October.

IT'S OVER.

FubarFoto documenting yours truly right before the bloodshed.

Well, AbraCadaver is, anyway. October is still just beginning, and thank all that is dark and spooky for that. The show was a huge success (I heard we had three walk-outs this year, which may be a new record) and the feedback I've gotten so far indicates people thought it was our most sophisticated production yet. I am truly blessed to work with so many talented and passionate people - it means we can keep scaring the living bejeezus out of people year after year.

The last act this year involved my darling little sister murdering me horribly on stage. My cousin was in attendance and she said that while the people around her reacted to our fighting with winces, she could only snort and think "sisters." Indeed, I think it would be hard to fight more convincingly with anyone BUT Voodoo - we've been play fighting for years, after all, and if we slip and actually hurt one another we won't be all that angry. And hurt ourselves we did - I cannot begin to tell you how many bruises I have, and my left knee is missing most of its skin. Worth it. However, these bumps combined with the physical exhaustion of both setting up and taking down the stage dec this year has left me pretty fucking sore.

This is not entirely a bad thing - it is a reminder that we live in the body. And some of us have not been looking after those bodies as well as we should.

October marks one of the traditional Witches Sabbats that I hold dear - Samhain. Halloween has always been my favourite holiday (and my favourite costume as a child was a bat, so we can see that goth is apparently a disease one contracts early on) and the spiritual side of this day is one that I have not been able to ignore with any great success even in my most secular phases.

Many people consider Samhain to be the Witches New Year. It's the final harvest, and as such acts as the death knell for the year.

Also a character on the old Ghostbusters cartoon.

I've come to approach the holiday as time to clear old old junk in order to set new patterns over the winter, and this year feels like a good one to really stop fucking around in. A lot of my plans over the past year started strong and fell flat, and that's a problem. I think I've learned ways to avoid the usual obstacles I create for myself, and now is a time when I truly have no excuses left to keep me from doing my shit.

And man, do I have shit to do.