"Twas the Late Afternoon Before Halloween

As you know, we spent the day checking out Marywood University in Scranton, PA.  One would think that my blog would have to do with the college.  One would be incorrect.  Several hundred people went to the same open house.  Let them write about it.

Tara informed me yesterday afternoon as we were leaving that she and Jesse (the boyfriend) are going trick-or-treating as hippies.  We'd have to shop quickly because she had invited a handful of friends over to watch scary movies and eat unhealthy amounts of candy.  We figured that after we returned (Saturday afternoon) we could go look at costumes.  Then today at lunch we came up with the idea to pass our planned exit home and go to Woodbridge for the costume.  This evolved into Tara getting her friends to locate Halloween and party stores in the Scranton area.  This way we could  go to the Party City just 2.0 miles from our current location and be on our way home, two hours and 45 minutes away.  With our handy GPS this should be a piece of cake.

The first thing the GPS told us after receiving the address was that it was impossible to get there from our current location.  Then it said something about there being an unpaved road.  After a few false starts finding the Marywood exit, we were on the road and it gave directions to the store 2.0 miles away.  23 miles of  mountain passes and half an hour later, it announced that we had arrived at our destination.  There was a Fresho's Restaurant, a Pep Boys and a law office.  In the process of making a U-Turn we found a really steep road leading down to a big mall.  We eagerly ran inside to find it to be the only major mall with no Halloween store. 

So we drove around the parking lot trying to find a steep uphill road leading back onto the highway in the correct direction.  This accomplished, we looked again and reassured ourselves that our "destination" really did hold a restaurant, a Pep Boys and a law office.  Not a family to give up, we programmed in the next closest address in Dickson City.  This was fortuitous because we had just passed a sign welcoming us to Dickson City.  Within a quarter of a mile we were informed by the GPS that we had again reached our destination.  We pulled in to find a box store shopping center with a Target.  BP let us off at the door.  He was going to wait in the car.  Target had no costumes larger than girls size 12.  We know this for fact because we picked one my one through the 500 or so costumes on the rack.  Okay, there was the Robin, as in Batman -and-, mixed in to give us false hope.  We hemmed and hawed in both the juniors and girl departments for an alternative before admitting defeat and going to the car. 

BP picked us up.  We saw a Walmart down the other, far, far end of the parking lot, and were headed in that direction when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a Halloween costume poster in the window of Marshalls.  We leapt from the moving vehicle only to find that all costumes in this store were children's size 6 or smaller.  As long as we were there we decided to quickly peruse the women's department for something vaguely hippie.  After five minutes I located Tara and told her that no can shop quickly at Marshalls.  It is a collection of single editions of every garment manufactured on this planet in the last five years. And Daddy is waiting in the car.

Off to Walmart.  We chose unwisely and followed the sign to the holiday department.  Christmas holiday.  Then Tara saw orange, but it was the hunting department.  She asked a saleslady who pointed us to the far opposite end of the store.  More picking.  No adult sized costumes.  At all.

Crestfallen and defeated, we returned to the car.  BP was no longer offering curb service, so we had to walk the lot, trying to determine which of the three dozen red minivans was correct.  There we were- minivan number 36.  As we inched down the aisle, Tara staring sullenly out the window at the valley below,  suddenly shreiks, "Party City!!!!!"  How in God's name do we get down there?  We continue inching around the lot, find the correct road out, proceed down another extremely steep road, and get ourselves to the entrance to the lower parking lot. 

We enter the store and elbow through the day-before-Halloween crowd.  We find several suitable choices in the correct size.  We debate, choose, and find the end of the cashier line about ten feet up an aisle.  It's all good now.  

I share with Tara that up until last year, every single October since Laura was old enough to trick-or-treat, I have had a recurring nightmare.  I dream that it is Halloween, kids are out trick-or-treating, and I have not bought costumes yet.  I am frantically shopping through leftovers and trying to assemble an ensemble at the last possible moment.  I did not have that nightmare this year.  I lived it.