Halloween Costume Preview

Yesterday, I went to not one, but TWO beauty supply stores for a fake hair braid.

1. Beauty supply stores are freaky, godawful places that frighten me. Like that first time you stepped into Babies R Us for a shower gift and had to run screaming from the place. It's like that, but with wigs.

2. I also went to Auto Zone and bought new wiper blades. That was much less baffling, but still not my regular kind of venue. Wiper blades always remind me of my friend Emily, who once had a mechanic tell her that "all right-thinking people change their wiper blades every six months." I hope she doesn't use that mechanic any more. Because all right-thinking people are obviously like me, and change their wiper blades three rainstorms after it becomes painfully apparent that their wiper blades are shot.

3. [hysterical aside] HURRICANE SANDY IS GOING TO END US ALL! AHHHHHHHH! (I bought the new wiper blades before I learned a franken-cane was going to kill us all to death, bee tee dubs.)

4. Numbers 2 and 3 have nothing to do with Halloween costumes.

5. My son refuses to wear a fake braid.

"Hoods are better than braids," he told me, as he casually leaned against the couch this morning. Here's the photo his father took at the preschool costume parade this morning:

Whatever. Maybe he'll wear the $9 fake braid for trick-or-treating.

Lula is going to be Leia on Bespin, and Lumpyhead is going to be Darth Maul. If the HURRICANE OF DOOM doesn't get us first, that is.

Next Up, String Theory

I had this exchange with Nathan Jr in the car last week:

Nathan Jr: Do you know Kate?
Me: Kate who?
NJ: [indignant] No! This isn't a knock-knock joke.
Me: [not laughing, no really] Okay. [maybe snickering a little]
NJ: [slowly, like I'm an idiot] Do you know Kate?
Me: [mentally ticking through all the Kates with whom I am acquainted; and they are many] Which Kate do you mean?
NJ: He's in my class at school.
Me: [Now legitimately confused. Kate's a dude?]
Bump: You mean Kate Something-Something (I'm not protecting identities here, I don't remember what he said) from school?
NJ: Yes.
Me: No, I don't know her.
NJ: [getting to the damn point, already] Sometimes she calls me Nate-Nate.
Me: She does? (Awwwwww)
NJ: [sternly] Yes. And that's not appropriate.
Me: Okay.

I love that my four-year-old is exploring the concept of appropriate, something I have clearly not yet mastered. Also? It's funny to hear a four-year-old say the word "appropriate."

Bingo Night at Chez Lumpyhead

Aunt Bob and Pete came over on Friday night. Over dinner, one of the children asked, "What's a tyrant?"

"It's an adult who acts like a two-year-old," I said.

The adults ignored me. I muttered to Pete that I defied him to prove me wrong. Bump played it straight. "It's a ruler who uses power unfairly," he said.

I looked at Pete pointedly. "See? How is that not how a two-year-old acts?"

Pete continued to ignore me.

"Like a ferowa?" Lumpyhead asked.

"A what?" everyone responded.

"A fah-row-ah. Or maybe it's a pah-row-ah."

Oh, it was on. A puzzle cannot be left unsolved - not in this company - and you could see four adult brains scanning all that he could mean. Pete and I went the video game route. Mario character? Someone in Rayman?

"Tell me more about it," Bump asked.

"Like in ancient Egypt," Lumpyhead said.

Bump got there first. "Do you mean a pharaoh?"

"AH-HAH!" the other three of us yelled.

A fah-ROW-ah.

Also, we're huge dorks.

At Least I Got a Corndog

Bump considered bringing Nathan Jr to the Nationals game this afternoon, but the cheap tickets dried up and he changed his mind. He opted to bring Nathan Jr in to have lunch with me instead.

But when Aunt Bob called with an extra ticket, he was sorely tempted. In the end, he decided he needed to run the errands he had put off this morning. He declined.

When we met for lunch, I tried to get him to go to the game. I offered to take Nathan Jr to Costco and pick up Lumpyhead and Lula from school.

"Really?" Bump said, looking at me as though I had just claimed I could move a pull-out sleeper sofa by myself.

"I'm not saying it would be without disaster," I clarified, "but I could do it."

I'm sure Bump weighed the attraction of an afternoon baseball game in the sun, with discount beer and no children, against the impending doom of me driving the van, trying to navigate a warehouse store with a sugar-saturated four-year-old, and picking up two children from elementary school.

Yeah, it would have been a shitfest of apocalyptic proportions.

We had a good lunch, though.

It's Better Than Calling Them "Choking Hazards"

My kids refer to those decorative things you stick into your crocs as "giblets."

I can't think of a single reason to correct them.

Stellar Moment in Parenting

Last night I let Lumpyhead and Lula watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The whole thing.

They've seen bits and pieces of it before, but never the ending. They like the songs, and I think I just talked over the one snide sexual reference in the show during previous partial screenings.

I turned on the TV planning to stream a Phineas and Ferb when they begged ("but we haven't seen it in a looooong time, and I like it") and pleaded ("pleeeeeeease"), so I relented ("eh, they've seen most of it already").

I kind of wanted to see it, too. Bump hummed along with some of the songs. Then it ended.

Lumpyhead shouted, "Wait! What just happened?" in a tone that dripped of seven-year-old WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT.

I told them, "Well, Dr. Horrible got what he wanted, but it turns out that wasn't really what he wanted at all."

They shrugged and went off to bed, but of course this morning Lula kept repeating "the hammer is my penis" and giggling. We've been talking about "appropriate" without mentioning the irony that "appropriate" might have included not letting them watch a musical tragedy in three acts that was first broadcast on the internet. AM A GENIUS.

Progress

I'm getting better about not cursing around the kids, but one day my children will be very confused when they discover the word "nonsense" does not actually begin with the letters BULLSH.

Lowhbstah. Uh yuh.

Vader Bobblehead is Bewildered

Lumpyhead got a set of Star Wars bobbleheads from Nana for his birthday. Nathan Jr got to this one before Bump could stop him, and Darth suffered the indignity of being handled by a three-year-old.

I bet Admiral Ozzel and Captain Needa think this is hilarious.

Summer Activities

Last year I made a list of summer activities, for Bump and the tormentors to consult should the "I'm bored" chorus become too much for Bump to bear.

 It was even double-sided.

It was used approximately ZERO times.

The image I have in my head when I'm at work, of stir-crazy summer days with idle hands and grumpy slouching, is actually harried hours full of errands and lunchtime and playdates and snacks and pool visits. They rarely search for "activities," and when they do, "watch TV" works just fine.

But I made a list, dammit.

And for some baffling reason, I thought I should update it this year. Because it was so useful last year.

I did a google search and clicked a random link and went here:

Dudes.

Cork stamping.

And I laughed and laughed and laughed.

I imagined ruined clothing, furniture, and carpeting. Permanently stained fingers and faces.

The next project was chocolate pudding "potted plants" and I envisioned sneering faces and revolted grimaces.

For a moment I considered attempting each of these activities and posting the hilarious results, side-by-side with Martha's artful presentations. "Adorable butterfly cupcakes" and "tic-tac-towel," my ass.

Then I realized that in order to do cork stamping, we would need corks.

Lots of lots of corks.

Which means you would have to come to my house and help me drink lots of wine.

Camp Lumpyhead is totally taking on cork stamping this summer, bitches.