Friday, October 1, 2010

Seamstress?

I'm a pretty decent seamstress, I guess. I usually leave the hard stuff up to my mom and there's nothing I hate more than re-threading a sewing machine, but I can hold my own. But, for some reason, my children think this means I have the ability to create the most realistic and elaborate Halloween costumes in the history of the world. I'm going to let them share the blame with my sister. I've told you about my sister before. She's 10 months older than me, but maturity-wise, it's more like 10 years! She is very smart, very thorough, dedicated, driven, yada yada. She's the person that laughs at me because I use frozen pancakes or bisquick instead of making them from scratch (which she does with my kids on the weekends). She doesn't buy boxes of brownie or cake mix or tubs of frosting or rolls of cookie dough. To her, you use flour and all that other stuff to make cookies. There's a lot more about her, but you get my gist. She told my oldest yesterday that in her entire life, she has never once purchased a Halloween costume. She said that's the fun of the costume - finding the stuff and making it. Who hasn't gone out dressed as a hobo or an old lady or a hippie? It's just all the stuff you find in your parents' closet and scrounge up to make. Like when I was an old bingo lady and I used my mom's curlers and fuzzy slippers and housecoat - you know what I'm talking about. So, Caty and her creative aunt get to planning. Caty wants to be a crayon. Perfect, I say. My freshman year of college, a bunch of us got poster board, make it look like a crayola wrapper, folded it around our bodies and made a paper hat and voila we were crayons. Oh, no, poo poo cries my critical child and non-supportive sibling. One crayon is not good enough. She must be a crayon in an entire box of crayons. They are formulating plans and drawing designs and discussing materials. I am pretending to pick at something really interesting on the carpet so I don't have to listen to the plan. As I type, the blueprint is hanging on my desk mocking me. I don't want to build a crayon box. And I will tell you why. I know my children. A crayon box? That will last maybe 20 minutes. Maximum. My daughter won't even wear a hat when it's snowing - you think she's going to wear an uncomfortable paper triangle all night? Every year, I end up carrying around every prop, accessory and non-essential piece of clothing these girls have on while they run from door to door and hog all the candy to themselves. No dear, if you're going to be Batgirl or Supergirl, you should wear your cape. You should wear the mask and the gloves too. No mom, it's itchy/hot/poking me. So, I've got to put a nix on the crayon idea. I guess I brought it on myself. She wanted to be a witch and I said no. Serves me right! I will come up with a good idea between now and October 31. I will not tell my daughter the idea because she will refuse it on principal. I will find someone cool to tell her and then she might go for it. And if you see me out trick or treating later this month, could you please stop and give me a hand? I will be carrying a huge crayon box for pete's sake!

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