Halloween 2015: wrath of the elf

POSTERITY POST.

What a festive disaster.

Firstly, I was hungover. Not with booze, but with panic over the idea that it might have been booze. Any time I have a couple of light beers and go to bed mildly tipsy I wake in a panic the entire night, heart slamming because WHAT IF I'M AN ALCOHOLIC AND WHAT IF I HAVE A HEART ATTACK OR MY LIVER FAILS IN MY SLEEP AND I DIE. So I was in a state of acute remorse and trembling exhaustion by the time I made it to my mom's house after work for Halloween festivities. The kids were carving pumpkins and the adults were sipping margaritas, and the moment I made a face and waved off a drink I was pushed out the door with $20 in my hand and orders to return with hamburgers. Halloween is not a night for cooking or for nutrition. I did this thing.

Things began to derail as costumes were donned. Through an accident in sizing on Amazon, both the boys had the same Legolas costume. They weren't going as Lord of the Rings characters, but as Dungeons and Dragons characters, which are close enough. Gavin had a big stick, which cousin Chris contested hotly because that was for his D&D character, despite the fact that he was dressed as a doctor and didn't need a big damn stick anyway.

And then Chris ran away to find his friends from the high school who lived in the neighborhood. Gavin, who has trick-or-treated with his cousin/best friend every year since their very BIRTHS, slowly puffed up into a ball of hackles like a supremely cheesed off mountain lion.  "Chill," I said to him as I was wrestling Zenny into her dragon pants, "We will find him when we head out. He'll probably bring his friends back with him."

Heading out was delayed, because it was immediately apparent that Zenny's costume would kill her. It was roughly 140 degrees with the humidity, and she was damp with sweat by the time I finished chasing her around with the camera.

We tossed the dragon fleece aside and I cut up a paper bag while my mother put motorcycle-repair aluminum tape on a McDonalds cup for a crown. THE PAPER BAG PRINCESS, we crowed.

"Ronald, you're a bum," she said. I was so proud.

I didn't dress up. I tried on my mom's valkyrie helmet and a couple witch hats before just wearing a black dress.

My mother, on the other hand, made her own Doctor Horrible costume and freeze ray. I should have slapped a hammer sticker on a t shirt, damn it.

The younger cousin was a ghoul. Again. His only criteria in a costume is that it covers his face. Which doesn't do any good when he keeps running up to people and hauling it up and yelling, "LAST YEAR WAS MUCH SCARIER THAN THIS YEAR. I CAN'T EAT PEANUTS."

The students at the college made pumpkins, and then the staff (my aunt and husband) stole them. So we had rather a lot of jack-o-lanterns to greet the candy-seekers.

Gavin was ready to go. He had murderous rage in his eyes. But he's a pretty nice guy, so it looked like this:

I KILL YOU, CHRIS

We headed out just as the sun set, so this was the last lit picture I took. The elf stalked along, stamping his stick angrily, while the paper bag ran to keep up with him.

We found the cousin. The enormous high school friends turned to stare at us self-consciously, adjusting their hats, so I gave them a moment. The boy came back fuming, and the cousin set off with his crew of future internet trolls, too cool to hang out with his oldest and most loyal friend. And just like that, childhood Halloweens ended for the both of them. Turning 13 is rough. 

We did the rounds with the littler kids, got back to the house for the candy dump, watched a spooky show, and carried sleeping bodies to the car at 10pm. 

And that was that. Success, and pain, and soon... VENGEANCE.

flashers and sharks

Both of our library-frequenting police officers came in yesterday, looking bushy-tailed. They only travel in packs when they're on a call.

officer 1: someone reported a blonde lady flashing traffic by the library. Anybody seen her?
everyone: *turn to look at blonde librarian*
me: Hey. I've been at the desk all morning.
co-worker: What did she look like - how old was she?
officer 2: We don't know. Depends if she was going like this [up high] or like this [down low].
co-worker: *smacks officer's arm*
officer 2: we had a call about a shark earlier, want to see?
me: ooh, sure.
officer 2: *shows picture of mutilated leg chomped into hamburger by shark*
me: MY EYES. WHY.

Never a dull day.

self-actualization and potties

In my dream, I was dead. I was laying dead in a ditch and trying to get a flattering selfie of my dead self so I could update my facebook profile and see if people I hadn't heard from in a while might want to reconnect before I lost sentience completely. Which I was failing to do, because I was dead, and I couldn't get my arms to work. I woke up with my head hanging off the mattress.

If I'm thinking accidental death might be an expedient way to make friends, it might be a sign that I need more people in my life.

This is all Ann Brashares' fault. I stayed up until 11pm finishing the book, then went to bed like a hollow-eyed sad thing.

The lost love returns after 10 years and their someday arrives. The 'successful one' puts down her phone and finds her own voice again. The wayward girl hits bottom and then blossoms in the sunshine with a baby in her arms. Everyone reconnects, laughs and hugs and eats pop tarts, and it's all ok in the end.

Damn it, I want to feel things. And laugh about things outside of the letters h-a-h-a on my keyboard. And find letters in my mailbox. Maybe I'd get some if I sent some damn letters to people. 

Off to find a book that is more thrills-and-kilts and less weep-for-your-squandered-life.

In other news

* I missed Rhinebeck, the big upstate New York fiber festival. Again. Someone please help me come up with a reason to go to that thing without having to visit my in-laws.

* Looking at artwork on my blog feed (here, here, oh, and here) I felt existential distress because I haven't been making art - and then remembered that I've been spending all my free time drawing a potty-training board book. This is going to be my legacy. In a world of portraiture and fantasy art and stormy landscapes, I have a half-finished potty board book. And folks, I have discovered why there are not more potty books. Why there is an ever-present need for potty-training instruction and an inexplicable dearth of material. Why illustrators go through ridiculous back-flips to avoid drawing kids on potties (eg: "I'm a Potty Superhero!" with child in cape not actually using a potty. You know who does not know what a 'superhero' is? MY POTTY TRAINING TODDLER). Because here is what happens when you try to make a potty book:

1. After sketching the book out and beginning the process of gathering reference for the final illustrations, you discover almost immediately that it is REALLY creepy taking pictures of toddlers using the toilet, and you begin wondering how you'd explain it to a judge after the police ram down your door. I happen to have a toddler on hand. Imagine needing to borrow your friend's kid for pictures in the bathroom. NOPE. 
2. In an effort to avoid taking reference pictures, you turn to the internet - figuring there are plenty of proud parents posting tasteless pictures of their kids on the potty - and immediately you are punched in the face by horrifying pictures of bottle-sucking men in diapers and bonnets spreading their legs suggestively.
3. You set the computer on fire and go draw a book about ducklings.

I decided to just take pictures of my kid watching tv on the ottoman and pretend it was a potty, and that was fine. But then I had the great idea to include a bit about using a public toilet - because really, half of potty training is running across a giant store with the kid under your arm and crouching in the stall to hold them up on the toilet. So the next time we found ourselves sprinting to the Costco restroom, I helped her finish her business and then remembered to take a picture of the public toilet for reference. Just the toilet. On its own. "STOP TAKING PICTURES," my kid bellowed, and I felt the laser eyes of every person in the crowded bathroom shoot through the stall door into my back. "IT JUST FELL OUT OF MY PURSE," I lied loudly, cramming my phone away. Then I whipped her through the hand-washing trough and we ran for it.

I had better produce the next Once Upon a Potty for all this nonsense, I tell you what.

Autumn on the North Shore

Folks, I remembered that I can go to the beach. The beach is not one of my favorite places, and I don't even know why. I like sitting. I like swimming. I like the mountains and the heat and the wind and the crashing waves. I like eating snacks and drinking out of sweating water bottles. What I don't like is having to keep the kids from dying or getting sunburned or being creeped up on by creeps. But that is life anywhere you go with small children. More parking my ass on the beach and relaxing is in order. 

Pumpkin Spiced Heatstroke

If Hawaii is maybe a bit overcrowded, it is only in very small and compactly contained areas. The rest is sprawling mountain and misty jungle and sweltering fields of farmland. Among these fields is Aloun (a-loon) Farms, home of pumpkins and corn and sunflowers and Mount Doom.

They called it Pumpkin Mauna Kea.

Every year we visit the pumpkin patch, imagining scenes of autumn breezes and caramel apples, and every year we step out of the car into the blistering cushion of heat that sits in the valley and join the groaning hordes shuffling bleakly through the fields, shedding water bottles and articles of clothes and the occasional old person.

In the festival compound, families cram into every puddle of shade cast by bouncy houses and food tents, pouring water straight over their children's heads and watching it steam on contact.

We bunched under the hay ride tent and waited for the tractor to pull up, surveying the miles of pumpkin vines punctuated by the brief flare of human combustion.

Parents were overtaken by a sort of desperate cheer. They hollered along with the live country music and thumbed out stacks of five-dollar bills for carnival food. "We are having FUN!" yelled the dad next to us, "Good old fashioned fun that we will NEVER FORGET!" 

And for all that, it really was memorable fun. We rumbled through the fields on bales of hay, ran through the vines to grab pumpkins before we could blister with sunburn, hobbled under their weight through the dust and heat mirage to pay whatever the guy at the door arbitrarily decided to charge us ($15) and hauled ass back through the rows of cars to the safety of air conditioning. 

Seasonal childhood memory ACHIEVED.

It's all candy and pie from here out.

Question du jour

Old man walks up the desk. "Can you break a five for me?"
"Sure."
"Thanks. Say, you're pretty good at that for a girl."
"Oh reaaaally."
"I don't tend to endear myself to folks when I say that."
"Yes, I was going to say, 'And you have a lot of teeth for a man who talks like that.'"
"You know, where I come from, men really love their football. I had a friend who's wife said, 'You love football more than me!' and he said, 'That's true - but I love you more than basketball!'"
"And now he's buried in the yard."
"Har har, see ya, sweetheart!"

It's secular autumn festival decoration time!

In the interests of keeping our library witchcraft-complaining-parent-free, I drew a Hawaiian Hoary Bat for my storytime kids. Just open it in a new window, print on cardstock, color & cut, and use as very cheap decorations, if you want.

Why you should want:

1. It's a bat, so SEASONAL.
2. The name has "hoar" in it.

Let's acknowledge that happened and then pretend it didn't.

Sorry about posting and deleting, RSS feeders. I looked at a thing that hurt my feelings even though it was none of my business and I knew it was a bad idea. So the next morning I went ahead and impulsively put in a big knitpicks order- which will either comfort and console me or reward me for being a passive internet creep. Distracting me from self-inflicted injury was the whole reason I started knitting furiously in the first place. At least people get hats out of it.

Anyway, I want to report that I like the truck. It has me feeling like The Me I Was Back When I Was Me. Which is not really a great thing, since that Me made some really shitty life decisions. My mother says, "A truck brings out the man in a woman," so maybe what I'm feeling is whatever that means, but I think it just has more to do with having spent my formative years in a Ford Ranger. Maybe she meant that I'll be more confident about vehicle maintenance - probably because it will require more of it.

Trucks bring out the man in a man, too, I am rapidly discovering; there is a particular type of truck-driving man who becomes a complete dickhole when he sees another truck coming. This morning a truck up ahead was coming out of the gas station, saw me signaling, and decided to gun it and straddle two lanes to block the turn lane. I was banging the wheel and going, "RAWR RAWR I FEEL ANGER," because labeling emotions is healthy, and Gavin said, "GRATITUDE, mom. Quick, BE GRATEFUL." This is a neuroscience exercise, which we have been trying to do whenever we feel bad about things, because the act of searching for something to be grateful about (whether or not you find anything) releases happy brain chemicals. "I AM GRATEFUL I HAVE A TRUCK TO RAM HIM WITH."

And you know? I did feel better. Science, people.

knights, trucks, and figs

I will be knitting for survival soon, if the A/C at work continues to drop into the teeth-chattering digits. Today I ran outside to warm myself like a lizard against the warm brick building. There are clouds and a bit of a breeze as another hurricane tries to form itself right on top of us, and the weak tropical heat had a hard time penetrating the layers of leather and blouse and undershirt to warm up the meat of me. Mittens, I need. Arm warmers. A balaclava. I'm going to start wearing my hair in two flaps of braid to cover my ears.

 

In other news

The farmer's market next to the library sells figs. Figs are nostalgic for me; my great-grandmother had a stubborn old fig tree behind her little house in Kingman, Arizona, and I felt really pleased with myself any time I found a living fig on the thing. I can survive the savage heat of the desert! Behold my foraging skills! And I'd sit on the rock wall and eat the figs and read Dean Koontz novels.

So I took some figs home to draw. I was feeling pretty good, driving my truck and listening to loud music and wearing giant sunglasses, and then I got home and realized I hadn't put house keys on my new ring and I was locked the fuck out. But hey, the basement is open, and the kegerator is in the basement, and I set up the figs. 

Then I drank a mason jar full of beer, realized too late that it was really kind of too strong, ate the figs, and laid on the rug listening to Flight of the Conchords.

So that didn't work out. 

And that was Saturday. Well, is Saturday. I'm still locked in the basement.

MINE

I have a truuuuuuck. Brb, buying all the bandannas and torn jeans.

Then a small thing happened. While I was giddy about the truck and clearing dinner dishes, the boys sat down to paint their first D&D figures. These are tiny white plastic things with lots of detail molded into them, and I was pretty sure leif, being 7, would drown the thing in paint and get a lot of it on his face. An hour later he presented this: 

Holy shit, folks, that is shading and mixing and a controlled palette. Good thing these things don't cost much, because we are going to be getting LOTS more for this kid. 

I can't with the evens, as they say.