We’ll Always Have Halloween

Every Halloween, I wake up in the morning thinking I’m all grown up and will behave like a proper grandma when my daughter and I take her two young boys out for trick-or-treating. And every Halloween, the mischievous spirit of the holiday gets into me and I get as silly as they come. Tonight’s featured performance was howling like a werewolf, much to the delight of my grandsons, who joined me enthusiastically and even tunefully as we prowled the streets for candy.

And it wouldn’t be Halloween if I didn’t plow through at LEAST two or three piles of dry leaves. I totally destroyed one that was about 2 feet high and probably 15 feet long, providing a terrible example for the boys, who assisted me in this activity as happily as they did the howling. Their mother, in the meantime, was shaking her head and laughing at all of us at the same time……well, SOMEBODY had to be the adult, and it sure wasn’t me!

Ah, well, I’m just making up for lost time. Last year I weighed about 60 pounds more than I do now, and I couldn’t even walk a full city block; it was a terrible blow to my self-image as the Halloween Queen, and I thought I was done for good. Even as recently as this summer, I thought I might just be getting too old for this business……but I decided I was going to give it one last hurrah, and now, after two solid hours of trick or treating and walking at least a couple of miles, I think I’m good to go for at least another five years. 😀

It didn’t hurt that I still have a lot of manic energy left over, although I did come down several notches overnight thanks to the temporary addition of Vitamin “Z” to my customary nightcap. Now I’m just irritable as hell—a project at work that should’ve taken me four hours required almost seven, thanks to a lethal combination of poor focus and a horde of VERY noisy children who had a party in the residents’ dining room and popped balloons for two loooooooong hours. I have never tolerated loud or startling sounds well, even when I’m not manic (or post-manic), and the din was such that I thought I was going to lose my freaking MIND.

Fortunately, I had two things with me that saved my sanity for the moment: a) a door that I could close, and b) my iPod. Needless to say, it was much easier to pay attention to what I was doing and the work went more smoothly after I utilized these two items, although my attention span is still about that of a fruit fly. And in the long run, I got things done but honestly, I just hope I didn’t make TOO many mistakes.

I know better than to believe I didn’t make any when I was having that much trouble with focus……damn the timing! But one thing I’ve got going for me that I never did before I was diagnosed with this illness (you know, the one I don’t have, remember? LOL) is knowing when I’m overstimulated, and what to do about it when it happens.

So tonight, I am exhausted but satisfied, and I think another couple of nights’ worth of Zyprexa ought to knock the rest of this manic episode out of me. I am already caring again about my punctuation and grammar, and some of the stuff I thought important enough to spout off about only a day or two ago now sounds downright juvenile.

But as much maturing as I obviously have yet to do, I can always be a kid again on this magical night of spooks and specters, of ghosts and goblins……and of wearing a big plastic pumpkin on a headband and running through the streets kicking up leaves.