I haven't found much motivation to write in the past 3 months . I most certainly didn't want to parrot Halloween again. Apparently 2 years in a row now, I've written journal entries on that holiday . College has been a pain too , though that's an occupational hazard for college students in general. But it is nice to get back into the game and have a daily routine . I just wish I didn't have to drive 62 miles a day, round-trip . The campus I go to is 31 miles to the south of our town, and I have to drive a twisty, twiny mountain road partway to get there, as well as two highways full of traffic. Plus, in both directions, I have to deal with crazy speeders. Nothing irritates me more than drivers who go 20-30 miles over the speed limit (it's like you're just
begging to die
at those speeds) and idiots who
dive through one lane after another on the 4-lane highways. And I have to deal with that
5 days in a row! Next semester, I'm gonna set it up so I don't have to go 2 days a week. I might even consider taking an online class so I can stay home, but still go to school, like my brother does. My parents have been talking me into transferring to a college campus less than 10 miles to the west in a nearby town, though I have been a bit hesitant since I heard of their real shooter a few months ago.
Oh yeah, my school had a shooting scare just 2 days after the Vegas massacre. So instead of going to class, I ended up hiding with a bunch of other students and administrators in the college president's office, with the shades drawn. We had police, national guard, news helicopters, and everything. Thankfully, nobody got hurt, but we were all outraged and very irritated when the whole fuss turned out to be over a
NERF GUN, of all things. I think we all had the
how DARE you scare us over that! feelings on our minds as many of us just plain went home after the all-clear sounded. On the bright side
, I learned that I apparently can keep a cool head in high-stress situations. I mean, two of the female students I was hiding with were on the verge of tears, whereas I was wondering if we would all be okay and on high alert. As long as I know the procedure, you can count on me to help out when something insane is going on. I'm still scratching my head over this, but for some reason, I kept referencing cartoons while we were all hiding. Don't know why. One of the girls complained that nowhere was safe anymore, and I made a point about trying too hard to be safe by quoting Dory from
Finding Nemo: "You can't expect
nothing to happen to him." That made a few people smile .
The thing is, shooters like really big, open, famous college campuses; schools with names everyone in the country knows. The community college I go to is not known to many outside the county, does not have a huge student population, and it's kind of off the beaten path. You'd have to really know where you're going to find it. On the other hand, the campus is not "closed," with a wall, so anybody can just walk in. So we have obscurity and remoteness to defend us, but if a shooter really wanted to come in and kill us, there wouldn't be much to stop them. Oh well.
Halloween was quieter than last year. I didn't wear a costume, and we didn't have nearly as many people come to the door. It was actually kind of stressful because I spent the entire day on my feet, going from place to place. School, shopping for candy and new decorations (talk about last-minute, eh? ), and taking care of some other business I can't remember at the moment. I didn't carve the pumpkin mom bought this year, so instead, I took a black marker and drew a Jack-o-Lantern face on it. We did, however, get some new pumpkin lights, and I took advantage of some old pumpkin buckets we had to make some nice lanterns on either side of the front walk. Turns out if you don't want to carve a pumpkin , all you would need to do was take one of those orange (they come in pink and green too) iconic pumpkin buckets, put a candle inside, place it in front of your house, and light the candle when the sun goes down. Worked like a charm.
A few memorable things that happened after the Trick-or-Treaters started showing up was, the grade-school kids loved our anti-burglar stickers. See, when mom and dad went to Alaska last summer, they discovered that Alaskans
LOVE their guns . Of course, considering how large the pests are up there, I'm not surprised they would need to guard their homes with rifles. The only pests we get have 6-8 legs and are tiny
. I have yet to see the 2-legged kind in our area (thank God). But mom couldn't resist buying some stickers to put on one of our front windows by the door. One says "If you can read this, you're in range," and shows a human target with bullet-holes in the center. The other says "Nothing in here is worth dying for," and shows a gun or something like that.
A little girl asked me what "in range" meant. I told her "It means the bullet can hit you." But I assured the kids that I had no interest in shooting anyone, and those stickers were for evil burglars.
Memorable costumes included a miniature Halo soldier, a little shark, female zombie triplets, matching clowns, ninjas, and a huge variety of classic Halloween costumes. It seems the generic costumes are more popular these days, rather than always going full pop-culture.
I did hear about an interesting new movement among Halloween-lovers. It's called "The Teal Pumpkin Project." I read about it in online news, where some people who hand out candy at the door, are becoming increasingly aware of kids with gluten problems (thankfully that is still rare in the child population) so they get candy that is safe for kids with gluten allergies and put a pumpkin painted teal on their porch as a signal to any Trick-or-Treating kids with gluten issues. In the past 5-6 years of childcare, I have only met 2 gluten-sensitive kids out of hundreds of ordinary children. Most are either normal, or once in a while you'll meet some with milk allergies.
Not sure how you can make or buy candy that's gluten-free, but they must exist.
One thing that was really weird was, I had a strange craving for the movie
Hocus Pocus. I didn't even
like that movie as a kid! Why the hell would I want to watch it now?! And yet I wanted to see the Sanderson Sisters. So I downloaded it online and watched it on my laptop . I think I took the story a little too seriously as a kid and was turned off by some aspects of the film. Now it's just goofy to me. Strange how one's perspective of older movies changes over time, isn't it?
On a sad note, my grandma died earlier last week . She was my dad's mom. We were all very sad to hear of her passing. Poor grandma had suffered from Parkinson's Disease for over 28 years, and I think it finally killed her. A week before we got the sad news, she had just gotten over a scabies infection some elderly guy at her retirement home had passed onto her (I'm still wondering how a human could have gotten that, it's normally a problem for animals with fur), but then had to be hooked up to a breathing machine and had trouble swallowing. She had pulled out of similar situations before, so we did not know if she would be okay or not. Now we know . I actually had not seen grandma in over 8 months, and frankly, I don't want to remember how she was in the last few years of life. It's easier to remember how she was when I was little, or even during my teenage years. At least she's not in pain anymore . To be honest, I think part of her died with grandpa back in '97, and it just took 20 years for her body to catch up. She was a Jehovah's Witness (one of only two in our family, most of us are either Protestant Christians or don't follow anything) so she had to be buried less than a week after passing. They don't believe in embalming the body. What made it even worse was, I couldn't fly off to funeral on a whim because I had a test coming up in one of my classes, and I
had to be present for lessons in the other class, so I was shackled to the house and the dog while my family took dad's car to go attend the funeral . They were gone for 3 days. Colleges are not as kind towards re-taking tests or doing makeups as high schools are. Evil school, grrr.... But then again, I greatly dislike funerals (besides obvious reasons) because in the days beforehand, I would have been coming to accept the relative or friend being gone, and then am reminded of the sadness all over again at the funeral. My parents said I was missed. At least the relatives cared .
Domino finally did something so gross and disgusting, I cannot write it here because it would make anybody reading this lose their lunch
. I'll just say, that I was very short with him during the time my parents and brother were away. Let's just say, he took recycling to a whole new level, and I'll leave it at that .
Thanksgiving is coming up, and my parents signed us up for having international students come and eat with us. We were assigned two students, though we got kinda nervous about one of them being a vegan . My family is omnivorous, so we don't have much respect for vegetarians or vegans. My dad and brother in
particular don't look at vegetarian/vegan males in a favorable light. Thankfully, the vegan student found an all-vegan family to have Thanksgiving with (not sure how you can have Thanksgiving without a turkey ) and we got two nice Chinese girls coming to visit. For some reason, they each chose an American name to be known by . I guess they got tired of people mispronouncing their real names, though learning a foreign name isn't as difficult as you think, if they teach you the phonetics behind it. So hopefully, they will have fun at our house
.
So that's my fall 2017 season so far. Hopefully Christmas will be better this year than the autumn.