Saturday, October 31, 2009

One Flew Outta the Cuckoo's Nest

So, how was your Halloween? Halloween is, as many of you know, NOT my favorite holiday. I've always considered it to the The Holiday to Punish Uncreative Parents. Maybe it all goes back to the Halloween that someone cut our cat's tail off. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that on Jill's first Halloween, when she was ten months old, we dressed her as a Damnation, then she promptly vomited all over the entire outfit after the first stop we made. I really do hate Halloween.

I don't get into the whole make-a-costume thing. The one and only time I actually made a costume was for Seth, the year he wanted to be Link, from Legend of Zelda. Link wears a tunic, a pair of Robin Hood type tights, and some elf boots. Seth's Link consisted of a felt tunic that was glued and stapled together, a pair of girls leggings from the DAV (no way I'd have gotten him into tights), and a cute pair of 80s pixie boots. He never knew that half of Link came from the girl's department. Guess he does now, but he loved that costume.

So yeah, I am not into the whole Halloween thing. This year, since Dan was going to be at church most of the evening, cleaning up after the fish fry, I debated not even getting any candy, and just hiding from the wee ones. In the end, guilt won and I bought our usual $80 of candy, cause we get a LOT of trick or treaters. I got the candy ready, and Seth, God love him, said he'd take the dogs up to his room, cause as we all know, Boo is just plain crazy, and Timmy is getting old enough that he's confused a good portion of the time. He figured that if he took them up there, maybe the trick or treaters would live.

So, my friend stops by with her kid, right about the time the neighbor says "you MUST go over on the other block and see the tree, before they close it down. It's hilarious." We'd already have 150+ kids at our house, and it finally was slowing down, so we decided to get in the car and go see. You may remember that I'm not so good at driving in reverse, but I've done pretty well lately. Still, I started backing up, felt a bump and thought it must just be a pile of leaves. That was before the headlights shown on the screen from Seth's room. Uh oh.

I stop the car, we all look up, and Boo is getting ready to bail from the second story window, and Tim's looking just confused enough to follow. Oh Sweet Baby Jesus. Seth bails out the back seat, grabs the screen, and sprints for the back door while my friend and I are frantically telling the dogs to Stay. Lest you think we overreact, Boo WILL jump off or over just about anything, so it was a relief when Seth got up there and got the window closed before they lept. Whew!

Our relief was short lived, however, because when Seth got back in the car, he mentioned that Bandit, our very fat, very long haired, very DUMB cat, had been hiding in the bushes in back when he unlocked the door. Bandit, who had, till that point, been sitting on the windowsill in Seth's room. On the second floor of the house. Bandit apparently freaked when the dogs rushed the window, and fell straight out the window with the screen. Apparently Bandit is too dumb to even get injured, because he's not even limping, and doesn't look any more confused than a normal day.

And the tree we were going to see? It was worth the ride, because they had created a tree that talked, and sprayed water at people, all while telling funny and gross stories to the trick or treaters. Up to that point, I had thought that the mom who showed up with her trick-or-treaters, telling them to "say thank you" whilst she ate a salad was the funniest thing of the night. That tree? Best thing I've seen in a while, even if it did involve Halloween.