... living in the middle of nowhere...
... living in an apartment...

The living in the apartment part is the bit I've never gotten! You'd think, for munchkins of all ages, the apartment is the place you wnat to go to get candy! So many domiciles, so few footsteps between them! You'd think this would work even better for parents, who don't want to have to walk four miles to get their kids their fill of Trick or Treating! But, alas, the last two apartments I'd lived in... this was the case.

In part, I blame this problem on paranoia. In the world that we occupy, there's so much concern regarding bad people who do bad things, and parents want to curb this as much as possible. I'm all good with this... but come on, people! This is Halloween! Just be astute! Be watchful! Dress up and _go out_ with your kids! Then be mindful enough to look through what they brought home!

And I'll also grant this...

All Hallow's Eve is probably the most spiritually charged day of the year for me. I _never_ feel quite so alive as on Halloween. The drought of candy handing out may in part be responsible for my discovery of paganism as a spiritual outlet... after all, I stumbled into serious contemplation of the path while essentially pacing restlessly in an empty apartment... on Halloween... with no kids coming to the door.

But...

(Yes, this post was going somewhere...)

This year...

This year gets to be different.

*grins* Because our apartment actually has a system to handle the _mass of kids_ that evidently come through this complex.

Woot!

We get to hand out candy this year!

(If I'd known earlier, I would have planned out something more elaborate to wear...)

Raen.

This has been building in my head over the last couple of years. Its been building, slowly, and as we approach the Holiday Season, its in the front of my mind again. So... I thought I'd share. *smiles* Just to let y'all know what's in my mind before the season of disagreement begins again.

Its a topic that some find a little touchy, I know... so read with patience, and please don't go flame on at the end of it...

( I'm going to start in an odd place. )

Anyway... I'm spent now. *smiles*

Love to you all... and here's to a Holiday season full of fun.

(I so can't wait for Halloween!)

Raen.

I've always loved autumn. To the point that if you go back through my journal, you can kind of tell when autumn is starting where ever I've lived. Because I've always commented on it. For the past two years, though, I was denied something that I hadn't really realized _had_ been denied me.

_True_ autumn.

Today, I stepped outside to take the trash out. I made it out of the breezeway and half way across the parking lot to the dumpster when it suddenly struck me... the cool breeze weaving between the leaves, the light smell of dampness to the air, the dark sky whispering down to me. I had to stop... and smile... and think... Wow... its autumn...

Its amazing how much you realize you've missed a thing when suddenly its surrounding you again.

I love autumn. *smiles* And I'm living in it again.

Raen.

Made a false start at a walk today, last_bastion and I. We've been dealing with various hurdles to getting up and running full blown, but last week we accomplished a full two weeks of five days working out.

Today... was just a walk day.

And then we ran into the animal.

One of the nice things about where we live is that our street dead ends into a park. The general area is very green. If you're careful, you can see deer down in the watershed. If you're observant, you can see rabbits just about everywhere. The problem with this, of course, is their proximity to man.

Today, we saw a fox. It made me jump, how close we were to the animal. Then I understood why. The whole back of one of its back legs was bloody and it wasn't loping so much as it was doing its best to pull itself forward. You could see that it was trying so very hard to get out of sight, but there just wasn't any place for it to get to... and the watershed it appeared to be heading for was still another mile off.

We asked nearby walkers if they had cell phones... a car stopped, and called emergency services. I jogged up to the fire department while last_bastion kept the animal in sight. I hit the doorbell twice, hoping to at least get them to call animal services for me; no reseponse. I jogged back to the apartment and called animal services myself... with last_bastion still standing on the road. The girl who answered wasn't trained to deal with the situation, so she couldn't come out the help. I called the emergency vet clinic, and they gave me another numbers... where I had to leave a message.

As an animal lover, and one who feels a kinship to the animals I share the world with, this sort of thing is frustrating beyond words. I know the creature was hurting. I know the creature was scared. But I couldn't do _anything_ to facilitate a quicker end to its suffering. Save make phone calls that went nowhere.

In the end, I kept my distance, looked it in the eye, and wished it as much well as I could in finding its way to a place to rest in peace.

They have a way of looking back at you, you know? Like they're looking into your soul and responding to you. If I could give voice to that expression, I would say she was saying she understood, and thank you for trying.

Just wish I could have done more.

Raen.

Wow... two days in a row. Today, on top of huge drops of rain, I got thunder.

Thunar is loving on me. *smiles*

Raen.

Tonight, I did something I would never have thought myself capable of doing.

Instead of squishing the spider trying to climb up the side of the tub in the bathroom, I carefully scooped it up into a cardboard box, knocked it into the bottom of it, then depositied it outside.

No, I don't know if I'll be able to repeat this stunt. But I've done it at least once.

I'm sure, somewhere, there are pigs flying backwards.

Raen.