Halloween 2020
Started: 2020-10-31 21:37:52
Submitted: 2020-11-01 00:00:22
Visibility: World-readable
In which the intrepid narrator celebrates Halloween during the First Plague Year
This being the First Plague Year, Halloween was bound to be different than last year. We had the additional complication of moving into the Santa Cruz Mountains, miles from the nearest subdivision or recognizable neighborhood (our driveway is a half-mile long, meaning it's a hike just to go to the mailbox or take the trash cans to the curb). Any attempt at trick-or-treating in our immediate vicinity would be futile (and given the lack of sidewalks on the narrow mountain road, hazardous to one's health). There were a couple of neighborhoods in the mountains that planned some sort of Halloween celebration, but Kiesa decided to roll our own.
Halloween fell on a Saturday, so we started with pumpkin scones for breakfast, then waited for Calvin to finish gaming online with one of his friends from Seattle before getting started with carving pumpkins.
For his pumpkin, Calvin carved the scariest thing he could think of: the year 2020.
Julian (at age five) wasn't quite up for carving a pumpkin yet, so he painted a pumpkin with acrylic paint. The end result was rather abstract (and difficult to view from any single angle), but I think it involved a face (the red splotch in the picture below), with blue ears on either side (just visible on the edges of the pumpkin) and something else in red in back.
Kiesa tried to take advantage of the time the kids were occupied with pumpkins to hide Halloween candy in the yard as a sort of candy hunt, but this proved more time-consuming than expected. Julian finished his pumpkin quickly, and we started watching Hotel Transylvania to occupy Julian while Kiesa continued hiding candy.
(I ducked out of the house to go get coffee in Capitola, on a flimsy pretext to get out of the house during the day. I missed the candy hunt but I understand our kids were not especially adept at finding the hidden candy. By the time I returned the kids had finished the search and were watching Hotel Transylvania 2.)
The kids dressed up in costumes: Calvin in as a "post-apocalyptic mercenary" with desert camo pants, a tactical vest, aviator sunglasses, and a black beret; and Julian in an off-the-shelf Squirtle costume.
Kiesa dressed up as Morticia Addams (which I neglected to photograph). I did not dress up.
Despite having his candy intake restricted (by virtue of limited supply), Calvin still pretended to have a post-Halloween candy crash on the floor.
The last thing we did for Halloween was play the board game Pandemic (for the first time since the current global pandemic started). This time we played with house rules that named each of the four diseases that break out during the game: vampires, zombies, werewolves, and ghouls. (This didn't actually change the gameplay, but provided additional flavor that made the game more fanciful and less like a tragic commentary on our current situation.) We beat the game, wrapping up our Halloween in the First Plague Year.
