After dragging my ass for several days, I finally got around to my Halloween prep list. I tried on my dress, made sure it still fit, went to the Halloween superstore and got some custom fitted fangs and some vampire makeup. I was thinking about straightening my hair but I think I’ll go with giant curly hair instead. Oooh, and I carved a pumpkin for the first time in I don’t even know how long. Definitely since high school, so that’s 10+ years. And I can tell you, my friends, that Pumpkin Master’s Pumpkin Carving Kit is not worth the purchase. There are some awesome looking patterns (none of which were small enough for the modest pumpkin my mom bought for me at the market last week) but the equipment for the actual carving is dinky and inneffective. So in the end my grandiose pumpkin carving fantasies were reduced to a hand drawn face that is pretty lame and sore muscles in my forearms from sawing through a pumpkin with a tiny, 3 inch long saw. But hey, I did it myself, and I’m proud of that.

On Friday we had a surprise party for my Grandma’a 85th birthday. We pulled it off pretty well…I don’t think she knew what was happening:

We went to Luma, a really nice restaurant where my brother works on the weekends. My good friend used to wait on tables there and Scooter always sets family events up very nicely there. Here is my family:Me, Dad, Mom, Scooter(my little brother…yes, you heard me right)

Mom and Me…awww….so very brown

Anyway, I post these because they were nice pictures but also because I want to brag about my hair. See, my hair was fine and pin straight until I turned 13. Then I started the whole fun ovulation thing, grew me some boobies and got crazy curls where once there were none (I mean on my head you perverts). Ever since, one of my struggles, cosmetically (other than mega hooters and weight fluctuation) has been taming the beast that is my hair. I’ve had it straightened, I’ve gelled it until it crunches, I’ve tried braiding it, pulling it up all sorts of ways, wetting it, drying it, defusing it. It never does what I want it to do. I washed it Thursday night and just pulled the top back, knowing I had the party Friday night right after work. Unfortunately, Friday was also the day we had our first field trip ever, to Reilly’s Pumpkin Farm and of course it rained the whole time (pictures will be posted as soon as I get some from parents. I forgot to take a camera). So my already crazy hair was shoved under my hooded sweatshirt and the wisps of frizz that stuck out of the front were throughly soaked by the downpour. We got back to school, damp and mud spattered. During nap I went to the bathroom and glanced in the mirror and miracle of miracles, my hair looked perfect! Those wet frizzies had somehow formed perfect little spirals when they were jammed under my hood! The rest of it spiralled beautifully with no gel (or resulting crunchiness)! People at the party asked me what I did to it and I damn near strutted for the first time since prom (or maybe my sorority spring formal…but we all think we look good when we’ve had that much beer). If this Friday onslaught of field trip followed by party taught me one thing, it’s that I need to put on a hood and stand in the rain more often.“Why wasn’t I invited? Too sexy for you? That’s what I thought. Punks.”

The long awaited evening has come and gone. I babysat for Squirt tonight for the first time in several several months. He has been asking me to sit for him continuously since I came back to CHCC and once his mom asked me to we had an ongoing countdown for three weeks. Every day we looked at the classroom calendar and I showed him what day it was and reminded him that I would babysit after we went to the pumpkin farm. Then I had to count from what day we were on to the pumpkin farm day and show him the number of days (not that he actually got it, but he really tried). I got to his house a few minutes early (ok, ok, I adore this kid, I admit it. He actually won me over last year even though I gave it my all not to be too fond of him. He targeted me, the little bugger, and slowly broke down my resistance….that’s mah Squirt) and after his mom left we had some pizza (I know, I’ve been cheating like crazy on my diet this weekend…I plead the period. It’s either eat some carbs and sugar or rain sulfur down upon those who oppose me, so let me have some cookies in peace), built a train set (well, I built the track…Squirt pushed it once, decided that basically it sucked, which it did, and we moved on), painted both on the easel and with finger paints, and then we settled down to watch a movie. What did Squirt want to watch, you ask? The 2006 World Cup Portugal/France semifinal game. His dad has it on a DVD. We popped it in and started watching. I told him all about my old soccer team and the other girls on it. Then I taught him about the “back door” and about Zidane
or, for those of you less versed in the world of French soccer, the head butt guy:

Then I tucked him into bed, read him some stories, gave some kisses and hugs and that was that. Squirt Night was adjourned and I headed downstairs to read a book while Squirt’s rottweiler mix proceeded to jump up, lick me till I nearly passed out (big dogs cause me extreme unrest…I can’t really say fear, cause I’m not afraid, but I do get anxiety attack inducing degrees of uncomfortable), and then curl up and spoon with me, making it impossible for me to read my book till she dozed off and I could stop scratching her belly without fear of more intense doggy tongue bathing. All in all a very pleasant evening.

While I was driving home from work today (someday I’ll go back and get a count on how many of my posts start like this) I started thinking about rings. Jewelry type rings. I used to wear a bunch until I started working in daycare (too many things to get caught on: clothing, diapers, skin…or too many crevices to get poop in). I began to create this perfect ring in my head, like, if I had unlimited funds and nothing else to use it on, what would my ideal ring look like (and no, normally I’m not this shallow, honest). I think gold is ugly and diamonds are over rated, so as far as metal goes, definitely white gold or platinum (cause silver tarnishes…meh). And a star sapphire (well, really any kind of sapphire would do) would be good too. And I like bands with sort of a nature look (i.e. vines or leaves). I have no clue where said ring would be found, but it would be awesome to find something like that someday.

This exercise in reflection on my taste is jewelry led me to delve a little further into things that I would like to have, but most likely will never be able to find/afford/have time for etc. So, followers of the blog, I give you, drum roll please……

I has always assumed that kids starting making more sense as they got older. Today while I was babysitting APRF and Older Brother we decided to walk to Blue Slide Park, a sizeable park with tons of climbers and slides (all of which are blue, duh) as well as this really cool chute type blue slide that is actually cut into a hill. Kids bring pieces of cardboard to make the slide down faster. Older Brother is 9 or 10 (I should probably know that I guess) and I let him go do his own thing, keeping him in my peripheral vision while APRF scrambled back and forth on the largest climber, sort of playing an unspoken game of “catch me if you can.” Unfortunately this neccessitated me running up and down a steep hill over and over in the 77 degree heat (does it concern anyone else that it is 77 degrees in Pittsburgh in the middle of October?? No wonder the polar bears are drowning). Anyway, after a lot of chasing and sweating (mostly on my part) APRF stopped inside one of the little areas of the climber.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I don’t want you to see me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like you.”
This was sort of odd cause I hadn’t done anything by this point to raise APRF’s hair-trigger ire. He turned to face the wall.
“Do you have to poop?”
“Yeah. I have to go poopies.”
I called Older Brother, who led us to the concession stand/toilets up near the baseball field and APRF unloaded, washed his hands and was back in a good mood.
After about an hour we headed back to the boys’ house so APRF could have his nap. Several yards out of the park, Older Brother removed his Croc to shake a rock out and was circled by a lazy bee. I stood still, hoping the kid would be cool and not freak out like some people do around bees. He handled it pretty well and the bee flew off, but as he replaced his Croc he looked up at me with worried eyes and said, “I really wish that bee would leave me alone when I’m in my own personal foot.”

blink blink

Um, I thought they got easier to understand when they got older…