It’s November! I had this theory when I was a kid that the odd years passed more quickly than the even years, so ’97, ’99, ’01 etc. were a blur. But now that I’m a bit older, it feels like EVERY year passes in a blur. And from listening to friends of mine with newborns, I know that feeling will only be exacerbated with even more time. Isn’t that crazy how it works out? As a child, you spend your days wishing for time to pass faster, but it trudges on slow as molasses. But then when you’re finally old enough to appreciate time for what it is, it slips away, a flighty thing never to be held still. Infuriating.

Friday was our first Halloween in the new house and we had so much fun! My last-minute costume idea was to be black-turtle-neck-clad Taylor Swift from the Shake It Off video, and Matt bought a “Rufferee” costume for Lily and then donned his high school football jersey to match. A ragtag bunch of costumes, but we had fun sitting out of the stoop watching the neighborhood kids trudge door-to-door.

As always, lessons learned/events that transpired over the past week:

• Maybe this makes me a crotchety old person, but kids these days need to learn what a proper costume is. Throwing on a Scream mask without even changing out of what you wore to school that day is NOT a costume. Neither is simply spraying your hair with pink temporary dye. Go home, get a real costume, and then come back and ask me for free candy.
• Also, Trick-Or-Treating etiquette mandates that you SAY “Trick-Or-Treat!” in order to receive your sweet reward. Simply sticking your bag in my face isn’t going to cut it, buddy.
• If I say “you can pick four pieces of candy,” don’t whine. Take the dang candy and get off my porch, you ungrateful child. And next year? You’ll be limited to THREE Krabby Patties.
• Clearly, I’m pretty self-righteous about Halloween. I should probably get over that.
• There’s this group of kids in our neighborhood who enjoys cussing loudly while they play outside in the afternoons. And I mean serious cussing. So when the ringleader came to our door in costume with his cronies in tow, I jokingly said “Hey, are you the kid who keeps dropping the F-bomb around the neighborhood?” Never, ever ask that. The response I got was “What’s an F-bomb?” and then, of course, I had to backpedal, and explain that it’s not an incendiary device, and that I was just kidding and to please forget it. Oh, and then I realized their parents were standing off to the side. Whoops!

Our costumes!

And in case you were wondering, nope, I didn’t cut my hair! Just some well-placed bobby pins and lotsa hair spray. Happy Monday, friends!