Busy Bee

Man, what a weekend!

Last Friday started bright and early, cause I had to have work squared away by noon because The Boy's 2nd grade class was having "Fall Centers", which is a complete ripoff . . . in MY day, we had Halloween carnivals with scary houses and good candy, and it was the highlight of the year. "Fall Centers" means that during the last 1/2 hour of the school day, everyone gets to glue together a foam turkey and make a candy corn-bedazzled picture frame and . . . well, that's pretty much it.

BUT . . . I was determined to sneak the devil in by bringing in treat bags full of scary bat rings, and rubber bats, and glow in the dark skeletons, and GOOD candy. An hour later, I emerged, glue-covered with a happy boy and my girl, headed to the house to get ready for the trick and/or treating festivities to begin.

Full of Halloween spirit, we costumed up (even my tiny Chihuahua, LilBit, had a witch costume) and we headed to the mall. Hub, ever the pragmatist, mentioned something in passing about LilBit and the mall, but I was too hopped up to pay much attention. We entered the mall and began our parade down the hallways, earning oohs and ahhs for our costumes, and squeals of delight for our tiny pet. All was good until I was approached by mall security for some type of breach, and among a chorus of "Booooooooooo!"s, I was unceremoniously escorted out of the mall by the mall police.

That dampened our spirits a bit, but Hub was kind enough to kiss my cheek and not say "I told you so", and the boy lent his support by bellowing "This place blows!" on the way out the door. Ahh, my family.

On to bigger and better . . .

We had never "Trunk or Treat"ed before, but since our neighborhood is sort of devoid of the Halloween spirit, we thought we'd give it a whirl. My girl and I had bought a metric ton of good candy at the Kroger the night before (Midnight Madness sale - $1.65 per bag for the GOOD stuff, plus a full order of groceries for less than $200, score!) so we were loaded. I had no idea how to pull off a Trunk or Treat, so I just packed things that I would use at home, and we all piled into my Element and headed out (LilBit, too).


20 minutes later, our little vehicle was properly "trunked" and delighted fellow Trunkers oooohed and ahhhhed, saying that I must certainly be a "Trunking" veteran, which caused a deep blush of pride (luckily, my witch hat had a black veil that blocked most of it). We saw witches, and ghosts, and Star Wars characters, and fairies, and superheroes, and . . . and . . .and . . .all KIND of stuff.

It was getting chilly and really dark, and the Trunk or Treat was winding down, so we headed home, each kid with at least 5 lbs of candy to show for their efforts.When we pulled into our neighborhood, we saw some kids listlessly walking our street, so I hightailed it in to set up my Trunk props and threw on the front lights, and I was rewarded by visits from 10-15 kids, so that was cool.

Saturday was spent in pursuit of electric blankets (it's getting cold down here!) Hub and I have different core temperatures these days, and I can't seem to stay warm, so I had the idea that an electrified heat source might be just the answer, and keep the heating bill reasonable. So, the kids were good as gold as we schlepped all over town, through Bed Bath and Beyond and Linens n Things and other places looking for a decent deal. Everyone was up for lunch at Golden Corral, and a flash of my "surgery card" got me a nice little discount, since I'm still eating Lilliputian-sized meals.

The kids had evening plans, so we were able to slide away and get a low carb Smoothie King concoction and laugh at "Zack and Miri" at the AMC late Saturday night. Funny and horrible, just my style!

Sunday was a whirlwind of activity: we gutted and regorganized the Black Hole known as the laundry room, sorted clothing and came up with 5 or 6 bags for donation and hauled those to Goodwill, scored my electric blankets (damn, I love Big Lots - $40 for blankets that were $90 everywhere else, PLUS I found a bullet mixer to make my OWN Smoothie King smoothies, and it works like a charm, even on on the whole frozen strawberries, the bane of my regular blender's existence), cleaned all 3 bedrooms (dusting and vacuuming too), washed all the linens. blankets and covers, got Weenie into her Doxie Cart for some physical therapy and exercise, planned our intinerary for our Disney World trip in 3 weeks, and we changed out all the Halloween to Thanksgiving.

I laid down last night feeling great and commented to Hub that there is no way in hell I could have done all this 3 months ago.

It feels fantastic.

Trick or Treat . . . Smell My Feet!

If you have a 5 year old at your house, then you have probably heard that as many times as I have this past month. Interestingly enough, 5 year olds NEVER tire of saying it, and then dissolving into uncontrollable laughter. My son is no exception, except maybe for the fact that he ACTUALLY tries to make you smell his feet (he's pretty strong and agile, too, so no laying on the sofa around here until closer to Thanksgiving.)

We tend to do things up big around here for Halloween. It's always been one of my favorite holidays, and even though schools don't have Halloween carnivals anymore, and kids can't trick or treat unsupervised, and you have to check the candy bags for razor blades, it's still a cool holiday. We generally kick things off by erecting our huge blowup scarecrow on October 1 (the Homeowner's Association LOVES us!) and follow that up by repeated viewings of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" throughout the month, awaiting the arrival of the Big Party To End All Parties that ALWAYS occurs the Saturday before Halloween.

Except this year.

Our friends, who have dutifully thrown the best party ever for many, many years, finally decided to discontinue the tradition this year. Speculation is that the party was getting too big, there were too many people, too much booze and weed, and too many hassles, too many complaints from the neighbors, and too much hassle all around. Can't say I blame them, but damn, was I disappointed.

But, I did what you do when the best party in the world is dead and gone, I found another. It seemed a shame not to take advantage of our costumes (Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf), so we crashed the Masquerade Ball at Wild Bill's Saloon. It was lots of fun, about 5,000 people strong, and nearly everyone was dressed up!

It drew a big crowd, because there was $5,000 on the line for Best Costume. There were guys there on stilts inside 8 foot tall monster costumes, all manner of witches, goblins, devils, and superheroes. There was even one lady who had recreated a full-scale framed painting of the Mona Lisa, which she wore and stuck her own head and arms through. I saw her dancing with Teen Wolf at one point (he took the big prize, by the way. Don't you know the stilts monster guys were pissed off about that?)

Saturday slowly, ever so slowly gave way to Tuesday . . . THE day. I don't know how the kids made it through the school day! I joined my kindergartener for "Fall Centers" (remember, they can't call it a Halloween Party in public school) and I was in charge of helping kids glue eyes and mouths to foam pumpkin cutouts. My "center" was totally outdone by the "smear peanut butter on a pinecone and roll it in birdseed" center, not to mention the "make a spider out of doughnuts and pretzel sticks and icing and decorate with candy" center. Ah, well . . . when it's all said and done, and the doughnut spiders have been eaten, and the birdseed and peanut butter have all been pecked away, my foam pumpkin cutouts will remain (that is, if the moms don't throw them in the garbage the minute that Halloween is over. I keep all that stuff, but then again, I am sort of a packrat when it comes to stuff my kids make.)

Once the agony of the school day had passed, and I extricated myself from my work (harder and harder these days), we prepared ourselves for The Moment . . . Sundown on Halloween night. Hub had been home sick the previous day and Halloween day with some kind of stomach bug, but he was a trooper, gathering the troops. We had invited the kids' friends to come walk the neighborhood with us. Really sweet kids, brother and sister, same age as my two, and all four are inseparable. We had missed the little boy's birthday earlier in the month, so we set up a quick party table with cupcakes (like you need THAT on Halloween), popcorn and presents. Imagine our surprise when he showed up, dressed exactly like MY kid!


Hilarious!

The kids decided to pool their resources and dump their candy into a community wagon as we went through the neighborhood. The wagon was pulled by Weenie the Wonderdog, who was celebrating her 3rd "birthday" with us (I got her from the pound on Halloween day, 2003.)

By the time 8:00 pm rolled around, we had (easily) 15 pounds of candy, 4 tired kids, and a worn out dog. It was worth it. And for the record, nope, I didn't eat ANY candy. Good for me.

Happy Halloween, ya'll.