I've seen how you sparkle / when fall nips the air

football, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Geahh! What a weekend! Halloween is a battlefield, ask anyone.

Among other things:

Big Man Mao lost a tooth (a baby tooth) due to string-related complications arising from participation in The Gummy Relay at school on Friday.



(Not Mao - our pal WonderGirl)

Let me recommend it - if kid has a loose tooth, get kid to chew a gummy worm off a string as fast as he can. Tooth will come out quickly thereafter, and with no trauma at all.

But DON'T get all drinky that night, not if your kids sleep in bunk beds. Yes, I remembered to put the Tooth Fairy's reward - a cool t-shirt - under the pillow, but the next morning, Bob looked up to see Zhou - not Mao - coming into the kitchen wearing the new shirt. "Look what I found under my pillow!" he crows, beaming. Sensing that I somehow blew the Tooth Fairy transaction, Bob scurried upstairs, only to overhear Mao whimpering that the Fairy forgot him as he crawled into bed with me for another half-hour of shut-eye. "Huhh?!" I slur, "No, no honey, sure she came, she... snurrrr"

So Bob surreptitiously retrieved a novelty football from our stash of once and future birthday presents and put it under the boy's pillow, so when he woke up for the second time and went back to his room to get dressed - Avast! there was Tooth Fairy booty in its rightful place: under HIS pillow, on HIS bed.

The trick-or-treating this year was the best so far. Beautiful warm weather, and children who are finally old enough to run up and down the street without me panicking every time I lose sight of one (or both) of them.

Zhou's Frankenstein costume was both recognizable, due to the green face paint,



and functional - unlike, for example, the year he went as a dump truck.



Hard to climb porch stairs in that thing.

Mao's alien outfit was a little harder to puzzle. He wore his cousin Stretch's old spider top, and Neighbor Girl's starry stretch pants, and Nature Girl's silver boots, but his snazzy silver Captain Smekday cape



went AWOL somewhere between the Gummy Relay and home, so we had to punt a little. How did we do that, you may ask? Well... I drew a red lightning bolt on his face and he was Ziggy Stardust.

Did it make him look more like an alien? Yeah ok no. But he was happy, and it was gorgeous and unbelievably cool, and you'd think so too if my battery hadn't run out and I could have taken a picture.

In addition, there were parties - that's right, parties plural! With GAMES! "Sneak into the graveyard" was a good game: picture about a dozen women in their, ummm... thirties (let's say), most dressed as some variety of witch, crawling up and over and through a chain-link fence, trying to keep their tights, wigs, capes, frizzy hair, hats, and/or lit cigarettes from getting stuck in the chain-link. That was pretty fun. I only got a little hole in my tights and two funny lines of bruises all up and down my right leg. Back when I used to climb buildings routinely, I used to kind of love Mondays, surveying my body's minor dings and dents and correlating them with the weekend's activity.

(At the other party there was Charades. Let us not speak of it.)

But speaking of dings and dents, you should see the ones on the minivan! Here you go:



Woo hoo, right?! Deer season started on Saturday, and sure enough, long about 1am Sunday, we bagged us a big one! Stupid damn deer I swear accelerated INTO us as we were driving on Route 231 in rural Virginia. Probably broke its neck, and I know there's a couple thousand dollars worth of damage to the van. Poor dumb deer.

And why were we in Virginia? Because, in a spectacular alignment of stars and schedules, we found it possible to bust out of Baltimore after I worked on Saturday, barrel down the highway for a few hours, and get to, yes, a THIRD Halloween party, this one with music,



and John and Yoko:



Not to mention the Tooth Fairy,



jeez, where was that guy when we needed him?!

The next day there was a little nature appreciation,



a little football,



and back to Baltimore by bedtime.

TO SUM UP:

Dear teachers,
Please excuse my kids from still having a little Halloween makeup around their ears. We have been having too much fun to bathe them thoroughly.
oh and PS if I am late picking them up it is because the car is all jacked up, 'cause of the damn deer.

love,
Your Neighborhood Librarian