When I was a kid back in the 60s, Halloween was a major event. It seemed the entire town delighted in haunted houses and door-to-door trick-or-treating. My sister and I would meet up with our cousins and roam the eastside neighborhood from sunset until 10:00, collecting apples, candy, small bags of popcorn and the occasional dime. Rather than eating it all that night, we’d ration out our goodies and make them last a couple of months because candy was an indulgence that finances didn’t allow often.

We’d start planning our costumes early in September. We were jealous of the kids who could afford the store-bought get-ups with those hard plastic masks for the school parties, but we made do with whatever we could find. It never occurred to us that our parents would do it for us–it was our night and our opportunity to recreate ourselves.

Robbie used to be a football player in Cousin Tom’s old high school jersey and black smudges under his eyes. Leanne would be a secretary–a high aspiration for a kid of our class–in a skirt, high heels and carrying a steno book. Debbie chose a robot made from boxes collected at the grocery store on stocking day. Penny was a blond Pocahontas with pheasant feathers in a construction paper headband and a vest made from a paper sack, brightly decorated with crayons. My sister dressed up as a princess in my mother’s old prom dress. Jim played at being a hippie.

Because I had olive skin and black hair, unlike my fair sister and cousins, I was always a gypsy.

This was, of course, long before I learned that cultural appropriation and stereotyping was wrong, and years before I learned that my grandmother had Rom heritage herself. I had a long bright peasant skirt from my cousin Kathy and a white gauze blouse with elastic around the shoulders that I could pull down. I loved my collection of brightly colored strands of beads that I bought for a nickle a piece at rummage sales. My favorite part was a bright red fabric flower salvaged from one of my grandmother’s dresses that I would fix in my hair with scotch tape. And I was alway barefooted, no matter how cold it was, with bells on a piece of string tied around my ankle. Even then I longed to be exotic if I couldn’t be beautiful. My costume gave me that.

When Halloween rolls around I remember how special I felt back then, I wish for that high again. Unfortunately I’m too old to play dress-up and I don’t get invited to any costume parties, so I settle for handing out candy at the door and giving extra to the kids who obviously made their costumes themselves. Halloween is a time for dreams and make-believe. We all need that, no matter what our age.

National Novel Writing Month begins on Wednesday. For those unfamiliar with it, the goal is to write the complete first draft of a novel, 50,000 words or more, between November 1 and November 30. I’ve been thinking about it all of October, wondering if this is the time to screw up my courage and learn to write again. I think it is.

I used to be a fairly prolific writer. I have 3 complete 120,000 word manuscripts (the last of which really hasn’t even been submitted) and 2 half-finished ones. I used to be able to ride the waves of my cycles, pouring out 10 pages on a high day and still banging out 4 pages of self-pity on the depressed ones. But I began to fear the magic of fiction and started to believe that by writing bad things I would call them into being. In some ways, that fear was legitimate. I over-empathized with my characters until my moods echoed theirs, coloring everything I felt and did. If they were in turmoil, so was I. I lost track of the boundaries between what happened inside my head and the real word. I was hell to be around, but it let me make sense of my inner chaos. It helped me cope.

Then I got medicated, first with antidepressants 8 years ago, and more recently with anti-cycling agents. In a lot of ways the quality of my life improved, but the writing, with the exception of poetry, stopped. The ideas refused to come; there was less adrenaline to send my brain racing through possibilities and my mode of thinking became very concrete. I seldom dream now even when asleep, let alone when I’m awake, and without dreams, it’s hard to become someone else and live through them. It’s difficult to create a world and live inside it enough to make it real on paper when I can’t step over the line into my imagination. I’ve gotten to where I’m afraid to try — I’ve failed too many times over the last years. The confidence I once had is gone.

So I’m looking at November 1st and screwing up my courage. But for this to work for me, I’ve got to define my own goals in a way that I can achieve. Even in full-blown mania I couldn’t do 50,000 words in a month. So my aim is a lot more modest. I’m going to try to write 4 pages a day, 5 days a week for 30 days. If I can do that, I think I can break this pattern of avoidance and fear and learn to write again.

I have to prove to myself that I can be both stable and a writer. That’s what I want to accomplish this month.

Note to self: when writing list-style-type, disk must be spelled disc.

Duh.

While trying to help a friend figure out an embed problem in Firefox, I needed to download the latest version of Quicktime. But when I went to the download page, the only free version I could find came bundled with iTunes, a program I refuse to use. I’m loyal to Music Match Jukebox and I don’t want to clutter my hard drive with proprietary format copies of songs I already have. But if I wanted Quicktime, I had to accept iTunes as well. Given no choice, I did.

Quicktime bugs the hell out of me. There’s no option in the program itself to NOT load on start up. The damn thing writes itself into my startup and no matter how many times I kill it, it keeps coming back. Now with the mandatory iTunes, I’ve got iPodService written into my services and iTunesHelper in my start up. (I killed ‘em through msconfig — we’ll see they’re immortal like QTTask.) When your computer is as slow as mine (1.2 ghz) you can’t afford anything unnecessary running resident. And it’s the principle of the thing.

This is not the way to win over customers, Apple. You’re starting to act like Microsoft.

Reading the Seattle PI this morning, I was surprised to find a flashing banner ad for Mike McGavick, Republican candidate for the Senate, across the top of a news story I was reading. I checked half a dozen other stories, and the ad was there, too. It seems to be tagged to all news stories in today’s edition. It doesn’t seem to be part of a rotating block, because it turns up every time I load the pages. It’s an exclusive.

I know it’s legal, but it seems slimey to me. As far as I know, the paper has not yet come out with endorsements in the senate races, but running this ad on every page of their website implies approval to me. Political ads in the print copies of newspapers are required to have a statement that they are put there for pay and list just who paid for the ad to distinguish them from editorial content. That line is fuzzy here. I’m sure the PI made a nice chunk of change in exchange for running it and in these days of dwindling revenues I’m sure that’s quite attractive. But I’m disappointed just the same. I expected better from my primary news source.

Are your online news outlets running banner ads for candidates? If so, how do you feel about it?

I thought it was bad that Washington requires me to sign my ballot envelop before I send it in. Listening to NPR this morning, I discovered it’s worse in Ohio. Not only must they sign their vote, they have to turn over their driver’s license, military id or Social Security number as well.

Ohio passed a law requiring legal identification at the polls, and by extension, on absentee ballots. The big problem? On the driver’s license the number listed in bold type above the picture is NOT the correct number. That’s somewhere else on the card. Providing the wrong number gets your ballot tossed. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Matthew Damschroder, Franklin County elections director, says an estimated 5,000 of the 100,000 absentee ballots expected to be submitted will have ID problems and not be counted.

But yesterday, a federal judge suspended the requirement, citing unequal enforcement across the state, violating the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. Judge Algenon L. Marbley has said he will rule Wednesday on whether to completely block new requirements to provide certain types of identification on both absentee ballots and at the polls Nov. 7.

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Marbley rejected arguments by Assistant Attorney General Richard N. Coglianese, who asserted no ballots had been counted and therefore there was no harm to any voters.

“That’s like Bush versus Gore redux. Florida voters had no recourse because they didn’t know their ballots had been rejected until after the election, and then it was too late,” Marbley said. “Maybe they all voted for President Bush and felt vindicated.”

He sided with attorneys for The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Service Employees International Union, Local 1199, who sued (Sec. of State and gubenatorial candidate Kenneth) Blackwell this week. They argued yesterday that the laws, because of loose definitions, have led to unequal enforcement. For instance, one county would accept a driver’s license that listed an old address, another wouldn’t; one would accept a month-old utility bill and another as far back as six months; one county would accept a government document from a city but another said it had to be a state or federal document, and so on.

Coglianese argued that Marbley should not change the rules in the middle of an election. “We fear a system where there is confusion.”

Marbley responded: “What leads to more confusion than a statute that people cannot understand?”

Coglianese said the voting requirements were put in place to “instill voter confidence.”

Marbley issued a directive and ordered Blackwell to send one out as well to all elections boards not to enforce requirements for voters to provide the driver’s license number, or the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number, or other forms of identification until he rules whether to block the ID requirements on all voters.

Watch this one closely, folks. It has ramifications all across the county. Read what Fair Vote has to say about id requirements and find out how your county will enforce it. Be prepared — don’t give them a reason to invalidate your franchise, no matter how unreasonable the demand. It’s the only shot you have to make your vote count.

Is there a law somewhere that says it’s illegal to have 10 perfect fingernails at one time? Just when I got them exactly the way I want them, I broke 2 this morning. They’re polished bright red, too, which means I have to remove all the color to keep from looking ridiculous. Grrr.

It’s Pledge Week for my local NPR affiliate. Though I’ve listened for a couple of years, I’ll confess I’ve never contributed to the cause. When the kids were little and watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers I annually sent my $35 in to the PBS tv station, but as they grew (and the station stopped showing Dr. Who and Red Dwarf) I let my membership lapse. It’s been a lot of years now since I made a donation.

This morning on the way home from dropping Tony off at school, listening to the volunteers reciting the great programming I always tune in to, the guilt got to me. I called as soon as I walked into the house and made a pledge. I can give up my weekly latte for a couple of months to pay for it.

Now I can listen to the radio the rest of the week without squirming.

If you listen to public radio, please think about giving them a buck or two to help out. The option is all Clear Channel all the time. You don’t want that.

• Happy thing: I learned how to turn off the rich text editor in WordPress 2. Thank God!
• Happy thing: one button database backup in WordPress 2.
• Happy thing: New host that hasn’t glitched yet
• Happy thing: a Presto Log fire in the evenings
• Not so happy thing: ice on my windshield in the morning
• Happy thing: Tony’s done with marching band for the season, so no more worrying about him on the road
• Happy thing: lovely weekend with Meredith home
• Happy thing: found a dress for Julie’s wedding for only $20
• Happy thing: shoes to match said dress, $14
• Happy thing: call from a friend from high school I’ve only seen once in 25+ years - against all odds, he’s living in Spokane, too.
• Not so happy thing: he was calling to talk me into going to a class reunion. I don’t think so.
• Happy thing: new Evanescence cd
• Happy thing: taking Tony out for breakfast before school this morning

Teen Girl Squad has become a cult phenomenon. I suppose it’s one of those things that is so bad it’s almost good. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s sort of like a train wreck, but I’ll freely admit I’m a bit beyond the target demographic. Meredith and her friends are nuts for it, so much so that they’re dressing up as The Girls on Halloween for their dorm costume contest.

If you’re old like me, consider yourself educated.