Dentist, then trick-or-treat

I just chatted with a friend who told me that we signed up for Halloween when we became parents.  We signed up for stuffing our kids into costumes after they've stuffed themselves with candy corn at school.  We agreed to send them out in freezing and/wet weather to collect candy that they'll eat for the next six + months.  Did we? Did I sign up for Halloween?  What miniscule print listed this as a parenting duty and/pleasure when I signed on the dotted line?

This friend asked me if I planned to dress up. I have--yes, I have--thought ahead and dressed in all black today, so I can easily throw something bright/gaudy on top and declare myself a rainbow on a stormy afternoon or some such nonsense.  If it's not pouring, I will take the kids downtown for an hour, where I have been told it is like a real Gilmore Girls scene, with people laughing and greeting each other through purple witch lips and jostling babies-turned-pumpkins.  Our favorite ice-cream store is scooping free this afternoon and the picturesque Norwegian-fronted stores are giving out heaps of treats.  If it's pouring though, I've got back-up plans: carving pumpkins and candy corn.  One year we didn't carve pumpkins until after Thanksgiving, so that would really be over-achieving for the likes of us.

Merry woke me early so I could braid her hair in preparation for being Hermione Granger this afternoon.  I'm going to pin up my Granddad's old and ornate doctoral robes, which Martin has used at matriculation ceremonies in past years.  She tossed around the idea of buying a wand but finally shut herself into the bathroom with a butter knife and somehow stripped a stick down to the knots.  (I made her vacuum the bathroom of the considerable debris afterward.)  It looks amazing.

Elspeth somehow lost her crown in the last ten minutes before school but headed out the door with her snow queen costume (complete with hoop skirt) and wand stuffed into a plastic bag.  No, I did not make it, you funny people!  Goodwill special!

I thought I was going to kit up Bea as a doctor but she's since told me--this morning on the way to school--that she wants to be a spider web.  I've also heard a cougar and a princess.  But she's having trouble focusing on trick-or-treat, because she's terribly excited about going to the dentist this afternoon.  For the past two days she's told me with determined energy that she has a cavity.  She has proudly informed people at school and invited her best friend to come as her special guest to the dentist to watch her get drilled. 

(In case you didn't know, Bea is ecstatic about all things Doctor--injections, exams, puss-filled owies, you name it.  We have checked out every single doctor book in the library appropriate for her age, and she pours over skeletons and muscles and diagrams of organs.  You'd think she'd want to be one for Halloween, but apparently not.  I'm not sure how I'm going to manage the spider web.  But hey, if I could stay up half the night one Christmas eve stitching an old scarf into a muff for Christmas day because Merry told me Santa Claus was definitely bringing her one, I can manage a spider web.  I think.)

Happy Halloween, all.  If I am terribly organized (hee, hee) I will take photos and post them soon.  But that is a second priority to stealing all the better chocolate out of the kid's candy stashes, so we'll see how much time is left over.

In other news, I just enjoyed a long, detailed e-mail from my father, who is working for a month with a deaf population in Hanoi.  He sent me this link (not his own video) to show me what crossing the street on his daily commute is like.  It made me laugh and made me so grateful for crosswalks, cars that stop, and blinking walking-men.

Click here to experience CROSSING THE STREET IN HANOI.