Frog on the dash

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I never mind dressing up, or trick or treating with the kids, or prepping the house for trick or treaters or passing out candy. In fact, it's that combination of those things that sometimes gets the festivities all tangled up. All that outgoing activity sometimes leaves the household in a position to leave the candy to stand on it's own. That means placing a note next to a cauldron filled with candy and toys with hopes that the good hearts of the community to do the right thing and only take a little, in order to leave a lot for the next crowd brave enough to climb my stairs.

The toys in the candy bowl are a fairly new innovation. That's only because we've had so many little things come into the house over the years, and I'm not talking about my children. The wee toys in the grab bowl didn't start out in my kid's toybox, mind you, but were found as I gathered up toys and such for our business as well as for them.

When you go around to the second hands as often as I do it's easy to find toys to give away. It's rare for me to hit up the St Vinnie's in Bremerton and not find cello bags filled with spiders and insects and dinosaurs and such. One year that cauldron was chock loaded with cowboys and soldiers, the next year was spilling over with reptiles and rubber balls. But back in October of '05 I had come across a huge bag filled with some very nicely painted lizards, a ton of snakes, a handful of frogs and so many other rubbery, creepy, crawly things that I didn't even need to bother with candy.

That year I was also prepping for what was the last of my toy soldier shows. I had taken two days off prior to the show and had soldiers and plastic bags and labels strewn hither and yon throughout the house. The living room was a wreck and so was I, not only due to the show but due to other silly stuff that had gone down earlier in the week between us. I hadn't expected to see you that weekend, especially standing on my porch with you daughter, but you also had a mission in mind and that mission required lizards to complete her Sunday school program. Tell me, M, how did you know that I was awash in lizards?

I still remember that Friday as I was knee deep in loading up boxes and last minute prepping. It was afterschool that you showed up, not that that would have mattered much because the girls were homeschooled at the time. The day was sunny and I remember you on the porch acting very casual and yet very proper with me in front of your girl. Acting as if we were old pals just talking about the weather and bags full of rubber snakes. I suppose we were, and you looked around at my mess and at the time conjured up a toy soldier mission of your own, one that would somehow get that van of yours into my hands for the upcoming show.

How could I even consider using it, after finding out how high the price would be for you to loan it to me. Never mind that you paid out that cost to The Detective "up front". Never mind that that iffy bit of bartering resulted in some awful phone calls between us, calls that resulted in the freshly minted term "the librarian's fifth wife". Yeah, four days filled with all too many hot, sweaty phone calls, all taking away from practice time for you and show packing for me. It wasn't till late Sunday afternoon, when that bag full of frogs made good their promise as visual aids and the last of my toy soldiers were packed away that we were able to somehow smooth over the silliness of the van "payment", clear up the misunderstandings about my prior martial adventures and move forward with our plans for our upcoming trip to WALE.

Smooth things over things we did, but our time that October was forever tinged by the colors of those nicely painted frogs. You ended up having one rest on your bathroom sink, and one resided quite nicely on my toilet tank lid throughout the rest of the year.

Two years ago that frog of mine took a flight after our grand tiff and ended up deep in the bowels of the Yew tree bordering the house. Somehow it surfaced after last summer's hedge trimming and landed on a bench right outside my kitchen door. It was great to see that frog again. It let me know that certain things are meant to have adventures, but moreso, are meant to be found again. Even if, for now, those adventures are only stories that reside in the warm shadows of our hearts.

Your WHMB