Halloween 2012

I don't often admit to having married a facsimile of my father, but Tim is not yet willing to turn on the heat.  Does it have to be December?  I don't know.  It's been below freezing for a few nights in a row.  I have to bribe Jack Peter to get out of bed by putting his school uniform in the dryer to tempt him with warmth.  My father used to keep the house at 62 degrees during the day, but just before bed I'd catch him poised in front of the thermostat.  His glasses would be tilted forward on his nose so he could peer over the tops to discern the numbers.  He'd whistle quietly as he turned the dial down making the sound of a bomb plummeting from the clouds punctuating the desired mid 50's number with the explosion sound straight off of the Road Runner/Wiley Coyote sound track.

Speaking of cartoons, Steel just looked at the image of the Disney store Dory costume and said, rightly, "She looks like a duck."  What she meant to say was, "Mom, the Disney store can kiss your ass!"  Is my Halloween costume intensity purely motivated by a competitive spirit?  Is it directed at the Disney store or the world at large?  I like making stuff, but I am always keen to share my creations with everyone.  I was raised to be ashamed of my competitive spirit. I love it when people are unabashedly competitive.  My friend, Safeena was going to a "paint your own pottery" bridal shower.  She called me in for a pre-party consultation.  "Liz, I want mine to be the best.  How do I do it?"  I told her to make an asymmetrical bold pattern go off of the edge of the plate.  "Liz, I CRUSHED it!  Mine was definitely the best!"  That bridal shower didn't know what hit it.

People always say to me, "You're not a potter; you're an artist!"  I insist that I am a potter.  Maybe I'll just start saying, I'm a potter now, but I aspire to be a foam and duct tape artist.  My Halloween insanity often inspires exclamations from other moms, "You make me feel so BAD!  I just went to Walmart for Halloween costumes!"  Ummmm....so you bought your kids the costume they really wanted and then you had a month to pay attention to them rather than sequestering yourself with a bunch of foam and spray paint while screaming at them, "DON'T TOUCH THAT!!!"   You're the bad parent????  .


I wonder if it's going to be annoying for Steel or fun to have her birthday fall on Halloween.  She does get extra candy when she tells people it's her birthday, but what good is that going to do her?  We dump it all into a bowl and put it high up on a shelf.  It usually lasts till Easter.  This year it seems to be dwindling faster.  Tim and I are doing most of the damage after they go to sleep while we watch dumb things on Netflix.  Our morning routine is so ridiculous and yet, we still can't pry ourselves away from each other, the Halloween candy, alcohol and bad films to get over 7 hours of sleep.

A friend of mine is reading an historical novel about Elizabeth I.  She was pleased to read that mothers of 500 years ago also relished their wine after a day of taking care of their children.  Was alcohol created to deal with children or was it created to create children?  It's one of those chicken and egg questions.  Which came first the children or the booze?  All I can say is that I definitely needed a drink after taking them trick-or-treating.  Toby refused to wear her Dory costume and wanted me to carry it and her for most of the night.  It was freezing out.  She should have wanted to wear it for the warmth alone, but she's been inured to the cold by her obsessed-with-passive-house architect father.