Witch in a Sh*tstorm!

**Author's note: 10/8/06: Sorry for the late pulishing on this now week-old entry - I forgot to publish it, which just makes me unreliable, as well as lazy**

To begin at the beginning, since I was a small child, too small actually remember exactly when, I have possessed snow globes. You know, a base of some kind, and a glass globe, full of some viscous liquid within which fake snow, glitter, or whatnot is suspended. Sometime in my preteen years, I recieved one of these with a black base, and inside the globe was a semi cute, quat, frumpy witch, and the "snow" in suspension was black, mixed with tiny black bats.

I still have this collection, now shelved in our yellow room - due to the lavish three bedroom domicile we share ::ahem:: we refer to our two guest rooms by color - where my husband, from time to time, has opportunity to contemplate it (usually coinciding with contemplating tearing out floorboards or a wall). Has subsequently nicknamed it the "witch in a shitstorm" after having shaken it, and decided that's what it looked like. He tried to coin the phrase for a short while, kind of in a "snakes on a plane!" way. Sadly, this new linguistic phenomenon didn't last out the week.

Today, I was in Lowe's, looking for paint color samples and a cheap 3" brush for Mark to apply pesticide to the exterior of the sill under the front of the house, when I actually saw the witch in a shitstorm, in all it's inflatable glory! Then, my eyes adjusted to the present and I realized it was a graveyard scene, not a witch, but seriously, people - giant inflatable "tornado" globes with bats and graveyards?

What ever happened to answering the door dressed as Frankenstein and handing out Mars bars with a Jack-O-Lantern on the porch? When did all the holidays get like this? And why, when I asked (le plus tongue-in-cheek) if there actually was one with a witch, did they tell me, with sincere apology, that I "should have bought it in July, before they sold out."