A Year Without Halloween...And Worse

The one day that I look forward to all year long was ruined by Sandy.  Sure, by the time Wednesday night actually rolled around the weather was actually quite nice…but by then, the damage had already been done – our party had been cancelled and “Trick or Treat” had been rescheduled for the following Saturday…when I’d be working on Long Island.  Given the ominous forecast, that we were presented with just days earlier, The Wife and I determined it would be prudent to dismantle the front yard cemetery and the haunted path before the hurricane-force winds blew in and turned all my tombstones, ghouls, and dismembered body-parts into projectiles and rained them down on unsuspecting neighbors.  So on the Sunday before, I set about undoing all the hard work I had put in, only weeks and days earlier.  As if my mood wasn’t bad enough, I also had the Eagles/Falcons game on in the house so I could poke my head in, from time to time, and check the score – this was a terrible idea…along the lines of “New Coke”, The “XFL”, and the “Pontiac Aztec” kind of bad…what the hell was I thinking??  Anyway, as much as it sucked, taking all the decorations down turned out to be a good idea and, outside of losing power for a day and a half, we came through the other side unscathed.  Halloween, however, was a complete loss – the neighborhood kids were able to fill their candy-bags, all-be-it 3 days later than originally planned, but, for me…it’s as if the calendar skipped from October 30th right to November 1st.  Ok, now that I got my own selfish “boo-hooing” out of the way, I just want to say that I feel like a Dick for even worrying about Halloween in the face of such widespread destruction.  I ain’t gonna lie, I was feelin’ pretty sorry for myself last Sunday but, after seeing the aftermath of this storm…all I can feel now is lucky.  A lot of people out there are really suffering…some lost everything…some even lost their lives.  For what very little it may mean…my thoughts are with you all and hope life returns to some kind of normalcy as quickly as possible.