I know this is supposed to be a travel blog and that I promised everyone a post on my photographic process, but please excuse this interruptive rant while I tell you why I hate October.

First, I hate Halloween!

There I said. It is by far my least favorite holiday of the year, and please allow me to explain why. Mainly it is because it takes over the world I live in. Everything I read, watch or see is all about Halloween, and most of it involves something I don’t like.

For instance, besides photography and writing this blog, my favorite hobby is cooking. I love to cook. I love to find new recipes. But every October the recipe sites I get notifications from all seem to be about pumpkin this or pumpkin that. To be honest, I hate pumpkin. I find it to be on the blah side when it comes to flavors. The older I get, the more that’s true. For instance, I no longer like banana bread. I did earlier in my life but not anymore. Now it is simply something to put butter on. The main thing I will taste will be the butter. The same is true of pumpkin bread, yet I get constant recipes for pumpkin bread and pies and muffins this whole month long.

I also love television and movies, but during October, everything is about scaring, frightening and worse. So many horror films and television specials are released each October that it drives me nuts. Of course, the reason I hate these shows and movies is that I hate scary films. Horror is a genre that I just despise. My life and the world are scary enough without having to watch some guy with a chainsaw cut up people. And even if I ignore all the movies and shows about Halloween, they corrupt the shows I enjoy every week with Halloween special episodes. Yes, I realize that the cast of The Conners does outstanding Halloween costumes, but when even cop shows are about someone getting killed on Halloween by a guy dressed in a hockey mask, we have gone too far.

The whole costume thing drives me nuts too. I know my daughter, her husband and my grandkids love dressing up. And I love to see how imaginative their costumes are (plus they usually aren’t scary, just cool), but god forbid I ever get asked to do that. A costume party is my idea of hell.

I hate decorating for Halloween. I really believed that when we moved to Trilogy in May that we would see very few Halloween decorations around because, hey, there’s no one here under 55, and Halloween is a kid’s holiday, right? Nope. Every other house on our street has Halloween decorations up. Even our next-door neighbor, who won’t even talk to us, has them up? I don’t get it. When I was younger (in my 30s-50s), my best friend around here was a guy named Bob Couture. Bob decorated more for Halloween than he did for Christmas…and believe me, he really decorated for Christmas. But it always drove me nuts, and he would make fun of me because I didn’t love the holiday the way he did. When it comes to Halloween decorations, we have one very cool, jack ‘o lantern that we don’t know where to put in the new house.

Don’t get me started on the colors. Black is OK. I mean, it’s just black. For a while in my life, my psoriasis was so bad I couldn’t wear black at all. I looked like I had been in a snowstorm. So I don’t have much black. Then let’s talk orange. Does anyone look good in orange? Well, if you know anyone who thinks they look good in orange, I look worse.

Second, I hate what the weather has become

The weather this October isn’t helping. With climate change has come a change in seasons here in Washington. When I first moved to Western Washington, there were two seasons—dry (July, August and September) and wet (the rest of the year). Now we have three, and we are smack-dab in the middle of the third one—smoke. We have forests, so we have forest fires. And that means we have a smoke. Right now, our air quality level is 128. That’s considered very bad. And it’s been this way since we got home from Europe. The night we got home, we were thrilled to sleep with our windows open. But by the morning, the house stunk with the smell of smoke. So we have been using the AC ever since. One day last week, while we were having shelves and a closet unit installed, the installation guys were coming in and out, and it was a rough day, smoke-wise. The temperatures aren’t very autumn-like either. We haven’t had measurable rain since early July and today it was almost 80. This is crazy—I used to love October weather.

The weather also gets in the way of my cooking. By now I should be making stews and soups but I am still grilling. I don’t want to be grilling in October. I want to bake and braise.

Third, it’s election year

If I hear one more lie from a candidate, I am going to throw something at our brand-new TV. Well, I won’t do that, but I can guarantee you that Kathleen is getting tired of me yelling at the television. And my inbox is full of people wanting money or my opinion. That just makes this October worse. The election can’t come soon enough. Let’s go November!

Some things make this one a little better

One of the shining lights this year has been my Seattle Mariners, who are in the playoffs for the first time in 21 years. They won a huge game tonight in Toronto (sorry Canadian friends), and they will continue to play this week. But this won’t happen every October (although it did happen 27 years ago tonight and my kids and I were there!)

Thanks for listening to my October lament. I truly hate this month. Besides the Mariners being in the playoffs, the only really good things that are going to happen this month are that our good friends Mike and Cathy are coming from Florida on the 18th for a week (YEAH!) and Kathleen’s birthday is the 27th—the big 70—so that will be a big celebration! And I can’t wait for November! Maybe it will rain by then.

There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.  —Jean Baudrillard