Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
I’m not really sure what I say when I’m mad. I’m mad, you see, at the time.
Magoo squishes his eyes really close together, squinches his brows into a tight little mountain of peach-fuzzy flesh, flattens his lips out into a thin line grimace and repeats with venomous rage, “EVER. EVER. EVER. EVER. EEEVVVVVER!!!”
I’m really not sure where he gets that from. I may NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER figure it out.
The Halloween Witch – Thaaat’s what they call me, folks.
I am oh-so-done with my children running around at warp speed with their volume turned up to “shatter”. The candy was fun. The candy was beloved. The candy is now gone. And my kids are grateful. The entire neighborhood and my fellow Target shoppers are probably grateful too.
Firstly, I will say that I refuse to ration candy or fight with my kids for weeks on end after the tricking and the treating are over. If I’ve dragged them from house to house in the cold begging for sugar, I refuse to then take all the sugar away on the grounds that it’s not good for them.
For the two days following Halloween, I let the sugar flow free throughout the house. Food was substituted by refined enamel-dissolving carbs and the children alternately rejoiced and melted down. It was too much for their little brains to handle.
Magoo woke the second morning calling for me in sadness. I entered his room to find him sitting up looking half asleep and mumbling to himself.
Me: Good morning!
Magoo: Umph.
Me: You wanna get up?
Magoo: No.
Me: You wanna come to mommy?
Magoo: No.
Me: You wanna stay in bed?
Magoo: No.
Me: What do you want?
Magoo: Uh…my canny.
Me: You want your candy?
Magoo: YEAH!!!
With that he jumped into my arms.
And so I told my children the legend of the Halloween Witch. She comes in the night 48 hours after spook day, searching for candy. If you leave what’s left of your stash on the front porch by the rotting pumpkins, she will whisk it away to dad’s office her Witch’s palace and leave a present in its place.
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My kids gleefully binged for 2 days and then decided to take their chances with door number 3. Behind door number 3 they found a mechanical snorting baby pig and a BIG TRUCK!!!!! Their joy was full and those little stinkers were able to eat candy all day today too because they had tricked the witch by deviously squirreling chocolate away in their carseats, bits of bit-o-honey under their beds and half-licked linty lollipops in purses and bags.
They look forward to gathering candy for the witch next year and I look forward to them slowing down tomorrow and detoxing enough to feel the pain when they slam their heads into the walls.
*** It’s 2012 and The Halloween Witch has visited every year since the writing of this post in 2007. It’s always voluntary but the kids see it as a no-brainer. This year I gave them the option of donating their candy directly to the troops in exchange for cash and bypassing the witch. They would have none of it. So I guess the witch will have to donate in their honor. I love the witch as much today as I did when we first met her and I hope you enjoy her as well! ***
In my heart I know I’m not as perfect as I sometimes like to think I am. At times I annoy myself with my little habits and quirks. However, I have a few fine qualities and traits I wish desperately to pass on to my children. Sadly I’m finding that certain things cannot be taught or forced. [read more at parenting.com]
This poor pumpkin didn’t stand a chance. The conspiracy began when Papa snatched this poor guy right off the street and drug him back to our house.
He carefully sliced a hole in the top of his noggin while Laylee sat heartlessly drawing plans for his new brainless face.
Magoo looked on as papa extracted all the grey er orange matter from the cranial cavity, a very seedy affair.
And he thinks it’s funny.
Laylee explained her detailed schematics to Papa.
“I want the pumpkin to have a scary face like this.”
“Like this?”
“Exactly.”
With the brains extracted and the tools assembled, it was time to get down to the serious work. Scalpel!
Eyebrows are a pumpkinic must.
Grammy couldn’t resist rubbing our own fuzzy little pumpkin head.
Some dental cleanup work was needed. Anyone have some cinnamon floss we could borrow? This knife is a little inprecise.
And a group photo. It’s hard to tell them apart with identical faces like that.
Sometimes Magoo talks with a not-splickable Southern accent.
Magoo loves hills.
The Seattle area is full of them.
When he sees one coming up in the distance, he points and strains hulk-like at his carseat straps, yelling, “MOMMY!!!! GO TO HAY-ULL!!! GO. TO. HAY-ULL!!!”
I don’t really want to go there.
Here is a snapshot of a day in my life with Laylee:
When I put Magoo in time out in the middle of the floor in Costco for continuously running away from me cackling, Laylee stated her approval. “MOM!” she whispered loudly, “I A-GREE with you!” Lately she whispers this to me pretty much any time I tell Magoo off. It’s nice to know my approval rating is on the rise.
She is in love with the cartoons that come on PBS every afternoon.
Laylee: I noticed that every time when I watch cartoons they always say ”˜dot ord.’
Laylee: So are cartoons on all day?
Me: No. They’re just on in the late afternoon when kids will be getting home from school.
Laylee: So, if I don’t go to school, they won’t COME ON?!
Laylee on science: Air can fit through really tiny spaces. You know? Air… is a lot like germs.
Last week Laylee proudly handed me a very old bag of nearly unrecognizable grapes and other sundries that reeked with a fabulously hideous reek. She said it was a snack she’d been making in her backpack. I told her calmly and firmly to dispose of the fermenting slime-fest expeditiously.
Tonight she was supposed to be sleeping but she had to get up to make an emergency request.
Laylee: Hey mom. Can you please remember to vacuum my room tomorrow because it’s covered in that gunky stuff that I made in the bag in my backpack that you told me to throw in the trash and then wash my hands because it’s putrid?
At the doctor’s office today, I distracted the kids from licking the floor by pointing out the Halloween decorations.
Me: That’s a great pumpkin. What kind of face does that jack ”˜o lantern have? Happy? Sad? Scary?
Laylee [studying it closely]: Iiiiiit’s…kind of nervous.
Are we the only ones who’ve been doing this for the past several weeks at Costco?
When we know better, we do better. I wish I’d known more about postpartum mood disorders before Magoo was born. I wish more people were more informed. It is this wish that’s caused me to write my 3-part series at Parenting about my experiences with postpartum anxiety and panic, the conclusion of which was posted today. Part 1 and Part 2 are still on the site as well.
It’s not fun to talk about. It’s an incredibly personal experience and there are so many feelings of guilt and inadequacy associated with it. I’m open about what happened to me because I want other people to know that the problem is real and that help is available.
Since I started this blog 2 years ago as part of my healing process, I’ve corresponded with several women who have gotten help because they finally realized that they were not alone. If you know anyone who’s not doing well after the birth of a child (I mean REALLY not doing well, more than the normal I-just-had-a-baby-OH-HELP not doing well.), any time during the first year, encourage them to find out more about postpartum mood disorders and help them find the support they need to heal.
I went to a support group at the hospital, to an OB, to a therapist and psychiatrist. I got the help I needed and my family is intact because of it.
Right now there’s a bipartisan bill in the Senate to do early screening for postpartum depression and offer more education and support to new moms.
It’s called the Mothers Act and I encourage you to call your Senator and urge her to support this bill. I rarely call my Senator about anything. We don’t exactly hang out and watch The Office together, but I called about this and I wish you would too.
A traveling sales person who was “not selling anything” came by my house the other day. He was “not selling” home security systems. They were the best security systems ever and would change my life for the better and possibly prolong it. It was a good thing that he was “not selling” them because I was interested in “not buying” them. When I told him as much, he proceeded to glance around my yard.
“Yeah. I chose to come to your house because it’s so far away from the street light and located by that grove of trees.” He proceeded to tell me all the reasons why he’d determined that my house was a prime target for criminals.
Seriously? Was he seriously trying to scare me into buying the product he was “not selling”? Yes. Yes he was. As he listed all the ways he could break into my house, I started to wonder whether he had previous experience working in the burgling industry. I wondered if he would break into my house and steal the money from my bread canister if I didn’t just fork it over as payment for the security system.
Our pest control guys did the same thing. They showed pictures of ROUSs and gave me a ridiculous list of all the diseases rodents are known to carry. If I didn’t want my children to die the death of characters in a British nursery rhyme, I’d better cough up the $3000 for the rat vacuum.
Just yesterday we took our car in to the shop because the brakes were squeakish. We’ve used the same shop for years and trust them completely. When I dropped off the car, I noticed that the parking lot wasn’t nearly as full as usual… and the store sign had been replaced with a garish neon marquee. The classic car in the show room had been replaced by a pile of sale-priced tires and the general manager was nowhere to be seen. I asked the new guy what had happened to Rick. “Oh, the previous owner retired and sold the place. It’s under new management.”
Hmmm… I might as well have picked a shop out of the yellow pages for all the experience I had with this guy. Not sure what to do, I left the car with him anyway. What I thought would be a $500 brake job turned into $2400 of “necessary” but unobvious repairs.
He asked if we wanted him to go ahead with the repairs, assuring us that if we didn’t do them, our car was a proverbial time bomb rolling around the streets of Seattle. What could we do? We don’t know anything about cars. He could have told us that our radish was lazy and we would have told him to fix it if he said it was life threatening.
I’d like to see this kind of scary sales tactic spread into other industries.
At the makeup counter — “Dang! You’ve got some seriously bad skin. Did you know that if you don’t perform microderm abrasion on skin LIKE THAT, your face will start turning purple at age 37?”
In the smoothie shop — “People with (How many do you have? 3?) 3 kids who live in the Seattle area are 30% more likely to develop fibrous tuboflomia than werewolves living in Athens… UNLESS they ingest dandelion fluff in liquid form twice daily. Would you like me to add some to your drink for just 2 dollars more? You’d like your mommy to maintain long-term use of her earlobes, right little girl?”
I want them just like this. For always.
