Helloween

Yesterday began with dragging two kids out of bed two hours earlier than normal, packing up school stuff and costumes and giant veggie platters for the "snack party", hustling to find street parking since the school parking lot was closed, walking two said tired and disoriented kids several blocks with giant veggie platters and heavy bags full of crap to school and stuffing said tired and disoriented kids into costumes to participate in their preschool Halloween parade (which due to their disparate ages were two hours apart, requiring me to take one kid on an hour and a half car ride to kill time).  Good times.

I spent the remainder of the day catching up on my Sunday night HBO shows, which was lovely. 

Then came the evening marathon of trick or treating with a two-year-old and four-year-old in a dark, chaotic neighborhood with hoards of kids. My friend (nine months pregnant with her fourth child) and I occasionally pulled each other aside and whispered ihatethisihatethisihatethis

Here are some things you don't notice until you're trick or treating with a two-year-old and a four-year-old: dark streets, steps up to people's houses, cacti in lawns, rose bushes, dogs, tree roots pushing up sidewalks making them an obstacle course for toddlers. In the dark. With tons and tons of people pushing and shoving. It sucked. But.

Everything went ok. The kids were polite and delighted the kind people doing candy duty on their porches, looked cute in their costumes and seemed to enjoy it. And I secretly loved the fact that already the kids are having a kick ass childhood compared to mine - my childhood Halloweens in NYC meant gangs of hoodlums run amuck in the streets, eggs thrown in your face, racial epithets slung in your direction...you know, good wholesome fun for the whole family. Not.

We went to dinner at a local El Pollo Loco and there were several other families there having a much more stressful night than us. At one point an exhausted mom of three next to us hissed at her pouting tween daughter, "keep this up and I'll turn into the monster you wanted me to be." Yikes.

Still and all, despite nearly going into cardiac arrest at various moments, it was a good day. I'm going to let myself off the hook and just try to spend this week recovering, though.