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....

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.