Halloween Withdrawal

Halloween might have been yesterday. I wouldn't know. No children came to our house to trick-or-treat. I bought candy, turned on my porch light, and waited patiently for the little costumed beggars coming for me. And I waited...and waited...and finally gave up and went to bed.

Austin is a town that seems to live and die by Halloween. You just can't go through the day of October 31st and not remember that it's Halloween. We would have 50-75 kids come through for candy in the evening, and you would crash in bed thankful to be done with another year.

See, I'm not really a fan of the holiday. Never have been. Maybe it has to do with 4th grade, where I was invited to a Halloween party as a joke. They just wanted to see what kind of crappy costume I would piece together with what was laying around. And here was 9-year-old Heather, shocked that this girl wasn't just being nice. Regardless if that was the cause (it was the only Halloween-related memory I could come up with), I just don't get that excited about it. However, it was sad this year having absolutely NO Halloween.

No trick-or-treaters can mean one or more of a few things:
1. There are no children in Santa Barbara. This would actually confirm a few things that have been troubling me about this much-older community.
2. Our house is on some list of sex offenders. This would be awesome, because then we'd never have fundraising kids coming by.
3. The porch light being on is actually some weird California code that we don't know about that means "stay away or the crazy people inside will eat you!" Ah, the culture shift and little faux pas we may be making.
4. This is one of those places where overprotective parents only allow their kids to trick-or-treat at houses where they know they people. Where's the fun in that?

But mostly I'm just sad that now my husband will eat all that candy I got for the kids. And I was finally shrinking his sweet tooth!