Four Things That Happen When You Dress Up Early for Halloween

By Cazey Williams I know readers have been refreshing their email to see what I'll be this Halloween ever since I wrote about my memorable costumes.

So I guess I'll tell you: I'm going to be a skeleton. "A glam skeleton" according to the tutorial.

Yes, those are females, but I think we can agree that skulls are pretty androgynous. I just won't wear the leggings.

All in all, this costume cost me $20 in makeup – which I think is the scariest part. There was a moment in Target when I debated whether to spend an Andrew Jackson for one night’s play or if I should get another car wash.

Anyway, after my purchases, I decided to practice. Here is what I looked like:

This is what followed:

My mom texted: “I don t like . too scary.” And then “u look too thin. Are u eating.”

Don’t you like how I captured her vernacular? So Baby Boomer.

Anyway, I was proud of my handiwork (yes, I did it myself – with the assistance of my roommate, because me: “How do I put on eye shadow?”), so I sent my mom a pic. And my mom, a former Sunday school teacher, responds that I look “too scary.” Sorta what I’m going for? But I should have expected this. In seventh grade, when I read “The Exorcist” and was obsessed with cryptids like Sasquatch (omg, my worst nightmare) and the Mothman, she bought me some religious texts and instructed me to read “happier things.”

On the subject of am I too thin? Well, if you want to toss a few toward my grocery budget. (But thanks for complimenting the drawn on neck bones!)

You meet your upstairs neighbor.

After submerging my pores in chalk and paint, I had to show it off, so I decided to walk to my friend’s. Except as I’m going out the door, I run into my neighbor. I live in a duplex, so our doors are side-by-side. Neighbor moved in two months ago, and I don’t even know his name other than what’s on his mail, and I can’t even remember that.

We’re going out the door at the same time, and then we pause to stare at each other. I wouldn’t have paused except he’s locked to my face, and I’m thinking, “What is he looking at?” Because you remember how you would forget you have face paint on after a carnival in elementary school until you saw yourself in the bathroom mirror? Yeah, I forgot. (Why can’t we forget when we have zits on our face?) And other than my face, it didn’t look like I’m rearing for a party or something. I’m in flipflops and sweats. I’m your Goth neighbor.

Finally, Neighbor says, “You look good.” And we moved away from our doors.

Your grandmother comments on your photo: “How could someone I know and love change so much????”

This is another one of those generational gap things. On my walk to my friend’s, I obviously had to Facebook (and Instagram) my getup. So I’m checking my notifications, and my adoptive grandmother – aka my elderly neighbor from my childhood – has commented on my photo.

How am I supposed to respond to that? Did we need four question marks? Such a millennial move, that excessive punctuation.

And then I’m mulling, Do I comment back and graffiti my Facebook post (which grandma has already graffiti’d, mind you), or do I ignore her? But poor woman, she thinks I’ve sold my soul to Satan. I decide I’ll comment back in six hours after my post has its heyday without adding to the graffiti unnecessarily. (Does anyone else ever have these thoughts? No one?)

Someone asks, “Have you seen my missing black cat?”

Still en route to my friend’s (I know, will I ever make it?), these two women stop me. They don’t even flinch that I’m wearing skull makeup.

“Excuse me, have you seen a black cat? He’s missing.”

Despite being an extrovert, I don’t do well with unexpected communication when brooding how to respond to Facebook comments, so I just gawk at them. Pursed lips, too. Gotta show those painted on teeth.

They hand me a flyer.

“What’s his name?” I say.

I don’t remember his name, so I won’t make it up for this blog, but they tell me he’s just a year old cat, and I keep staring at them. I’m not a narcissist, but are we not going to address I look like a skeleton? (Or do I not? Does my makeup suck?)

No, let’s talk about your black cat that’s missing five days from Halloween. I can’t imagine where it’s gone. I probably look like the freak who took it. Yes, let me help you find it. (I would expand on this tangent, but I don’t want to appear insensitive. I really do like animals.)

Anyway, it was a weird night.

When Wednesday Bleeds Into Thursday (literally)

Editor's note: This is going to chronicle probably the goriest event that has ever happened to me. Get ready! A perfectly normal Wednesday was wrapping up. I had done some Zumba (poorly, I may add), cooked a chicken-based dinner (extremely typical), watched some television with the roommates, took a shower and lounged in my bed for a bit.

I was ready to go to bed at this point. It had been a long day and my hair had basically finished drying. So, like I do every night of my life, I went over to my closet door, pulled it open and reached up to hang up my towel. Then there was a bang, I look down.

The mirror from the front of the closet door is laying on the ground next to a bloody piece of meat. No wait -- that bloody piece of meat is my leg. I shit you not I saw bone. Huge drops of blood are hitting the floor every second. And huge drops are hitting the rug my mom explicitly told me not to ruin. I knew I had to move off of the rug, but my leg is limpy. I focus in. I absolutely need to go to the emergency room. My roommate next door is asleep already, so I'll crawl to the stairs and call for the one downstairs.

Nope, my leg won't make it. I yell downstairs, "I need to go to the emergency room." Both roommates materialize like they are wizards straight from Hogwarts. Everyone is calm, like we have a prepared emergency response plan. One roommate collects my and her belongings so that we can leave. The other wraps a towel around my leg and goes for gauze and pre-wrap. I sit applying pressure. Not crying. Just planning. I need shoes, id and my insurance card. And a bra. Can't leave the house without a bra.

She comes back with the supplies, and I squeeze the two halves of my leg together, while she applies gauze and then tightly wraps the pre-wrap around my wound. (The next day, I find out that she has experience splinting horse legs, so she was ready to put that skill to use). The other roommate comes back with our to-go supplies. We work out that one goes and one stays to clean the blood. What more can you ask for in a friend than someone who will mop up your pools of blood for you? #BloodSisters

I slide on my butt down the stairs, slip my boat shoes (they ended up being a casualty of the night. The entire left shoe is caked in blood beyond cleaning) on, and we are off. It was a quick drive (thank god) down just a few blocks to the ER. I get dropped off and hop on one leg inside. The greeting nurse takes down all sorts of information, as I internally contemplate whether I should call or text my parents. I decide text, because it's late, and they'll think I'm near death if I call now. Plus, what can they do when they're eight hours away, anyways right?

So then I'm led back to my bed. And then I sit alone, with just the sounds of the EMT's gossiping, the click of the heart rate monitor for the patient to my right and every now and then a squeak of a shoe. And I totally lose my shit. What if it actually broke my bone? Or ripped a muscle? Or it gets infected and they need to amputate? What if they just leave me sitting here to bleed out?

I sob. And sob a bit more. Nurses come and go, but I sit alone sobbing.

Eventually, one comes over and compliments the nice dressing on my wound (thanks, years of horse splinting). I still can't compose myself. They go to get my roommate. No one comes back.

I freak out a bit more. They just wheeled someone away for higher-grade attention.

Then, a lovely, nonchalant nurse comes over. She tells me I'm doing well, ask me how it happened. Then she asked me if I think I could have Ebola, if I was trying to hurt myself or if I was assaulted. All no.

She cracks a few jokes, and my tears subside. Shortly thereafter, I text my other friend and he comes running (more like brisk walking) from his house to the hospital. Once there, I feel much more calm. He's not nervous about all the blood. He handles it. He talks to me and takes my mind off of it.

"You really went big on this one," the nurse muses. "Go big or go home, right?" I quip back. When you're in pain, freaking out, there's nothing like a good wound joke to break the ice. We get some x-rays and praise hallelujah no broken bones, chard's of glass or ripped muscles. While getting hit by a falling mirror is a total unlucky fluke, at least hearing good news like that is calming.

So then begins the time to stitch. My friend snaps a picture (which I swear if he shows that to me before a years time, I will vomit. Not that I actually need the picture to remember how my leg looked. I'll probably carry that image with me to the grave. It looked straight out of a horror film.), and the doctor begins. Oh pain. So much of it.

But damn, do I have a good friend. He talks about nothing for the entire time. He explains his graduate school classes, which meant nothing to me. Except for the real fact that it meant everything to me. He had a midterm the next day, but he chose to help me out when I needed him most, and was able to talk to me enough to distract me from the mangled mess that was my leg.

After a long evening of waiting and stitching, my roommate and I head home. She's GOT to be drained, as she drove our other roommate to the airport at 5:30 that morning. She hates blood, yet still sucked it up and brought me to the hospital. What more can I say other than she's a leg-saver.

I'm spent too, except for the fact that I can't sleep. Maybe it was the drugs they gave me, maybe it was the pain or maybe it was replaying the way my leg looked when it was about to become stuffed chicken. But I was very much awake.

I then decide that I should blog about it (the nurse did say this would make an awesome story), and I should do it immediately before I forget. Right -- because I can forget this trauma so quickly.

So instead of trying to blog about the night at 4am, I roll over, thank god for the three most helpful, amazing people a girl could ask for, and do my best to go to sleep (and waited til daylight to share the gore with you all. Happy Halloween!)

Six Costumes You Maybe Should or Shouldn’t Wear

By Cazey Williams Halloween is close enough that we should all be considering what we’re going to don come October 31^st – even if it’s a Dementor cloak to hide our food baby after all that candy corn. So what follows is a history of costumes I’ve memorably fashioned (or envisioned):

Vampire:

This is my signature getup. Stalk Facebook – and even MySpace – and you’ll see I’ve been a vampire since before Edward Cullen was a thing. I also don’t do it like the simpletons aka wear Dollar Tree fangs. No, kids, I use dental adhesive. I also have a cape, gloves, and some Renaissance-esque medallion – we’re talking Anne Rice vampires. On the topic of that dental adhesive, I even made out with someone with those incisors, and they didn’t fall out (!!), though I can’t imagine I tasted very good.

Love’s Prisoner:

This is when things got weird. I was going through a quasi-relationship with a girl who had a boyfriend (not that I endorse that sort of thing, unless you enjoy uncomfortable stories like this one), so why not be metaphorical and angsty? I bought some plastic shackles (the prisoner part), and then I tore up a white t-shirt with a kitchen knife and sprinkled blood on it. Some of that blood ended up on my bathroom carpet, which I still own and step onto after every shower. I focused on exposing my left nipple with said shirt and put a prosthetic wound across my heart. Get it? No? I don’t know…

French painter:

This was by far my favorite costume, but the one that received the most criticism because apparently I dress like a French painter in everyday life. (Is it bad I take that as a compliment?) Admittedly, the only thing I bought for this outfit was a watercolor set. And I stole a cardboard box from a dumpster to make a palette and used some computer paper for my cig. But I never would have paired those yellow pants with that striped shirt any other day. Okay, maybe. It’s hard work being a hipster.

Narcissus:

This one was last year, and I never made it out of the house because #selfdoubts. Basically, I wrapped myself in a toga (read: bed sheet – though it was a green sheet, because that’s different) and a bought a Dollar Tree wreath for my laurel and even some plastic grapes. The final touch was a handheld mirror. And then everyone was like, “It’s Halloween, not a toga party.” And I was like, “Does no one remember reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in seventh grade? I’m Narcissus!” I also didn’t know if my pecs were in prime condition for the wintry night, so I changed into zombie attire.

The Vain Man:

I’m trying to bring Narcissus into the modern age. I’m also afraid I’m just too highbrow for people. Or I overthink costumes. Who is the Vain man, you ask? Well, he’s the one who walks like he’s on a yacht. He has a hat dipped strategically below one eye, and he has an apricot scarf! You probably think it’s you, don’t you (don’t you)?  Oh, so you don’t think anyone will get it? “How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days” came out in 2003, though. Okay, I guess I won’t be the Vain Man this year.

Gym bro:

I haven’t pulled off this costume either, but I think it’s brilliant – and if that’s not a red flag, I don’t know what is. The idea is you wear those toe shoes that they’ve proven are worthless , a tank top that has sleeve openings down to your hips, an iPhone strap around your biceps, and you put a bandana around your forehead. You also have to haul around a gallon of water. Bonus points if you refuse  alcohol on Halloween because #gains. I would do this, but I eat bread, so I’m not sure I want to show my abs.

So now I have two weeks to figure out how I’ll stun the masses on All Hallow’s Eve. Any ideas?

A Day of Baldness

Disclaimer: Sorry in advance for offending you, Britney Spears, I did it with love.  Naturally when my sister's group of friends decided to dress up as different Britney Spears throughout the ages, someone HAD to be Breakdown Britney of 2007. Since I am not actually in the group of friends, somehow I took it upon myself to be bald Brit.

I must say, being dressed in workout clothes as a costume was a plus, but being bald was pretty hard. Here are some of the more memorable moments of my time as a bald pop star:

• "She must be the one in the group with a boyfriend." Obviously no one single would ever volunteer to go out on the town looking like this (except for me, apparently): 
• "You really have a lot of courage coming out today as a bald person." I would take this as a compliment, but it seems somewhat offensive. I know bald people that leave their house everyday and no one tells them how confident they must be.
• From across the room, I hear someone meeting all the other Britney's and they go, "THERE MUST BE A BREAKDOWN ONE IN HERE." Yes, yes, thank you for the enthusiasm.
• Drinks were accepted in appreciation of this costume. My advice that attaches to this one is: the weirder you look, the more attention you get, which, even when you're not looking good, might have positive results.
• One of the most puzzling things I came to realize is that even without hair, guys still talked to me. Take that for what you will.
• My head was scratchy with the stocking on all day, so it was pretty encouraging to know that perfect strangers were willing to scratch it for me, upon request.
• One of the biggest lessons I learned: being bald might qualify you to go cut the men's bathroom line, even if it is just because everyone is staring at you.
• The best part might have actually been nearer the end of the night, when the stocking fell out and I had given up on being bald, and NO ONE recognized me. It's like my hair made me a whole new woman.

So, this coming Thursday, go confidently in whatever Halloween outfit you might be wearing and enjoy it! Even if you look absurd, people will still appreciate you taking one for the team for a group of friends that are not even yours.