How NOT to begin NaNoWriMo

1. With a sink full of dirty dishes.
2. With a mountain of unwashed laundry.
3. With an endless to-do list at work (the kind that follows you home).
4. With a Girl Scout guilt trip cupcake order due November 2nd.
5. With no outline or any story-related prep whatsoever, really.
6. Without an official Survival Kit consisting of Mountain Dew, chocolate, fuzzy socks, note cards, post-it notes, guilt-inducing quotes and reminders, etc. (I always make one of these the last week of October.  Until now.)
7. Without a fully-planned menu and housework schedule to get the rest of the family through November with as little drama as possible.
8. With a mind that is totally scattered, distracted, unprepared, and not remotely in writing mode.

What can I say.  I'm a rule-breaker.

Write on, Wrimos!

I'll...um...catch up.

So. I'm an artist now.

A few days ago I posted a photo my daughter found on the internet (with help from her father) of a vampire pumpkin.  She LOVES this pumpkin.  LOVES IT.  So she printed out the photo and hung it on her bedroom door, where it thoroughly creeped me out every night.  You can read that story here if you're so inclined.

Or you can just look at the original "inspiration" photo below:

By the talented Adrienne Trafford, a woman I have never met but who seems quite lovely.

Without further ado, here is MY version of this fantastic pumpkin.

Errrr.  Maybe I shouldn't have put it side by side with the original.
It looks a lot better if you don't look at Adrienne's masterpiece.

Look, I told you I wasn't a painter, OK?  You can stop laughing now.

Besides, the Princess isn't as discerning in her art appreciation as you all are.  She's thrilled with it, so I call it a success.

Halloween Madness. No seriously. It is MADNESS.

I like Halloween.  I like it almost as much as I like Christmas.  And I really like Christmas.  But that's another post.

Because this is October.  As you may be aware, October is the month of Halloween (not Christmas. I'm talking to you, retailers everywhere). And because October is the month of Halloween, I've got Halloween on the brain.

I like to dress my kids up:

That's the Princess, age 7 months.

Age 19 months

Age 2.  A pirate with attitude.

Age 3.  Snow White.

Age 4.  Pinkalicious!

The Princess, 4 years, and the Monster, 6 weeks.

Costume 1: Vampire

Costume 2: Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Earp, people!

I like carving pumpkins:

OK. Truth? I do not like carving pumpkins. I like looking at pumpkins carved by my husband and child.

Yes, my husband is the Official Carver of Gourds and Melons in this household for good reason.

I LOVE trick or treating:

 And yes.  I like dressing up.  I work in an office where people are awesome:

Theme: Zombie Prom.  There were balloons and dance music.  And a strobe light.
I brought a fog machine.  It set off the smoke alarm and several hundred people had to evacuate the building.
And everybody was all, "Those zombie prom girls on the first floor know how to PAR-TAY!"

Another year, another zombie.  Mother-daughter zombies!
  This was for my brother's zombie-themed birthday party (his birthday is October 26).
The Princess was 3 and she was a zombie ballerina.

I even like Halloween cakes:

It's a brain.  It's a cake.  It's a brain cake, and I made it for the aforementioned Zombie Birthday Party.

OK.  I don't always dress like a zombie.  I've been Dorothy, Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton's the Corpse Bride, a fairy, and a host of other things.  But for some reason I can only find photos of the zombie costumes right now.  That's OK.  Zombies are awesome.  There are more zombies to come.  Just wait.

So.  You can imagine that one other thing I like is decorating my house for Halloween.  But see, the thing is, I have kids.  Young ones.  And they get all...scared.  So we've done some cutesy pumpkin crap for the last few years so the Princess wouldn't be terrified of her own front door or whatever.  Kids, right?

But this year she's 5, practically a teenager, and we think it's time to introduce her to the truth about Halloween.  It's scary.  In the most awesome way.  I think she's ready; she's fully aware of zombie and vampire mythology.  Whereas past years have been all about the princess, the costumes she's been considering this year have been decidedly on the side of horror.  (She settled on a witch, by the way, and kind of a cutesy sparkly witch, but a witch nonetheless, which I count as progress.  It's not a princess.)

Also?  We have a new house.  And the front of our new house has a gorgeous roomy porch with bushes and trees and flower beds and lots of space for...creativity.  Space for lots more fun than some stupid grinning pumpkins, right?

Today the Princess spent the day with her grandparents, and tHe O.G. and I found ourselves at the local Spirit Halloween store.  Looking.  And imagining all the various ways we could turn the front of our new house into something that would terrify and repel children, leaving us with a bowl full of candy to consume at our leisure delight the neighborhood children with the true spine-tingling spirit of Halloween.

We came home with some stuff.  A lot of stuff, maybe.  We might have come home with like 3 big bags full of creepy, demented, twisted stuff, OK?

And the crowning glory of this stuff?  Brace yourselves...

...No seriously, brace yourselves.  If you have a weak constitution you might want to turn back now...

INCREDIBLY LIFELIKE ZOMBIE BABY EATING ITS OWN FOOT!!!

That feeling you're feeling right now?  It's called jealousy.  Or nausea.  One of those.

But probably jealousy.



UPDATE:
This post now linked up at the following parties:

(Howleriffic Halloween @ By Word of Mouth Blogging)

Some advice.

You know what's weird?  Sometimes when I'm at work I forget to pee.  I mean, literally, I'll sit there all day and never use the facilities.  I get all involved in what I'm doing, and the restrooms are like, aaaaaaall the way down the hall, and it's just a pain, and I'll just do it when I get home.

Yes, the fact that this is even anatomically possible no doubt means I do not drink enough fluids.  That's a subject for a different post.

The point here is what am I thinking?

I'm at work.  Do you know what that means?  It means I can go to the restroom alone.  I can sit down and get comfortable and chances are very, very good that nobody will immediately have an URGENT CRISIS that can only be solved BY ME RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT the second my butt hits the porcelain.

So, working moms?  Just get up and go to the ladies' room.

That's my advice to you.

My child is seriously twisted. I don't know where she gets it. Also she thinks I'm more talented than I am.

The Princess somehow came across a photo online of a painted pumpkin (I blame her father. Because...well, he's the one who showed it to her).  Normally he's in charge of pumpkins in this household, as Official Carver of Gourds and Melons.  But painting?  Apparently painting is my thing.  I'm not sure how painting became my thing, because...I'm not a painter.  But the Official Carver of Gourds and Melons has informed me that, as his title suggests, he carves; he does not paint.  So by default...painting is my thing.

So she wants a painted pumpkin, and I'm supposed to help.  Does she want a cute little kid kind of cartoony pumpkin?  A pumpkin with a goofy smile and triangle eyes, a pumpkin her less-than-uber-talented mother might have a shot at accurately recreating?  A pumpkin that...won't give anybody nightmares?  No.  No she does not.

She wants this:

Not only is it kind of creepy and disturbing for a FIVE-YEAR-OLD to have chosen,
but, um...there is no way I'm that talented.  That thing is 12 kinds of awesome.
source

She was so enamored of this pumpkin that she made her daddy print this photo out and it is currently taped to her bedroom door.  So every night when I go to bed, I tiptoe down the silent hallway to check on my little sleeping Princess...and find myself faced with this haunting visage, floating somewhere around chest-level in the dark, observing me with her wide, knowing eyes and her bloody smirk.  It's...well, it's unnerving.

And this from the woman who purchased a Zombie Baby eating its own foot and lovingly named it Gnarles.  But hey.  Gnarles lives outside, ok?  And I'm an adult.  I'm allowed to be demented.  My baby girl?  Well, it's inevitable that she, too, will be demented.  I just thought it would take a few more years to get there.

RemembeRED: Turning Heads

This year Mom took me shopping at Masquerade Madness, the dusty little costume shop downtown bursting with glorious wigs and unexpected treasures, a whole wall of movie makeup and an old man behind the counter who can turn you into anything, anything at all.  I picked my way past the rustling ball gowns that have hung there longer than I’ve been alive, the twenty different varieties of vampire fangs, the vials of black-red gelatinous blood and the Marilyn Monroe wigs on faceless wire busts.  I made my way to the back, to a long white dress.  A glossy black wig, so unlike my own newly-permed cloud of hair.  Gold jewelry, lots of it, all snakes and winding things.  And makeup.  So much makeup.

Early in the morning I wrap my hair up tight, cover it with the cap like the old man showed me.  I adjust the heavy black wig, admire the way my skin glows fair beneath it.  Such a change.  I apply makeup slowly, carefully, following instructions I’ve clipped from Seventeen.  Smoky Egyptian eyes.  Red lipstick.  If I keep my mouth shut you can’t even tell Cleopatra wears braces, the bands orange and black for October.  I am transformed.

I walk to school.  This is always the worst part, on Halloween, the solitary walk to school, head down.  It’ll be better when I get there.  When I'm surrounded by monsters and fairies and the flirty, almost-slutty nurses who are sure to appear now that we’re teenagers, but we'll all be in this together, all of us pretending, playing, all of us transformed.

I hold on to the memory of myself in the mirror as I left the house.  I tell myself I am stunning.  Conspicuous.  So unlike the invisible girl I am.  I’ll turn heads.  I am brave.  I am beautiful.  I am transformed.

By the time I arrive my feet are already protesting their strappy gold sandals.  I smooth my wig, feel the lipstick, waxy on cold lips, lift my head high, and step onto the middle school campus.  Into the den of lions.  I’m thirteen and this is the fall of my eighth-grade year.  I’m going to make an impression, one that will carry me into high school, one that will change everything.

I survey my audience.

I turn heads. Yes I do.  I make an impression.  Because I?

I am the only one in costume.

 

This was my first contribution to the Write on Edge memoir-writing meme RemembeRED.  Here is the prompt:

Reach back to a costume that made an impression. Was it yours? A friend’s? Maybe it was a costume you never got to wear. Show it to us with your words, draw us into the emotions it evoked at the time.  Word limit is 400.

Head over to Write on Edge today to read the work of other writers responding to the same prompt!

Humiliation and volunteerism. Also Girl Scouts don't eat cookies.

So.  Girl Scouts.  Right?  Yeah.  We're Girl Scouts now.

I was in charge of snack yesterday.  I brought bananas and a box of Halloween sugar cookies.  Because it's the last meeting before Halloween, I wanted to be festive.  But you know what?  I kind of got the impression some of the other moms were...less than pleased about the cookies?  Maybe I was being paranoid.  But some of them were like, loudly, "You can bring that cookie home and have it after dinner."

Good grief, people.  I brought bananas.  They all happily ate their bananas.  Your kid can't have one single cookie at 4:00 in the afternoon at a Girl Scout meeting?  I mean, I'm kind of all about healthy snacks.  The Princess basically eats nothing between meals but fruit and veggies, period.  So I'm ok with a random cookie every now and then at a somewhat special occasion like a Girl Scout meeting.

Does anybody else find it somewhat ironic that cookies are not welcome at a Girl Scout meeting?

Oh, also?  This happened:

So.  Basically everybody at Girl Scouts is healthier and better-looking than me.  Got it.

Also?  Richer.  OK, we recently moved, and it was kind of an insanely expensive experience fraught with unexpected costs.  Then we had to buy 8 new tires because both cars decided to become death traps in the same month.  Whatever.  These months happen, right?  Well, we joined Girl Scouts in the middle of this, and while I'm told Girl Scouts will never cost us a penny ever again, ever, because cookie sales (cookies, people!) are so very lucrative that the Girl Scout experience is self-supporting...there is a little bit of a start-up cost.  Registration fee, dues, uniform...all told close to $80.  Fine.  I get that, things cost money, and I'm fine with it, and we can afford it.  Except...um...not this month.

The Girl Scout leader acted basically cool about it.  I said I'd pay next month, she didn't give me any grief.  But you know, I can pretty much read minds, and I just know she's judging me.  My inner monologue is something like this:  She thinks I'm lying, she thinks I'm going to keep showing up here with my freeloading kid and our evil unhealthy cookies and soak up the activities and take the patches and never pay a penny.  I'm like the Wimpy of the Girl Scouts.  And why are these women so pretty?!  That one did not give birth to that child.  No way.  They're all staring at me, they know I haven't paid the dues, and I don't own anything made by Nike, and I never stretch or drink enough water.

I will gladly pay you Tuesday for character-building enrichment activities today.

OK.  So at the end of the meeting they announce that we'll be having a "Founder's Day" celebration next month, with cake and snacks, a whole party.  Moms are asked to email the leader and let her know if we can bring fruit or pretzels.  Meanwhile I'm spending the whole meeting trying to avoid said leader so we don't have to address the money issue yet again because she never remembers that I said November 1, I can pay on November 1!

So I sort of sneak out the back door at the end of the meeting, avoiding eye contact.  That night I get an email from the leader:

Hey! I forgot to ask you today. Do you have the money for dues, registration, and the tunic? Just let me know what you can do. Thanks!

AAAARRRGH!! The horror.  I mean, do you see the judgement in those lines?

My response:

Sorry! I meant to talk to you too. [this is a lie] 

Ok here's the deal. We just moved to town in August. It turned out to be a very expensive move... lots of unforeseen costs that we're still trying to recover from. I fully intended to pay all of this on October 2nd, then Princess was sick [so we missed that meeting]... and now by this point in the month we're broke again! Ugh. I swear this is not our usual situation. It's just a weird transition period we're in from moving. 

So. Payday is the first of the month and I will absolutely pay everything we owe at the next meeting, November 2. Alternatively I'd be happy to give you a check tomorrow postdated for November 1. I'm so so sorry that I can't do better than that right now. It's embarrassing, honestly. Lol. I PROMISE I don't usually do stuff like this. Thank you so much for letting Princess still be part of the group. Once we get past this weirdness we'll be model scouts!

Also- I'm a cake decorator, so I wanted to see if you needed a cake donated for founders day? I could do some kind of girl scout themed sheet cake if you want. Otherwise just put me down for pretzels or fruit, whichever you still need. 

Thank you for everything! Princess is a little shy at first but she's loving Daisies and I know she'll open up soon.
Alyssa

Sigh.  Ramble much?

And can we just examine that second-to-last paragraph?  "I'm a cake decorator, so I wanted to see if you needed a cake donated"???  "I could do some kind of girl scout themed..."  WHAT??

People, yes, I have been known to decorate cakes.  Wedding cakes, even.  But I have formally announced to the world that I am taking a break because between my kids and my job and my house and my writing I just cannot handle it.  They became a chore, they became a source of absolute frustration and misery for me.  I do not decorate cakes.  I hate cakes.  

So yeah.  "I can decorate a cake for you, for free!  Totally!  You in no way asked me to do this and I would've been fine just buying a bag of pretzels at the grocery store but let me speak up and volunteer to cover the humiliation of putting my daughter's Girl Scout membership on layaway, OK?  Let's just forget that whole money thing and HEY, I'LL MAKE A DESIGNER CUSTOM GIRL SCOUT CAKE FOR YOU!"

So yeah.  We're Girl Scouts now.  Kind of.