Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I am thankful for my awesome husband, my beautiful daughter, the tiny little baby that's been growing inside me for these past twelve weeks, my wonderful family, and my fabulous friends. I have so many great people in my life and I love you all.

I am less than thankful for the maternity jeans I had to break down and get out of storage this morning. I don't fit into any of my old jeans anymore, but I don't look pregnant yet. I just look fat. Still, the elastic waistband should be useful this afternoon. ;-)

Halloween Is Too Much Effort

I haven't been interested in Halloween in a long time. I think the last time I actually got into a costume and went trick or treating, I was still in elementary school. Maybe middle school. I don't remember exactly when or why I lost interest in trick or treating.

In high school, we got to dress up on Halloween at work, so I got a costume to wear solely to get out of wearing my lame teal smock. I think I even remembered to wear it to work one year. I did go trick or treating my freshman year, but I didn't wear a costume and it was really more of an excuse to hang out late with my boyfriend and some of our friends. We just walked around the neighborhood and every now and again one of us would go up to a door and try to get someone to give us candy. We weren't even pranksters or troublemakers.

Clearly we missed every possible point of the holiday.

My freshman year of college I put together a crap last minute costume with random bits from my closet and walked around the dorm with some friends of mine. Then some idiot kicked open a door right into one of them and might have broken her toe (I remember she was hurt, but I don't remember the specifics. Hell, I don't even remember which friend. I'm pretty sure it wasn't me.) and that pretty much put an end to our evening.

My first senior year, a coworker made me a really awesome holocaust cloak. I worked the graveyard shift at Walgreens and Halloween morning actually ended up being my last night there. I got to stalk the aisles and scare the crap out of unsuspecting customers at 4AM. It was kind of nice.

Sadly, I don't have it anymore. Oh what I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak!

Later, when Lee and I had way more free time than we do now and were significantly more careless with our money, we celebrated October 31st with a dinner at The Meting Pot. We called it NaNoWeen and we went there because it was likely to be the last time either of us got to have a long, leisurely meal with conversation not centered around word counts and plot canyons and stubborn characters until NaNoWriMo ended.

Even though we were almost never home on Halloween, I also always picked up a bag of candy at Walmart just in case some stray trick or treaters
happened by. Which they never do, by the way. We've lived in apartments for the last decade. Even apartment complexes where children live don't ever seem to get trick or treaters. I guess all those kids get driven over to someone else's neighborhood or the mall or something.

Candy for me! See, I don't have to go trick or treating. I get a whole bag of candy I picked out myself instead.

Costumed against my will
two years ago

Two years ago, I was costumed against my will by some friends of mine who are far more interested in the holiday than I am. Well, not really "against my will". It's not like they tied me up and painted my face or anything. But I had no plans regarding wearing a costume when I got to Kalayna's house and somehow I left in a wig and cloak.

That is about the extent of my life's Halloween participation, and I think it's totally fine. I'm not opposed to the holiday. I'm not against it or anything. I'm just not interested.

Except now I'm a mom.

Look! I'm dressed up as the
mother of an adorable baby!

I got away with just putting Lizzie in a cute onesie last year, because she was eight weeks old and clearly too
young to go anywhere or do anything festive. People actually appreciated the fact that I wasn't using my newborn to scam a bunch of free candy. Yeah, I was totally just being conscientious. Not lazy at all. I was thinking of others.

But Lizzie is now one year old. It's not like she's going to remember this Halloween or anything. But people kept asking me what she was dressing up as, assuming I had a costume all picked out for her already because OF COURSE she would be dressing up for Halloween.

Um... I confess that I sort of knew we were going to have to start celebrating Halloween and stuff with her, but I figured it wouldn't start until she could actually say the words "trick or treat". Apparently not.

So she has a costume. It's a black cat costume. I tossed out the completely wrong, highly whoreish dress that came with the costume and replaced it with a plain black shirt and skirt. I got myself a hat, wig, and cloak so I can be her witch. We are officially doing the Halloween thing this year.

Then I started looking into what it is people actually do for Halloween these days, because they clearly don't trick or treat in apartment complexes. Apparently people do EVERYTHING for Halloween. For WEEKS. There are events at every mall in town, the parks, and even the zoo. Haunted houses and corn mazes abound. (I seriously don't understand the draw of a corn maze. But then I don't particularly like spending time on farms, so that might have something to do with it.) And apparently no one actually trick or treats on Halloween anymore. Neighborhoods have signs that announce what day and time the trick or treating will take place, because it can't be on the actual day of the holiday anymore for some reason.

Look, I broke down and got costumes dammit. Why does the rest of it have to be so freaking complicated?