the pieces of my life

I read somewhere that if you’re going to eat candy, you should let the wrappers pile up, because when you see how many you’ve eaten, you’ll stop.

Doesn’t work. I look at the pile and think, “Shit, I’ve gone this far. Might as well eat another five.”

Did I mention it’s only 9:12 a.m.?

Did I mention my tummy is starting to bother me?

Did I mention I just put another wrapper on the pile? (If you are one of my children and you are reading this, “Ha ha! Just kidding! That’s all garbage I picked up off the street on my way home from walking Pie to school. I would never eat like that. Especially not first thing in the morning. So bad for you. So bad!”)

My son has been a terror these days. He had a doctor’s appointment and we were running a few minutes late. Parking was going to be a bit of a pain, and I was stopped at a traffic light across the street from where he had to be, so I said to him, “Why don’t you get out here and walk to the appointment and I’ll park and meet you.”

“Okay,” he said, hopping out of the car. And then he completely bypassed the traffic light, walked up one the absolute busiest streets in our town, and proceeded to cross in the middle of the street, around the cars. I’m trying to yell at him from the car, “Doodles! You moron! Cross at the light. CROSS AT THE LIGHT!”

By the time I park and catch up with him, I’m furious. “What the hell! That was a complete lack of judgment! How can I trust you to walk yourself places when you do it like an f’ing idiot! Seriously! What were you thinking?”

“Sorry, sorry!” he said. “I didn’t know you wanted me to cross at the light!”

“How could you NOT know that? You are eleven years old and you don’t know how to cross a street? How do you have such a complete lack of judgment! Complete! How do you not know this! COMPLETE LACK OF JUDGMENT!”

Luckily, it was his turn to go in, so my tirade ended, though I silently cursed him throughout. And on the way out, still feeling really snippy, I walked him down to the corner and demonstrated how one crosses at the light. I looked at my kid, shivering in his t-shirt, and I said, “Put on your jacket.”

“I don’t have a jacket with me,” he said.

“It’s October. In the Northeast. Why the hell do you not have a jacket?”

The little twit looked at me and shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Complete lack of judgment?”

I. Wanted. To. Smack. Him.

Surprisingly, he has continued to live and thrive.

(Those of you not on Facebook–my dad!–don’t have the benefit of hearing conversations like this between my son and myself, but it pretty much wraps up where we stand these days:
Me: How is it you made it to 11 and you’re still alive?
Boy: Survival of the fittest.
Me: Boy, if there were ever an argument against natural selection, you’re it.
Boy: The sad thing is that I was Dad’s strongest sperm.)

Meanwhile he’s signed up for a hacking contest, and all he wants to do his hack. (And now I’m singing that in my head to the tune of Don Henley’s “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.”) Homework? If he can fit it in. Viola practice? Not so much. Sleep? Who needs sleep? There’s hacking to be done! My boy is clamoring to be a geeking cliche.

By the way, I solved the candy problem. I threw out the wrappers. Now to keep my girl from going through the garbage looking for them (I swear, she does it, always trying to catch me chocolate-handed!).

Milky Way, anyone? I can be forgiven, though. It’s fortification for the yelling I’ll need to do later when I discover the latest stupid thing that boy has done. Maybe I should have two.

I have clearly failed as a mother. As part of her bass practice, Pie is supposed to sing along while she plucks out her tunes. It’s simple. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

Except… my daughter doesn’t know the words. Seriously? She gets lost somewhere around “Up above the world so high” and just starts making crap up. How can someone make it the age of eight and not know the words to “Twinkle Twinkle”? It’s crazy.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. What I really wanted to tell you about was a series of text messages that occurred on the morning of Thursday, October 31. At breakfast, about 7:08 a.m., my boy said, “Is Daddy on the plane right now?”

I replied, “He f’ing better be!”

I’m pretty sure I made it clear in my last post how I feel about Halloween. Let’s just say, I’m not a fan.

The man is clearly a mind reader because at 7:12 a.m. I got the following text: “On my flight. Just in case you were worried.” And a few minutes later, “See you in a little bit.”

I texted back a smiley face. Which was pretty much my kiss of death, because what it really meant was “I am so happy you are coming home to relieve me of the horrors of Halloween and to save me from the hordes of greedy children and the mounds of candy that I’m clearly just begging the universe to f’k with me.”

Because after a quick text exchange about the Red Sox winning the World Series, I got this text: “Hold the phone. Plane has some damage. On ground for at least an hour. May have to change planes. Just got done telling woman next to me my ‘I missed my Halloween flight’ story. She nows thinks I’m a jinx.”

I of course knew better. “This had better be a Halloween prank.”

And when he replied, “For reals,” I may have called him a loser. But not with that word. And not in a friendly upper/lowercase kind of typing.

So what time did his 3:30 arrival land? at 7:25 p.m. Just in time to COMPLETELY miss Halloween. He did write, “On the plus side I’m packing so many gummy bears that I think customs suspects me of being a drug mule.”

He did bring me gummies. Was it “so many”? I’d say it was a good two-days worth.

And I got first dibs on the kids’ reject candy (my kids dislike the oddest things and I ended up with a huge haul of peanut butter cups, butterfingers, and other random goodness). Of course, two days later, I was pissed I had so much kids’ candy, but what can you do? (Don’t say, “Not eat it.” Because that is NOT an option.)

I’ve already started crafting the note I plan on giving Adam’s boss next year:

Dear Mr. Boss Man,
Please excuse Adam from work travel. He will be drawn and quartered if he leaves the Boston vicinity within forty-eight hours of Halloween ever again. If he even thinks about a work trip around Halloween, I will come after every employee of your company. It will not be pretty.
Sincerely,
Epstein’s mother

Have I mentioned how much I hate Halloween?

The other night, I received a text from my husband who was in Berlin for work. “Did you lose internet connection?”

Aw, how sweet. He must have been trying to message me and was concerned when he couldn’t reach me. And then the next text came: “lost connection to sling box.”

Yes, my husband is using our home TV to watch the World Series in Berlin. And now he is in London. Watching the game. At 12:46 a.m. And we’re only in the 5th inning. Does anyone else remember the last time my husband was in London on Halloween? If he misses his flight because he was too tired to get to the airport on time–correction: if he misses his flight for any reason at all–I am leaving him alone with my children, the three-day weekend (because the school doesn’t want to deal with overtired, oversugared kids on Friday, so it’s a “professional development day”), and all the leftover candy while I go find a nice spa that serves bourbon.

I hate October.

I hate that baseball takes over.
I hate those stupid beards.
I hate that my football team sucks and not only sucks but last Sunday lured me into thoughts of “Maybe!” and then sucked the biggest suck they have ever sucked with a team I hate more than any other team in the world. So sucky.
I hate that I can’t stop eating candy corn.
I hate that I am out of candy corn.
I hate costumes.
I hate my kids going out begging for candy.
I hate handing out candy.
I hate that I decided to hand out only Halloween candy that I don’t like so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat any.
I hate that I bought all my favorites anyway.
I hate that the Twizzler/Milk Duds combo pack made the Milk Duds taste like a disgusting strawberry.
I hate that I ate those Milk Duds anyway.
I. Hate. Halloween.

If we could go straight from September to November, I’d be quite happy.

Last night, carving pumpkins (in an attempt to at least make my kids not hate October too much), my son discovered the box of Halloween decorations, things that people have given us over the years or things that I bought in hopes that I could overcome my hatred of Halloween (note: I can’t). He said, “If you’re not going to decorate for Halloween, I am!”

And he did. He put up a string of spider lights. He hung up a vampire and a ghost. The girl helped by putting up a skeleton. He found a few window decorations. He cut up a piece of cardboard to make a tombstone for one Mr. D. Ceased.

He finished and he looked at his handiwork. He said to me, “Don’t you want to say something to me?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like, ‘Thank you,'” he said.

“I should thank you? Thank you for what? Thank you for putting decorations for a holiday I despise? Thank you for mucking up my house with crap? Thank you for putting up all the crap that I’m going to have to clean up, take down myself, and put away next week? I should thank you?”

The boy looked at me and, wisely, turned to his sister. “Anything you want to say to me, Pie?”

To her credit, she said, “Thank you.”

Bah freakin’ humbug.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I freakin’ hate Halloween. That said, I’ve been suckered in. Candy has been purchased. Mummy dogs, monster fingers, and witches brew with bloody wormy ice cubes are being made for dinner. And I helped Pie carve her pumpkin. Correction: she designed her pumpkin, I carved it.

The drawing was a little elaborate with strands of hair. Most of the hair came out well, but some had a big chunk that fell out, so I changed it to ears.

Me: Pie, I’m sorry this didn’t quite work.

Pie: Do you think it still looks spooky?

Me: Uh… well, as spooky as this pumpkin was going to look.

Pie evaluates it for a moment. Then she declares, “I like it better this way!” As she turns to go up the stairs, she turns and looks at me and says, “I’m Sweetie Pie Medros and I approve this message!”

Thank goodness.