Indigo ... indigoing ... indigone

"You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap."

-- Dolly Parton

Self portrait 11-5-13

Self portrait (2) 11-5-13

"Existence is a 

strange bargain.

Life owes us little; 

we owe it everything.

The only true happiness comes from

squandering ourselves 

for a purpose."

-- William Cowper

Sacre bleu!

My local Target store was clearing out all of its Halloween merchandise for super-low prices. Everything was 70 percent off. Everything must go!

I guess it's their Halloween version of Black Friday. So, technically, it would probably be orange and black Friday.

Whatever. All I know is I got some sweet day-after Halloween bargains.

Like 11 packs of little glow-in-the-dark rubber snakes, regularly $1, for 30 cents each.

And a terrible, super itchy Mohawk wig that sheds like crazy, for 70 percent off.

And two tubes of face paint, one blue, one black, for 60 cents.

And eight sets of glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth for 4 cents each.

And five packs of self adhesive eyebrows (three pairs per pack) for 30 cents each. That's a low, low price of 10 cents a pair, or 5 cents an eyebrow! They were practically giving the stuff away.

Some folks might stash away all their post-Halloween bargains and save them for next Fall. These are the same folks who take away their kids' trick or treat loot and ration it back to them one piece at a time for the next 6 months.

Screw those folks.

I like to indulge.  I like to eat all of my candy as soon as possible, and I like to bust out my Halloween costume bargains a full year in advance. Squander it. Use it up. Because what if I die before next Halloween? That'd just be a waste of good eyebrows and face paint.

For today's face, I used two sets of the eyebrows (one set as sideburns, because self-adhesive eyebrows are versatile like that, and at 5 cents a brow, why not splurge?) and some of my new blue paint to give myself a nifty blue beard.

Why?

Because I have a daily blog to keep up, and 365 faces to generate before the year is out, that's why.

What did you do today?

"Out on the blue sea I sailed a blue ship.

I had a first mate that always had blue lips.

His name was Bluebeard. He had a weird twitch.

We flew a blue flag up on a big stick.

And we ate bluegill and we ate blue chips.

Oh, I felt real blue eating that blue fish.

Because there ain't much that I won't do unless it

keeps me from being true blue."

-- Bright Eyes, "True Blue"

More Polyjuice Potion, please

"Wizards don't all look alike."

-- Patricia Briggs, Dragon Bones

Self portrait 10-31-13

Hermione: 

"We should have taken the Polyjuice Potion."

Harry: 

"No. This is where I was born. 

I won't return as someone else."

-- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

So, I got my hair cut.

And when I got home, before I put any gel or paste or wax or pomade in it, it was just sort of straight and fluffy.

I looked like a schoolboy.

So I slipped on my Harry Potter glasses and, well, sometimes you just have to go with the obvious.

Lucky for me, I own an actual Gryffindor tie (doesn't everyone? I also have a Gryffindor scarf and hat set. Don't judge me.)

I borrowed my husband's v-neck and the robe from his medical school graduation (God, if they only knew what it was being used for).

I made a magic wand out of a paintbrush, drew on a little lightning bolt scar and ...

Geminio! 

In case you don't know much about Harry Potter, Polyjuice Potion is a very complicated potion that allows the drinker to temporarily assume the form of someone else. Its taste varies depending on the person being turned into.  It has stuff like lacewing flies (stewed for 21 days), and leeches and knotgrass and bicorn horn and shredded Boomslang skin and fluxweed (only if picked at the full moon), as well as a bit of the person one wants to turn into (usually some of their hair).

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Time for A Face A Day recipe bonus!

If you need a quick idea for a Halloween party tonight, I found a recipe for Polyjuice Potion Jell-O shots (don't panic, it calls for pineapple vodka and sherbet, not leeches and hair) right here: Polyjuice Potion jell-o shots

Thanks to everyone (who am I kidding, thanks to anyone) who tuned in for all 31 days (or even one day) of "October-faced," my disguise-themed challenge-within-a-challenge.

Happy Deathly Hallows-ween!

Out of my gourd

"When you get older there's this feeling 

that you have to start carving up your face and body."

-- Alanis Morissette

Self portrait on a pumpkin  10-28-13

"Only the knife knows what goes on
in the heart of a pumpkin."

--Simone Schwarz-Bart

Self portrait on a pumpkin 10-28-13

"He'd felt like a jack-o-lantern 

for the past few days, 

as if his guts had been yanked out 

with a fork and dumped in a heap 

while a grinning smile 

stayed plastered on his face."

--Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

Linus: 

You don't believe the story of the Great Pumpkin?

I thought little girls always believed everything that was told to them.

I thought little girls were innocent and trusting.

Sally: 

Welcome to the 20th Century!

-- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

My son Leo and I carved our Halloween pumpkins yesterday.

Instead of the old school three triangles and a gap-toothed grin Jack-o-lantern, we tried to get a little more creative.

I, of course, carved a self portrait into my pumpkin. It took me a couple of tries to get it right (not as easy as it looks). But I like the end result. It may not be a "Great Pumpkin," but it's a pretty good one.

Leo carved a football player into his pumpkin, with a block "H" (for his football team, the Huron Tigers) and a number 2 -- his jersey number -- on the other side. I think he did a really good job for a first effort. 

Here's Leo's pumpkin:

Leo's pumpkin 10-28-13

It was a good day.

It was a lazy kind of Sunday, we were listening to the Cowboys/Lions game on TV.

Leo was a gentleman and scooped the guts out of my pumpkin for me because I think it's really gross, and I cut the top off his pumpkin, because he was afraid he'd cut himself. (But he did do all the rest of his own carving, for the record).

I showed Leo how to lay on a stencil and score out his design so it would carve easily. (And I showed him a little trick with flour that made the design easier to see).

I was able to teach my kid a couple things, and he was in the mood to learn. Bonus!

And Leo helped clean up the mess. Extra bonus!

We roasted some pumpkin seeds with olive oil, salt, oregano, basil and garlic. They were delicious. We ate them while we watched Matthew Stafford and the Lions in an impressive last-second victory over Dallas.

While the pumpkins turned out pretty cool, I have to say the best part of carving the pumpkins was doing it together. We weren't in a hurry. We didn't have anything else we had to do, or anyplace else we had to be, which is a rare thing (especially for Leo).

And when you have the freedom to do whatever you want, with whoever you choose, when somebody you love chooses you over all their other options,  it feels pretty darn gourd ... er, good. 

You know what I mean.

Thin disguise

"I'm not anyone. I'm just myself; 

whatever I am, I am something."

-- Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

Self portrait 10-26-13

"It's a thin disguise,

Living our lives behind a thin disguise.

One of these days if I got the time,

I'll show you what I'm like on the inside."

-- Lou Reed, "Thin Disguise"

I think my favorite trick or treaters are the ones who don't go all out on an elaborate, detailed, store bought, comercially-recognizable, Disney-fied, movie tie-in costume that their parents probably did all the work on.

I have a soft spot for the kid who has a big, wonderful imagination and a weird little homemade disguise.

It might not even be a costume really. It could be just a prop, or an object -- some minute bit of outer reality to suggest what's going on inside this kid's huge, wild, creative inner world. Maybe we can't see it, but this kid is immersed -- drenched -- in other-ness. He is swimming in a magical sea the likes of which few of us will ever be lucky enough to experience, because we don't allow ourselves to travel there. We're too grown up, or too classy, or too educated, or too stable, or too mature, or too whatever, to be brave enough to dive face-first into the weird place.

That kid probably doesn't just limit his elaborate imagining and pretending to Halloween, either. I'm willing to bet there is something magical going on inside that kid 365 days a year.

That's another reason why I love that kid.

When I was in fifth grade we had a costume parade for Halloween at school. My costume was a mask that I made by molding tin foil to my face. I trimmed the edges and cut out the eyes, then colored it aqua blue with a magic marker.  It looked cool. Funky. Different. Spacey. Weird.

It was my whole costume, and nobody else had one like it.

A million kids asked the stupid question "What are you supposed to be?"

They had this need to define what I was. To label it. To put it in a category they could understand. 

"That's it? That's your costume?"

"I don't get it."

I didn't care.

I didn't bother to explain. 

They weren't worth the effort.

I just hid behind my aqua blue metallic mask and paraded around the school parking lot with the rest of the sheep.

This Halloween, if a weird little kid in a so-so, homemade costume shows up at your door, don't ask "What are you supposed to be?" Even if the disguise is thin and you know right away who it is, or you simply don't "get it," ask something like "Who are you?" or "What's your name?" Don't let on that you can't tell. And be amazed, no matter what he tells you.

And give him an extra handful of candy.

And a special note to parents:

If it's your own kid who wants to head out the door in a weird, obtuse costume, by all means, let it be. Resist the urge to "help" unless you are specifically asked to. Don't go all controlling and supervisory and try to make it into something more "normal." 

Kids have the rest of their goddamn lives to be normal.

Nice wig, Janis. What's it made of?

"Medusa is your mom?" he asked.

 "Dude, that sucks for you."

-- Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

Self portrait 10-19-13

"Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different."

-- Mary Ann Shaffer, 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

"She's fabulous, but she's evil."

-- Mean Girls

"Versace, Versace, Medusa head on me like I'm 'Luminati."

-- Drake, "Versace"

In my dual-purpose quest to come up with an October full of "disguise" faces, and come up with a good Halloween costume, I made myself this neat Medusa wig out of rubber snakes from the toy store!

Mad props to the nice clerk at my local Toys R Us, who helped me dig out all of the snakes they had in the way back on the bottom shelf of the store's "dollar deals" section.  

Beautiful monster

"She's a monster, beautiful monster

Beautiful monster but I don't mind

And I need her, said I need her

Beautiful monster but I don't mind."

-- Ne-Yo, "Beautiful Monster"

Self portrait 10-9-13

"Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me,

in the cavern that's where my heart should be,

and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin ..."

-- Jodi Picoult, Handle With Care

Self portrait (2) 10-9-13

"We all have a Monster within;

the difference is in degree, not in kind."

-- Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence

Self portrait (3) 10-9-13

The Monster:   You, make man ... like me?

Dr. Pretorius:      No. Woman ... friend for you.

The Monster:   Woman ... Friend ... Wife ...

-- The Bride of Frankenstein

My month-long "October-Faced" challenge-within-a-challenge has a dual purpose.

One is to celebrate the month of October by making it a special faces in disguise-themed project.

The other is to figure out what I'm going to be for Halloween.

I almost always dress up and stand at the end of our driveway to pass out candy to the neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Usually my boys dress up with me. Sam has been Michael Jackson in various iterations for several years. Leo has been wearing the same Cookie Monster costume since he was a little kid, which is hilarious now because he is over 6 feet tall and the thing fits him like a tiny, fuzzy, blue plush shrug with a Cookie Monster head on top. He wore it to Chipotle last year and got a free burrito.

I've been a bull rider, Elastigirl, Maid Marion (with my husband as a super-cute Robin Hood), a witch. The year I was a witch, my friend Maria brought her little grandsons by. The littlest one, who couldn't quite get his Ws in the right places, was scared of me and clung to Maria saying "I don't wike dat cwazy bitch." Of course, Maria encouraged his fledgling, accidental profanity. 

Maria: "Who is that, Ryan?" 

Ryan: "A bitch." 

Adorable.

Anyhoo.

This Bride of Frankenstein costume (well, makeup and wig so far) might be a front-runner. I still have a couple more ideas I want to explore. But this one is definitely in contention. Stay tuned.