Shortly after the lockdown started, we began watching movies in the evenings, and sometimes they were movies I enjoyed 20+ years ago that I couldn’t quite recall whether they’d be appropriate for children or not, but we watched them regardless, and one of those may very well have been “The Matrix,” but you know what? It made for a decidedly appropriate 2020 family Halloween costume, our 9th consecutive such undertaking:

We all know Neo took the red pill in 1999, opted to stay in Wonderland, and saw how deep the rabbit hole went, but in 2020, I’m opting for the blue pill, where “the story ends, and you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.”

October was fairly awful. I was attacked by my dog. 2/3 of my staff left on fairly short notice. Hurricane Delta flooded our basement, and then Hurricane Zeta killed our electricity for the past 4 days.

But, we pressed on. I love Halloween, and we had a great time starting the festivities at 4pm (a decision our darkened neighborhood made collectively) to allow for costumes and candy under natural lighting before having cocktails with neighbors who bought generators before our family retreated to a hotel for a second night of rest and hot showers.

Today, the power came back on. There was a lot of cleaning up refrigerators and freezers, but we’re all excited to return to some normalcy again.

Happy Halloween, folks (a day late)! Now let’s hope for a peaceful November election and a bountiful Thanksgiving.