Are We Done Yet?

Yesterday we had our annual gingerbread house party, otherwise known as the "Sugar Extravaganza." By mid-afternoon, I could no longer see straight and was thinking of calling some EMT's to bring me a dose of insulin. The kids, of course, were fine. They had a blast creating all sorts of graham cracker structures and plastering them with Skittles and gumdrops and marshmallows and....now the headache is coming back. Oy.

I was preparing to take snapshots of the finished houses when I realized I needed to take a closer look. You see, I could tell that David had added a little "garage" onto his edifice, but what was that mess in the driveway? A dramatic scene unveiled itself: a graham cracker car with a green gummy bear caught halfway underneath it and (get this) a yellow gummy bear (apparently the driver) standing next to the victim, looking as puzzled as a gelatinous piece of candy can look.

It's always the quiet kids you have to watch, you know?

I've been married to Larry for 17 years now. And I have been Christmas shopping all month. So it is a tad surprising that I found myself at a quarter to closing time in an upscale supermarket on Christmas Eve, searching frantically for a couple of Christmas presents for my husband. He is now the proud owner of a Christmas mug (4 for 3 dollars!) and a rechargeable flashlight that you have to crank. Lord knows what I would get for someone I didn't know.

A pack of batteries, maybe; those are useful.

At least Larry doesn't feel any pressure, gift-giving-wise. It would be hard for him not to top a 75-cent mug. And I did almost buy him one of those digital keychains that shows off pictures of your kids; but I didn't think he wanted the stress of figuring out how to make it work, as it involved USB cables.

Am I the only one who is glad that Christmas is almost over? We had 2 families over today for dinner, and we're exhausted. Theo has the bronchitis/cold/whatever now, so I was down one major helper in the kitchen. I still feel like hell. I hope we didn't infect all our guests. Merry Christmas! Have some Kleenex! Ricola cough drops, anyone?

Santa left little stuffed puppies for Rachel and Susie, and some rubber-band-propelled airplanes for David and Brian. Also some oranges and candy canes. And glitter glue pens. Santa is a real cheapskate around our house. But price doesn't matter, because these items were from the North Pole and were therefore very special. Now if I could just convince Larry that his mug came from the North Pole also, I'd have it made.

The children's Aunt Mary sent a Christmas card that sings "Deck the Halls" whenever you open it. Which is quite frequently, if there are little kids in the house. As in, I'm beginning to hate that song.

We meant to watch It's a Wonderful Life today, but we ran out of time. So that (and nothing else) is on the agenda for tomorrow. I can't wait.

The Way We Were

Anna asked me to take her shoe-shopping this evening, and she was shocked, shocked, to hear me say, "No." The floor of her room is still littered with the refuse from her tantrum last night, including broken shards of plastic and approximately a zillion teeny tiny beads that fell victim to her indignation at being made to catch up on her geometry assignments. It would also be nice if she put the sheets on her bed. I am quite the exacting housekeeper.

I hope that these Anna stories make someone feel better, just knowing that at least his/her teen doesn't act this way. Somebody has to benefit from this craziness. So go ahead, pat yourself on the back at my expense. I don't mind.

We're still coming down from the candy high which was engendered by the holiday-that-must-not-be-named-again-in-this-blog-until-next-October. Rachel wept all through dinner because Brian still had 4 Skittles left and she had nothing. It is beyond my organization skills to make sure that my kids all eat their candy at the same rate. I may be a control freak, but I still have to draw the line somewhere.

I just finished uploading all my photos (a conservative estimate puts the number at 2000) from the entire year onto Snapfish. Now I have to edit them. I really don't know how I fell this far behind. I didn't even have a baby this year. Maybe if I give up sleep....

Wait, I've already done that. Oh, dear. Maybe I should give up the digital camera instead. With film, I didn't have this many pictures to deal with. Remember film? How every event pretty much amounted to 24 snapshots, and at least 8 of those weren't any good? And you didn't know that until you paid for them? Now film photography seems as quaint as driving around with a horse and buggy. Or listening to lp's. Remember those?

I'm feeling nostalgic for simpler times tonight. For lousy photographs and scratched records, ugly Tupperware and boring evenings when there was nothing good on all 3 channels. We had some tough times back in the 70's, even without Watergate hearings pre-empting all the Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe I'll wake up the kids and tell them that. But I know they won't believe me. They don't even believe I was ever a kid. Heck, I don't believe it myself. It used to be that having children made me feel young. But now it does the opposite. Can someone explain that, please?

It occurs to me that I could get more photos edited if I didn't persist in wasting time maundering on about my own mortality. Let me test that theory. Good night, all!

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.