Tag Archives: Halloween

Part Two: The Night Of The Living Helicopter Parents

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This post continues where my previous one left off. If you do not share a minimum of 25% of either my DNA or aren’t a close family friend, you’re probably going to find this as boring as watching competitive cross stitch competitions. I suggest you bail now. Unless you have insomnia in which case- you’re welcome. Now you can save that Xanax for a night when you truly need it.

After the mall, we quickly hopped back into the bike to go see all of our three year old’s favourite decorations. In addition to hugging the blow up cats, monkeys and Halloween dogs, Mini-Tex of course had to tell each inflatable a story, and ask them questions. Thus started the routine of the evening, where the homeowner would come to the door after hearing voices, then stand and watch as our son mauled their decorations with hugs. The candy bearers were quite patient- they’d stand there for five minutes.

Mini-Tex, having finished his job of hugging the inflatable decorations, would head back to the bike to be ferried onto the next set of blow up decorations to be hugged, leaving the puzzled homeowner to wave their candy at him from the door. One woman even chucked a bag of chips at our bike when she realized that we weren’t going to come to her door. Mini-Tex’s entire raison d’etre was the decorations. The candy was a nice but completely unnecessary addition.

There were at least a dozen houses that we visited where we didn’t even bother ringing the doorbell. We just left. So this totally solidified our son’s assumption that Halloween was all about kissing and making friends with inflatable lawn ornaments.

Something you’ve undoubtedly realized is- I love Halloween. I don’t love getting dressed up. I don’t love decorating my house but I adore watching a parade of little people live out their dreams for one night. I’ve spent many years living in accommodations that children would never visit; above a doctor’s office, in apartment buildings, the list goes on. In the past, I’ve found friends who were willing to host me for the night. “I’ll bring the candy and dinner, you just have to let me squat in your front entrance for the evening” was always my agreement.

In the absence of trick or treaters, I’ve even been the creepy lady sticking her head out the front door when a group appears down the street, yelling at the children “I have candy! Lots of candy!” And it’s true, I heap the sugar upon the little people, like I’m at a costumed strip club and making it rain Hersheys. Wow. I just took an already awkward interaction and made it worse.

I ask every little person, “And what are you?” with all of the earnestness of Mr. Rogers. I fawn, I high five, I tell the trick or treaters how pretty/spooky/imaginative they are. Heck, I even like the sullen teenagers in plain clothes who show up at ten o’clock at night. The point is: I truly love Halloween.

Having now taken an adorable little person around for all Hallows Eve, it turns out- I’m not the only one.

Tex and I came up with a game plan while our son was napping. Start at the mall, bike to the opposite side of the city and make our way back to our house stopping at only the high yield houses. Meaning the houses with either three blow up decorations or more, or the ones with super neat decorations. For example the house with what looked like an ordinary inflatable giant pumpkin but actually played Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and had lights on the inside so the face of the Jack-o-lantern changed making it appear that the pumpkin was singing the music. That was cool. We spent ten minutes camped out on that person’s lawn dancing and whooping it up. We wanted to see every one of those places in town.

This meant that there was a little old lady who watched our trio go from well decorated house to well decorated house on her street. She had gotten into the spirit, but her decorations were small and dated. Also it was getting late. Abruptly, as we were about to walk up her driveway, I insisted we return to our bike and head to a warm place to give Mini-Tex dinner. My husband agreed and we turned around. The lady watched forlornly from her window as we walked away. Once it became clear that we were about to leave, she ran out onto her porch waving a giant bag of candy. “Don’t I get to see the little one?” she cried.

I felt awful. Not just because I had now seen myself in thirty years’ time, but because I was disappointing a woman who was the spitting image of a grandmother stereotype; the kind of lumpy figure that gives out amazing hugs, short cut hair curled perfectly with rollers that she sleeps in and wire frame spectacles. She was even wearing a grandma style sweatshirt.

The problem with driving a bike is that you can’t roll up your windows or make a fast getaway. “Get pedaling” I hissed at Tex as the septuagenarian contemplated whether she was going to run down the street after us. We waved jauntily as we cycled away, watching the poor old lady deflate like a balloon after a birthday party in the bike’s rearview mirror. Apparently there are people who love this holiday as much as I do.

Luckily the hospital where Tex works is halfway in between our house and the opposite side of the city. I was on the verge of hypothermia while Tex was on the verge of a meltdown from too many layers. He quickly shucked a shirt and long johns so I could put them on. In the meantime, Mini-Tex was having the dinner of his life, sausage pieces with a side of Smarties and juice to wash it down.

Juice is not a beverage that makes an appearance in our household. Ever. It is also heavy, relative to chips. It was decided, in the interest of storage space and weight, that we would open every juice box that Mini-Tex had been given up to that point. So for dinner he had a smorgasbord of juice. Between that and the dual parent dressing moment earlier, Tex and I should get an award. I’m not sure which one- whatever the parenting version of a Razzie is likely.

By the time we finished our dinner, it was seven. Reasonable, good parents would have recognized that the evening had been sufficiently fun and called it a night. But as established by our actions, we are not those people. So back into the bike we went, to hug the mummy blow up and shake the hand of the baby monster. Tex wins an additional award for not tripping over the thousands of guide wires securing the nine blow up decorations at the mummy house as he lifted our son from one decoration to another in the pitch black garden.

It was shortly after that when I realize that although we had put out a giant bowl of candy next to our three pumpkins for trick-or-treaters, I had neglected to turn on the porch light because it was four o’clock in the afternoon when we left. Meaning that, at the end of the night, we would return to a giant bowl of candy.

After a quick stop to hug the moving, fake fire breathing dragon, we headed home. Oh sorry, dragon-food eating dragon. Weeks ago, while I was strapping my three year old into the bike after visiting the library across the street from the dragon, Mini-Tex asked me “What is the dragon eating?” not realizing that there was something in the dragon’s mouth, I gave him what seemed like an obvious answer- dragon-food. Then of course we rode by the house and I realized that the dragon was breathing fire. But by then the damage had be done and the fire was henceforth known as “dragon-food”. No amount of correcting could convince our son otherwise.

Tex pedaled us quickly across town and I ran into our house to refill the candy bowl a bit and turn on the light.

OK, rant. What happened to all the greedy little miscreants who empty candy bowls? I was depending on them! Otherwise I wouldn’t have purchased three boxes of treats. I swear every single kid must have respectfully taken one lone piece and left the rest. Who raised these excessively polite children with endless reserves of willpower?  What is our world coming to when we can’t rely on the candy grubbing nature of the youth?

Also, I forgot the part when we stopped at the local nursing home. When my grandmother was alive, despite how desperately painful and embarrassing the experience was due to my toddler’s behaviour, I would always bring Mini-Tex to visit her. Little kids bring old people joy. Small children dressed up for any reason bring lots of joy. So we stopped at the local nursing home. As it turned out, we entered through the dementia wing just as they were sitting down to dinner. Mini-Tex wandered around and said “Hello” to all of the residents. They were delighted. One of them was blind so the nurse described all of our costumes to him.

Then we went and knocked on the individual doors of people still living independently in the home. Tragically most of the residents were verging on deaf and didn’t hear us. (Or didn’t want a visit.) But the couple elderly people we saw were happy. Though they felt guilty about not having candy which we reassured them wasn’t the purpose of our visit.

By this point in the evening, Mini-Tex was still excited but wilting. All the other little people and their responsible parents had returned home. But we continued to cycle around the city because gosh darn it, I was going to get my money’s worth out of that fifteen dollar Olaf costume from Kjiji. Also we had yet to visit the street with the ghost that jumps out of the pumpkin or the house with the spider on the roof.

It was around this time that Tex and I decided to forgo the candy part entirely. People had once again filled our son’s decorative pumpkin basket to the brim and we were running short on toddler energy. After terrifying our offspring by holding him up to touch the peekaboo ghost, we headed for the house with the giant tarantula.

Mini-Tex was beginning to look like Olaf in summer; he became a puddle of costume and snowsuit. “Do you want to see the spider on the roof?” I asked. “No” came his terse, small reply. That was it; we had maxed out our toddler’s love of inflatable decorations. Tex and I concluded that it was time to go home. The problem was that we had agreed to visit friends of ours.

As quickly as he could, Tex cycled past the spider house. In spite of his exhaustion, our son did get out and hug both Jack Skellington and Darth Vader along the way. We quickly popped by our friends’ homes and headed home.

Then on our way home it happened. The event we had been dreading. We live in a small town. Meaning there is a small police force so we NEVER see the police. While we wear our helmets religiously, much to our son’s chagrin, on this night none of us wore one. Wearing a helmet would have mussed my do, prevented Tex from wearing his Kristoff hat and wouldn’t have fit under Mini-Tex’s Olaf costume. Even still, during the afternoon, Tex had placed our son’s helmet in the bike because it is the law for children to wear head protection while cycling.

As we were pulling away from our friend’s house, coming in the opposite direction was an RCMP vehicle. All the colour drained from my face. There was no way with all our lights that he wouldn’t notice our bike. We were going to cap off our perfect night with a ticket. A ticket that was well deserved, but a ticket nonetheless.

The Mountie rolled down his passenger window and I broke into a flop sweat. “Did you get a lot of candy?” the officer asked Mini-Tex. Our toddler had transformed into a catatonic mess so Tex answered for him because I was suffering from the worst case of dry mouth I’d ever had in my life. “Lots.” The officer gave us a wave, “You folks have a good night then” before he continued on his way. It was only when the vehicle’s lights became pinpricks in the bike’s rearview mirror that I could exhale.

Happily, when we arrived home, the candy bowl was empty. I had instructed a group of teenagers that we passed to visit our house and take everything they found there. Old people who complain that kids these days don’t listen have clearly never offered two kilograms of sugar in exchange for walking four streets over.

Unfortunately there was still a full box of treats in the house. Furthermore it was open, so I couldn’t return it even if I did do responsible adult things like save receipts, which I don’t. But, as I went to unplug our inflatable Paw Patrol decoration, I heard voices down the street. “Oi!” I yelled in the direction of the youths. “Trick-or-treaters! Come clear out our candy bowl!”

Then I went back inside, without much hope because you know, kids these days. Likely they were angel children who only took one piece from the bowl. Then, as I was stripping off layer after chilly layer, I heard voices approaching. “Take everything!” I said.

“Everything?” the kids asked incredulously.

“Well divide it fairly amongst yourselves obviously but yes, everything.”

And that was the end of our Halloween. Well sort of. Turns out eating five packages of Swedish Fish will give a toddler a second wind. So Mini-Tex was up for another hour. I am an amazing parent, for serious, where is my Razzie?

Also, I welcome all hate mail about my bike safety decisions or lack thereof on all Hallows Eve. If you’re feeling lazy, you can just put them in the comments.

Don’t Read This. Seriously, Stop Right Here. Just Keep Scrolling.

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I bet you don’t respect authority either. Oh well, your funeral. That’s if you die of boredom. Or banal cuteness. You might actually enjoy this post if you have a subscription to Reader’s Digest. So this blog belongs to me. Most of the time I make funny with the haha. On occasion, I write endearing things about my beloveds on it. But that’s rare. Most often I use it to gently insult my mother. Because she’s the one who taught me how to laugh at myself.

Anyway, the primary readers of this blog are – my parents, my grandparents, and my son’s Godparents. All of them asked about our Halloween. So as a show of how much I love them, here is our Halloween in full. (Oh also Sula and her Mom read this blog. They would also want to know about our Halloween.)

Last year we had a German au pair who had never trick or treated before. Hence why for the first time ever, I went all out with family costumes. Tex paid a Kijiji seller fifteen dollars and in exchange we got our son an Olaf costume. Janey went as Elsa and I made myself an Anna costume. It was fabulous. It was the most elaborate costume I had ever created. Which is to say not elaborate at all but I put in effort so that was a change. I offered to make Tex a Kristoff costume at the same time, because we were in a city so I could buy items like costume materials. He declined.

This year, with only two and a half weeks until Halloween, Tex comes up to me and says “I want to be Kristoff”. People, we have lived three months without a bathmat because you can’t buy them here. The likelihood of me being able to procure the materials for a Kristoff costume without making a four hour round trip to the next large city over, (Well largeish. Ok small, it’s a small city.) was next to zero. However Tex never asks for things and he really wanted to participate in Halloween. So I sent him to the mall with a list. He returned without fake fur. Not surprising.

Two days and two dollars later, after a visit to the local second hand store, I found a teddy bear. (The secondhand store is only open certain days of the week hence the wait.) I gutted that stuffed animal like a fish. I chopped it into pieces and sewed the bits as fur trim to a jacket Tex had bought when we were first dating. Then I added piping, and made him boot covers so he’d have the requisite pointy ice seller toes. Also, I made a lantern that actually lit up for our “sleigh” which was our bike.

Tex looked awesome. Mini-Tex looked adorable. I looked well, Ok. And we borrowed a stuffed reindeer toy from my in-laws to act as Sven.

The day of, Tex had the afternoon off, so we spent our son’s nap rushing around, filling water bottles, preparing dinner for the road, affixing reindeer to the front of our bike, changing bike lights over so that we would be more visible and so forth. It took two and a half hours, but eventually we were all dressed and ready. I had four layers of long underwear up top and three layers on the bottom. I was plump. But warm.

We had everything together; we were all set for the best Halloween ever. All we needed was our Olaf. But he was sleeping. So Tex and I busied ourselves with filling the candy bowl, tidying up the house and looking at the clock going “How is he still sleeping?”

Readers, until that day, I didn’t know someone could sleep belligerently; it was like Mini-Tex was trying to miss out on Halloween. Finally, it got to the point where we were going to be late for trick or treating at the mall, so Tex and I did the unthinkable- we woke a sleeping child.

Because we’re obsessive parents who both need to bear witness to our offspring’s joy, we woke him up together. “It’s Halloween! It’s time to go trick or treating! It’s time to hug the blow ups!” Mini-Tex had been waiting A MONTH AND A HALF to hug all the inflatable decorations around town. Over the past month, we had put 200 kilometers on our bike and spent countless hours pedaling out of our way so he could see the blow up monkey, the blow up dragon, the blow up Jack Skellington. And every single time we saw them, our almost three year old asked “Can I hug them?” at which point we’d answer “On Halloween.”

To say Mini-Tex was excited was an understatement. But he was also very very sleepy. He stood straight up and then promptly did a face plant back into the bed. Tex grabbed him and popped him on the potty. We started both dressing him and undressing him together. It was like an instructional video on tandem helicopter parenting.

Within three minutes our Olaf was dressed and in the sled. Despite still waking up, he would yell “Jump Sven!” at random intervals. He would only call me “Anna” and his dad was “Kristoff”. It was quite possibly the best day of his life.

While riding to the mall to trick or treat with the other little people who go to bed before seven pm, we became aware that there were houses that had waited until the last possible moment to put up their decorations. Meaning that we hadn’t seen their magnificent inflatable decoration arrangements.

“Do we want to stop?” asked Tex. And so the blow up decoration love fest began. Mini-Tex was elated, he finally got to hug every pumpkin bearing Minion, every giant cat, every spooky ghost. The first house we stopped at had four blow up decorations. We stopped at two more houses before the mall until I got panicky that we would miss seeing all of our friends whom I had made arrangements with to meet.

Of course when we got to the mall, I didn’t recognize any of Mini-Tex’s friends and we just wandered around hugging the decorations. Tex took Mini-Tex to exactly one store to trick or treat and there was an over eager salesperson who jumped in our path so she could place candy into our son’s decorative pumpkin basket.

Then, on our way out, one of the best moments of the night happened; Mini-Tex’s best friend’s family appeared. His best friend was dressed as a ninja turtle. However the friend’s little brother who Mini-Tex also plays with, was also dressed as Olaf. The kids were delighted. Mini-Tex was over the moon. The eighteen month old who was also dressed as Olaf was vaguely confused and overwhelmed. It was fantastic.

Because all of you are gluttons for punishment, I’m going to continue writing about our Halloween. But in another post, because even my family and dearest friends can only take so much banal storytelling.

An Open Letter To The Neighbours: More Cooing Dammit!

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I don’t usually rant, but something has been bothering me since October. It was Mini-Tex’s first Halloween, so I dutifully dressed him up, ran him over to a fellow baby friend’s house and together our families Trick or Treated for twenty or so minutes. It was an abysmal failure; virtually every house we visited missed their marks, so I’m composing a letter to improve our experience next year.

Dearest Neighbours,

Thanks you for the sugary sweets, however as evidenced by both the presence and kempt appearance of the four adults in the group, we are both old enough and organized enough to purchase our own. We weren’t there for candy, those Smarties, even if the babies both had teeth would still be a choking hazard. No, we were there so you, our fellow homeowners, could lavish attention upon our babes.

With the exception of one effusive, older woman, all of you failed miserably at the task. Although my hopes are high for each of the neighbouring properties to be sold and a pack of infant-loving, grandmotherly types to descend upon the city, the likelihood of that happening is low. I mean heck, I would have taken a woman with a cookie house who wanted to eat our children as long as she had fawned over them sufficiently first. Admittedly, my false sense of bravado and adventuring comes from the fact that we were traveling with a member of the law enforcement whose home gym resembles Jillian Michaels’.

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I’d like to see the inhabitants of gingerbread homes just try to snack on this woman’s offspring. (Photo Credit : channelguidemag.com)

In lieu of a sudden influx of lovely, little, old ladies, I’ve written out some instructions for next Halloween.

  1. Fling the door open before we arrive on the stoop. This aggressive show of enthusiasm will communicate the extent of your excitement.
  2. Comment about how creative the costumes are, I mean for Pete’s sake, I almost dyed socks with food colouring for this moment!
  3. Hand out one piece of candy. It’s a rite of passage and if you’ve ever struggled to make a baby into a beluga whale by putting their tiny legs into a narrow, flippered tail, you know that a person deserves chocolate afterwards.
  4. Lastly you may choose from any one of the following statements and actions:
    1. “Yours are the cutest babies in the world! I’m going to turn off the lights and take in my pumpkin as this moment is clearly the pinnacle of my Halloween.”
    2. “Hold on, I’m going to chase down the twins from next door who just visited, as you possess the most attractive and adorable children in the world, you should have their candy.”
    3. “Well, having seen the most beautiful babies in the world, my life is now complete and I can die happy.”
    4. Or you can freestyle it with a similar statement of your own- points for originality!

Hopefully this helps to clear up the confusion so we can all have an enjoyable Halloween next year.

Madness, This Way Lies

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Let’s all just agree that Pintrest ruins lives, that said, I think I figured out how it started. I’ve never understood the attraction of looking at all the projects that take hours upon hours of time only to look nothing like the photo.

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Start smiling Amanda! The baby on Pintrest LOVED sitting naked in a cold, wet gourd. Image courtesy of Pinterestfail.com

I swore that I would never be that mom who stays up until 2 am, piping icing names onto cupcakes and losing it over misspelling Adelaide because why in the world would someone use five As and a Y in that name?

And I was doing pretty well on that front, until this morning when I found myself running around looking for blue sparkly pants and yellow socks. Because it’s Mini-Tex’s first Halloween. An event I didn’t take too seriously until I showed up a the third Mom and Baby class having forgotten that it was costume day. Ok the last class wasn’t so bad, I actually remembered – Mini Tex was supposed to be a cowboy however in my haste to get out the door I forgot his hat, so he ended up just being a boy again.

After seeing all the babies dressed up as adorable apples, cute chickens and lovable unicorns, I got jealous and decided to buy Mini-Tex an actual costume rather than just throwing riding headwear on him. However it was October 28th and so the shelves were bare. Hence why my son is going as a fish/bird/dinosaur. That’s what moms who wait until the last minute get- an unidentifiable mix of the animal kingdom. Just in case you were wondering, the costume was 90% off and there were two others left, in the event that you too wish to dress your infant as a fish/bird/dinosaur.

No problem, I assured myself, I’ll simply accesorize the heck out of it. This idea would have worked better if Tex and I lived in the big city where I purchased said costume. Instead we’re an hour and a half away and grateful that there’s a Walmart. So away I went this morning to find sparkly pants at the local Walmart.

Either all of the Moms who bought the cute costumes that have a definitive theme bought up the sparkly, blue baby pants, or Walmart doesn’t carry them. Regardless, I had to think of something else, so I decided on red pants. Mini-Tex actually already has red pants at home, but they have a penguin on the bum, and I didn’t need to add to the whole lizard/fish/bird confusion. So I bought new red pants with a plain bottom.

But Mini-Tex’s costume doesn’t have sleeves, it has these capped things that might be wings, or fins, or foreshortened arms so that babies can get a head start on feeling empathy for creatures without full length limbs. Regardless, Mini-Tex would need to wear a shirt underneath the costume and not just because there might be a foot of snow here on all Hallow’s Eve. I decided that a yellow shirt would work best. Only there were no yellow shirts in Mini-Tex’s size. There was, however, a yellow Minion themed shirt two sizes too big. My husband loves “Despicable Me” so this would work for Mini-Tex’s costume and be a beloved article of clothing after. Boom! Done.

Then I had a moment of doubt. It was in this moment when I bought a round trip ticket to the crazy train AND drank the crazy cocktail. What if the shade of yellow didn’t match the costume exactly? How would people know that Mini-Tex was a bird/dinosaur/fish? They might think he was a manatee/dog/banana. So I grabbed another shirt the reflective yellow of construction worker jackets. This is the moment where the crazy balloons were released into the sky signalling that the show had started.

Unwashed, the Unwashed who readily lets her child eat off the floor, who sits idly while another baby sucks on Mini-Tex’s pacifier and then hands it back to her son once the other baby is finished, without wiping it, was gone. Instead she had been replaced by the Mom who is painstakingly trying to insert another A into Adelaide at 2:13 AM. This meant that the costume needed socks because the cutest fish/bird/amphibeans have yellow feet. So Mini-Tex’s blue socks with the paw prints simply would not do.

The only problem was that the yellow socks had Minions on them. Neither fins, nor feet, nor claws have faces on them, so Minion socks will not work for fish/bird/dragons. So I went searching for dye because the store HAD to have white socks which could be coloured to match. Even though our town has a Walmart and we are grateful to have a Walmart, it’s not a big Walmart, meaning it doesn’t carry fabric dye. So I weighed my options; colouring the socks with markers would result in uneven shading, fabric paint would make them too stiff. I wandered up and down the aisles hoping in vain that the fabric dye had been shelved in a strange place and I spotted my savior- concentrated icing colouring! Edible dye in hand, I was off to find white socks.

There were no white socks. Obviously the organized mothers whose babies were dressed as strawberries had bought them all up. There were knee high socks eight sizes too big, but those would go all the way up Mini-Tex’s legs, obscuring the red pant legs giving him just a big red butt so that people would think he was a fish-monkey or a baboon-osaur.

As I stood there trying to figure out when I would have time to dye the socks between now and Monday afternoon, a little voice quietly asked “Are you making this too difficult?” God in heaven, I wish that voice had spoken sooner. I love that voice. It’s the voice that says, “Leave the laundry, no one cares” and “Your tub isn’t that dirty; go read a book”.

So I replaced the knee highs and returned the food colouring back where it belonged and walked out of the store. When I got home, my husband, ever the wonderful man exclaimed “Mini-Tex, look at this wonderful primary coloured outfit your Mom got you! You’ll be like a box of crayons!”

So he’ll be a fish/dinosaur/bird/writing utensil. Now everyone give me candy and tell me how adorable my baby is.

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Tex decided to add a hat at the last moment. So now our son is a fish/bird/dinosaur-cowboy. Or maybe just a fish/bird-cowboy. Tha hat obscures the giant fin/plate on top of the costume so he looks less prehistoric. (Photo Credit – Yours Truly)

The Chocolate Wars

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Left to my own devices, I would be one of those people featured on TLC’s “My Six Hundred Pound Life”, I’d also have gestational diabetes and my tiny fetus would be a peep.

"Congratulations, it's a .....yellow chick?" (Photo Credit : www.dailymail.co.uk)

“Congratulations, it’s a …..yellow chick?” (Photo Credit : http://www.dailymail.co.uk)

This is how dangerous my sweet tooth is. It’s so deadly that it’s less a sweet tooth and more of a glucose-hungry, sweet fang.

To combat this need for all things made of high fructose corn syrup, I used to eschew all yummy items at the grocery store. If it tasted good, it couldn’t be found in my pantry because then I would eat it. All of it. I may be small but don’t doubt my ability to consume a 140 piece sampler palate of Russell Stover’s finest by myself in one sitting.

Who am I kidding? I wouldn't even need to sit down to finish this box. (Photo Credit : bostonmagazine,com)

Who am I kidding? I wouldn’t even need to sit down to finish this box. (Photo Credit : bostonmagazine,com)

This system worked well until I moved in with my husband.

Tex is blessed with the kind of metabolism that allows him to eat an entire pizza, a family size bag of Oreos and still have room for supper while still fitting into his Wrangler jeans. Thus my habit of not having junk at home quickly fell by the wayside. At the same time, Tex discovered that while I would happily hand over seven eighths of a pizza to him, if he turned his back for even one moment, all his cookies would have mysteriously disappeared.

So began the chocolate and cookie wars. The last battle ended with the key to the gun cabinet, where the cookies and all delicious goods have been stored for months, being locked in its own lock box after there was an Unwashed break-in to the gun cabinet during a frantic, late-night search for Mr. Christie’s best.

Not surprisingly, Tex was concerned about Halloween. Being an engineer, he likes to be prepared, so we had purchased the necessary candy a couple of days in advance.

Tex “I’m keeping the candy in the car, there isn’t enough room in the gun cabinet for all of it. Is it going to be safe here?”

Unwashed “Mmmphes?”

Tex “How did you manage to open one of the boxes and eat some already?”

The answer- I’m a chocolate ninja. I further proved this the next day when I got up early and decided to have Snickers for breakfast, so I grabbed my car keys and trundled outside. Tex figured out something was up because the door was unlocked when he woke up. This led to my car keys being confiscated until after Halloween.

The next morning I got up, again hankering for a sugary hit, but without car keys. Tex is both intelligent and devious; there were any number of places he could have put my car keys, however he is also an engineer which means there is exactly one place where he would have put his keys.

At ten to six on Saturday morning, I snuck silently into the bedroom and stole Tex’s keys out of his jean pockets. Then I quickly made my way out to the car and snaffled chocolate to my heart’s content. After sneaking his keys back into his jeans, I locked the door to cover my tracks, but was later busted when Tex spotted the wrappers in the trash.

Regardless, I believe I won this particular battle.

Neil Patrick Harris Declined My Offer To Host This Award Post

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However the show must go on, and this is an awards show. For me. Just me. Here at The Great Unwashed we are super self involved but we are also about family. Big family. That last sentence may have been foreshadowing. Or it would be if Roscoe would let me have my way. On with the show.

 

Dear Faithful readers,

The day has finally arrived. I was nominated for an award. Not a big award. More like WordPress’ version of a participation award but gosh darn it, it’s an award. And I’m chuffed.  Now there are multiple steps to follow for this award, so many that I’ve decided to break it into two blog posts.

First you need to acknowledge and thank the person who nominated you. So thank you Erica Funi of  Finding The Funi, I do so appreciate being nominated, I was so thrilled that I called my Mom, who already knew because she went on my site and saw, but didn’t call me because that’s the kind of mother she is. Actually she may have texted me in her excitement, I’ll have to check my phone to see if there is a cryptic “k” from the day that you nominated me. This is my mother’s electronic way of communicating with the world- one indecipherable letter at a time. Sometimes she’ll put a “u” or an “i” in there just to mix it up.

Getting back to the award. Erica is a wonderful writer. She also has a nice smile. And I have it on good authority that she does not smell. Erica, I don’t think I could have written a more winning recommendation if I tried. Thanks again for nominating me, I did my best to answer your questions which was of course the second step in the process.

 

What is your biggest pet peeve?

People asking about my pet peeves.  No that’s not true, like most people, I love to be questioned about the things that are bothering me. Most recently my biggest pet peeve is Roscoe’s refusal to take a second wife. I’ve gotten into the show “Big Love” of late and the concept of polygamy is really growing on me. I just love the idea of someone else cleaning and grocery shopping and vacuuming. Roscoe claims that I don’t fully understand the idea of multiple spouses.

Car-mel or Car-a-mel?

 

Are they both edible? Yes? Then why are we having this conversation and not eating sweets?

 

If you could trade places with anyone for a day, who would it be?

I can tell you who it wouldn’t be – my imaginary sister wife. I left her alllll of the laundry. The pile is taller than me, which isn’t saying much, but it’s also taller than Roscoe. I’m going to consider that an accomplishment. We’re out of laundry detergent but I’m sure my imaginary sister wife can take care of that.

 

What is the last website you visited?

Hold The Condiments. Occasionally I feel it necessary to send windy, rambling messages to other bloggers. Before that I wrote a fan letter to the Byronic Man.

Wait did I answer the question? No matter, moving on.

 

Toilet paper. Over or under?

Once again, I think you’ve missed the forest for the trees, or in this case the forest for the products of the pulp and paper industry. As long as you have TP, you’re good. Unless of course you have a house full of riotous teenagers and it’s Halloween, in which case you’re probably going to be out of toilet paper shortly. Also you’ll owe your neighbours a cake. I’d hide the eggs before you start baking too.

 

He's cool.

He’s cool.

What was the first concert you went to?

I feel like you don’t want me to answer Raffi.   I’ll go with someone much cooler instead- Hanson.

 

What is your favorite quote?

MMBop.

 

Is that not a quote?

MMMBop

They’re definitely cooler.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How do you take your coffee?

In litres, preferably in the morning.

Or in gallons for all my Southern reader friends.

 

What are you having (or did you have) for dinner tonight?

A sandwich, I was supposed to be making wheatberry salad, but then I started watching “Big Love”, and answering a never ending series of questions.

 

What is your favorite thing about yourself?

I feel like this is more than eleven questions, or possibly I’m answering more than eleven questions, or maybe it just feels longer because I keep asking questions.

Let’s say my ability to count.

 

What is your guilty pleasure?

Polygamy, but I haven’t actually done that, I just imagine other women cleaning my house and then making me litres of coffee. So let’s go with eating all of Roscoe’s special yogurt out of the fridge.

 

Stay tuned for part two of the Liebster award posts. There’s going to be a bar fight.