Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 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.