This is Halloween

Kids on an adrenaline high.  For two months.  Follow that with a two-week sugar high.  That's Halloween.

They are drawn in by the spooky, creepy, gross, terrifying, and utterly ghoulish. They craft "hand-made" paper decorations to be hung from the ceiling with masking tape.  We also spread our collection of store-bought trimmings around the house.  Spiders and pumpkins, skeletons, and ghosts.

And every year there is talk of costuming and I, the sole curator of costume and disguise, give suggestions that will make my job simple and seamless (as in I don't want to have to sew any seams.)  I am fixated on the goal of doing and paying as little as possible. Reduce, re-use, recycle, be cheap. My mantra.

 For example, Nolan was a second-hand lion in 2007.  It had been worn by my youngest sister in 2003.  This year, Nolan tried to wear it again, but could not negotiate his arms into the sleeves, so Auburn put it on instead, becoming a third-hand lion.

I don't even know where the 2008 bee suit came from, but I assure you it appeared at my door with no effort on my part.  Nolan's ensemble was homemade by my mom for my sister, Olivia seven years earlier.

I used the same cowboy suit the next year on the next boy, but he refused to wear hats.  And like Woody always says, "A cowboy without his hat is like a yodel without its hay-hee-hoo."  The panda costume came in a box of hand-me-downs from my Aunt Pat.  Nolan, the second-hand panda.

I was a youth leader when I was pregnant with Auburn in 2011.  Halloween was approaching and so was my expected due date.  The girls at church wanted to have some Halloween festivities.  I was due the 25th and they hoped I could attend, so we planned the activity for Wednesday, the 19th.  I thought for sure I would make it and I did, dressed as a pregnant panda.  I wore all black, wrapped my tummy in a white crib mattress-pad, squeezed my head in Nolan's panda hood, colored black around my eyes and called it good.  It was really good, considering I thought and executed the idea while having uterine contractions.  I walked in the door at the church and announced to the girls and the other leaders, "I'm in labor."  They all laughed and I did, too, but then I said, "No really, I am."  And we laughed again.  Auburn was born the next morning.

It was September 2010, when I first purchased a costume.  I was pulling the boys in the bike mobile through downtown T-burg.  The window display of the thrift store known as The Gem Shop featured some mediocre second-hand costumes.  The $3 Spiderman get-up caught the eye of my 4-year-old.  It was apparently better than mediocre and would fulfill his heart's fondest wish.  We had a Spiderman for Halloween and almost every day afterward until he outgrew the costume.  That same costume made a reappearance the next year on the same boy at which time I announced that would be his last time squeezing himself into Spiderman.  Wedgie was the word of the day.

We gratefully receive truck-loads of second-hand boy clothes from my three boy cousins.  From those boxes of clothes, we have procured many beloved articles of clothing including some costumes.  One of the costumes was a hooded Batman cape.  Gerret fell in love with that cape and wore it daily, accessorized most of the time by black rubber boots.  It was his Halloween costume in 2010, 2011, and 2012 when it finally bit the dust.  

Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids some costumes, such as Buzz Light Year, a new Spiderman so we could have two at the same time, and a pumpkin princess thing.  When Auburn was a week old, we dressed her as piglet, an insulated winter-suit that came from somewhere in a second-hand sort of a way.  

This year, the boys wore costumes they had been given at Christmas last year, bought cheaply in a post-Halloween sale.

And there you have it.  Reduce. Re-use. Recycle.  Be cheap.  Happy Halloween.

Curl Be Gone

Hair has always been somewhat of an issue for me.  Genetic inheritance accorded me frizzy curls (is there any other kind ??)  I knew from a young age that I was supposed to love those curls, because many a woman (and some unfortunate men) paid good money on a monthly basis to have them chemically induced.  Those women were sure to let me know it, too.  I remember old ladies eulogizing my curls in rapturous refrain.  Curls were lovely!  And amazing!  A blessing from heaven!  How they wished they had been born with curls!  How many uncomfortable nights of hair tied tightly to their heads would it have saved them!

Conversely, I remember my grandmother, who also had curly hair, calling my genetic inheritance a curse.  In fact, most curly haired people I've encountered have had a similar reaction.  They know a secret.  I know it, too.  It is this: To the observer, curly hair looks just fine, nifty, maybe even beautiful or desirable, but to the owner of real live curly hair, it is an uncontrollable monster with a mind of its own.

I spent some teenage years trying to tame and control it with negligible success.  Then I moved to the desert for college where all of my hair taming dreams came true.  Five years of smooth, shiny, flat control.

But home is NY where it rains two-thirds of the year and is humid every remaining day.  Water is to my hair what the full moon is to a werewolf.  Therefore, my hair expresses animalistic qualities in NY.  I would spend a half hour drying and straightening my hair then walk outside to have it morph pretty quickly into a twirly, frizzy monster baring fangs and claws.  It was frustrating and a waste of time, so I gave up the fight.  I came to terms with frizzy-curly beast being just the way it is and experienced some peace in the acceptance.  I just let it grow and grow and sometimes, when I got tired of the length I would flip my head upside down and wield a pair of scissors.  Curly hair absorbs scissors mishaps like it was born to.  On the worst days, rubber bands really came in handy.

My struggles with hair aren't all aesthetic, though.  Sometimes, the wildness is also cumbersome and uncomfortable.   It feels heavy and awkward on my head; it trails in tangles around my neck, in my face, down my back.  In times of discomfort, peace is hard to come by.

About six months ago, I started feeling a lot of angst regarding my hair.  The more cumbersome it felt, the more I noticed its flawed appearance.  The more I thought about how it looked, the more I cared.  The more I cared, the more I thought other people cared.  I became infected with this idea that people looked at my hair before they looked in my eyes.  My hair was me!  It was taking over my entire image of myself, (a desperate situation, for sure).  After working for six years to come to terms with the curly mass attached to my scalp, I had undone every semblance of peace.

One morning, not long ago, I went into the bathroom to shower, caught a glimpse of myself (read: my hair) in the mirror and decided then and there that I had had enough.  I didn't even bother to trifle through our hair stuff for the sharp hair-cutting clippers; I went straight for the somewhat dull kitchen scissors.  And I cut off my pony tail.  All of it.  Then I took out the rubber band and did my best to make the cut even.  When I was done, it could barely be held back.   It hung about three inches above my shoulders, somewhere between my chin and earlobe, still a curly mass, just less of it.  In fact, it seemed even more wild now that it was lighter weight and short.

I decided pretty quickly after the cut that I didn't take off enough of it, but logistically, I couldn't cut my own hair any shorter, so I enlisted my husband who was unsure of his abilities.  That made me nervous, so finally after about a month of my ponytail chop, I determined to pay someone professional to cut the rest off.

Though disappointing to have to pay for it, the cut was a success.  I have never felt so comfortable and unconcerned with my hair.  I've heard women with short cuts say, "Short hair, don't care" and in the past I didn't really understand, but I get it now.  I have short hair and it means I don't have to care about it anymore, because it barely exists.  It isn't heavy or hot.  It doesn't snarl or tangle its way down my neck.  It is even too short to be frizzy or even very curly.  I can make it go straight just by wearing a hat for a while.  It can never get in my mouth or go up my nose.  I couldn't spend much time on it, even if I wanted to.  It is awesome.

Short hair
 Don't care!

Green Feathers, Diminutive Eggs

Our growing chick was turning out to be a rooster.
The touch of green in his tail gave him away.
Plans were made for tender meat; his contribution in lieu of eggs.

But then...

Small eggs this week.  

(When a young hen first starts her laying, her eggs are often half-sized. )

Maybe the rooster is really a hen?

With green feathers?

A true Miracle.