Trick or Treat? YOU make the call.

Just so you know...this particular Earth is totally protected. And also, it's offical. I have no say in what my kids wear for halloween. Thank God I knocked Mickey and Minnie Mouse out when they were babies! Then there was Elvis and the 50's girl...that was fun. Now it's come to this.

I'm impartial with Halloween. It's fun gearing up for it, but the actual day of Halloween is a mother's version of a decathalon. The events are:
1. Finding the right costume - This is indeed quite the project. Calculate in the rules from school, a budget for a mom who does not sew nor craft times two, and add in what will keep them warm considering Halloween seems to be the perfect day for mother nature to send in a chill and the ocassional snow flake. Don't even get me started about stupid safety measures. Recap: Must meet school rules, must be budgeted for, must be warm and snuggly.

2. Packing the costume and making sure each kid knows to go pee BEFORE they put their costumes on. (The javelin throw)

3. Remember all accessories. This may seem like a menial 10th of the Halloween decathlon, but hey, so is the triple jump. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump away from ruining the gold medal chances of Halloween greatness. Remember the accessories.

4. Get spiderwebs and candycorns to Max's class for his class party. There may be a technicality here because I was told to get purple and green spider webs. However, the store only had purple and white. So I went with it. I'm still waiting to get the call from the party coordinator moms to tell me what a washed up piece of crap I am and how I can't read, nor follow directions and what kind of parent does that make me? But so far, no such call. So, I'm still a contender, I suppose. But there's always technicalities years down the road, I mean, look at Marion Jones.

5. Get juiceboxes to Lucy's class party when I drop the kids off for school. This was easy. However, I actually had to park the car, and carry those juice boxes in rather than stay nice and warm and toasty, and pull up to the side and push the kids out while telling them to have a nice day. The nerve.

6. Get to MY class and hear 50 students randomly complain that they couldn't wear their costumes on speech day. I'd consider this the 1500m event: slow, bearable, but slightly tiring.

7. Get candy. Now this is always the event I bomb in: Hurdles, if you will. Some think it's easy, since I'm so tall, I'm supposed to be graceful and have great strides. But to me, that's all the more leg to get tangled up in those hurdles. Buying candy is a great example of being Catholic. You don't want to get too little and then feel guilty, so you get way too much, and pay penance later. Sigh. It happens. Last year, I went to Sam's Club and got halloween popcorn bags. We had so much left over that Ricardo just ate the last bag of it LAST WEEK.

8. Get home, get the kids, and fake it like you're having fun and so excited while making Halloween cookies and nursing the candy headache you just induced because you just bought all that candy, and well...

9. Hand out candy. Nothing brings home a bad attitude to me like handing out candy to a bunch of brats. Granted, the beginning it starts off so cute. The little kids in their snuggly like a giant chicken, or a bunch of super heroes. And then the fine line is crossed with arrogant teenagers not even in costume. "Just put down my jack-o-lanterns and take some candy and no one gets hurt." Some form of this is usually what determines when I lock the door and turn off the lights. Last night, it was a group of FOUR 20-something year olds trick-or-treating for what they called, "The baby's first halloween". One to hold the pillow case, one to hold the baby, and one to....Really? How old is the baby? She's 3 weeks old. Idiots, it's 30 degrees out, and please don't give the 3-week year old baby one of those dum-dums I just dropped in the "Baby's" halloween bag. If you can't carry your own bag, if you can't say trick or treat, or thank you. No candy for you. That's my new rule. Lights off, and we have two bags of candy left.

10. Getting the kids off the sugar high. Much like a decathlon, it's just a matter of finishing.

With the gold medal in hand, November 1 is a welcome. After I dropped the kids off at school, I went to put some new tunes, other than the Halloween cd I'd made for the kids. Had I heard Ghostbusters, The Monster Mash, or One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater one more time, I might explode. So, I throw in an unmarked cd, and lo, The Chipmunks Christmas Song starts playing. And then it hits me, if there's one reason I love Halloween, it's that to me, after it's over, I can play the Christmas Music. I love Christmas. But moreso, I LOVE CHRISTMAS MUSIC!

I'm more of a closet Christmas Music listener. I realize, and force an important lesson on my kids, "We have to give thanks first before we can celebrate Christmas." But the music is so chipper and fun and grateful. It's validated, I feel.

So, I'll wait until after Thanksgiving to put the lights up, or get the decorations out. But if you see a minivan roll by and hear a faint Ella Fitzgerald catchy version of Merry Little Christmas...that's me. And that's how I roll.