{"id":598,"date":"2011-11-02T11:38:02","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T03:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=598"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:24:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:24:23","slug":"trick-or-treat-at-sea-10312011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=598","title":{"rendered":"Trick Or Treat \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [10\/31\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>~On All Hallow\u2019s Eve when the moon is round\u2026.~<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTonight\u2019s like, dead for the undead\u2026they stay in! They just find it all too crass\u2026\u201d \u2013 Buffy<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTomorrow? Tomorrow night\u2019s Halloween. Nothing happens on Halloween\u201d – Buffy<\/em><\/p>\n

Halloween on ships is an interesting experience. Well, most holidays on ships are an interesting experience to say the least, but Halloween? Well I\u2019ve only ever worked it on ships that don\u2019t have a lot of children \u2013 I can imagine it\u2019s a lot<\/em> more energetic on ships that have a 200+ kid count. Usually though, you end up with a rather more adult (and that\u2019s not necessarily to say more subdued) Halloween celebration when your clientele is mostly well above the age of trick or treating.<\/p>\n

The entire ship is decked out in pumpkin orange and sparkling black, events are all re-named to sound suitably spooky (it\u2019s not just ring toss, it\u2019s witchy<\/em> ring toss) and even Bingo gets to be honorary trick-or-treating (\u201cbring us a piece of chocolate, we\u2019ll give you a free card, bring us a piece of good<\/em> chocolate, we\u2019ll give you two<\/em> free cards!\u201d\u2026we got a lot of chocolate!). If you\u2019ve ever worked retail, a lot of this would look familiar.<\/p>\n

There are kids on board of course, most of whom belong to the crew, we have a few Indonesian ports coming up and so there are a lot of crew families on board at the moment. You can hear the kids coming a mile away, so you have plenty of warning before they sneak up behind you in their cobbled together costumes and yell BOO!! In their loudest voices. None-the-less, you still act<\/em> scared. And you still curse yourself for not remembering to bring some of that chocolate you have squirreled away in your emergency supply down on A-deck upstairs<\/em> so that you could give them something other than bookmarks!<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s fun none-the-less, and the best part of it honestly, is that we\u2019re allowed to dress up. In whatever we want. For some that just means finding a pair of mouse ears and set of blacks, for others? Like me? Not so much\u2026.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons my Grand Voyage suitcase is always so massive? Is because it carries all<\/em> of my theme wear. Including, not one, not two, but four<\/em> options for a Halloween costume. Two of which I actually packed on purpose, two of which I realized I could opt for at the last minute. But really, the simplest is often the best, and I had, after all, bought it special. So, Cheshire Cat it was.<\/p>\n

Since I never do anything that involves a costume by half measures, Chesh \u00a0is not as easy as it probably should be. It includes 45 minutes in the hairdresser\u2019s chair having her pull my hair into about a thousand tiny little ringlets, 15 minutes after that<\/em>, pinning and styling to arrange those ringlets into something that looks at least slightly tame (because ringlets fresh out of the chair makes me look like I\u2019ve stuck my finger in an electrical socket and results in me going AAAAAH! WHAT HAVE I DONE!!!!\u201d). And then I sit cross-legged on the floor, in front of my cabin mirror, with everything from eyeshadow to lipstick to eyeliner scattered within reaching distance, and start on the make-up.<\/p>\n

It was funny watching everyone get ready last night, somehow we all ended up watching the same movie. You\u2019d drift from room to room and see different parts of Disney\u2019s Hocus Pocus<\/em> wherever you went. I\u2019m personally surprised no one decided to dress up as the Sanderson Sisters!<\/p>\n

The fun thing about picking that particular costume last night, was that our piano bar entertainer dressed as the Mad Hatter (from the new movie, not the Disney one)\u2026.and then<\/em> he asked me to sing with him.<\/p>\n

Stryker, I\u2019ve got a helluva cold I\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, now, a real performer can always sing over her illness\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Gimme the microphone\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

So it ended up being the Cheshire Cat singing with the Mad Hatter, there were camera flashes going off all over<\/em> the place. All we needed was an Alice! There is an insanely cute shot of the two of us perched back to back on the edge of the Grand Piano. For those few of you who don\u2019t have access to my facebook account, email me and I\u2019ll send it to you J<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the why of all this. Why do I put so much effort into a commercial holiday? Because under all that, Halloween isn\u2019t<\/em> Halloween at all\u2026it\u2019s something completely different – those of you who know, know, those of you who don\u2019t, ask me, I\u2019ll answer, I just won\u2019t answer here.<\/p>\n

Under all the false glitter and the buck-toothed pumpkins and the sugar high children\u2026through the cotton wool that so often clogs my ears this time of year – I can still hear them\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

~On All Hallow\u2019s Eve when the moon is round\u2026.~ \u201cTonight\u2019s like, dead for the undead\u2026they stay in! They just find it all too crass\u2026\u201d \u2013 Buffy \u201cTomorrow? Tomorrow night\u2019s Halloween. Nothing happens on Halloween\u201d – Buffy Halloween on ships is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39,18],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-asiaaustralia-2011","category-theme-events","tag-halloween"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-9E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2195,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/2195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}