Monique 244/365

As we have no children or specific religious affiliation (he’s agnostic,
I’m non-dogmatic Christian), we tend to skip the Easter frenzy. Too many
pastel colors. Halloween, however, is an entirely different story what with
our mutual love of horror movies, sci fi, movie effects & costuming, etc.
Every year, I make up a Halloween basket for my sweetie to dive into first
thing Halloween morning. Many of the features, like the stretchy/squishy
toys that include the skull on the left, the brain to its right, the piranha
you can barely see at the bottom of Mega Piranha (which has the arm of the
neighboring stretch skeleton in its fishy little rubber teeth), and the
giant rat on the left below the skull, are re-used every year along with the
flowers. Movies, candy, and in this instance glow-in-the-dark plastic
weaponry are replaced every year, with this year being heavy on movies since
neither of us really eat much of anything any more and I for one can’t
really have much in the way of chocolate these days. The silver candle
holder is getting left out this year, though the giant candy-corn candle
will live to celebrate a few more years only because it’s not staying out.
The shot glass with its back turned to us (WTF is with this ‘garter shot’
phenomenon, anyway?) says Time For Your Shot and has gotten way more giggles
than Blood Shot over there on the left. The beaker in the front is actually
full of gummy bats in some kind of syrup, and is likely never to be opened.
At the moment it occupies a place of honor next to last year’s birthday
bottle of Crystal Head Vodka that my sweetie has yet to open, but once the
big skull votive holder goes back up, it’s due to be shifted to some
as-yet-undecided location.