I spent the Halloween holiday down in the heart of south
Orange County with my baby sister JoAnna and her family.
South OC is especially beautiful this time of year
Running our pre-Halloween errands, JoAnna took me to
her favorite juicer hang-out. Holy crap, these green drinks
were big! The last time I had wheat grass was before we left
on our trip, and those were shots. Well, I guess like everything
else in this country, these green drinks are now super-sized!
Anyway, it was delicious!
We passed this guy during our errands -- presumably he's from "The Matrix"
I liked this kid's Hulk costume. He's so strong
he can lift an automobile with no problem.
Back at my sister's place in Mission Viejo, we began to prepare
for the big night as the sun slowly set. I brought down my happy
little Jack-O-Lantern all the way from Green Valley Lake.
These were the Jack-o-Lanterns that Chris and I carved only
24 hours earlier up in Green Valley Lake. That's what's so
great about Southern California: from the snow to the beach in only 2 hours.
My niece Paige and her friends dressed as the girls in
ABC Family's "Pretty Little Liars."
Here's the real thing. Not bad, girls!
Even though my sister lives in an affluent area, we were stunned to find out that most of the local kids blew off Mission Viejo for trick or treating and drove to nearby Nellie Gale -- an even more prosperous area where, the rumor was, they gave out FULL SIZE Snickers Bars!
In fairness, Nellie Gale also goes all out in decorating their gated
homes (as in the one above)...and I guess gated mansions are a bit
more "Haunted Mansion"-esque...
We did, of course, get a few trick or treaters back
in Mission Viejo. I loved this kids zipper face. Scary!
To kill time while waiting for the scant trick or treaters,
we watched "When Animals Attack" on The
Travel Channel, which is pretty darn scary and therefore
appropriate for Halloween night viewing.
Scary!
Horrifying!
.jpg)
Yes. WAY scarrier than anything Freddie Kruger can dish out.
Which leads us to a sort of scary event that occurred Halloween
night: when opening the door to give out treats, what we thought
was a pretty big bird flew into the house and began darting about
and dive-bombing us. Was it a bat?
Looking up at the strange creature that invaded our home
and afixed itself to the ceiling on Halloween night. NOTE:
My friend Maria pointed out the floating orbs in the upper
third of the photo. Turns out many people consider these
"benevolent spirits" which are inadvertently captured in
digital photographs. Others say they are bits of dust, etc.,
which are magnified by the flash. Hmmmmm.
I will say that my sister JoAnna's house is spotless and there
is little or no dust in the place. And it certainly wasn't raining
INSIDE. So, these orbs fall under the category of "things that
make you go "hmmmmmm."
Anyway, back to the scary creature that entered the house.
It seemed to be about the size of a small bird but it definitely
looked like an INSECT. A BIG insect.
This baby had a wing span of about 3-5 inches, and a thick (gross) body
It's called a Hummingbird Moth. Yep, it's about the size
of a large hummingbird, but it's 1,000 times creepier.
Which begs the question: why, exactly, are we so freaked out by a
gigantic moth inside our homes -- while a hummingbird trapped
in our living quarters would merely be a whimsical adventure?
After all, we know intrinsically that neither a moth or a
hummingbird will hurt us physically.
Well, to dig deeper into the origin of our fears,
first let's look at the face of a hummingbird:
Awwwwww. So pretty and sweet. And so colorful and sparkly, too!
Now, let's check out the face of a moth up close:
AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
So, I guess it boils down to this: we fear what is very different from us.
Anyway, we lured the flying Sherman Tank outside, which was a
Halloween adventure in itself -- we had to turn off every light in the
house, then open the front door and turn on the porchlight -- which
eventually led our flying horror out the front door to find another
family to terrorize on Halloween night.
We slept peacefully, knowing that we had freed the house
of all flying creatures of horror. The next morning, I was quite
impressed with the thrift of my neice Paige, who had drained
every last millimeter of toothpaste out of the tube:
Well done! :-)
Hanging out with Paige...
...and my sister JoJo...
...and their lab Riley
We said our goodbyes and I headed north towards
LA to visit another neice Ashley.
Remember how blue the sky was in that first
photo I showed of South Orange County?
I took this photo driving north on the 405 towards LA.
See that brown line on the horizon? That's the smog of LA.
Seriously. It's getting worse and worse again. Now THAT is scary!
I arrived at Ashley's apartment in Huntington Beach.
She proudly displays this paint-by-number
she did on her living room wall.
Ashley is Aspergerian, and like many Aspergerians, she's really into
collecting things -- especially things related to fantasy,
Disney characters or Anime.
This is just part of her collection of Disney pins,
which she proudly displays on the wall.
This Anime poster graces the wall of her bathroom
Over the years I've worried about Ashley's obsession with fantasy...
but lately, I'm throttling back on that concern. It's a scary world out
there. Things are uncertain. I'm beginning to understand why Ashley
(and countless others) gains such comfort in
happy things and happy places.
I took Ashley out to lunch in her costume of the
cute little cowgirl in "Toy Story."
She was especially proud of her braid and bow -- just like the movie!
Well done, Ashley. Well done. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment