Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

Before I start this review, I feel like I should preface this by saying, if there was some sort of target audience for this season, I'm well aware that it wasn't me. A desperation for pregnancy and motherhood is not something I will ever understand or relate to, and I, in general, am grossed out by pregnancy and everything that comes with it, so this season was turning my stomach before it even got into anything overtly horrific. Also, like much of the fandom, I was unimpressed with the majority of the casting. However, Kim Kardashian's Siobhan wound up being my favorite character, solely because she had some great lines. But anyway. Delicate is the story of Anna Victoria Alcott, an actress teetering toward washed up, who desperately craves motherhood. She seeks out the help of New York's greatest fertility doctor, Dr. Hill (notably portrayed by Denis O'Hare, who I would watch read the phone book, but I really don't have much to say about his performance in this

This past week, as I've watched the Easter displays in stores disappear, I've felt the heaviness of the end of a holiday, more than I usually do. I don't do much to celebrate Easter anymore...to me it's more of a children's holiday, celebration-wise, what with the egg hunts and Easter Bunny lore and all, but I do feel a great deal of nostalgia when I think about it. This past season was eye-opening for me when it comes to the impression Easter made on me as a child, realizing how many memories I have attached to it, though I doubt it could ever be a favorite holiday ever again, at least in the traditional sense. Was I sad to see it end after the wave of nostalgia it brought me? Of course. But that also doesn't mean that I can't still think about those things now. It's long been established that living life by a calendar is absolutely beneath me.  I've realized, now, though, watching the displays get taken down and torn apart and built back into somet

  It's hard, sometimes, not to feel like a costumed clown, out in a world that you feel no real connection to, except for during that one specific time.  I wonder, sometimes, am I the fool? Or is it everyone else? Do I sit behind a billowing black veil, unable to see past the shadows, or is it that no one else really sees me, or even the potential within themselves to be more than they are? Sometimes it feels like a cruel joke, to fit in for a season and then be cast out once again.  But how, I must ask, can it be foolish to simply live your own truth? To do what makes you happy, regardless of how others perceive you?  Perhaps I will sit behind this veil forever then, or at least until my time comes again. I don't think it's foolish, at all.

 Here is a very interesting fact about myself that I recently remembered: The first holiday I ever tried to preserve and continue to celebrate after it was over, actually wasn't Halloween. It was Easter. When I was very small, my mother had window clings for every holiday. (I actually have a post about the scarecrow that went up at Halloween and stayed up through Thanksgiving  here .) As a little girl who liked particularly girly things at the time (I believe this happened somewhere between the ages of four and six), the Easter clings were actually my favorite, particularly the little lamb. For whatever reason, that particular year, I couldn't bear the thought of those clings being packed away for another three-hundred-and-something days, and begged my mother to move them into my window in my bedroom so I could enjoy them year round. She agreed, albeit reluctantly, and the Easter clings adorned my window until they eventually dried out and shriveled up from the summer heat, muc

  The shadows in the cemetery that day were unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It was more than a cloudy afternoon. It felt ominous, like a warning. A warning I should have heeded ages ago, if I'm honest. I look back on every tear shed, every whispered word, every time I should have put a stop to a desperate fairytale that was spinning out of control. I question my sanity, when I look back on it. Who was I? Or perhaps, who was I  trying  to be, and for what purpose?  Why was I looking for something I'd had all along?  I'll never forget how blue the sky was, the moment hope returned.  I had to shut my eyes to see clearly, but when I opened them again, the world was vivid, as if that shadowy night never happened. Or, at the very least, happened somewhere far, far away.  As I finally stood up again, I nearly tripped over my own feet, like a newborn animal. Rebirth, it seems, was the theme of the day. I felt something catch me, holding me steady once more.  Welcome back,

I remember a car ride with my parents. I'm not entirely sure how old I was. Middle school aged, I believe. My father commented on how, in about a week or so, the clocks would move forward, and it would stay light out later into the evening hours. I always tried not to really listen to my parents' conversations in the car, or at least not let on that I was. But this time, for some reason, I blurted out in response "How depressing." I believe this may have been the first time I ever expressed that out loud. I've never cared for spring, and especially not summer, even in childhood. Even when I didn't realize I was doing it, I was always searching for Halloween, in everything around me. And what is more reminiscent of Halloween, in the treacherous off-season, than bare trees, dead leaves, and darkness?  Putting my aversion to warm weather and sunlight aside, spring comes along and breaks the illusion. It's hard to get lost in the memory of trick-or-treating, o

 I can't remember the last time I went for a walk before today. It may actually have been Christmas Day, as I was sick for most of January and the earlier part of February. That strange period of time when last Halloween is so close, yet so far Today I set out, on my usual route, half happy to have the time, energy, and daylight to finally go off in search of inspiration once again, and half annoyed at the sunlight in my eyes and the knowledge of the imminent boss battle ahead of me, as it's already starting to feel like summer and it's not even officially spring. It felt strange, in a way, to be walking that way again, after so long. On my last walk, I felt the strange melancholy of a post-holiday world, combined with the Christmas facade falling away. I was standing on the borderline of autumn and winter, while today I almost felt as if I were walking the plank between winter's pirate ship and spring and summer's endless ocean.  Memories of autumn flooded me, as I

The end of Valentine’s Day has been weighing heavily on my mind. Being my second-favorite holiday, I suppose that’s to be expected…but the truth is, I feel the weight of the end of every  holiday. It doesn't matter if it's a holiday I celebrate or not. It can be a big holiday, like Christmas, or a small one, like Saint Patrick's Day. It can even be a holiday from a different culture, that I may actually know very little about.  For the few days after every holiday, I feel a strange heaviness.  It's never as all-consuming as it is for me immediately after Halloween. Valentine's Day comes somewhat close but, of course, doesn't quite touch it. Still, though... I look at the leftover decorations, the clearance aisles, the social media posts from the previous days, and I feel strangely about it. I think of how painful it is for me, to watch Halloween get torn down, stored away, reduced to a fifty-percent-off pile of candy corn on a grocery store display. On February

 Like many others in the spooky community this year, I decided to make Lisa Frankenstein a part of my Valloween celebration.  The name of this movie alone caught my eye, as a child of the Lisa Frank renaissance of the 90s. I will never forget the excitement of buying more stationary than I could ever possibly use in a lifetime, for the brightly colored animals depicted on it. I was obsessed. I actually had an entire binder full of Lisa Frank folders that I refused to actually use. Honestly, it was probably the most bizarre, yet least expensive, hobby I ever had. So yes, the name of the movie alone gave me all the nostalgic pangs, even though I knew it wasn't going to be about bright fuchsia kittens and dogs the color of the blinding sun on an August afternoon.  I waffled back and forth about whether or not I wanted to see this movie, though. Oddly enough, considering my love for Valentine's Day, romance in general tends to make me tune out of a story. And, in this post- Twiligh

 It's that time of year again. The time when I, arguably the reigning queen of not living life by a calendar, shocks the world, or at least the online community, by declaring that my second favorite holiday, the only non-Halloween holiday I genuinely care about, is, in fact, Valentine's Day.  If you've followed me long enough, maybe you know this already, but it's become tradition for me to talk about it here each year.  I've loved Valentine's Day as long as I've been alive. My heart would leap as a child, when the stores would start turning pink and red, filled with random stuffed animals and silly puns presented by doe-eyed puppies and kittens, or of-the-moment children's TV and movie stars. Second only to choosing my Halloween costume, was the decision of which Valentines I would hand out in class. I still remember second grade, thinking I'd be the coolest kid in class because everyone was so obsessed with The Lion King and I managed to find Valen

 I know, it's been ages  since I've reviewed anything relating to American Horror Story. Hopefully someone out there missed it? I can't promise how frequent these reviews will be, as it's probably pretty evident that finding the time to watch the episodes and really contemplate them has been challenging for me over the past couple of years. While I don't think it would possible for me to ever truly stop loving AHS, its recent offerings, save for NYC, have left me feeling pretty "meh" about it. I've seen one episode of Delicate, and while it certainly wasn't bad, the subject matter doesn't really interest me at all and much like the vast majority of the fandom, the casting choices didn't exactly thrill me. I'll get back to it eventually, but I may wait until the entire season is out and just share my thoughts after the fact. American Horror Stories also has a habit of leaving me with a "meh" taste in my mouth. Save for a few st

You may already know, I consider one of my biggest "flexes" in life to be the fact that I beat arachnophobia. I worked very hard to overcome a lifelong fear of spiders, in about 2010 or so, and now I love spiders and actually prefer Halloween decor that features them. You can read more about that in  this post . I've come a long way with it and though it may sound silly, I consider it a huge accomplishment. Overcoming any fear, no matter how big or small, is always something to be proud of. I thought it would be fun today, though, to revisit one of my funniest stories from the time when I was still very much, almost obsessively and irrationally, arachnophobic. The year was 2000. I had just turned thirteen, and I believe I was back-to-school shopping with my mother and aunt at one of the nearby malls. This mall, strangely enough, had a CVS inside of it, and from the outside, across from the Old Navy where most of my wardrobe from ages 12-14 came from, we could see that the

 I think something people don't really talk about is, how hopeless the countdown to Halloween can seem in its earliest stages. It's interesting, because we feel as though we want to move forward, yet we still hang onto the remains of the previous Halloween. We're closer to the last one than the next one. It feels more about the memory, than it does the promise of a new day. As if we've awoken from the sweetest dream and are unsure if we will ever be able to see or feel those things again. It's hazy. As time goes on, as November turns into December turns into January, the remnants of the previous Halloween fade away. Pumpkins rot, the last of the forgotten decorations are torn down and stored away. Christmas violently takes over the world, temperatures drop, snow begins to fall, covering the last of the dead leaves, blurring out even the potential for delusions of a permanent October. It feels like hope is gone, like we will always be stuck here, almost a year away.