Well, it's day one of the Blog Fest and boy are all you lucky that this day happened to fall right after yesterday, which was Halloween.

Halloween has got to be the only holiday all year that does not get the panties of our particluar corner of San Francisco up in a sort of primitive day (or night) tripping bunch. Usually on the eve of some holiday (even it it's just a bank holiday, mind you) our neighborhood explodes into a vomit bomb of Frat boys and slutty girls yelling YOOOOOHOOOOO as loud as they can before they all throw up on mailboxes and then take cabs back to their hotel rooms. On Halloween, these people who do these things descend instead on the poor Castro district and shoot people.

So because the violent and chaotic tourists were for at least one night of the year, not in our neighborhood, we deemed it safe to take Austin out Trick or Treating. We went early, before the slightly less scary throngs of 6th graders and their parents swarmed down the hill and hit all the places openly soliciting Trick or Treaters much the same way I figure these same kids would pull off a bank heist if the thought ever occured to them: fast and wearing just a hint of a halloween costume.

Austin didn't have any costume on at all, really. We did not buy him one because it seemed like a terrible waste of money for people who on bad days come real close to qualifying for food stamps. That and we are just cheap when it comes to spending money on plastic unbreathable outfits for our son. We thought we would dress him up in this over-sized fancy blazer and matching shirt someone had given us. Austin thought that was a crazy idea and would not stand for it.

We thought if maybe David put on his fancy suit, Austin might want to put his on, too. So David dragged out his wedding suit, which for those of you who were at our wedding might remember was covered with cat hair. STILL is. Anyways, David put his suit on (Still FIT, yay!) but Austin would not put his on. David put on a necktie, which Austin was just fascinated with.
"What's that do, Daddy?", he said pointing at the tie.

"Um, nothing, actually. It just goes around your neck."

"Why, Daddy?"

"I do not know, Austin."

Being a practical child, Austin would not put on a necktie. We couldn't blame him, really. Although if David said something like, "It adds a splash of color to your outfit, Austin".....or "It helps to keep my head from falling off, Austin", we may have had better luck here.

I of course was already wearing a fluffly pink ballerina dress and rainboots because I have the fashion sense of a four year old princess and I was not going to miss a chance to flaunt it. David kept his suit on. Austin put on his raincoat. We told people we were dressed as page seventeen of the new J. Crew Catalog. The people just smiled and changed the subject to something less boring.

Then we spent 20 minutes Trick or Treating down Grant Street. We hit 2 hair salons, 2 liquor stores, 2 high end boutiques, 1 card shop, 1 Italian restaurant, 1 Thai restuarant, 1 bar, 1 pizza parlor and we only went to Cafe Trieste once so I guess that counts as only 1 coffee shop. For those of you in the suburbs, and for me, really, the idea of Trick or Treating at retail establishments instead of door to suburban detached ranch door seems a little out of the ordinary. But the drunk people at the bar seemed to be expecting us as well as the new nun at the coffee shop and the sleepy old man at the hair salon. We indeed, are not in Kansas anymore. And neither is Dorothy, because we saw her getting on the bus headed toward the Castro last night and I think she was carrying a bottle rocket.