Happy All Saints Day

"Look, don't you think we're saintly?
No? Really?
Surely you must be mistaken."

Last night was a typical Halloween. A few trick-or-treaters, lots of dog barking and too much left-over Halloween candy. My jack-o-lanterns ended up being fairly cute. (A happy-faced round orange pumpkin stacked on top of a sad-faced white pumpkin). If I had a functioning camera at the moment, I would have taken a picture of them. Early on in the evening I had to put the dogs outside so that they could join the chorus of other barking dogs on my block / annoy my neighbors instead of just me.

When I finally let them in they were all riled up, what with having to run laps around the back yard to protect our land from various very scary elementary school students. So riled up in fact that they managed to wage a fairly impressive campaign of shock and awe in only about 15 minutes before they collapsed in exhaustion on the floor. It included, but was not limited to,

• knocking over my Diet Coke


• stealing and shredding the wet paper towels I used to clean up the Diet Coke


• leaping onto the ottoman in the getaway process of stealing the wet paper towels


• knocking a stack of magazines off the ottoman


• stealing and shredding a couple of the subscription reply cards that fell out of the stack of magazines


• growling and snapping at each other over who got the better subscription reply card / larger portion of wet paper towels


• jumping onto the couch with Diet Coke Paws


• yanking the laptop power cord out of the wall


• pulling the compost pail off the counter


• digging out a chunk of pumpkin from the compost pail


• racing out the dog door with treasured chunk of pumpkin so that I wouldn't take it away from them


• eating part of the chunk of pumpkin


• dropping the pumpkin left-overs in the hole in the yard for safe keeping


• coming back inside only to yak chewed-up pumpkin on the kitchen floor (and perhaps rethink the logic of the last four activities).
  

Two seconds later they were asleep in the living room and every time I got up to do something or laugh aloud at something on the TV, they'd open an eye or stick up an ear like "Hey, pipe down! We're sleepin' here!"

Today though is All Saints Day which makes Sunday, well, All Saints Sunday. It’s one of my very favorite days of the year. Why? Well, I just happened to have a list:

1. I dig Holy Days with such blatant Pagan origins/aspects.


2. I really like the concept of saints and celebrating people who have died.


3. It has the pomp and circumstance of a Christmas or Easter service without having to fight anyone for a parking space at the mall or cooking any large animals.
   
4. I get to sing one of my favorite hymns (you have to love a hymn that talks about having tea). And, in looking for the “correct” version of the lyrics online (surprisingly challenging) I came across an Episcopal blog with the lyrics and other cool posts that I’m going to have to revisit.


5. Numbers 1 & 2 really make the fundamentalists twitch so really, it’s a win-win-win situation.

So next my plan was to go on and on about something terribly profound, I'm sure, but there's a basket of leftover Halloween candy calling my name...