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Someone asked me today if we’d carved pumpkins yet, and my face immediately morphed into my favorite emoji, the one where the mouth is a straight line. UGHHH. So much unspoken feeling in that straight line. That straight line is the soul and essence of Heather B. Armstrong.

Halloween is probably the most celebrated holiday in Utah. People go bananas with decorations, will transform their entire front lawns into cemeteries complete with animatronic zombies and dry ice and skeletons randomly dropping out of trees. I suppose this should make sense to me since this holiday is dedicated to remembering the dead, and Mormons routinely baptize the dead (at least by proxy, don’t scream at me Elder Christiansen, I am telling the truth HOWEVER UNCOMFORTABLE MY TELLING OF IT MAKES YOU).

So I guess goblins and ghouls should be able to receive the gospel in the afterlife if they had not been given the chance when they were living goblins and ghouls. My logic is impeccable.

No, we have not yet carved pumpkins. I’m thinking we will on Saturday morning, and when we do I’ll stick Marlo in her bathing suit because I know she is going to dive right into that motherfucker and come out looking just like this:

But that is as far as I will go. That’s it. No fancy autumnal-themed centerpiece on the dining room table. No gourds on the back of the toilet. No handful of cotton balls stretched out in the top right corner of the doorway to look like a cobweb. We will trick or treat and they will be happy and then we will go on living like normal human beings who are not celebrating dead things. IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST (WHO ROSE FROM THE DEAD), amen.