Smartie Pants

What does it mean when your four year old's last words to his father before drifting into a Halloween candy induced coma are "Dad will you put my candy up somewhere high where Mom can't get it?"

Hmmm.

A Gypsy in Snow Pants

Women have children for many different reasons. Some women want a baby (This is a classic bait and switch ladies. How they start out is not how they end up.) Some women want to be mothers - sometimes even after they truly know what that means. Some women just want people to stop pestering them about when the baby is coming already. Here is a confession - one of the main reasons that I had kids was to dress them up in super awesome Halloween costumes. In my mind I saw my little trick-or-treaters marching into the night clad in thematically inspired clothing designed and executed by their super creative and capable mother. (Me.) The actual trick-or-treating would be done with their father, because October's too cold for me to do that kind of craziness and also, someone has to answer the door and dole out candy. (Also, this was going to be the time when I could judge all of the other mom's efforts to see if they were as good as mine.)

As you can see, my plan was foolproof. In my mind. Then I had children... and my children had opinions. These opinions included ideas about what they would and would not wear at Halloween. Mostly these opinions revolved around what they perceived as "cool" or "not cool". Also, these opinions tended to change the night before Halloween...after I'd completed their costume. So now it's store bought costumes and no matching. (Who's being judged now? )

Too bad, because I had some good ideas too. Some of the better ones that were summarily dismissed were:

• Marie Antoinette and some random French peasants. My daughter just didn't get this one and she hated the wig. What kind of girl hates a huge white wig, I ask you? If I could wear a big old powdered wig to the grocery store I would totally do it... and I might or might not yell "let them eat cake" when I walked past the bakery.
• Little Bo Peep and her sheep brothers. I'm not sure why my four year old son would not want to dress up as a sheep to coordinate with his baby brother and be herded by his older sister's crook while I took pictures, but it totally ruined a good photo op. that would've been very cute in one of those graduating senior slide shows. Whatever.
• A family tribute to "The Wizard of Oz" - again foiled by: a. my sons, who felt that they could've made a lot shorter work of the Wicked Witch of the West if only they were allowed to use their light sabers at the church trunk-or-treat, and b. my husband, who had no interest in going out in public dressed as a member of The Lollipop Guild. Go figure.

Personally, my favorite Halloween costume when I was a little girl was a gypsy. When you live in the Rocky Mountains the idea of being a gypsy is about as exotic as it gets. I had visions of being decked out in a white peasant blouse, huge gold hoop earrings, a festive head scarf with fringe all around the edge, and a red skirt that would fly up in a huge circle when you spun around on your heels. (One of the best parts of being a little girl is a twirly skirt. Fun.) I would of course need lots of bangles and beads and bracelets and baubles - because I was pretty sure that those were the things that made a gypsy's life so great... and I'd seen pictures. Oh, also, I'd need a tambourine.

Yep, that's what my costume looked like... in my head. However, as I recall I usually ended up wearing a read bandanna, lots of cheap, beaded necklaces, and some lipstick. (I realize now that essentially my costume was a biker chick at Mardi Gras.) The things that really gave it that authentic Mediterranean flair though, were - snow boots and a winter coat. The sad truth was that Montana at the end of October was no place for twirly skirts and peasant blouses. No place for a gypsy- unless the gypsy wanted frostbite.

I look back on my gypsy obsession now and have a couple of thoughts. Firstly, I'm totally unclear about whether it is or is not okay to allow your child to dress as a gypsy for Halloween. It seems a little... racial. I think it must be alright, though. I mean, I would let my kids dress in lederhosen (another thwarted family costume theme: "The Sound of Music" - I wanted to be that Baroness lady), or in kimonos or ninja wear. I would let them dress like Cleopatra and other Egyptiany people. So...

Secondly, I didn't know that one day I would come dangerously close to living the gypsy lifestyle with my three children and hugely pregnant belly. Living like a gypsy, with the constant moving around, is less glamorous I've found, than dressing like one. We are on the move again after just one year. Our rental house was sold and the people that are buying it actually want to live in it. Rude. At first I did not think it was going to be a big deal to find housing. We wanted to "downsize" anyway and we were pretty open to whatever came along. (By the way, the word "downsize" might sound neutral and consoling, but in reality- it's pretty lame. I'm hoping to leave the "downsize" part of life behind us really soon.) Too bad for us, finding a rental that allowed us to keep our kids around people they know and didn't force us to revisit the last school year with our daughter (an experience just as enjoyable as a daily bikini wax) turned out to be asking a lot. Particularly when you're trying to "downsize".

With about 10 days to go before we had to move out we still had no place to move... in. What I learned next was this: Necessity might be the mother of Invention, but the mother of Necessity is Poverty. That's when I hatched my plan. Yurt. Or maybe a tent. At a campground. Homeschooling and cooking over a fire. Apparently Poverty is also the mother of Crazy. My family was not impressed. I told my sisters that a lot of people live that way. They told me that those people were called "homeless" - or "scary polygamist kidnappers on the run from the law". They told me that I needed to find somewhere to take my soon to be newborn baby that did not include communal showers and exposure to random mosquito borne diseases.

Fortunately, God knows that despite my willingness for adventure/borderline personality, I am not exactly cut out for camping and that I would last about two minutes in a Yurt homeschooling my children and beating my clothing against a rock. After that, there would just be a lot of tears. From me mostly. So... although I was looking forward to a big adventure, we have successfully found a place to move our family... that includes a permanent roof and flush toilets. Now with exactly two days to spare all I have to do is come up with a way to move all of our stuff. Maybe, if I can find one that fits over my belly, I'll wear a twirly red skirt and a huge powdered wig during the whole fiasco and hope that the new neighbors recognize a gypsy (at heart) when they see one... and since it's August, I won't even need snow pants.

Don't leave your pants in a pumpkin patch

One thing I loved about holidays growing up were the corresponding Charlie Brown TV specials.  I mean, who doesn't love "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown?" (I think that's what it's called).  In case you never watched this - in which case I think you can make a persuasive argument of abuse and/or neglect - Linus sits in the punkin patch (that's the folksy spelling that I just made up) all through Halloween waiting for the Great Punkin to bring presents to all the girls and boys.  He manages to talk Sally into sitting with him (or maybe she volunteers because she is not so secretly in love with this big headed, punkin obsessed kid), and they wait all night for the Great Punkin, who - shocker - is a no show.  In the end she gets pretty hacked off because she realizes that she missed all the good parts of Halloween while she was waiting around on the dreams of some stupid boy (there's a lesson in that girls).

Well Linus, do not despair - I have found your people and they have got your back.  Maybe you did not know this (and neither did I until I watched a public television special called "Lord of the Gourd" - because we get 4 channels on our TV), but there are people in this great land of ours that are just as passionate about punkins as you are Linus.  These produce engineers dedicate their lives to growing and weighing off giant punkins.  I'm talking about punkins that weigh 1044 lbs. , 1225 lbs., 1091 lbs.  (Apparently this last weight was a disappointment because they interviewed a bunch of people that seemed really upset about it.  I'm talking tears people.  No joke.)

If you think you've seen commitment, think again.  These punkin growers make Navy Seals look like a bunch of lay-about slackers.  The punkin competition circuit is apparently similar to a cage fight to the death and is wrought with hidden perils.  Among these - rodents, water, no water, bugs (all kinds), and sabotage from jealous competitors.  (Yes, sabotage - one family actually has surveillance cameras all around their punkin patch to catch the perps.  Which, they let us know, should serve hard time for their crimes against giant gourds.  It's vegicide is what it is really and we can't punish that severely enough I say.)

All other endeavors take a back seat to nurturing the punkins.  One of the growers actually said "sometimes I can't go to family stuff, like my daughter's soccer games, because I have to feed the punkins".  I pictured him sitting next to a huge punkin holding a spoon and yelling, (much like Brando in "Street Car..." or "On the Waterfront"), "Puuunnkiiinnn.  We could have been a contender".  (It was all very dramatic in my mind).

I was all impressed with these people until one of them said that taking care of his punkin was harder than taking care of an infant.  This was followed up by comments like :  "when you cut the punkin from its stem it's like cutting the umbilical cord from your baby", and "taking your punkin to the competition is like taking your child to college".  There was actually one lady (who ps. did not have actual human children)- that named her punkin Shasta (apparently her punkin was a stripper) and says it takes her days of solitude to mourn the loss of her punkins.  (By the way - Shasta weighed in at 700 lbs., that's a lot of stripper).

Okay.  Punkin Crazies answer me this, did you make dietary decisions based on what you could throw up with ease everyday of your punkin's growing season?  Exactly how many stretch marks will you carry for the rest of your life due to rapid weight gain because your punkin insisted on taking up every inch of space inside your body that it could get it's greedy little punkiny hands on?  Did someone tell you that your punkin would be ready to go to competition on a certain day, but then the punkin decided that it wouldn't be ready until 12 days later?  How much sleep do you average per night when your punkin is cutting its teeth? Is it hard to find a punkin sitter on short notice?  How do you get away with leaving your punkin out in the field all night because I'm pretty sure the state would frown on that if I did it to one of my kids - even if I did cover them with a handmade patchwork quilt like you do.  I'd imagine that "this is how the giant punkin growers do it and those things get huge" might not be an acceptable defense when children's services came a knockin'.  And finally, what is the going rate for punkin tuition these days, because I'm checking into selling my organs on the black market to pay for my three kids to go to college and if you've got a better plan I'd love to hear it.

Punkin Growers of the world hear my voice - unless you can answer these questions to the satisfaction of every mother that has grown, birthed/adopted, cleaned the amazing variety of bodily fluids from, and dried the tears of another human being - enough with the infant references.  (This goes for all you animal lovers out there too - although I know I'm gonna take a hit for it.)  Nothing that you take care of will ever be like taking care of a child.  I don't care how cute it is, or how much time it took to do it, it's not taking care of a child.  It may be a noble pursuit, or a passionate hobby, but it is not taking care of a child.

Even Linus could figure this one out, because at the end of the day when his punkin disappointed him, he went home to the one whose work was raising actual children.  His mommy.  And if she believed, as I do, that the best way to deal with disappointment in life is to eat something that tastes good, she would've served him up a big old piece of punkin pie (with whipped cream) and smiled at the irony of it all.