BOO!

What a great Halloween night this is - dry, calm and very mild. Usually, Halloween night in Nova Scotia can be relied upon to be cold and rainy, which is always the pits. I remember so many years when I was a kid, working to come up with a really good costume, then having it wrecked because it was freezing out and my mother insisted that I wear my snowsuit underneath. Oh, the indignity.

I raced home after work today (watching all the kiddies going door-to-door en route), lit the jack o'lantern and put it out on the deck...but thus far tonight, there have been no trick-or-treaters. *sigh* Not surprising - we didn't have any last year either. Since our street is a cul-de-sac, with only a handful of houses, I guess the local kids can't be bothered with us. And apparently, most kids get driven around by overprotective or lazy parents these days.

It was different when I was a kid. Granted, I grew up in a small village, where there weren't that many neighbours, and they lived far apart. But maybe because there were relatively few houses, we made sure not to miss any at Halloween.

The other great thing about trick-or-treating in the country is the quality of one's haul of treats. When my brother and I were very young, and living in Toronto, anything we brought home that wasn't wrapped was chucked out. But having then moved to a rural community in Cape Breton, it became OK to eat all the good home-made stuff, like toffee apples and fudge, because we knew all our neighbours and could tell our parents who had given us what.

Eh...it's just not the same these days, I tell ye....
*consoles self with unclaimed stash of Doritos and mini Crispy Crunch bars*