The best laid plans …

Well, I said I would post the warts and all here.  Now I know why Pagan parents might not want to have a Pagan family ritual on Halloween.  After spending two days constructing a haunted house on my front walk and porch (and spending ungodly amounts of money), and then getting myself and everyone else in costume, and then walking my kids for two hours through the neighborhood in the mid-40’s, and then forgetting to eat dinner, all after a five hour round trip for business … I was beat.  There was no way I was going to try to go back out into the cold and conduct a ritual.  Symbolic confluence be damned!

The good news is we had an awesome set for the trick-or-treaters and my kids had a blast.  So we all collapsed in front of the TV and watched The Lost Boys.  Best last line of a movie ever: ” The one thing I never could stomach about Santa Clara — all the damn vampires.”

So we’re going to do the ritual next week, which is actually closer to the midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice anyway.  We’ll still have a little Halloween in the back our minds, since the kids will still have candy they’re gorging on and I’ll probably still be cleaning up the mess I made from building the haunted house.  So, it all works out in the end.