Halloween Take your frog to work day

Yeah, sorry about that. Every once in a while, Froog gets ahold of Garageband on one or the other of my devices. It was easy when only my laptop had Garageband. Now it’s everywhere and he managed to sneak onto my iPad. Sat right there in the front window on his “jacky-lantern” and recorded that “masterpiece”. Maybe that’s why we only had something like four batches of trick-or-treaters.

Because boy oh boy, we did not get many. Back in the day, we usually got a pretty steady stream. Even when various forms of precipitation were descending out of the sky. Part of me wonders if it’s because there is no evidence of children around The Landfill but maybe it’s just that we’re in a low point in some unknown cycle. This is the first year in I don’t know how many that we didn’t carve at least one pumpkin. It is the first year in forever that we didn’t set up Vandergriff on a stepladder. I remember when we were stuffing Vandergriff once when Lizard Breath was in kindergarten. Her kindergarten aide walked by and Liz excitedly announced, “We’re stuffing our dummy!” And then there was the time that I was dismantling Vandergriff and as I took his decomposing pumpkin head out to the compost bin, I had to reassure Mouse that he would help the flowers grow in the spring.

This year? I hung a bunch of orange and purple lights around and I am putting The Commander’s “electric jack-o-lantern” to good use. Last fall, when she asked to have her electric jack-o-lantern at Freighter View, I was kind of nonplussed at first. What the heck is an electric jack-o-lantern? Well, it is an electric jack-o-lantern. I can’t remember if I found it up at Command Central or if The Beautiful Jan or The Beautiful Connie did the job. The Commander liked decorating for holidays although her decorations became simpler and more subtle in her later years. She didn’t want to take the time to carve a pumpkin (and in the last years, probably couldn’t easily do it) so she found an electric one. I am using it now.

I actually found all of my Halloween stuff yesterday morning at 0-skunk-30. I woke up at that batscope hour the night before and remembered that I had packed it carefully into a plastic box last fall. (Except for the borrowed witch’s hat. That is somewhere else. I will find it.) Still, black clothing (which I wear all the time) and a sparkly purple spider “shawl”, bat mardi gras beads, and jack-o-lantern socks don’t really make a costume. I knew it and I didn’t care about the costume contest. Those who wore serious costumes were very tired of them by the end of the day.

I am still pinching myself that I have a job that I like and there are people there who think my goofy old frog puppet is actually cool. Because, as Froog said yesterday, I did not win any prizes in the costume contest but I *was* officially recognized for reaching my five-year employment milestone. I do not get sentimental about stuff like this except that I totally fell into this job at a time when I was wondering if I would ever have gainful employment again. I don’t want to go into great detail about that but I am not the best at interviewing for jobs, etc. I have a fine arts degree but I am also one of those folks who make the trains run on time plus I can be creative when I need to be. I am good at learning new technologies, for one thing… But I have to believe that I wouldn’t have been offered this job if I had answered an ad for it because I would have had a hard time selling my “skills”. Because it’s hard to quantify them.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

5 Responses to “Halloween Take your frog to work day”

  1. Jan Miller Says:

    Cam gave your Mom the electric pumpkin and I found the witches hat this afternoon, so you can stop looking. Love, Jan

  2. kayak woman Says:

    So glad you found the hat and thank you Cam (and miss you)…

  3. Margaret Says:

    You seem very content in your job and they were very supportive of your journey with the Commander, as I recall. A good group of people.

  4. UU Says:

    Frog is OK with me. Hope to see him(?) up at the lake this weekend.

  5. Pooh Says:

    Does “old” Froogy know he’s been replaced by “new” Froogy?