Oh, Hell - You Bet!

I managed to escape to our neighborhood Bunko game yesterday evening, despite Larry's sudden home improvement attack. (Or, perhaps, because of it - who knows?) We needed more players, so we recruited 2 husbands (not mine - he was home, wreaking yet more destruction upon our erstwhile habitable kitchen). We still didn't have enough people, so the 2 guys, rebelling against the feminine aura of Bunko, dragooned us into playing a card game called "Oh, Hell." Which would have been a lot of fun, if I hadn't lost. Badly. Never play someone else's game - not when there's money involved, anyway.

So, anyway, after the game and drinks and food, I invited people over to our house so they could witness just what "irreconcilable differences" look like. Larry was still hacking away with his crowbar and some weird sort of electric saw that he had just bought that day at Home Depot. He really needed it, he said, to do the job right. Hey, I really need a chef and a maid to do my job right, but is he spending money on that? I don't think so.

I'll give him credit - he stayed up half the night, and he worked in the kitchen this morning before he went to work. Apparently, he does have some sense of urgency about this project. Maybe he even detects that I am unhappy. But, of course, that theory doesn't explain why he would leave the refrigerator in the dining room for the foreseeable future, now does it?

It's that time - baths, dinner, books, bed, go!

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....