13 Thursday Treats
1. When something exciting happens and Joe hears me say, “Now that’s something to write home about!” he knows it means I’m going to blog about it.
2. Ever since I heard Bob Dylan sing “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat,” (HERE) I’ve wanted one, but don’t know if I’d be brave enough to wear it.
3. I JUST LOVE THIS stuff, found by way of Smiler. It looks like the posters I had hanging on my bedroom walls in the late 60’s, only this stuff is moving (I think) and my posters never moved (unless I was on something).
4. I must be working too hard. Not only did I go to bed with my glasses still on but when I rolled over onto them in the night I started to write this line in my head.
5. At one point while watching The Blob with Joe at the Hotel Floyd someone in the movie actually said “Shucks.” When’s the last time you heard that word and what do you think they would say today in a remake?
6. When I was a girl I once participated in a Halloween prank that involved throwing raw eggs. The kid I did it with later grew up to be the town police captain.
7. My pumpkin patch only produced the two pumpkins, shown in the photo above. The big one is the biggest I’ve ever grown and too heavy for me to lift on my own. I’m convinced that it used up all the soil nutrients and caused the other pumpkins plants to die.
8. Last year I held a Halloween Costume contest. I asked readers to guess which one was me of the four costumes pictured HERE. You can play the quick game and guess and then look HERE to see if you are right.
9. Although trick or treating only became popular in this country in the early 1950’s, it’s roots go back to late medieval practice of “souling,” when poor folk would go door to door, receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day. Here’s what the Wikipedia says about trick or treating: The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney portrayed it in the cartoon Trick or Treat, Ozzie and Harriet were besieged by trick-or-treaters on an episode of their television show, and UNICEF first conducted a national campaign for children to raise funds for the charity while trick-or-treating.
10. I collect leaves in the fall the way I collect shells in summer.
11. Eulogoy for Fallen Leaves: Some die of natural causes … They drift to the ground and close their eyes … Leaving their perfectly unmarked bodies … scattered like photographs of my ancestors … I collect the ones that look familiar … I write their obituaries and bury them in books … Or I lay them out on the kitchen table … like old lace doilies at an open casket wake … The rest of this poem is HERE. 
12. The only candy corn I saw this Halloween was the fall foliage on the Parkway, and because of the drought it isn’t as orange as it has been in years past.
13. THIS is my Halloween gift to everyone. I had to do it three times to find out what was inside. Have fun!
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13’s are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.
October 31st, 2007 11:29 pm
Excellent list! Thank you and Happy Thursday.
October 31st, 2007 11:41 pm
Hi Colleen,
I actually was thinking of you the other day — we are having a fairly mild fall and some of my summer flowers started to bloom! And I have a bunch of buds on my rose bushes! I know I’ve told you what a wierd summer we had…looks like our fall will be a strange one too!
Really enjoyed your treat list — my friend fell asleep on the typewriter (in the old days!) once and woke up with QWERT on her forehead!
Have a great Halloween!
October 31st, 2007 11:49 pm
Beautiful Fall picture!
I hope your glasses didn’t break when you rolled on them.
Your pumpkins look good even if there were only two.
Terrific Thursday Thirteen!
My TT is posted.
Have a wonderful day!
Happy TT’ing!
*^_^
(=’:’=)
(“)_ (“)Š
Raggedy
November 1st, 2007 1:04 am
fun and interesting post (as they all are!). could not get the link to the “gift” to open though. could you check it, please? i tried several times. thanks.
November 1st, 2007 1:12 am
I never celebrated Halloween in real I didn’t even know about it until 1992 when I first went to London to visit my son who lived there.
Today I have to clean up the mess of my virtual Halloween party, that’s easy to do not like with a real one, lol !
November 1st, 2007 1:59 am
#13 is fun!! Great autumn photo.
November 1st, 2007 3:53 am
Great list!
November 1st, 2007 4:32 am
LOL, I used “shucks” in something I wrote just the other day and thought to myself at the time, “now where did that word sneak in from?!”
Love your pumpkin, now you just better be sure it doesn’t grow legs and start stalking the other vegetables! 😉
November 1st, 2007 7:10 am
3. Yes, our dorm walls were full of stuff like this.
8. I guessed you without hesitation. Your aura came through.
9. Interesting info re: trick or treating. I remembered some of it, but never knew about Ozzie & Harriet’s role…though I’m not surprised.
10.Judy’s collected some fall leaves and has pressed them for a future project – she’s going to mount them in an old window panel we have hanging in our living area. I was going to ask what you did with yours, but then went on to #11.
11. Another wonderful poem.
12. Candy corn seems to have gone the way of phone booths.
13. Thanks for the fun!
November 1st, 2007 7:34 am
great stuff-much better than my wild party for 30 fifteen year olds!
texas sue
November 1st, 2007 8:34 am
6- one with a long memory or forgiving heart?
For sure you could dare a that pillbox. I have one in velvet and one in lambskin. I just found that last one in the halloween stuff but its warm enough for every (winter)day.
November 1st, 2007 9:54 am
I collect leaves every fall, too, and press them in our books. I have so many pressed in various volumes that often when we open our books, we have leaves drift to the floor like they flutter from the trees, so we can have our own personal autumn any time of year!
By the way, my children are 18 and 19, but I always buy them each a big bag of candy corn at Halloween and some of those little candy pumpkins, too.
November 1st, 2007 9:56 am
ahahahah #3…yeah man, those were the days! Thanks for the tip on #13, I didn’t know that was there!
November 1st, 2007 10:24 am
I was always scared of getting caught. Never did pranks. What a wuss 🙂
November 1st, 2007 11:58 am
Great 13, a virtual cornucopia of seasonal delight!
November 1st, 2007 12:24 pm
Great 13! And a special thanks for mentioning me and my site!
1. I know exactly what you mean. Everything is fodder for bloggers. I have so many ideas there are not enough days in the week to cover it all.
2. yeeaaahh… dunno about that one.
3. It’s not actually moving. That’s the really cool thing about it, is that’s it’s all an optical illusion. Trippy, I know.
4. Yesp, been there.
5.I love these old quaint expletives
6. I did that too once. Only I’m ashamed to say it wasn’t even halloween, though I was young and stupid. I still feel remorseful about it, even though no one found us out, my friend and I (it was her idea of course).
7.Which confirms my suspicion that pumpkins are evil.
8. I would never have recognized you.
9. Really interesting, I didn’t know about that.
10. They’re so lovely aren’t they? Where do you keep them?
11. Gorgeous poem. I love the idea of it – a eulogy for fallen leaves. Wonderful. And then these two:
“They drift to the ground and close their eyes
Leaving their perfectly unmarked bodies
scattered like photographs of my ancestors”
“I write their obituaries and bury them in books
Or I lay them out on the kitchen table
like old lace doilies at an open casket wake”
Inspire me to sing and dance and paint and draw and and and… just wonderful Colleen.
12. Candy corn – yech.
13. I’ll have to try that later. I AM participating in NaNoWriMo after all, so I’ll have to put a cap on my procrastinating.
November 1st, 2007 12:34 pm
Just a question: do you think I could use one of your poems in my novel? I have a character (I still need to find a name for) who is from a very wealthy upper east side type family. Sixteen and a bit of a loner and on the fringe. Writes poetry. Let me know (I’ll give you proper credit somewhere of course).
November 1st, 2007 12:36 pm
thanks for letting me carve!
November 1st, 2007 1:07 pm
Ohh ouch. I know what you meanabout the non-colorful fall we’re in this year. It’s awful like that up here too – a few speckled oranges here and there but VERY few.
As to “Shucks” … I know you won’t believe this, but that’s another of the oldie words that I’ve managed to keep alive in typical conversation. That, along with yikes, egad, holy mackeral (holy moley), nincompoop, and jeepers and golly. Sometimes, I’ll even let loose a “fiddlesticks” or “dagnabbit.”
I like your pumpkins!
November 1st, 2007 1:46 pm
That was fun carving and your poem was touching
November 1st, 2007 2:13 pm
my students always liked the never ending Escher prints especially the skull in the eye
November 1st, 2007 2:19 pm
groovy 13! 🙂 ya know, i still use the word ‘shucks’, as in ‘ah shucks!’, but usually in a kind of teasing way.
i remember your costume party post from last year, and i believe i was one that guessed right! 🙂
your pumpkin reminds me of the kids book ‘chumpkin the pumpkin’, who was the biggest, fattest pumpkin on the patch and tried to go on a diet b/c he thought none of the kids would want him! 🙂
November 1st, 2007 3:51 pm
I said “snap” on a few of these. lol
November 1st, 2007 5:40 pm
I agree with Weary Hag……..I still use “shucks” too and all the other words she mentioned, especially “Holy Mackeral.”
I love your big pumpkin. It is so fallish.
And I did go to the movies and see the Blob at the Loring theater with you, Jimmy, Kathy, and Danny. xox
November 1st, 2007 5:43 pm
You grew 2? I only got one pathetic pumpkin. Damned if I’m going to let it get carved up–I’m letting it sit as decoration. I hated the fact that the leaves were not as red and orange as normal.
November 1st, 2007 6:52 pm
#4 I love that you sleepblogged.
November 1st, 2007 8:41 pm
LOVED your gift, Colleen…I had to do it twice…The first time it kiked like a leg bone…LOL!
Wonderful Poem, my dear….And I saw those things on Smiler’s site too….Loved them!
You have the BEST THursday Thirteen’s!!!
November 2nd, 2007 9:19 am
Colleen, this was one fun post! Love that pumpkin carving thing.
November 2nd, 2007 4:29 pm
I bet it would rhyme with shuck.
This was a great post and I hate that you shamed my little yellow pumpkin ball so badly. Thanks.
November 2nd, 2007 4:38 pm
“It would rhyme with shuck.” Great line for #5, Deana. Classic. I hadn’t thought of that!
November 2nd, 2007 8:41 pm
That’s a big pumpkin!!
And I had fun with the carving of my own pumpkin. 🙂
Fun list this week.
~S