October In Canada! Giving Thanks And Spooks!
Halloween is one of my favourite holidays. Not that I get hardcore into wearing a costume or handing out candy, but I just absolutely love the vibe of Halloween.
I am Canadian. In Canada October is actually a pretty big month. Approximately halfway through the month we celebrate our Thanksgiving (this year it’s on the 14th). My family likes to have a big Thanksgiving meal with turkey and ham; this has been kinda different for me the past few years since I went vegetarian, but I digress.
See, I grew up on a beef cattle farm. So for me, nowadays, going home is a commitment. A forty-five minute drive from my small-city home to the eventually unpaved, gravel roads of the farm.
As some of you might assume, and assume correctly, Canada (my area of Canada anyway) is about eight months of winter. This means that we only have about two months of spring, one month of summer, and MAYBE if we are lucky one month of fall, though usually our fall is only a couple of weeks long before everything is covered in snow. Sad times…
Take this year for example: today, the day I am typing this, there is a blizzard outside. The weather is forecasting approximately ten centimeters of snow, and the temperature is -3 degrees celsius.
Growing up on a farm, as I did, was an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. Sure, I was far away from any kind of hangout, or entertainment-outside-the-house opportunities. There are no cinemas or coffee shops less than a 30 minute drive away from where I grew up. Heck, we lived very close to my grandparent’s farm, and that was still a good 15-minute bike ride away for my little child legs on my little pink banana-seat bike.
This means that, for me, Halloween was getting in and out of the truck over and over as we drove around from house to house – usually stopping at the neighbour friend’s homes so my parents could chat for a long time before we left – to trick-or-treat.
Childhood Story Time With Ash!
I remember this one year when I was quite young; my mom made me a Jasmine (from Aladdin) costume. I took it to school that day and had to change into it at school. The costume was actually pretty big on me, and I had to wear it over top of a T-shirt and pants so it wouldn’t fall down.
The reason my costume had to be so big was because by Halloween, we usually always have a few feet of snow and the temperature is in the minus-double-digits at least, so the costume has to be big enough to fit over a snow suit!
My family has all of these photos of me and my brother as a child with our costumes stretched over our winter coats and snow-pants before we headed out into the ice cold to collect candy from the neighbours in an old pillowcase.
Here’s the best part about trick-or-treating in the country though: SO MUCH CANDY! Because so few people live out there, every house inevitably overestimates how much candy they need, and buy way to much. As well, they always buy full sized chocolate bars, chips and pop. One year, I remember getting a WHOLE box of caramel corn! A WHOLE UNOPENED BOX! We would arrive at each neighbours house only to hear them lament that we were only their second set of trick-or-treaters, and then have them say “Here, take some more!” And as a child who LURVES chocolate, I was ecstatic to take all those extra chocolate bars off their hands.
I’m A Big Kid Now
Now that I am an adult, I feel like I may have lost a bit of my zeal for Halloween… not just Halloween, but all holidays in general. I don’t have that same excitement for Christmas or Valentine’s Day either.
This year, however, I do – for the first time in MANY years – have a costume ready to go!
Earlier this year, back in May, I bought a ticket to go to an anime convention in a neighbouring city. I have ALWAYS wanted to learn how to sew, and I have always wanted to cosplay.
I really only wanted to make my own cosplay outfit. I didn’t want to buy anything that might look cheap or tacky, so I asked a friend who makes her own clothes to teach me how to sew. She had a bunch of patterns, and I had just recently fallen in love with the manga “Wotakoi” (totally check it out, I highly recommend it. It has a brief anime on Amazon Prime as well), so I had her help me make a cosplay outfit for the character of Momose.
It turned out SO WELL! I made the little pink business suit, bought a pretty awesome pink wig off of Amazon, and I was good to go. I looked so darn KEWT!
So I have decided I will re-use that outfit, and go as Momose again for Halloween.
Nerdiness! How DOES a Canadian Nerd Like Me Enjoy The Ween-of-Hallow?
The whole month of October puts me in a mood for spooky stuff. Now I have always HATED scary movies – I can’t handle horror movies, they honest-to-goodness give me nightmares. My imagination is very powerful and vivid, and it will make me lose sleep.
Scary video games, on the other hand, are a bit different.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that in the back of my mind I KNOW a scary video game has the potential for my character to stay alive and save the day. As well, I am in control of a video game (to a certain degree). That’s where I think the mental difference is for me, for a scary movie is just me having to watch everything go horribly wrong without being able to do anything about it.
Long story short – I get in the mood to watch spooky anime and play scary video games.
This year, on my docket:
Amnesia Collection (which I will be reviewing): I played this game a LOOONG time ago, when it first came out, on an ex’s PC; I effectively forget most everything about it, so I am excited to play it again now in 2019 on my Switch. Will it be scarier in handheld mode? I’m excited to give it a try.
The Promised Neverland: A VERY spooky and creepy and disturbing anime that I started watching a few episodes of. I watched two episodes, and HONEST TO GODDESSES had a crazy nightmare that night. So I’ve been too spooked to watch anymore. But, now that October has put me in the mood I think now is the time, so I will try to finish that.
That’s about as adventurous as I get during this time in terms of seeking out spooks. I am NOT going to be watching the new “It” movie, that’s for DARN sure!