Hello, November!

November's not a bad month. That is, if you don't mind cold and rain and Christmas carols playing in every single store you step into. Right?

We usually get about 65 trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Plus or minus 10, say. Last year, I think we had close to 80. This year? 27. I've talked to friends around here and they experienced the same drop in the numbers of candy-begging urchins. I'm wondering whether this phenomenon is confined to my little corner of the world, or if it is more widespread. Did the number of trick-or-treaters at your door drop considerably this year?

And do you think the drop in numbers was caused by the election? Maybe the McCain campaign, with all its talk of "spreading the wealth" being the same as socialism, discouraged people from participating in spreading the candy around. Or perhaps the Obama campaign's emphasis on change confused people and made them think that it was time to change our Halloween customs.

And for those of you who are thinking, "Hey, Suburban Correspondent, election campaigns have nothing whatsoever to do with Halloween!" - well, I urge you to check out this article, sent to me by the Hotfessional. The sentence about the "crying children" cracks me up every single time.

The Scariest One Of All

Whew! Caught up in the Halloween plus House Guest frenzy over here! I've been promising people pictures of the jack-o-lanterns, so I am taking time out of my busy Snickers-eating schedule to post a few photos. Above, you can see the spider and the bat. My photographic skills (or lack thereof, really) do not do justice to these pumpkins. They looked fantastic. Here's a close-up of the spider:





This one is supposed to be a kitty cat, but it sort of didn't work:




As I do not possess math skills advanced enough to enable me to buy the proper number of pumpkins for our family, Susie and Rachel had to share this one. Rachel carved the cat face on the front, and Susie selected a more typical jack-0-lantern visage for the back:




And the last one, alas, does not have a picture that would adequately represent its awesomeness. Theo found the pattern and carved it while I was out. He is also responsible for the carved commentary near the bottom (so don't yell at me, okay?). People were coming over just to see it (and take pictures), it was so awesome. This photo of it simply sucks:


It looks, in this photo, to be portraying some member of the Beat Generation; but I swear, in person, it was such a good representation of the current governor of Alaska that people walking by on the sidewalk would stop and exclaim, "Sarah!"

Do you see how in the photo the pumpkin appears to be levitating? That is totally creeping me out. Do you think it's a sign?

Oh - and we had 2 dalmatian puppies, one robot, and one lego piece trick-or-treating this year. In case you were wondering. The lego costume was easy (meaning, Larry took care of it), and so was the robot. But the dalmatian puppies? I struggled to create a costume for Rachel that would match her sister's pre-made one. You know, these things are way trickier than they look. At least, for craft-impaired people like me. In fact, the only reason Rachel had a tail at all is because Auntie Kate leapt into the breach this week, as it were, and saved my faltering efforts with her special creative powers. I owe her big.

And now, back to my previously scheduled Snickers...

Brain Candy

Watch tonight's debate? (Gaaah! I know, politics) Does Obama make brains look sexy, or what? I had to convince the kids I was drooling over health care policy.

Wondering what was true or false in the debate? Go here for the latest. Also a fantastic site for truth-checking is this one. Its truth-o-meter (a portion of which you can see over there to the left) is one of my favorite features. (I particularly like its "Liar, liar, pants on fire" rating.) Both sites seem to be fairly unbiased and extremely informative. Go! What are you waiting for?

Oh. That's right, we need the results of the candy poll. Just a second, I need to check my tallies. Let's see - it looks as though Reese's Peanut Butter Cups pulled ahead at the last moment to win with 6 votes. A close second with 5 votes were the terrorist-sympathizer Butterfingers.

Really, I think you guys voted for those just to yank my chain. I can't believe anyone likes them.

Personally? I go for the KitKats (2 votes). And the Twix (4). Oh, and the mini Snickers, of course (3 votes). And, really, is there anyone who can turn down those Peanut Butter Cups? But I draw the line at 3 Musketeers (3 votes) - they've never done much for me.

So now you know why I have 6 kids - I get more loot on Halloween. It's that simple.

Candy We All Get Along?

It is once again that time of year when legions of people across the US are frantically Googling "tornado costume." And they all end up here. You're welcome. I have instructed our children not to involve their father in their costume plans this Halloween. It gets too frightening (and expensive).

Besides, Larry won't be here much this month. I think he'll be dropping in for his birthday this Friday and maybe he'll stick around over the weekend to do some laundry, and then he heads off on yet another trip. Somewhere. But I don't care. I travel places, too. Just today I went to Target. Tomorrow, who knows? I never make plans that far ahead. I go where the wind takes me: grocery store, Trader Joe's, Kohl's...each day is a new adventure.

Susie is insisting on being a pumpkin again for Halloween. We all want her to be a puppy dog, because every kid from Anna on down has worn the puppy dog costume when they were 3 years old (and, hey, I paid all of 3 dollars for it at the local thrift store 12 years ago); but she seems to be intent on breaking with tradition. The kid's a maverick, I tell you.

Sorry, couldn't help it.

I wonder if I could get through the next 29 days without mentioning politics at all? Wouldn't that be refreshing, if election-weary people could come to this blog and count on not hearing anything at all about the Dems or the GOP, no partisan bickering, no hockey mom jokes (like this one)? Just a place where we could all come together as people needing a break from all the name-calling?

We could talk about something innocuous instead. Like, candy, maybe...Yeah, that's it. How about everyone tells me what his/her favorite Halloween candy is. You know, the stuff you grab out of your kids' bags and hide for yourself? We can't fight over candy, can we? I mean, unless you are one of those incompetent lying terrorist-sympathizers who claim to like Butterfingers...

The End of Halloween (I Promise)

Thought I'd grab a moment while the kids continue overdosing on sugar to let everyone know that Halloween here was a rip-roaring success. Larry took the 4 youngest to a zillion houses and they came home bearing approximately 46 pounds of candy each. Which we promptly took away. Just kidding - we waited until they finally went to bed and then we took it away. Except for a few pieces, which they are working on now.

Susie dropped out after about 50 houses and came home and sat on the floor and devoured candy. It was awesome to watch. She ate and ate and ate. At one point, she had 3 different lollipops going, and an open pack of Skittles. What finally slowed her down was when she peed in her (pretty darn absorbent) pumpkin costume.

Anna went trick-or-treating with a neighborhood friend. Because the friend's family is just so cool and not horribly embarrassing like ours. Not that I am bitter or anything.

This morning we walked to the bagel shop for breakfast and the kids picked up dropped candy from the ground. Because they didn't eat enough last night. Happily, they didn't mistake the round piece of dog poop for chocolate.

I chopped up our jack-o-lanterns today - darned if I'm going to let those stupid squirrels eat them instead of us. And before all you slackers start commenting on how you don't even know how to cook pumpkin, let me just point out that it's easy - you hack the pumpkin apart, take off the rind (that's the dark orange part, for you cooking novices out there), and you cut the rest into chunks and throw it in your crockpot on high all day. (Oh, and make sure the crockpot is plugged in. The food cooks faster that way.) That's all there is to it. And it sure beats throwing 20 dollars worth of pumpkins in the trash.

At least, that's how I felt before I spent an hour chopping up one and a half pumpkins and then realized I still had at least 2 hours to go. Now, I'm not so sure. If I'm saving 20 dollars by not throwing out the pumpkins, but it takes me, say, 4 hours (including clean-up) to do it.....that's 5 dollars an hour. I think I'd earn more working at Target, and I'd get an employee discount, too.

But which is better for my career, pumpkin-hacking or customer service? That is the question. I wonder what Hillary would say....

Sugar Babies

I have to say (again) that it is astonishing how many people are (still) googling "tornado costume." And the folks googling it this afternoon are really under the wire, as it were. I should give them the idea we finally came up with, since Brian has decided (are you ready for this?) that he wants to go as a bat after all. A bat. Not a tornado. Larry and I are definitely going to eat that kid's candy first.

So here we are, Halloween day, and the kids are already so sugared up that they can't see straight. For starters, I totally ran out of breakfast comestibles; so I fed them apple pie for breakfast. Then, they spent an hour this morning stuffing candy into treat bags (don't ask why we bother doing that - tradition, all right?) while freely sampling it to make sure it was okay. Later, Rachel bumped her head somehow and got a popsicle, so Brian and Susie had sympathy popsicles - the really junky kind that come in a box of 800 for 2 dollars and are comprised of food coloring and sugar and water. I think I managed to fit some real food in there for lunch, but my friend brought over ghost-shaped marshmallow thingies for dessert. Like bringing coals to Newcastle...

So...only 3 more hours to trick-or-treat. The baby has been screaming for candy pretty much non-stop today, and I myself am on Almond Joy overload. Now everyone is just dancing around in their costumes and asking when they can go out. Even jaded Anna is dressed up (and not as Medusa, as Theo had suggested). Whew - I don't know how much more of this I can take. I didn't even bother planning dinner. Nothing like making the kids sit down and eat something healthy when every other minute someone is at the door asking for candy. It's like trying to have a Weight Watcher's meeting at the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

David's robot costume came out great. All we had to do was cut some armholes in a box and cut a few pieces of dryer duct whaddayacallit, and he did the rest (which, um, fulfills my definition of a great costume, I guess - when the kid does the work). Rachel is a fairy princess or whatever you call a person wearing a very pink, floaty dress with a pointy pink hat. And toddling Susie is a round little pumpkin. But she refuses to put any clothes on underneath the pumpkin costume. Which makes it fairly risque (I mean, for a pumpkin) - spaghetti straps that tie into bows on the shoulders and nothing on the legs. Aside from the fact that I worry she will be too cold, I don't want to be one of those accused of sexualizing little kids' Halloweens. One minute they're innocently dressing as almost naked pumpkins; and before you know it, they're pole-dancing for college spending money. It's a slippery slope, isn't it?

Theo is thinking of dressing up, too - as a plumber (what can I say? Rachel's antics last year have really inspired him, career-wise). Why should he go to college, he wonders, if he can make all that money fixing toilets?

Time to go whip up some chocolate bars for dinner.

Rite of Passage

Okay, let's just try to forget about Halloween and tornado costumes and half-eaten bags of candy pumpkins that the trick-or-treaters are never going to see - just for a little bit, okay? The holiday excitement here has reached a fever pitch, and I need a little break.

So....Sunday I took my son Theo out with his brand-new driver's permit. Theo is my oldest, which means that this was a brand-new experience for me. Nothing, I mean, nothing - not getting married, not giving birth, not realizing that you like to go to sleep by 9:30 - nothing makes you feel as suddenly, irretrievably aged as putting your first-born baby boy behind the wheel of an honest-to-goodness motor vehicle. My brain essentially flipped itself inside out trying to comprehend how, in a time span encompassing approximately 15.8 seconds, I went from trying to figure out how to buckle in Theo's infant car seat to showing him how to adjust the driver's side mirror. I know you parents out there who have already been through this are smirking and saying, "Novice!", just as I do when I read about some young parent worrying about how to make a 2-year-old behave; but, dear Lord, how did this happen? Where did the time go? How did I get so old?

Okay, okay, I'm going to calm down. I am glad to report that I only slammed on the imaginary brake once (okay, twice) during the entire 2-hour session. Although I noticed, once I pried my clenched fingers off it, that the passenger-assist handle that Honda thoughtfully places above the passenger-side door seems to have worked itself a bit loose. Theo had a great time and asked lots of questions, such as "If the speedometer goes up to 120, does that mean the car can go that fast?" (Over your dead body) and "Gee, can we go out on the road now?" (No, not until you learn to stop the car before the stop sign). And the whole time I was thinking, "There are 5 more kids after this one. I cannot survive this." We did leave the nice, big, safe parking lot to go out on the road (the very untrafficked side roads) at the end, with me praying that he wouldn't slam into someone's parked Volvo or Lexus (we live in an affluent neighborhood, and no, I don't know why they let trailer trash like us own a home here, either). I didn't let him go over 25 mph (let's face it, it's my one and only chance to control how he drives). We made it home, in one piece and undented, but I feel as though I aged 10 years.

I have a child that drives. I am officially old.

Problem Solved

Larry attempted to construct a wearable tornado for Brian yesterday. Not wanting to get in the way, I took Theo out in the car with his brand-new driver's permit (that's another post - I haven't gotten to the point where I can talk about it yet.) Anyway, we came home, 2 hours and one undented car later (whew!), to find Larry and Brian gone, and a heap of tangled plastic fencing lying on the living room floor. I correctly deduced that Plan A had failed and that they had gone off to Home Depot to purchase materials for Plan B (have I mentioned that we spend more on Halloween than we do on Christmas around here?). Anyway, they returned bearing....weed barrier. Yup. I must have looked a little concerned, because Larry said, "See? No problem - we'll just wrap this stuff around him and we'll have a tornado!" Okay.

10 minutes later, poor little Brian (peering uncertainly out of the small space left for his face) looked as though he was wearing a burka. Or maybe he was trying to dress like a mummy wearing a burka. "Don't worry," Larry reassured me. "Once we tape a few plastic animals and some toy cars to it, it will look like a tornado." At this point I had to say, "Um, no, it will look like someone wearing a burka with toy animals and cars taped to it. And someone will think we are making some weird political statement about American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, I don't think so..."

Apparently, this was just the out Larry was looking for, because he sort of threw his hands up in the air and exclaimed, "Fine! You figure something out then!" May I just point out here that Larry was the one who encouraged Brian in his tornado imaginings? I wanted the kid to be a bat, a costume we already have.

Are irreconcilable costume differences ever stated as grounds for a marital breakup? I wouldn't be surprised.

Anyway, I dashed out to Michael's for a dollar's worth of posterboard and we cut out sort of a tornado shape to hang around Brian's neck and explained to him that we would glue the toy animals and cars onto that, and that's when he started to cry. And he asked why we couldn't make the costume the way he wanted to do it. Which was, it turns out, devastatingly simple. And, no, I don't know why neither of us asked him in the first place.

So on Wednesday night, Brian will go out happily attired in the aforementioned bat costume, with cotton balls taped all over the hood (it's a cloud, see?) and animals and cars and such taped all over the cape/wings and he'll be able to twirl around and pretend he is a tornado, and that is all he ever wanted to do in the first place. And, boy, do we feel stupid.

Maybe I can e-bay the plastic fencing and the weed barrier, and buy Larry some beer with the money. Then maybe he'll start talking to me again.

Butterflies are made to fly....

Well, I seem to have tapped into some cultural zeitgeist for Halloween here. You would not believe how many people out there are googling "tornado costume" (and landing on my blog). Larry's still working on the costume concept here - he hauled home some heavy-duty plastic fencing from Home Depot. I think chicken wire would have been more malleable, but Larry said it was too sharp. To which I said, "So?" These kids should suffer a little for all that candy, don't you think so?

Where was I? Oh, yes, so today Larry was attempting to demonstrate how he was going to make this not very bendy fencing into a tornado costume by wrapping it around Brian's body, like so (and here he executed a very interesting pirouette while attempting to surround himself with the aforementioned material and I still can't believe I didn't have the camera handy). It's always a little scary when Larry takes over the costume design. Maybe it's a guy thing, but he heads to Home Depot instead of Michael's and tends to end up constructing costumes that are, well, very heavy-duty. The year Anna (age 8 or so) wanted to be a butterfly is a good example. Larry obtained some very heavy cardboard and cut out wings and spray painted the whole thing yellow and black (he even studied a picture of a tiger swallowtail in our butterfly book for guidance); in short, he worked a long time and made some very impressive-looking butterfly wings which spanned about 3 feet across and over 2 feet from top to bottom. He then proceeded to fasten them to Anna's little back by securing them with some heavy duty cables around her tiny waist, at which point, of course, she burst into tears. Because the costume didn't exude that flitty, floaty butterfly effect that she was after. She ended up wearing it (what choice did she have, after all the work that went into it?), but we had a real problem with her knocking smaller trick-or-treaters over with the wings as she turned around on people's front steps. And she never dared ask to be a butterfly again.

So, I'm really curious to see what Larry comes up with this time. Whatever it is, you can rest assured that it will be sturdy. And original. Stay tuned....

Why Hillary Clinton Envies Me

After an entire day of being sick, Anna woke up yesterday morning and was downright pleasant to her siblings. It was scary, because it means that the real Anna is trapped in that teenager's body somewhere, and she can't get out. Not for any real length of time, anyway. All day, as she got better and better (physically), she got worse and worse, demeanor-wise. But it was nice for at least 2 hours. I've got to take what I can get.

I was a good mother and made chicken soup for my recovering sickie. Now we're just waiting for David and Larry to come down with this bug. I wish they would hurry up, because my best friend refuses to come into my house until they do.

I managed to escape for 2 whole hours this evening to attend a Stitch 'n' B...ch (I'm not a prig, I just don't want to lose the G-rating on this blog) near my house. Everyone was nice there; in fact, I've yet to meet a nasty knitter. People were showing off their expensive sock yarn; they even let me (a perfect stranger) fondle it. (Believe me, if you had seen it, you'd have wanted to fondle it, also.) Then I went back to knitting with my $2.50-a-skein-with-the-40%-coupon yarn that I buy at the local Michael's. And they didn't even reject me. Whew - I guess snobby knitters are rare, also.

It has forgotten how to rain. That is the only explanation for the weather we are having here. The plus side of our drought is that we haven't been tormented by Asian tiger mosquitoes all summer and fall; the down side (and you knew there had to be one, didn't you?) is that some weird species of cricket is moving into everyone's basements and utility rooms looking for water. Good Lord, I hate bugs. Especially ones that jump and can land in my hair. It's a girl thing.

I still haven't figured out how to turn Brian into a tornado for Halloween, and none of you are any help. And, yes, I know that it would be fun to glue little plastic animals and houses and cars all over the outside of his costume - but I need the body of his costume first. Somehow, I don't think that even the God Google can help me. We've got the hat figured out, at least - something that we can glue cotton all over and pretend it's a cloud. Now, don't steal that idea. It's ours.

Chicken soup, yarn, bugs, costumes - yes, I lead a breathtakingly inconsequential life. It's an art. And you're just jealous. I bet Hillary Clinton is secretly dying to be me. I'm sure she can't even make a simple visit to Target without being hounded by all sorts of important people - and there's no way she could take 4 kids to the snack counter and feed them all on one 1-dollar bag of popcorn, without the media raising a fuss. But I can, Hillary! I've got it all!

Hmm, maybe I could make money by letting people be me for a day. Then they'd pay me to take my life back. It's harder than it looks, you know.

Sweatshirts and Socks and Halloween Rocks!

I don't know what's with that title - I just wanted it to rhyme.

What can I say? I lost my bet. Larry's b'day passed uneventfully, and I still owe him a cake (I didn't bother making one, I was so sure he'd be sick). We're not out of the woods here, yet; but it sure is nice to get a little break. I'm sure everyone reading this thinks so too.

Fall blew in with a blast here - we went from hot humid weather to wearing sweatshirts and jeans in less than 24 hours. And we're loving it. Well, except Susie, who of course has no memory of wearing anything but sandals on her cute little feet; it took quite a bit of strong-arming her (okay, actually, I used candy) to get her socks and sneakers on.

To add a little excitement to our day, we emptied out Larry's sock drawer of all the change he dumps in it and took the money to the coin-sorting machine (free!) at our credit union. Then we placed bets on what the total would be. We also watched the TV there (Over the Hedge was playing) and picked up some lollipops (green). A good time was had by all. Hard to believe that other people pay money to amuse their children.

Halloween looms on the horizon, and Brian wants to be a tornado and David wants to be a robot. I have 3 perfectly good pirate capes and no one wants to wear them. I guess making the boys be pirates 2 or 3 years in a row sort of burned them out on a life of nautical skulduggery. But they're such great capes! I'll save them for Rachel and Susie. The girls will cooperate, as long as they can twirl around and make the capes swirl prettily.

Anna made apple pie again today, apparently in an attempt to make me fat. I told you she has it in for me. She also got up early (for her). I don't know what's going on. She didn't even try yelling at me or muttering "I hate you" at me without moving her lips, as is her wont. Was the past year all a dream? Or is this the dream? Maybe it's all just shadows on a cave wall.....

Bad Craziness

I've lost track of the time, I've been so busy unstuffing toilets and pulling scissors out of Rachel's hands. What a little monster - she sneaked into Anna's room and tore the covers off 3 of her textbooks and hid the innards in Theo's bureau drawer. In case you're wondering why she did that, please think - could there possibly be any reasonable answer to that question? Of course not. And yes, she's been getting plenty of positive attention (in between punishments for her various misdemeanors) and yes, she still loves Susie. So you can all quit your amateur psychoanalyzing and accept the basic chaotic nature of the universe, all right? Sheesh.

Well, the basic chaotic nature of my universe, anyway.

In between all the craziness, I'm expected to start dreaming up Halloween costumes for everyone. The boys have informed me that they don't want to be pirates for the 4th year in a row. So we're going to make scarecrow costumes for them. That will be a piece of cake compared to what Anna wants - she and her best friend want to dress as Turkish harem girls (G-rated version, of course). We were looking for costume patterns and ideas on the web together (this was back when Anna was still talking to me, by the way). A word to the wise - never google "slave costume" while your teenage daughter is sitting at the computer with you.

It doesn't matter now, anyway - Anna has gone back to hating all of us all the time, so she's on her own for Halloween. Basically, we don't let her do what she wants whenever she wants - aren't we mean? I comfort myself with the thought that I have 2 other daughters who may grow up to love me (well, if Rachel isn't sent away to reform school). The oldest girl is just a prototype anyway - the beta model, if you will.

Our next-door neighbors are still trying to sell their house. They seem desperate to get away from us - they've already dropped the price 100,000 dollars. I blame the killer apple tree; Larry seems to think it has something to do with the junk heap of assorted plastic riding toys which populate our front patio. Or the childish screams emanating from the open front door all hours of the day and night. Or maybe Theo's mess of an experimental container garden littering the back deck. All of the above, perhaps? I guess when our neighbors paid almost half-a-million dollars for their place 2 years ago, they didn't expect to be living next-door to the Trailer Park Family from Hell. Real estate is full of surprises, isn't it?

Well, here's to October! I for one am looking forward to some real fall weather finally and the traditional autumn activities that go with it: drinking fresh apple cider, carving ridiculously elaborate jack-o-lanterns (we're going high-tech this year - we've got a CD-Rom of pumpkin patterns), and eating the kids' Halloween candy while they sleep. Especially Rachel's.

Halloween, Etc.

Well, Halloween passed uneventfully. We had 2 pirates, 1 damsel, a dalmatian, a bat, and a pumpkin this year. Rachel (the dalmatian - and a very cute one, at that) almost backed out at the last minute, as the first trick-or-treater to show up at our door was a 9-year-old Grim Reaper. We had to unmask him in order to persuade Rachel to stop screaming and come out of the hall closet. Larry took all my candy and brought it to his office. When I asked him to bring back some of my chocolate, he said that two really fat women in his office had eaten all of it. I think he's trying to tell me something.

Anna is perennially annoyed at me now. This morning she was annoyed because I asked her to come back down and throw out the potato peels from the potatoes she had just peeled for me. Then she got more annoyed because I told her to change the garbage bag, since she had left the peels mounded so high the lid on the can wouldn't even close. I am so mean. Today is her day to do the dishes, too. I can't wait.

As if having a 12-year-old girl isn't bad enough, I have an 8-year-old boy who suddenly thinks that he shouldn't do anything he doesn't want to. But that's okay. It may be sadistic, but Larry and I will really enjoy, um, persuading David that, yes, he actually does want to do everything we ask of him, even the unreasonable requests such as not screaming at the table and being polite to his parents. In fact, I have reason to believe that shortly he will be downright eager to say "Yes, Ma'am" and "No, Sir" and to stop acting as though everyone closest to him is his worst enemy.

Do I sound fed up or what? I can't believe that kid is stupid enough to mess with me.

Okay, I'll stop. It's raining now, and rapidly turning colder, and we all know what that means. Well, maybe we don't. It means, tonight is the night the mice come in seeking shelter from the elements. We're ready for them this year, though - traps are set, waiting to be deployed. I don't need any extra creatures living in this house at this time, pooping all over the place and making a nuisance of themselves. We have enough of that type already. Meaning, yes, we have made absolutely no progress with Rachel's toileting habits. I think I'll just work on Susie; if she learns, perhaps Rachel will be shamed into it. Who would want to be outdone by a 6-month-old?

You know, reading over this scribble has me thinking that Larry and I really need to get away for a bit. Anyone want to come babysit? It'll be easy - really.

Of Costumes and Commodes

Relatives are visiting (ain't we got fun?). Larry's sister Kate is here, which means all the little ones are sitting around wielding crochet hooks and other implements of destruction. She brought Grandma with her. Grandma is prefacing everything she says with "I may be repeating myself, but..." Yes. Indeed, yes. Most emphatically, yes.

Anna's Halloween costume (a damsel dress) is progressing well, thanks to Auntie. If she hadn't showed up to help, Anna would have been stuck with wrapping herself in old newspapers and going trick-or-treating as the Goddess of Recycling. Or perhaps as an order of fish-and-chips. Or the floor of a bird cage, even. The possibilities are endless, if you simply use your imagination.

I have officially given up - I do not know how to potty-train a child. I am open to any and all suggestions that may help Rachel to kick her diaper habit. (And, no, the suggestions may not involve the use of duct tape.) I just read an article in The New York Times (see - I can still read) claiming that the fashion now is to toilet-train one's infant, before it develops that nasty and expensive dependency on diapers. One mother is quoted as saying that she has a much better relationship with her 10-week-old now that she has learned to read his cues which signal his need to poop or pee. May I humbly suggest that there is one woman with way too much time on her hands? Anyway, it's too late for Rachel, who apparently (at this late age) needs some sort of 12-Step program in order to graduate to undies.

Rachel has commandeered a camping lantern for her bed (battery-operated, don't worry). "See, Brian," she showed her brother. "This is my lighttern." "No, Rachel," he sagely corrected her. "That is a lamptern." Despite their differing opinions on most things linguistic, theirs is a mostly harmonious relationship. Oh, Rachel does swat Brian on the head with her little purse from time to time; but he's taking Tae Kwan Do 3 times a week now, so he should be able to defend himself pretty soon.

Until next time...