The neighborhood has an annual Halloween block party, where they shut down a section of one of the streets near the park, and there are games for little kids in every yard along the way. Kids and adults all in costume, and sometimes even stilt-walkers or fire-jugglers. This year I’d hoped to bring lil e with me, but she’s too old to play the games and too young to want to volunteer to run them. She went trick-or-treating somewhere with her girlfriends, and then I’m sure they ate candy and watched scary movies all night. Meanwhile, I dressed up like a fairy, glittery makeup and all, and marched myself down the street to take up a post at the Witch’s Brew station.

Little kids “fished” for weird little rubber spiders and bats, and then brought me their “catch” to put into the brew. The brew was just a plastic cauldron of water with dry ice, but it steamed and bubbled in a most horrifying way. Some of the kids looked a little skeptical, so I would spoon out a rubber spider, gently bite one of the legs, declare that it was “not done,” and stir it back in again. Mwah ha ha ha ha ha!