It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Usually I have ideas for something to put up here and then I don’t, because who’s going to read it? who’s going to care? etc. But then I stumbled upon something interesting.

I use webmaster tools to monitor the SEO of the sites I design. It’s a handy free resource that tells me if google agrees with me about the sites keywords and whether or not the site is catching any search engine attention. I don’t normally look at the results for my own site. This site isn’t even SEO optimized and I don’t stand a chance of getting this site on the top rankings for web design, so why bother. I focus on my client’s sites.

They sometimes yield interesting results. For example, the word clop is apparently a relevant search word for my dad’s humor columns site even though the word only appears on three out of several hundred pages. It’s not a key word, but it does better in searches than “humor columns” the main keywords for his site. People are searching for Clip Clop the Wonder Horse and finding a column my dad wrote about said horse. SEO is interesting.

But I digress, I was looking through the impressions for all the sites and decided, what the hell, I’ll look at my own. Imagine my surprise when I had better impression results than any of the other sites I’ve created. The credit for this goes completely to the blog. As I tell my clients, blogs are great for SEO, but still, I haven’t blogged in months. How am I getting search impressions? And what am I registering for in the search results? As it turns out, my blog is popping up on searches for “sexy 12 year olds.”

Disturbing … and maybe also flattering. I’m glad google thinks I’m sexy. Google, I think you’re a pretty sexy piece of technology too, but I’m not 12. I even have a beard now.

It’s not a page one result or even a page 10 result, but there are 110 impressions. Now, let’s be clear. An impression doesn’t mean they opened my site when it appeared on page 20+ in the search results. It just means, Google thought my page was relevant to their search 110 times and I’ve had 4500+ impressions this month for various key phrases.

The bottom line, look for more blog posts from me, and don’t expect them to have anything to do with sexy 12 year-olds.

*Note: To anyone who might think this shows a lack of SEO understanding, I know Google can’t really see my pictures.

As an adult I’m surprised every year, although my dismay diminishes with time, at how quickly Halloween comes and goes.

When I was a kid, Halloween started in September, with the Feast of the Hunters Moon. It was like a Renaissance Fair, but in an Indiana timeline. All the costumes, the pretending to be living during times when making candle wax was a required skill set and the onset of the smell of burning leaves. It was the weekend when jeans still felt strange over my calves after having been uncovered all summer. It meant it was time to start thinking about Halloween and what I was going to be that year. At school, it became the hot topic of conversation along with how uncool it was that our parents wouldn’t let us be truly scary monsters.

My mom wouldn’t spend money on Halloween costumes and no one in my immediate family has sewing skills, so most of my costumes where pretty thrown together. My favorite costume was the year I was a ninja. I wore a red kimono my parents got for me from China town in San Francisco, a matching red bandanna, some eye paint, jeans and black shoes. No one knew I was a ninja. Then there was the year I wore my brother’s old football gear from when he played in the pee wee leagues. That was probably the most accurate costume we put together.

When I got older, this continued, not for me, but for my nephews and my niece. My sister and I would discuss their costumes, laugh with bewilderment over their choices and enjoy the fun of making it happen for them. We would dress up too.

Leading up to Halloween there were movies to watch, not Friday the 13th or anything so gory, but Are you afraid of the dark on Nickolodian, Hocus Pocus and Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin Patch. Our classrooms were decorated in anticipation of the big night and we’d think about the stashes of candy that would be kept in our sock drawers for the next several months.

There were campaigns warning kids not to eat candy that wasn’t wrapped from the store and to make sure your parents checked it over before you dug in. We had debates at recess about whether the rumors concerning needles in coke cans were true. And of course there were churches urging parents not to let their children celebrate a pagan holiday. This always struck me as strange considering Christians used to endorse the use of pagan holidays as a conversion tool, but this is beside the point.

In the car my dad would start singing. It was probably the only time of year I joined in with him. We would go together to get several pumpkins and about a week before the holiday, the whole family would gather around the kitchen table, with newspaper spread out and draw on the pumpkins with marker. Mine never turned out like I wanted it too. I didn’t have a great mind for visualizing what would look cool on a pumpkin and I refused to do anything standard.

For years, my dad and I did the gutting and then he did the carving, but I remember the year I got the exacto knife in my hands and got to plunge it into the pumpkin. I remember how I would cut too far or have to really tug to pull it back out. We turned out the lights and lit the pumpkins to witness our handwork. In the darkness we sang our Halloween songs to our smiling or scowling pumpkins before placing them on the steps outside and taking way too many photographs.

The last school day before Halloween or on the day itself if it worked out that way, we all wore our costumes to school. Sometimes it would be cold so we would have sweats on underneath or jackets covering them, but we had them on. We didn’t have school on those days, not really. We wrote scary stories, went trick or treating among the classrooms, ate snacks and drew pictures.

Trick or Treating happened in the early evening. I remember convincing my parents to let my friends and I go alone for the first time. We were young, but not too young. We got to be out, alone, after the street lights came on and that was fun. We tried to make any weird house we could find into a haunted one. Anything that could be made scary made scary. There was a house with a silhouette of a man holding a knife. His porch lights were off, which was a signal that he didn’t have any candy. We went up to the door anyway and told each other he was a madman. It was thrilling to turn chopping vegetables into danger.

My best friend had to go home shortly after that, but I wanted to be out at night on my own. I wasn’t ready to go home. I went down Cambridge Ave. It was the weird street in our neighborhood. No one paved it. The houses were more run down. It was strange to have such an area surrounded by otherwise middle class dwellings. I was one house down the street when an older boy, probably 12, came upon me. He wasn’t in a costume. He was just wearing black jeans and a shirt. He took my candy.

Go looking for trouble and you’ll probably find it.

But it was alright. I went home and we got in the car and drove to my grandmothers house where there was a large fountain glass filled with ice cream and rootbeer. The last stage of the holiday.

While we drove home I was already scheming on my costume for the next year and better pumpkin designs. I think about my grandmother every Halloween. It amazes me that she’s been gone for about 14 years now, but she’s still a fresh presence for my entire family. We all still miss her, but not in a sad way.

Halloween was bigger than Christmas in my memory. Christmas was BIG but Halloween was when I felt most myself. The reality behind that is not lost on me.

I couldn’t tell you the words to Oh Christmas Tree. I think there’s a line about lovely branches, but I’m not sure.

On the other hand:
Halloween, Halloween, Oh what funny things are seen, witches hats, cold black cats, broom stick riders, mice and rats.

Witches and Goblins and Jack-O-Lanterns bright, creep through the dark on a cold October night. They knock on every window pane where people can be seen. And the strangest things can happen on a wild, Halloween.

Jack-O-Lantern, Jack-O-Lantern, you are such a lovely site, as you sit there in the window looking out at the night. Once you were a yellow pumpkin hanging on a sturdy vine, now you are a Jack-O-Lantern see the candle light shine.

Long blog, but when I think about all the adult parties people are go to in their store bought costumes that are really more about looking sexy and getting laid than dressing up and pretending to be someone else I miss the days when Halloween felt like such a bigger deal, like a major holiday and not just a any other day.