This has been a bit of a challenging time for us. At the end of August my sweetheart unexpectedly ended up in the hospital for several days following emergency surgery. It was stressful to say the least. It’s taking a while for him to fully recover, and as a result the pace of our lives has slowed down.

I’m good with the slow down. I’m a homebody at heart, so spending evenings reading and watching Harry Potter for the millionth time on the weekend works for me just fine. The thing is, the outside world hasn’t slowed down. Time keeps passing, and we’re already days away from the annual Halloween hoards.

Let me explain. Our neighborhood is family friendly. Very family friendly. The street behind us, in particular. They do a huge Christmas light display every year, and bring in a horse-drawn carriage, hot cocoa, local school choirs, and more. For Halloween, it looks like something out of a Hallmark channel movie, with dozens of kids and families happily criss-crossing the street, filling their pumpkin shaped buckets with candy. It’s lovely. Incredible, and lovely.

Being on the back side of that, and across from the park, we get a lot of foot traffic as well. So much that it doesn’t pay to go inside and shut the door. For the past several years I’ve parked myself on the driveway with a tv table and a large bowl of candy. A second large bowl sits ready just inside the door. Bags of candy lay on the dining room table, waiting to be opened. My sweetheart delivers candy to me several times during the evening using this trade-off method.

We get the good candy. No crappy cheap stuff for us. After all, if there’s leftovers we’re going to eat them. We also get plenty. Running out just doesn’t seem like a good option. So far we’ve avoided toilet paper and eggs, but I don’t think those are too common in our neighborhood anyway.

Well, here’s the thing, we don’t have any candy yet. Normally we would be loaded and ready by now, but we haven’t gotten a thing. I also haven’t done any decorating. No outside lights, no cute pumpkin quilts hanging on the walls, not even the spooky haunted mansion tea-light holder. The decorations are all in the attic, which is accessible only by ladder. Normally my sweetheart gets them down, but this year that’s not possible. I could try to, but I just don’t feel motivated to take the risk of falling off the ladder (it’s a very real possibility).

So to recap: no decorations, no candy, no Halloween spirit.

Can we just turn off the light this year and hide in the back of the house?

No, that wouldn’t be right.

So off we go to the supermarket. They have a 50% off coupon on candy. The good stuff. Hopefully there’s some left. Happy Halloween.