A couple weeks before Halloween, I was driving to work and noticed they were putting holiday lights on the trees that line Mill Avenue, the main drag in our college town. I started to harrumph — and I stopped myself. This year, I vowed, I will not complain about how early the holidays start. I […]

I always try to put the Halloween stuff away the day after. I might have five overflowing laundry baskets in my dining room at the moment, and be perfectly okay with it — but to me, there’s something unacceptably untidy about having holiday detritus around after the holiday in question is over. Maybe I drove […]

Yesterday, Annabelle and her friend Bhavini carved pumpkins. (These are their pumpkins, above.) Yeah, kids all over America carved pumpkins yesterday (I know this from Facebook) but this was special because it’s the third year in a row Bhavini has come over to carve pumpkins with us. She and her mom might return to India within […]

Let the Halloween festivities begin….