Last Friday was Halloween.
We didn’t celebrate it because we’re fundamentalist killjoys.
However, we did go up to Sherman where Jessica’s cousin’s family did
celebrate it, and it was great fun watching the little ones get
excited.
It was not fun to see the 14 year old’s doing Halloween.
I think their parents should have said, “No, you’re not 8 any more.
Plus the odor from your body is going to cause the people answering
their doors to pass out. And I know you, you’ll steel their candy.”

I did have fun with one slightly older kid though, because when he/she
(hard to tell with the gory makeup on) came to the door I said to
Morgan,
“What a nice ballerina costume.”
To which Morgan replied, “That’s not a ballerina!”
Of course it wasn’t a ballerina, it was a kid dressed up as a mauled
white kid who was feeling creative, just like all of the other
mauled white kids.

What happened to the good old days when there were 300 supermen
running around with 600 princesses behind them?
What happened to the day when your parents went with you and
made you say, “Thank you.”
And who wouldn’t let you eat all of the candy before you got home
because they wanted to check it for small weapons of mass
destruction embedded in the center of a chewy caramel candy.
I remember those days, my mom was the one handing out raisin
boxes (98% of which were thrown away).

In fact, my brother and I made it a policy to warn the other kids in
the neighborhood that mom was going to be giving away the candy.
It was our public service announcement.

“This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.
The following is a warning, if you do not heed the warning you may
find yourself the recipient of non-candy objects.
Non-candy objects in this case refers to Raisins.
Eat them at your own risk…”

To make matters worse, we would get our candy picked through, and
anything mom didn’t want us to eat was given out to costumed kids
later on in the evening (this was 100% of the candy that had food
coloring, particularly anything red).
We were sorry that we couldn’t eat all of the candy at once, too.
I imagine that I might have died, become diabetic, or simply wet my
pants and forgotten my name for a half an hour (which would have
made www.icantremember.com my domain).

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday we kicked into full gear and started working on the kitchen.
Doug and Amanda’s kitchen is in the process of a complete remodel.
We stripped it down to the sheetrock (and replaced some of that) and then,
shortly after that (Sunday) Amanda and Jessica took the rented snot
blower (my name for the spackling device with compressor) and spackled
the walls and ceiling.
No animals were harmed, but the kids were pooped and cranky.
The house was pretty trashed since the kitchen was emptied of all of
its guts with few exceptions.