Last year for Halloween, we dressed up, but we didn’t go out. This year, we’re all feeling a little more confident and safe about the areas neighboring Whimsieville. In fact, do you know, it’s been months and months since we’ve heard anything that sounds even remotely like a dog? That Mr. Squee sure must be doing his job well! He’s keeping all the dogs far, far away. So this year, we decided to be brace and go out trick- or- treating.
Yes! We have gone out trick or treating! In fact, we just got back. And what a blast it’s been! If I’d known it was going to be this much fun, I would have done everything I could to overcome my silly fear of dogs even sooner than this! But wait, wait…I’m getting way ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.
I guess the beginning was a few weeks ago, when I let the beans slip (let the cat out of the bag??) that we Whimsies do actually enjoy a bit of sweets now and then. Last year, we were keeping that a secret, so even if we had decided to go trick-or-treating, we wouldn’t have been able to share that with you here, and sometimes sharing is half the fun. But now that everybody knows how much Whimsies love candy, it only makes sense that we would go trick-or-treating. We talked about it for a while, and Tillie and (to a lesser extent) Trixie convinced me it would be safe, if we only went to the houses on either side of Whimsieville. We happen to know for a fact that no dogs live in either of those houses, so I became convinced it would be safe after all to take our Big Trick-or-Treating Adventure.
So, that’s how it started. But next…we got shoes. See, last year we only had one pair of shoes, and also those pretty pink ballet slippers that go with the Fairy Princess outfit. But even then, it meant one of us would have to go with no shoes, and that simply was not an option. Traveling within the confines of Whimsieville we often go barefoot, but once you get outside the gates, there’s Concrete and Asphalt, which are very difficult surfaces for delicate Whimsie feet.
But now we have shoes…lots and lots of shoes! So we know that whatever outfits we might put together, we would be able to add some appropriate shoes to finish off the look, and make us able to safely and comfortably walk those long distances past the gates of Whismieville.
After getting all those shoes, we began to rummage through our wardrobe, seeing if we could put together any new looks that might be good for Halloween. We did indeed find some new looks, but none of them were quite as good as the outfits we had last year. So ultimately, we just decided to repeat. (If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…right?)
Actually, Trixie has had a hankering to be the Fairy Princess ever since last Halloween, so she gravitated right towards that outfit, and as you can see her, she does it tremendous justice! Trixie’s even taken it up a notch, adding a hot pink shirt rather than the simple white one I wore last year, and she’s also added white tights. What a conglomeration of colors! She considered wearing the sparkly pink sneakers with the Fairy Princess outfit, and while those might have served her quite well, in the end she was set on the pink satin slippers. They are not as rugged as the sneakers, but no matter—once we got on our way, Trixie spent so much time skipping and jumping, pretending she could fly, that her feet barely ever touched the ground, and the slippers remain in good shape, even after a Halloween outing.
Tillie played around with the pirate outfit, and with all her crazy hair, we just had to laugh and agree that she makes the perfect pirate! Doesn’t the eye patch look absolutely adorable on her? Adding the brown suede boots even gives the impression of pirate boots…well…sorta. It was the best she could do, and she spent most of the evening clomping around, shouting “Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirate’s life for me!” So those poor little boots really got a workout!
Now as for me, I end up with the pumpkin outfit, which suits me just fine. I always wondered what it would feel like to be fat, and this gave me an opportunity to try it out. But it’s a most peculiar feeling I don’t particularly care for! It’s very difficult to stand upright when your belly is this big! I kept wanting to fall forward, and had to pull myself upright at the last minute. Luckily, my black patent leather shoes gave me some good footing, and as we traveled the concrete and asphalt roads to the Neighbors’ Houses I was even able to get off a little tap dancing! That made the Holiday feel extra festive!
But wait! I’m getting ahead of myself again! Before we went out, Miss Chrissy said she would like to take a picture of us on the front step. She remembered that when she was a girl, she and her sister would often go out trick-or-treating together, and their Mom would take a picture of them before they left on their adventure. Well, all this talk about being a girl got Miss Chrissy feeling nostalgic, and she went into the Photo Box and dug up one of those pictures of herself with her sister, sitting on the front step in their Halloween costumes.
Oh my! Isn’t this funny! The funny part for me is that this is the way I remember Miss Chrissy, because this is what she looked like when we used to live together all those years ago, before I got taken away by wolves. I don’t remember Halloween, or trick-or-treat, from back in those days, because back in those days young Whimsies didn’t do such things. But I do remember Miss Chrissy like this. Of course she’s much older now, and does look different, but we Whimsies are really good at seeing past the superficialities of age, and seeing the person inside. So when I look at this picture of Miss Chrissy, I remember who she was when we first knew each other…but at the same time, I can easily see that she’s exactly the same person.
I must say, though…I don’t understand those “Halloween costumes” she and her sister are wearing. What is this all about? They look like they are made of colorful plastic, which has been added over their thick Winter coats. How is that a costume? And why does her sister have all those dots on her face? Miss Chrissy assures me that no…her sister did not regularly have dots on her face, but that it must have been part of her costume. But why doesMiss Chrissy not have dots on her face as well? Hmmm…Miss Chrissy had to think about that one for a while. And then it came to her! Obviously, her costume also included a Mask, which her mother made her take off for the picture.
Miss Chrissy does not remember anything in particular about these Halloween costumes, and her clearest memory about Halloween is her cousins coming in and telling her that someone on the other side of the block was giving out DECKS OF CARDS!! Entire, whole decks of cards!! Wow!! And someone else was giving toothbrushes.
Sigh…
But I’m getting off track again, aren’t I? Sorry about that! I guess it’s just that I’m a little hyped up from all the CANDY we’ve eaten tonight! Because even though we only went to a few houses on either side of Whimsieville, boy did we bring in a load of candy! Here’s a picture of us with only a portion of it. The rest of it was already in our bellies by this point.
It was really hard to sit still for this portrait, but I hope it conveys how very excited we are by the whole idea of Halloween and trick-or-treating and FREE CANDY!!! As you can see here, we had two trick-or-treat bags that were shaped like pumpkins, but since I was already shaped like a pumpkin, I let Tillie and Trixie use those special bags. I had to go to Miss Chrissy’s Pocketbook Closet to find something to put my candy in. I took her very smallest little purse—and even so, it was enormous for me!! But that’s okay, because I think all the people who gave us candy felt that if I had such a very big bag, it ought to be filled with lots and LOTS of candy.
I made out like a bandit!
Huh! A bandit. That’s giving me an idea for a new Halloween costume for next year…
Yes, I’m already thinking about next year. Because this was so much fun. And the best part was realizing how much fun you can have, when you don’t let your fears tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. Sometimes it’s okay to take a chance that there won’t be dogs (because sometimes there won’t be) and then you go off and see things you’ve never seen before, and get lots and lots of delicious candy.
All in all, this was a fun and successful evening.
(During our recent bad weather, Tillie fell in love with the flameless candle and decided it would work just perfectly to create an eerie mood for her scary story.)
The Peter Max poster was taken off the wall in the den, and a big white sheet was hung up in its place. (Jennifer’s Professor parents were very modern, so their walls were never white, they were always some strong, almost psychedelic color, and the way I remember it, the walls of the den were some shade of….gold…) Anyway, I’d been to the movies before with Jennifer and her parents, so I was no stranger to BIG movie images, but never before in our own house! And it was also strange to be watching a movie in grainy black-and-white, rather than Technicolor. Add on top of all that: it’s a silent movie!
Of course, the creepiest thing of all about this movie, is Nosferatu himself. Nosferatu is a vampire, and if I’m remembering this right, he is the first vampire to ever appear in a movie. And he’s nothing like the vampires from movies that we’ve seen since then. Frank Langella in the 1970’s was absolutely handsome, as was George Hamilton in Love at First Bite (which doesn’t really count, because it’s a comedy, and boy! Is that movie funny!) Even Barnabas Collins from TV’s Dark Shadows looks better than Noferatu! This first movie vampire has a huge bald head, pointed ears, dark eyes, long fingernails, bad teeth—nothing you would consider even remotely attractive in a vampire, never mind a human being! Add to all this the dramatically creepy background organ music, the black-and-white, he doesn’t even talk so you have no idea what he’s thinking, and frankly…he’s absolutely terrifying!
As for that laughing, I have a theory. I think the other partygoers, the Grown-Up Professors, were also frightened by Nosferatu, but too embarrassed to admit it, so they chose to cover their fear with laughter, so nobody would know how they really felt. People do that sometimes, you know.
(Trixie puts on the Halloween pajammy to cuddle up with several dozen scary movies! Here’s what she has to say about them.)
I say three, because one of them is really two: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll himself is not scary, at least not the way he looks. But it is kind of scary when you think about a man who is a scientist and wants to mess around with human nature. Sure, human nature is not always the best, but everything in books and movies paints a pretty convincing argument that trying to mess around with human nature never makes it better, it only makes it worse! So why keep trying? All you get is this monster, who’s ugly, and rude, and very scary. Not the sort of fellow you’d like to run into in the grocery store…never mind in a dark alley at midnight!
That was a very bad time of my life, having to live with them, and I’m not going to dwell on it. Let’s go back to the movies. How about this one: Is anyone really in love with the Frankenstein monster? Talk about scary-looking! Flat head, scars all over, bolts in his neck! There’s never been anyone like him. He’s sort of alive…but also sort of dead. What is he? A monster? An ogre? But he’s nice to the little girl, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Like Hulk (who is also scary-looking) he just wants to be left alone. Of course, it’s his creator, Dr. Frankenstein, who’s the real monster. But that’s a whole ‘nother story that I won’t go into here.
(Tessie feels nothing says “Halloween” better than a black cat! So here she is with our resident black cat—Mr. Squee!)
I could tell you all about mummies, ghosts and ventriloquists, but the most unsettling thing I’ve ever seen in the movies is a “comedy” team called Abbott and Costello. The big one, Abbott, is domineering and mean, and the short fat one, Costello, is just plain stupid. He’s always doing things that get them in trouble. These two have run into Trixie’s Frankenstein AND Jekyll and Hyde in their movies, as well as Count Dracula, and every time, they muff it up big-time. It’s supposed to be funny, but to me it’s just frustrating, and the scary part is that there might really be people in the world as dim-witted as the chubby guy in the goofy hat. 
in the way of shoes. Several trips to the Thrift Store Boutique have produced plenty of hats and pants and shirts, but I can’t seem to find any shoes! It’s not it’s not that I can’t find any good shoes there, I simply can’t find any shoes at all!
party. The party was being thrown by some friends of her parents, who were university professors, and the people throwing the party were also university professors, and their house was very big, and very nice, and so beautifully decorated for Christmas, and everyone there was wearing their holiday best, and the table was overflowing with beautiful and delicious foods. This is where Tillie first got to taste those fruit-flavored slices she is so partial to, and also something called “marzipan,” which she also enjoys very much. 
Tillie jumped right into the spirit of this weird juxtaposition and added the fancy ruffled socks (just like the ones she wore years ago at that big party) and a merry red velvet Christmas bow in her hair. In every way her outfit says, “It’s not Christmas yet…but I can’t wait till it comes!”
Trixie is always ready to help with any outdoor activities, but in the past, not having a really good pair of shoes has prevented her from doing as much as she would like. Because, as everyone knows, if you are working with dangerous machinery, like a lawnmower, you must be wearing good, safe shoes. Well, these sneakers, tied up tightly with bright white shoelaces, now keep her feet completely safe from any lawn mowing danger. So now, of course we will be happy to have Trixie help us with the lawn! 
to combine the sneakers and shirt, so here she is, with her hair held back off her face by a bright pink headband, ready to help tidy up the Lawns of Whimsieville!
So! Now! it’s my turn to talk about sweets! First, Tessie accidentally let the cat out of the bag, (no, not Mr. Squee! As if you ever could keep him in a bag!) then Tillie picked up with a full confession that we Whimsies enjoy a bit of sweet now and then. She happened to mention that I was partial to chocolate, and oh my! That is true! But there’s something else I want to talk about in regard to chocolate.
Speaking of songs, there’s also that song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Being home is always comfortable and extremely pleasant, so why do we actually sing about it when we’re home for Christmas?
because when they send out their catalog just before Christmas, there is so much wonderful stuff to look at in there, you could get a tummy ache just turning the pages!
Till then, I had only had the opportunity to sneak a bite or two of a Snickers bar from Abigail, my human. She wasn’t nice enough to share it with me, so I would sneak a tiny bite now and then, when she wasn’t looking. And it was delicious! Looking at The Swiss Colony catalog, I always dreamed that those chocolates would taste just as good.
The Hoarder dropped that Swiss Colony box right where she stood and started running around frantically, looking for blankets and coats that she knew she had “somewhere,” and while she ran all around like a crazy person, I scurried over to the box and grabbed one WHOLE Petit Four that was completely chocolate and had a giant T on the top. The T was part of the word “Christmas,” because the candies spelled out “Merry Christmas,” but as far as I was concerned, that T was for TRIXIE and that candy was MINE!
And that day came when I got to Whimsieville! Last Halloween, we Whimsies all dressed up in costumes (I was a Pirate!) and even though we told you we didn’t go Trick or Treating because we don’t eat candy…well, that was only partially true. In fact, we did not go Trick or Treating, mostly because there might be dogs in the neighborhood, and Tessie was afraid, but Miss Chrissy had quite a bit of candy left over after serving up all the 
Trick-or-Treaters that came to our front door. Miss Chrissy reached deep into the bowl and gave each of us a piece of candy. And you’ll never guess what I got! No, not a Petit Four. I got a Snickers! My very own Snickers!
Even though it’s not officially Autumn yet, it’s September, the month when Autumn begins, and Autumn is our favorite season. Not just for us Whimsies, but Miss Chrissy and The Man are in complete agreement as well. We think Mr. Squee probably feels the same way, but we can’t seem to get a straight answer out of him lately. He’s been in a contrary mood because try as he might, he can’t seem to figure out how to make his autofeeder drop kibble simply by knocking his head against the plastic container. It’s a perplexing problem that makes him occasionally ornery.
But enough about Mr. Squee! I’m here to begin our celebration of Autumn! Autumn is a time of many celebrations, containing not only Halloween and Thanksgiving, but also many birthdays here in Whimsieville. At Halloween we’ll disguise ourselves in costumes, but for Thanksgiving and birthdays we might very well have a party! And you know what that means: friends and fun, games and music, and let’s not forget…fashion! 
First of all, hair like that….wow! I’m calling her Carrot Top, and honestly, I don’t know when that name has ever been more appropriate. We might see a Whimsie now and then whose hair is so red it’s orange, but…c’mon now! And there’s so much of that truly orange hair. So much that she needs to use numerous hair ornaments to keep it under control. Each ponytail is restrained by a fluff of orange and white, and there’s an additional fluff on the top of her head. There’s so much going on here! Carrot Top is saying, “Yes, I’m casual…but I’m also a little bit crazy! And I’m ready to party!”
Now here’s another girl who’s ready to party. So much so, that her outfit is not even a dress, it’s described as “playsuit.” The multicolored stripes in this playsuit, offset by a blue bodice eloquently portray the idea of fun, fun, fun! Suzy Stripes looks like she hopes this party will include a spirited game of Twister, and she’s ready to get down on the dots and twist herself in knots! Her shoes are simple, with a single leather strap, so easy to kick off at a moment’s notice. 
Now let’s switch gears a bit and get back to some more preposterously pretty party dresses, as you’ll see worn here be another braided beauty. Lollipop is working the flowers like there’s no tomorrow! A delicate trim of lace at the bottom of her full hemline says, “Yes, I’m a lady, and if you don’t’ believe me, check out the little pink ribbons on my braids!” So! Our Trixie is not the only one! Pink ribbons and braids seems to be a recurring fashion theme among high-spirited Whimsies. 
The first impression is that our new Whimsie friend is a “Brownie,” which is a very young Girl Scout. She even appears to have merit badges sewn in to her very plain dress. And what is that on her very lacy neckerchief? Could that be yet another badge? At once, you have to look at this Whimsie and wonder, “What an unusual Whimsie! What in the world is she all about?” At a party, when she walks in, all heads will turn, and instantly be topped with a floating question mark. As this friendly Whimsie approaches, even though you have never met her before, you can’t help but ask…”What is the meaning of all these symbols on your dress?” And so, there is a topic of conversation, an “ice-breaker,” as they call it.
