Sugar Babies and Pop rocks aside, Halloween is a pretty sweet holiday, especially when you stop to consider all the bitter people who come out to #playnotplay. One can make a sport of choosing to view all holidays as entertaining, particularly when you encounter curmudgeons and snobs, but it’s especially amusing come Halloween, when people think just because they’re disguised behind a mask, that their behavior is somehow concealed. I for one see Halloween as the new triple threat. When you’re single, there’s the triple threat of  love.

1. Thanksgiving Holiday Parties Begin: Families meet or don’t meet. There’s a lot of emphasis on family and food and reunions and games and sleepovers and traditions. There are films built around these occassions to help us get through these events. It’s big. So huge, in fact, that you often need to unbutton.
2. Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanza or Winter Solstace or Name Your Big
3. New Years Eve, the outfit, the drink, the money handed over so you can say you now have proof that you’re not wasting the night. You’re making it count, see? Proof. Right here in how much I’m spending. A bit absurd? No. A big absurd.

I feel like the new triple jump begins now, in time for Halloween, which I wish I could skip entirely. Curmudgeon alert. Have I always felt this way? Nay. I’m certain there were a few early years when I enjoyed the variety of candy in a pillowcase, collected from the homes of strangers. I didn’t care about costumes or decorating pumpkins. I enjoyed Charlie Brown’s Pumpkin special and the cozy feeling around the house. But now, it feels like all holidays become holidaze.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Autumn’s harvest, being thankful, cozy winter tidings of cheer. I wish I could meld the three themes into one lesson plan and theme, not three. One outdoor porch design with doordinated door wreath and door mat, thank you. One foyer entrance decor themed design, not 3! Oh, yes, you heard that, one tablescape that works for Christmas that will also work for Thanksgiving, with only the slightest modifications (a plaid tablecloth, merci). That sounds like the design plan for me, with matching educational hands-on activities that extend beyond crayons and coloring, all tied into the themes. Wishlist.

Only how? Only, am I insane? Am I? Do I need to see someone? Do I? Genuinely. I might be crazy.

This week I’m also due to get a haircut downtown, due to sign Abigail up for about 5 Girl Scout programs, due to print out a family monogram and blow it up and carve it with a hot knife into foam board and affix it to a wreath, due to decorate my porch with stacks of wheat and white glittered pumpkins. Due to glitter the pumpkins. I am seriously deranged. I am, but I also do delight in these types of things once they’re finished. Not the doing, just the being done!

All this and I have to teach girls how to budget and handle money and set goals and learn to comparison shop as I work to make a spinning wheel for our booth sale, and I have to talk to the girls about what they want to do with money they earn, etc. It’s a lot.

You know what I want to do most? I want nothing to do with my kids’ costumes. All I want to do is teach them to water color and draw with Prismacolors. Sigh. Yesterday, they came home from school with paper ghosts to decorate for the school hallways, and Abigail wanted to learn how to draw an eye. REJOICE, she let me teach her on a scrap piece of paper, and she drew her own eye on the ghost. Win.

What’s more Phil has some fun health issues cropping up, so we’ve been dealing wtih that as well. Oh, joy. Something totally new. Here’s our motto. We refuse to worry until they tell us to worry. We try that anyway.

I need to seriously stock up on Pinot Noir Sauvignan Blanc from Willamette Valley. I haven’ t had a good Pinot Noir in far too long. I think it’s why I’m far too Cranky Hoo Ville. I also don’t sew. I will NEVER sew. I once owned a machine, and that shit KILLED my sex life (it should come on the warning label, along with video games). If you own a sewing machine, you never have oral sex. It’s just true. Don’te blame me. Blame Singer.

I leave you with this, in the spirit of Halloween and snobbery:

The image of a young David Sedaris, hoarding Halloween candy in the safety of his bedroom after a late night of trick-or-treating, sorting his stash into piles of name-brand and generic categories, gorging on Hershey bars, despite being allergic to chocolate, just to prevent the beggar neighbor boy from enjoying them, as his mother knocks from outside his door, waiting, to see which morsels David is willing to donate to his fashionably late Trick-or-Treater, his neighbor (who has shown up on Nov 1. “When you go trick or treating on Nov 1. It’s no longer called trick or treating. It’s called begging”).

*This post brought to you on the Ambien Express. Making no sane or logical stops. Notice there is absolutely no point or “train” of thought? La di dah.