Author: Big Mama

I can’t promise that any of this is going to come together in any kind of coherent way today. I am suffering from the after effects of too much candy corn followed by a few fun size Snickers chasers.

Our Halloween festivities started bright and early on Friday morning as we got Caroline dressed and her face painted for her school’s dress up day. She was a butterfly this year. A sparkly pink and purple butterfly.

For the record, 7:00 a.m. is way too early to paint flowers and vines on someone’s face.

I dropped her off at school and then picked up AJ so we could grab something from Starbucks to give us energy before our day of shopping. The good news is the second dress she tried on turned out to be the perfect dress. But the bad news is I made her spend five more hours at the mall just to make sure it was actually the best dress. No dress left behind is my personal motto.

(That’s not really true. I don’t really have a personal motto. And if I did it would probably be something like “Never miss the chance to take a nap.” But that could just be because Caroline woke me up at 5:45 yesterday morning and I’m coming down off my candy corn high and feel like I’m about to drop.)

AJ and I finished shopping just in time for me to pick up Caroline from school and experience the Friday afternoon that tried to kill me dead. I was one of the first cars in the carpool line but Caroline’s class was late coming out of the school for reasons I still don’t understand. Which means I was that annoying car holding up an entire line of cars and I try very hard to never be that annoying car in any situation. I immediately felt the need to explain the situation to all the cars behind me but of course I can’t do that because then I would be that mother walking around outside of her car and holding up the carpool line.

Finally Caroline came out of the school loaded down with various pieces of her costume and her Black Beauty pumpkin which was much worse off after three days on display in the school library. She hopped in the car and began to melt down as she told me that some fifth grade boys made fun of her in her costume. Naturally, I was ready to put a hit out on some ten-year-old boys. Maybe they needed to wake up to find a Black Beauty pumpkin head on their front porch as a warning sign.

As I pulled out the rest of the story it became apparent that the fifth grade boys were making fun of all the second grade girls and not just Caroline. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t all juvenile delinquents who need a good spanking, but it did make it a little bit better. I explained that’s what boys do and it’s a good reminder of how important it is to be kind to everyone and remember how it feels when someone hurts your feelings.

We got home and I started to help her put all the pieces of her costume back on because we had plans to go to the Halloween Pixie Skate and the roller rink. And that’s when we realized her sparkly antennae were missing.

Heaven help me.

So we went back up to the school and searched all over for the sparkly antennae that were nowhere to be found. And then I had to start coming up with a back up antennae plan because OH BRITNEY, THIS IS NOT GOING TO END WELL.

Ultimately, she ended up wearing one of her tiaras as a temporary replacement and I tried to sell her on the coolness that is a BUTTERFLY PRINCESS, but I could tell she doubted me. Then we walked into the roller rink only to see her friend’s mama wearing Caroline’s antennae. As it turns out, Caroline had handed her the antennae as she walked out of school because they were falling off her head and the mama had told her she’d bring them to her at the roller rink.

All this falls under the category of things that would have been good to know before I desperately rummaged through all manner of forgotten lunch boxes and smelly sweaters in the school’s lost and found.

But the important thing is that my butterfly was reunited with her sparkly antennae and the world continued to spin on its axis.

Saturday morning, the Cheetah Girls played the best game of their soccer season. And, best of all, Jackson and Will were there to watch her play.

The rest of Saturday is a blur but the important thing is the Aggies beat Texas Tech. And Baylor beat Texas which probably means the end times are upon us.

On Sunday morning, Caroline woke up bright and early at 5:45. I don’t know why.

All I know is that before the day was over, I’d carved pumpkins while she gave me orders like I was working in some sort of Halloween sweatshop.

(What I lack in carving skill, I make up for in enthusiasm. Or at least Caroline makes up for in enthusiasm.)

I made popcorn balls and got a blister on my thumb and pinky finger.

I cooked a batch of chili to take to a Halloween party.

I painted yet another face on my little butterfly but couldn’t get her to really smile for the camera as opposed to making the dramatic faces apparently favored by pink and purple sparkly butterflies.

I channeled the version of myself who lived back in 1988 when my biggest concern was getting the proper height out of my bangs and the right amount of blue eyeshadow.

(Yes. That’s a banana clip in my hair. No. My bangs did not turn out like I wanted. Apparently getting the right height out of your bangs is an acquired skill that I have forgotten. Or maybe your bangs have to be trained over time. Or maybe I just didn’t have enough Aussie Sprunch Spray to get the look I was going for. Or most likely my hair is no longer fried on a steady stream of perm solution and AquaNet.)

I watched P let Caroline dress him up as a vampire.

(A vampire in Birkenstocks and cargo shorts. I don’t know that anyone is going to leave Team Edward for Team P.)

(I’ve only read one of the Twilight books and don’t really understand the hype. I’ll stick with Team P and his Birkenstocks. He’s like a laid-back vampire.)

But most of all, I watched Caroline have the best time making memories I hope she’ll never forget.

And that makes it all worth it.

I think.

Sometime last week (I can’t remember exactly what day because I have blocked it out) Caroline came home with a note in her homework folder informing parents about the upcoming literary pumpkin patch. She was beside herself with excitement about the whole thing and insisted that she just had to make a literary pumpkin for the literary pumpkin patch even though the note was quick to explain that the whole thing was totally voluntary. It’s just a fun thing that the librarian does every year because she has a lot of quiet time to sit amongst the books and think of ways to make parents’ lives more difficult.

And I know the librarian plans the literary pumpkin patch every year because we received a note about it last year when Caroline was in first grade. But that was back in the good old days before Caroline learned to read big words like “literary” and “pumpkin” and once I saw the word “voluntary” I threw that piece of paper away so fast it would make your head spin because I have long been aware of the levels of madness to which I descend when any type of craft project is involved. Dang that school for teachin’ my baby all that book learnin’.

A literary pumpkin patch, in case you’re wondering, is an event wherein one decorates a pumpkin to look like a character out of a book. Hence the words “literary” and “pumpkin”. The only conditions are that the pumpkin cannot be carved and must be smaller than a basketball. Also, each parent is limited to only three Xanax throughout the course of “helping” their child make the pumpkin.

When Caroline initially brought home the note last week, she informed me that she would like to make a pumpkin that looks like Junie B. Jones which seemed like a fairly easy choice. We’ll paint on a face, glue some brown yarn on top and call it a day.

However, she soon discovered that two other girls in her class were planning on making Junie B. Jones pumpkins and she wanted something unique. I tried desperately to think of books that feature an orange round ball as the main character, but there appear to be shockingly few that fit that description. Then Gulley suggested a spider because we could just paint it black and glue on some pipe cleaner legs. But, oh no. Caroline was not interested in a spider. A spider pumpkin clearly didn’t have the potential to push me to the brink of sanity.

So, after a weekend of much literary pumpkin debate, I finally told her Monday afternoon that she had to make a final decision so we’d have enough time to get it done. She came home from school, walked in her room to look through her books, and, after a few brief moments, walked into the kitchen triumphantly holding a copy of Black Beauty over her head.

Perfect.

I felt the blood drain from my head as I began to figure out on how earth you make a round pumpkin look like a horse head. Within seconds, I had gone to the Twitter for help and typed out a plea in 140 characters or less. And there were some decent suggestions, but no one actually offered to come to my house and do it for me.

The only thing I knew to do was to get out the black paint. I put Caroline to work painting our orange pumpkin with several coats of black paint and decided to go all Scarlett O’ Hara and think about the rest tomorrow. I also called Gulley to ask for some advice because, ever since she started teaching preschool last year, she has been known to get her craft on. She’ll try to deny it, but she knows way too much about all the aisles at Michael’s to act like she doesn’t enjoy the occasional craft challenge. Ultimately, she called a few of her preschool teacher friends and got back to me with a suggestion of one of those styrofoam cones, black Model Magic, and a wooden dowel to hold the whole thing in place.

After school yesterday, Caroline and I went straight to Michael’s to load up on supplies and then we came home to face our black pumpkin. And we got started. Right after I ate half a bag of Double Chocolate Milano cookies to give me strength.

I’ll be honest. At one point I was really concerned. I thought we were going to have to abort the entire mission and try to come up with a book that features a black bird. But slowly and surely, we actually made something that resembled a horse’s mane. And then I threw down the pipe cleaner gauntlet and figured out how to fashion some ears. My OCD cylinders were kicking in at all levels as I insisted it needed one more coat of black paint and a little touch up on the white diamond on its forehead.

But, ladies and gentlemen, we ended up with Black Beauty.

We turned a pumpkin into a horse just like we were Cinderella’s fairy godmother.

But with more Double Chocolate Milanos. And hot glue gun burns.

And possibly a pill for my nerves.