November Sucks

I’m doing my best to work through the post-Halloween doldrums, but it’s kind of hard to get motivated to do anything. This is not made any easier by the fact that it’s gloomy as hell outside and the stupid time change is still messing with my internal clock.

Fuck Daylight Savings Time.

The bulk of last week was prepping for Halloween for the GLAHW’s Monster Mash For Literacy Bash which was held on the first. Saturday I drove out to Berkley to help set up, rocketed back home to clean up and put on my costume, then back out to the Berkley VFW for the party. Sunday I was back out there again to help clean up and restore the hall to its appropriate floor plan.

We had a good time at the party and took home the trophies for Best Couples Costume. The Mrs won both of the baskets from Candle Wick so we now have plenty of cool candles and room fragrances (with names like IDGAF and Get Out). I snagged a new flask (you can never have too many) and a mystery box from Don England with cool magnets, stickers, patches, and stuff. Most importantly, all of the stuff which I donated was won by someone else so I didn’t have to take anything home.

I attempted a bread/dip version of Cthulhu for the food table. It came out well and sort of looks like the Great Old One if you squint at it with one eye.

Since then all of my time has been spent taking down and storing the Halloween decorations. Over the course of Monday and Tuesday I walked almost 8 miles, all of it in our front yard. I think I have one more trip to the storage place and then everything will be put away for the season.

Sigh.

I still have to take down the interior decorations. Then I can move on to the chores I’ve been putting off like dishes and laundry.

Double sigh.

Listening To: The one good thing about all of the work outside and the driving was that I was able to spend a lot of time with audiobooks. I listened to The Unworthy by Augustina Baziterrica, a moving post-apocalyptic tale, and Thief of Night by Holly Black, the sequel to Book of Night. I’m about halfway through Why I Love Horror edited by Becky Siegel Spatford.

Currently Reading: I finished The Ghost That Ate Us (what a ride) and moved on to Josh Alan Friedman’s Tales of Times Square (I told you I would be rabbit-holing stuff about 42nd Street).

Current Obsession: Using all of my well earned Tetris skills to pack as much as possible into the car as I can to cut down on trips.

Halloween may have passed, but Spooky Season (and Con Season) lives on! From the no rest for the wicked file, we have three shows coming up in the next week and a half.

First up is the Creature Feature Artisan Market at the Freighthouse in Ypsilanti. Look for us this Friday (7 November) from 5pm -9pm.

Two days later (Sunday 9 November) we will be at the Ann Arbor Community Bookfest at the Ann Arbor Downtown Library from 10am - 5pm.

We round out our November appearances the following Saturday (15 November) with the Book Fair for Grown Ups at Lansing’s Sloan Library from 6pm - 9pm.

The frightful season and the essays in Why I Love Horror have prompted me to spend some time thinking about things that scared me as a child (some of which still scare me today). I’ll be touching on a number of these in the coming months, but I thought that I would start with a discussion of my relationship with bees.

Growing up I think I kind of lumped all stinging insects into a broad category of “bee”. I know that this is terribly unfair, due to the fact that what I really didn’t like were hornets which I had been stung by on numerous occasions. Hornets are just evil mother fuckers and I’m sorry that I lumped bees into the same category.

This fear of bees was compounded a million fold when my best friend told be about the KILLER BEES which were coming up from Mexico. Anyone who was a kid in the 70s will know about this terrible threat to life that were swarming across the border. Giant insects who wanted nothing more than to sting a little kid to death.

One night I saw some of these bees. They were the size of a pigeon and they were chasing me down the hallway to my bed. I vividly remember them flying a me from the area by the attic door (you may remember that I had to pass by the attic access to get to my room). There were three of them and they were buzzing loudly and coming right for me. I did what any normal child would: I jumped in the bed, covered up so they couldn’t sting me, and screamed bloody murder. I remember my mom coming up the stairs to save me. She assured me that there were no killer bees in Michigan, even if they did exist we were way too far from the southern border for them to reach us (my grasp of geography has never been that great.). It was just my imagination and I needed to try and get some sleep.

I remember her muttering about “those stupid kids” as she went back downstairs. If you bring this up today, she will still mutter about how Big Chris got the idea in my head.

I may do this at Thanksgiving, just to provoke the reaction.

Now I know how important bees are to our fragile ecosystem (I knew this even before seeing Bugonia last week). One of my favorite pictures of the old homestead is of a bee walking on the thistle I planted. We have planted flowers at The New House™️ to attract bees, although I do worry that Tesla might get too curious and get stung.

Moreover, with my new obsession of making mead, I have giant containers of bee vomit (honey) ready to be turned into alcohol.

So, childhood fear of bees? Conquered.

Hornets can still fuck right off.