Happy Halloween!

I get to look forward to trick-or-treating with my 8 year old daughter tonight, and it's going to be around 25 degrees Farenheit. Brrrrr! She is going to be dressed as a dead baseball player. We bought the required grey and white face paint, and she will wear her softball uniform, cleats, and we'll paint her face to resemble death. Never has she wanted the cutesy, girly, frilly costumes. Vampires, ghosts, scary things are more her style. And that's fine with me! I'm not a cutesy, girly, frilly type woman either!

My son wants to go trick-or-treating too, but we already rented his Elvis costume and returned it last week so he could wear it to school all day and wear it to the dance as well. He looked great. We told him he couldn't go because he's already taller than me now! He's 5'10". With a bass voice. So maybe it's time to give it up? But just in case, I'm prepared to help him become a dead soccer player.

The trouble with the whole trick-or-treat thing in Montana is that it's so much colder than a witch's tit that kids either have to wear a full length furry costume with long johns underneath, or they have to just go door to door with full winter gear on over their costumes. Sad, I know. And it sucks the double big one for the parents who care enough to take their kids out.

Previous years we've enjoyed Trunk-or-Treat, the activity the youth put on at church where the whole ward comes dressed up and they park in the church parking lot and park with trunks inward, and the kids walk around getting candy from all the decorated trunks until the supply is gone. Last year the witch's tit demanded that we take it indoors, so the people had to line the church hallways and the kids walked from bowl to bowl for candy galore.

What's up with those cheapskates who only hand out Tootsie Rolls?

I have to actually hand it to the cheapskates...as a kid my siblings and I would actually use PILLOWCASES to trick-or-treat with, since little, puny plastic pumpkins or flimsy plastic bags would never hold up under the sheer weight of it all.

We'd get home, demand hot chocolate, and each take a corner of the living room for the Most Important Halloween Event Ever: LET THE TRADING BEGIN.

Each of us would dump our pillowcase, then sort and count. This was serious business. If you forgot to pee first, you waited and ignored all discomfort and distraction. There was no way you could leave your pile, because when you returned, it'd be half the size you dumped out. No talking happened during the sort and count, unless it was an awed "Ooooh, a Whole Snickers Bar!" or a mumbled "Who gives a darn toothbrush anyway?"

Inevitably my piles would show that cheapskates do in fact rule the world...the Tootsie Roll pile was always the biggest. But I had a secret. Tootsie Rolls were my LEAST favorite. I had some serious trading power at my disposal.

Next came the best part: The NEGOTIATION. My favorite thing to trade for was the Dubble Bubble gum. Especially if the gumballs were of the fresh variety, meaning you could actually make a dent when you squeezed them. You either got the petrified or the fresh, no in-between. Either way, they are better than sex sometimes. Who cares if the flavor only lasts 4.3 seconds??

Once the trading was done, it was time for the most important part of all, Finding the Best Hiding Spot Ever. Without this detail taken care of, all previous efforts are deemed a waste.

Not that it truly matters, since for me, the candy was gone in less than a week. I really enjoy my candy, damnit. My children amaze me with their ability to save Halloween and Easter candy until it's stale. It's only because they found a Hiding Spot Mom Can't Find.

The photo included here: my dad's creativity at its best.

Can You Tell Which is the Lie? ~ TAKE TWO.

Oh shit...this is so embarrassing. It wasn't until I got the e-mailed comment from my brother Eric about my truths and lies that it dawned on me what I had done: I had listed 5 truths about myself! How blonde can I be?

Sadly, this is not unusual for me. I hope that Eric will get on here and vouch for me on this...I have moments like this on a daily basis.

The only thing I could do was change the 22 hours to 20 and hope I'd get away with my serious Dumb and Dumber moment...but no. You are too smart. I was not trying to cheat, I swear. In my own defense, I think it was the post I was working on when my boss showed up suddenly, so I published it fast without thinking.

So, in an effort to redeem myself and not look like a complete idiot, I've given myself a do-over here. One is seriously a lie.

1. During childbirth the first time, I went from being dilated to 6 to actually having my baby in only 15 minutes.

2. My first romantic (wet) dream starred me and . . . . wait for it . . . . Christopher Reeves. I was maybe 11 at the time. And it was HOT. Of course all we did was kiss, but it was lying-down-in-bed kinda kissing.

3. I once endured a 12 hour layover in Brussels, Belgium. We wandered the city and then slept next to a really cool fountain most of the day.

4. On an all-day hike at Girls Camp, I found a huge mushroom (6” across) that had another mushroom growing out the top of it which had another mushroom growing out the top of it. I picked it and hauled it back to camp because I knew nobody would believe me otherwise.

5. The first concert I ever attended was Kool and the Gang. It would’ve been a hot date except my host brother insisted in coming along, damn him.

The Answer!

OK, thanks for playing, everyone. I'm ready to give you the answer to my truth/lie post. I wasn't given the rules for when to divulge the truth, but I hate being left hanging, so I won't do that to you guys like SOME PEOPLE I know.

1. I jumped the fence of a locked cemetery in Vienna late at night and walked around the graves to see the headstones with candles burning in remembrance of the dead.

TRUE. I was with a group of BYU Study Abroad students and we were walking around and came upon the cemetery, and it was so beautiful but locked. We walked along the tall wall and we actually came upon a chair hidden in the bushes...so now my brother Eric knows how I was able to scale a wall, since he doubts I can do it. Thanks a LOT.

2. I don't know how to swim.

Sad, but TRUE. I was so mad at my mom when I was a teen and I confronted her as to why she didn't give me lessons, and she said, "Honey, I tried 3 times. YOU wouldn't get in the water."

Oh.

3. My first kiss was with a man(boy) who later turned out to be gay.

TRUE. Cal M. I'm glad he found happiness finally. He surely didn't find any with me and my little dry peck of a kiss. In case you wonder, I did figure out how to kiss eventually.

4. I skipped school as an exchange student for over half the year. I never told my host parents.

TRUE, except for the never told my host parents part. I told them a year ago. In a letter. And oh how my German's suffered for it. I was such an idiot. Eric, did I ever pay you back for that phone call???

5. I rode the Greyhound bus from Billings, MT to Colorado Springs once. It took 22 hours.

FALSE. I DID take the Greyhound bus from Billings to Colorado Springs in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school because I got accepted for the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Summer Seminar at Colorado College to study art for a week or two (I can't remember the time frame of it, I only know it was awesome.) However, the bus ride was only 20 hours including layovers, not 22 hours.

Can you tell which is the lie?

Cele tagged me to write five things about myself, only one of them is a lie. Can you guess which one?

1. I jumped the fence of a locked cemetery in Vienna late at night and walked around the graves to see the headstones with candles burning in remembrance of the dead.

2. I don't know how to swim.

3. My first kiss was with a man(boy) who later turned out to be gay.

4. I skipped school as an exchange student for over half the year. I never told my host parents.

5. I rode the Greyhound bus from Billings, MT to Colorado Springs once. It took 22 hours.

Weenis Of the Week

Last night while I was on the computer, my son asked me to give him a back rub. After I rubbed his shoulders for a bit, he moved so I could massage his arm and shoulder. I was massaging when I noticed his elbow and I pulled the patch of really dry skin there. He said, "What's wrong with my weenis?" I had to laugh because I had forgotten that he told us a few months ago that the back of the elbow is called the weenis, and I told him that wasn't a real body part term. But he swore he thought it was, all his friends called the outside of your elbow a weenis. I told him his friends were pulling his leg and he was being gullible.

So last night I laughed again and repeated that I didn't think this was a word, really. But I was at the computer already, so why not? I Googled the word weenis. Lo and behold, it's there! I couldn't believe it. Apparently it IS the term for the back of the elbow. Maybe the slang term, but the term nonetheless.

I've decided the word weenis is too priceless not to use for my own ends.

Therefore, this post marks the beginning of my Weenis of the Week spotlight.

WEENIS OF THE WEEK:



David Caruso.

I see him on the TV screen and I'm instantly mad for no apparent reason other than he bugs the crap out of me. I hated him in NYPD Blue, and I hate him in CSI Miami. Why do some casting directors think he's good at drama? I absolutely hate how he looks down all the time while he's speaking to people, then at the last second he looks up. Every single time, every single scene. And what's up with that voice of his??

David, you are a weenis.

Is reincarnation a possibility?

Why can't I lie in the sun like this and be perfectly content?