2016 looks to be a crucial year ahead.  On this first day, many of us have resolutions to make or break depending on your motivations.  I started my contemplation of possible things I could do better, and bad habits to break, scientifically.  No, not really, but didn’t that sound impressive?  Bad habits…  I looked at mine, and then took a page from Dr. Phil and asked “What do I get out of them?”  Enjoyment.  So are they bad habits if they bring about so much fun?  So I’ll not be breaking any bad habits this year.  How about you?  At Bliss cottage we have more goals than habits in our resolutions.

Attention, ghosts and ghouls!  Halloween falls on a Saturday this year.  The weather here will be cool but dry.  I expect we will have a record turnout.  In our village, the children are allowed to Trick or Treat from five to seven at night.  Because it’s Saturday, more parents will be home - not tired from the long Chicago commute - to take part in the holiday.  I have so many great memories of Halloween as a child and as an adult, dressing up and taking my children door to door.  My children are grown now, but I suspect at least one of them would like to show up at your door and yell, “Trick or treat!”

Two very major activities are looming.  Both take a lot of hard work and planning.  One is the upcoming launch of my thirteenth novel “The Siege,” and the other is preparing for a family Christmas celebration.  My diet is forgotten.  The stress of edits has me stealing candy canes from the newly decorated tree.  As I type this, I have one precariously balanced on my lower lip.  Catching my reflection, I see a chain-smoking stereotypical 1940s newspaperman instead of a candy-thieving fiction author.

Happy Halloween!  After preparing three pumpkins for carving, I’ve started to call it hollow-it-out-ween and are-you-happy-you-stabbed-yourself-again, duffus-ween.  Anyway, here we are again at my favorite time of year.  I look forward to seeing frost on the pumpkins, viewing colorful autumnal leaves, and handing out fistfuls of miniature candies to future dental patients and members of Jenny Craig.  No healthy food for Halloween or placid toddler-friendly decorations here.  In my neck of the woods, the houses are decked out with balls of light, skulls a plenty, a few dozen ghouls clawing their way out of the ground, and the supervising parents walking around with questionable beverages in their hands.