I suppose on Halloween, of all days, I should write an entry - something about how my town (city) of Salem, Massachusetts, celebrates this holy-day. Yes, here in Salem, it is a holy-day...the origin for the word holiday. That's why all thinking citizens of Salem, if at all possible, stay as far away from downtown Salem as they possibly can. I'm not saying we are such great thinkers, but we live on the very edge of this city, only a mere feet over the line from my hometown of Marblehead, and also only feet away from the Swampscott town line, so a trip down into Salem isn't a regular occurrence anymore with us. Me especially. I hardly ever go anywhere any more. Thanks to whatever malady my body is suffering from, but pain mainly. So Halloween is a Salem holy-day, but for us here in Crow Cottage, it's just another day.

As a friend said in her blog today, it's the end of October and good riddance.

Although November never is much better. There's that pesky Thanksgiving holy-day plopped into the 3rd Thursday of it each year. Which means I have to spend money I don't have, push my body to do things it can no longer do in the kitchen, and by the end of that day, I always announce to the family that next year we are going out to a restaurant!

But we never do. I always think that THIS year I'll tone it down a lot, won't cook as much food, won't EAT as much food, and will make it a shorter day than usual.

But it never works out like that. Only this year I just don't know how I'm ever going to do it. Just going to the food market for my weekly shopping has turned into a monumental task for me each week (which I did this morning) and wipes me out for the entire rest of the day. That one little hour of pushing the cart up and down the aisles is now an hour of torture for me. Standing in the queue to check out my items is even worse, my legs/back/hips giving out at any time. I lean on the push-cart just to ease the pain a bit. I get weird looks from the employees sometimes, but I don't care any more. I used to care what people thought of me when I went anywhere in public, but now I know what they meant about old ladies wearing purple...

So I am off to take a cat nap before husband comes home from his long and physically demanding day of lobstering in 30-40 mph winds, and then selling lobsters down by the harbor all afternoon, because he wants dinner and that's one of life's little chores that he can't seem to do for himself -- get dinner. He gets breakfast and lunch OK but my one main job here has dwindled down to getting him a nice hot supper on the table every night, and until I can't stand up any more at all, I will continue to do that for him.

The "Haunted Happenings" spooks, goblins and witches will be flying around our town tonight, but we won't see any of them here. We'll be watching another episode of "When the Boat Comes In" on DVD on the telly, and giggling to ourselves over the cute little theme song that they play at the beginning and end of each episode.

Cheers,

Bex