All Hallows' Eve

Let me go on record as saying quite officially that I do not like Halloween. I don't. There - I said it. In this household, that makes me the bad guy. So be it. I'll wear it well. I loved Halloween as a child - what kid doesn't? And I have great memories of several years where The Big Sis and I dressed up and went trick or treating. I was a teenager by then and she was shorter than I, so we got away with it when people assumed I was along to keep my lil' sister safe. Of course we usually ingested a fair amount of a certain appetite altering substance before we hit the free candy streets, so it was the perfect activity! Right up until the laziness set in and we just wanted to sit down. Anywhere. These were the days before cell phones were everywhere, so we generally had to approach a house and I'd explain that my sister had eaten too much candy and was sick, could they please call our dad. Then our 'dad' (my youngest older brother) would come and get us. But I digress. I'm a Mom now and not supposed to have any knowledge of such things. Then there was the year, having long abandoned my 'substance' days, that I went to the Fall Festival at our church as Mary. You know, the mother of Jesus? I'd already started dating The Beloved, but he was not the churchy type and was working that night anyway. So, my ex-pseudo-boyfriend (long boring story) still feeling the sting that I was dating someone else and dared to be happy, felt perfectly justified hauling me before our pastor so I could explain my costume. "I think this is inappropriate! I think it's blasphemous!" The pastor scratched his head while they gawked at my midsection and said the words over which I will forever giggle, "I don't know %&$#@. This is October. According to the Christian calender, Mary would have been about that big!" If that hadn't been bad enough, he then patted the e-p-b's belly, much bigger than my hidden pillow, and said, "You could have dressed up as Mary! Where's your costume?" I nearly wet myself with not laughing while the e-p-b stood there nearly choking on his own gall! Good memories. But back to now...

Halloween at our house starts early in the month with The Beloved announcing at various times, "Only ten more days!" "Only six more days!" "Only..." you get it. The Littles also get it. Only x number of days until we all trek out one frosty night to go to The Halloween Store. That's what it's called, and he loves to tease them until it's time to actually go. Sometimes we buy costumes, and sometimes we just get things to complete costumes. And they always come home with a skull. Or a bag of bones. Or a complete skeleton. Or plastic spiders and rubber rats. Yuck! These are not my kids! They aren't. This time of year, they are soley and completely The Beloved's kids. I had more times that I dressed up as witches and mummies that not as a kid, but I never found any interest, much less fun, in playing with skulls, bones and rubber rats. Like I said, this time of year, these are not my kids. They're his!

I have long thought that women who are pregnant at Halloween are really lucky to be able to paint their bellies into a pumpkin. I'd never had that luck until now. The Oldest was barely rounding in October and The Middle was 6 weeks old for his first Halloween. But this year I have Jack! A Jack-o'-lantern! So...Miss Susie found the big box of water color paints and hauled it out of it's hidey hole. We picked out colors and found brushes. I had an idea of how I wanted Jack's o' lantern to look. I thought I'd paint the basic outline myself and fill it in and let the kids paint in the eyes, nose and mouth. And then I had a good look at my belly. It was nice and round and stuck out there...but there was also a five pound bag of fluid hanging below it. Pretty! Not! Jack's pumpkin would look more like a giant upside down orange pear. Okay...new plan. I will stay down most of today and first thing in the morning tomorrow, when I've been flat all night and I'm less likely to have the under-belly-bag-o'-jelly, we will paint Jack's pumpkin!

It never happened. I woke up that morning with a giant bag of jiggle hanging mostly to the left because that's the side I'd spent most of the late morning on. The Beloved suggested that I wear the belly shorts with the wide band and keep it tucked under Jack so that the fluid would disperse. So I tried it. Bless him, he was truly trying to be helpful with this ridiculous thing I wanted to do...but all it got me was deep ugly grooves on the lower third of my belly and a fluid shift to an undesirable location. The fluid did to disperse to 'there.' You know, there! And further up my belly. It was awful. My mid-section looked like a giant white plucked turkey, complete with the pock marks where the feathers were pulled out. And it was all over my belly. In medical jargon it's described as "orange peel skin" but it looked more like a plucked turkey. And my 'there' region, what you can see with closed thighs, looked just like the back end of the plucked turkey that you tuck under the legs before you truss the turkey up to hold in the stuffing. Only my stuffing was on the outside. At this rate, my Jack-o'-lantern was going to look more like an ugly orange warted gourd. Crap! I kept the paints out just in case the swelling went down, but it never happened. I'd thought that if we couldn't paint me for Halloween, maybe for Thanksgiving then. Jack would be even bigger then and maybe he'd stick out farther than the bag-o-bleck!

Miss Susie helped the kids scoop out their pumpkins, since I was officially too weak to even carve them. I helped them draw the faces before carving and then took up my dutiful position as camera man and journalist for the event! The Kiddles even picked out and carved a little pumpkin for Jack!

Halloween night saw The Middle dressed up as Bumblebee of the Transformers and The Oldest as Hannah Montana of, well, Hannah Montana. The Beloved took them out looting and pillaging while I kept the home fires burning and handing out candy to trick or treaters. The Kidlets pooped out fairly early and were back home before I knew it. And when I saw the bags of loot they had, I understood why. The were loaded! The Beloved reported that there were very few houses giving out candy and that there were very few kids out this year. On a Saturday. Weird. I'd had only perhaps five groups of kids ring our doorbell. Consequently, folks weren't giving one or two pieces of candy...they were dumping handfuls into their bags. I'd done that too!