boo

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

                                            Traditional Scottish Prayer

I ramp up for the holiday season beginning with Halloween and concluding with the Feast of the Three Kings in January. Sadly, the Feast of the Three Kings is iffy since the year I whacked Baby Jesus in two cutting the Kings’ cake. One person got the top half and another the bottom. It unsettled some of the guests.

This year I hosted a Halloween party for four grandmothers, two mothers, and ten children ages 12-2 at my 950 sq.ft. apartment. The invitation read, Wear your costume or your most comfortable clothes. The guests included Indiana Jones, a kitty, an Asian warrior, a pirate princess and a baby dragon who was very cute but a tad gamy having worn the costume daily for about two weeks. Two children opted for comfortable clothes, and one showed up in business casual.

Many of these children live on a diet of water, tofu and raw vegetables, so I thought how fun it would be to load them up with the famous HEB lard and sugar cookies topped off with a quarter inch of festive icing. The grocery also makes birthday cakes. Think the cookie dough baked in cake pans. My adult children still clamor for HEB Birthday Cake. With age, they’ve abandoned the theme cakes. Now they are just hot for the sugar and fat.

Also there was candy, hard core candy like Smartees, candy corn, M&M’s and Halloween shaped gummies. (I’d rather handle grubs than any form of gummy candy.) A polite little guest would come to me and ask if they could have a package of M&M’s. I’d respond with, Of course you can, Darling. Take six. None of their adults noticed being otherwise occupied woofing down the HEB cookies.

The children left with party bags full of yummies made from sugar, chemical dyes and petroleum distillates. Interestingly, they were judicious in their consumption of party food. Their drivers, however, were careening off the walls from the sugar and fat having not been similarly judicious.

Out of ten children gathered in a very small space, no one cried, peed their pants, or got into a fight. It was one my most successful parties.

If I am rigorously honest, which I hardly ever am, I must admit to one of the guest’s good intention gone awry. This involves the baby dragon and the cat. You must have context. I had closed two doors for the party, my bedroom door and the door to my study. The cat was in my bedroom to protect her from sticky fingers and also give her access to her litter box.

I’m visiting with a guest and in walks the baby dragon in the stinky costume. She takes my hand and says, Grammy, come and see. She opens the door to my bedroom. (A closed door in a grandparent’s house is merely a mild inconvenience to a grandchild. It certainly does not communicate STAY OUT.)

See kitty?

Yes, I do see kitty. Kitty is on my bed looking long suffering and oddly misshapen.

Kitty is very soft. She has lotion.

Oh, my. Kitty did indeed have lotion. Baby dragon had applied about quarter cup to a very fluffy cat’s exposed side...only. Talk about slicked down.

I am not always a good person, but to my credit I do not laugh at humiliated cats, and I do not scold children whose attempts at a kind gesture lack a certain finesse. As we leave the room, I look over my shoulder and lock eyes with the moisturized cat. It’s going to take me the rest of the day to lick this crap out of my fur! And indeed it did.

st. francis and the bobster

As you may know, or not know nor care, Sunday was the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. This is the bird-guy whose likeness stands in many a yard with homeowners clueless about who he is and why he’s standing in their yard.

His classic depiction is with birds on his shoulders and assorted other creatures at his feet, a nod to the legend that when he had no human audience he would preach to the birds. Other animals were added over time in the name of artistic license or market appeal. Sad to say, there are no indigenous Texas creatures at his feet. He is absent the horned toad, turkey buzzard and rattlesnake. We must cut some slack. He was Italian and Italy has been civilized a lot longer than Texas, as have Italian animals. A guy in the hydrangeas with buzzards on his shoulders and armadillos at his feet is just wrong.

Many churches have a blessing of the animals on St. Francis’s Feast Day. Sadder but wiser from past mishaps and fatalities, parishes now have gentle guidelines, e.g. rules for this event. For example, no loose pythons, nothing with fangs or venom in or out of cages, no insects because one pet cricket is another pet’s lunch. No pets with poop too large to be removed with a swipe of one paper towel.

If the pet is sickly, poisonous, or fails the poop test, a picture of the pet may stand in for the real thing. Love and mercy find their way home no matter what the vehicle.

Meeting all the criteria, Bob qualified for an on-site blessing. Later that afternoon, I find Bob, tiny eyes squeezed shut, conked out on his basking rock. Intense spiritual experiences can be exhausting not to mention being sloshed about in one's feeding bucket for the 20 minute drive to St. Julian’s in the company of five children in a closed vehicle.

Somewhere, St. Francis is smiling.