<p>So, H goes to his 30-year class reunion, and after several minutes of conversation with a woman he didn't know, he stuck out his hand and said, "My name is John, by the way." Reaching out to return his handshake, she said, "My name is Sharon, by the way. We must be related."</p>
<p>They both had the same last name...by the way! :) </p>
<p>::::snort:::</p>
<p>
[quote]
S picks up little gin bottle and exclaims, "You can make bombs out of this!" --Tookie
[/quote]
Lol, it's parenting moments like this that turn the hair we haven't already pulled out gray.</p>
<p>I was in the grocery store the other day and saw some poor dad dragging a couple of kids up and down the aisles. The toddler was in the cart, and the 3-year old was running alongside, alternating between grabbing stuff off the shelves and crying when the dad made him put the items back. By the time they got to the checkout stand, the dad looked like he was contemplating an emergency vasectomy on himself with the Bic pens on display next to the register. He didn't know that everyone in there had been in his shoes before, and no one really cared if his kids were throwing sh*fits in the store. It was kinda funny, actually. Poor guy. Finally, seized by a brain spasm of desperation, the dad blurted out to the 3-year old who was performing the classic kid-torture maneuver of half holding onto the cart while yanking on the father's belt..."Look, everybody is looking at you because you're a bad boy!"* </p>
<p>Jeeezus. Every head in the store whipped around and stared right at them, like we'd been commanded by a higher power to do so. We couldn't help it! I turned to look because I wanted to see the look on the dad's face when he realized what had just come out of his mouth. Everybody froze like a pack of squirrels who had all run out onto the same busy street together, waiting to either be run over, or somehow, miraculously saved. After about 10 seconds of suspended animation, we all went back to schlepping our groceries, once again reminded that thing used be a lot worse. ;)</p>
<p>You might like this story. A slightly dingbat friend of mine was at a crowded Hollywood party... and she introduced herself to her own ex-husband.</p>
<p>I'm coming out so you better get this party satrted!</p>
<p>Where is everyone? Are there power outages sweeping the nation? Is there a new HBO show I don't know about? Did all your kids <em>finally</em> call tonight? Is there nobody having a hard time falling asleep on a business trip?</p>
<p>I'll take a Bakers bourbon on ice and some snappy conversation, please!</p>
<p>Hi! I'm the sort of new person, but I'm glad to have found this area. I'm up working late on a manuscript due in a few weeks. Hoping I can make the deadline...and here I am procrastinating!</p>
<p>write, Welcome but I'm sorry to tell you that you'll have to queue up for the next available procrastination booth.;) But while you are here waiting to avoid work, would you care for a virtual refreshment? A Commonwealth approved G and T? I've just watched some Roger Bannister movie on satellite. Stiff upper lip and all that. They somehow managed to make a 2 hour movie about a sub-four minute race. I found myself wondering if it wouldn't have been better the other way around.</p>
<p>I was thinking, sign of my attachment to cc despite D in college now, S not for another 2 years, about asking everyone here about Halloween costumes they have made over the years. (Cur, my father was there for that 4 minute mile. OMG do we have to hear that story a lot or what!) Anyway, my favorite was the year S decided he wanted to be a potato.</p>
<p>Yes, I said a potato.</p>
<p>So since I was always haunted by my fulltime mother who had 4 kids and made costumes every year, I was determined to make a potato costume. Note I do not have a sewing machine and have no small motor coordination. So I hand sewed, sticking my fingers with a needle, a large white sack. (S was 8, it wasn't all that large). Then I made eyes in it by pinching little bits and sewing them together. Then I dyed it brown. Then I got two bags of bits of foam rubber. </p>
<p>S got into the sack. It covered him from neck to just above his knees. I filled the sack with foam rubber bits. Out we went to trick or treat.</p>
<p>The first time he tried to run with his friend to the next house he fell down and lay on the ground, unable to move, balanced on the foam under his stomach, arms and legs wiggling like a bug. </p>
<p>Off came the potato costume. I spent the rest of the evening carrying a large brown sack of foam rubber and explaining to the people glaring at my unconstumed son asking them for candy that no, we weren't cheatiing. That he had a costume. That this large brown sack was actually a potato.</p>
<p>The rule next year was he had to be something he could run in. That meant I nixed his next idea - to be a doorknob.</p>
<p>OMG, what a creative kid! Mine were never so creative, I salute him! (And you for getting all that together!) I would have given him 2 candy bars for that costume.</p>
<p>I'm currently "watching" the DARPA</a> Grand Challenge online, where autonomous vehicles built by teams of students and engineers are attempting to navigate a 131-mile course in the NV desert without any human intervention. Right now, 2 CMU teams and the Stanford team have completed over 85 miles of the course: the farthest ANY team got last year was 7.36 miles!! This is like Major Crunchy Goodness for a techie geek like me: way exciting. And I get to share the race progress with The Kid back east via AIM. :)</p>
<p>O.k. You asked for it: a hand sewn batman felt costume. I had to learn a bit of Greek to find the materials, and I pricked my fingers as well. The worst part, I have saved parts of it. The next year, i thought I'd be smart with a ghost costume, you know, sheet, eye holes. It got discarded very quickly (just like the potato)--you say Halloween! Yes, it is the biggest act in my town. And the party is at our school. This is the first year in many, many that I will NOT be the fortune teller. My "booth" was in the elevator. This year I'll be at a Greek wedding. Much better. My grocer's daughter is getting married. No Halloween. But a biggg party. Oh yes, being that we can manipulate things, Halloween is early this year........</p>
<p>The year my S was a ghost he was three. I showed up at his nursery school to get him at noon. His teacher told me he had been so absorbed in being a ghost that he had essentially stood still in the yard, for over an hour, not moving. One year he was an origami display and pinned some of his thousands of origami creations to a sweatshirt and went out. I have never been sure if he was creative, original, or just plain weird. Luckily or unluckily, testosterone hit and starting at 11 we had a succession of purchased ninja, vampire, etc. costumes.</p>
<p>Mootmom, your S never wanted to be a robot?</p>
<p>I saved the beetle costume. Overseas, would you like it to wear to the Greek wedding? It is very shiny....</p>
<p>overseas, when I lived in Paris my friend and I got dressed up for a Halloween party at an American restaurant. Great costumes, BTW: we wnt as Bonnie and Clyde, after the shoot-out. Took the metro to the party; the Parisians thought we were CRAZY.</p>
<p>Alum, hmmm, shiny beetle? Thanks anyway, I'll stick with basic blackish churchish and all.</p>
<p>SB, many years ago when I lived on Rue Des Ecoles, I rode the metro with Greek Sorbonne buds! They thought we were all crazy. That's when I realized how conservative my most favorite people were, the Parisians.</p>
<p>When my kids were in middle school, we watched Hitchcock's "The Birds" on TV one weekend. For Halloween, I made a costume based on that movie that they both wore at one time or another. </p>
<p>I went to Michael's or the Rag Shop and bought about a dozen of those life-size birds that are used in craft wreaths and such. I took one of my husband's old shirts and wired the birds all over it, front and back. Then I ripped the shirt in a few places near the birds' beaks. A little fake Dracula blood dripped around the rips and voila! I even added a baseball cap, wired a big ol' bird to the top and drizzled a little more "blood" up there. </p>
<p>I was a little concerned that it would be a little too gory for middle school, but it turned out that gory was good. The only problem was that it was a little over the heads of the kids who had never seen the film. By the time they wore it in high school, most everyone "got it".</p>
<p>Ah, Halloween costumes! When my daughter was a toddler, I made her an adorable cracked egg costume. Which she hated. Which my son hated three years later. My favorite costumes for my kids were when they dressed up as Pinky and the Brain. Unfortunately, only one person knew who they were - the rest of the neighbors thought they were rabbits. Then my son started giving me his Gameboy cartridges to copy costumes from the tiny artwork on the cartridge. Thank heaven the costume days are over, but I still miss the cracked egg.</p>
<p>Gee could this be a unifying theme on the alley, we're all a wee bit competitive re costumes? Cause I too am a non-sewer/costume-maker par excellence. My mother was really crafty with costumes; so began my mania.</p>
<p>My Mom's best: My sister was a lion tamer-- in riding breeches & riding jacket, with lunging whip & top hat. Our Great Dane, wearing a homemade yarn mane, was the lion.</p>
<p>My favorite: I think the year that DH, DS, DD & I were the characters from "Doug" I got DH to be Skeeter, with a blue face and everything. I was Roger, DS was Doug, DD was Judy. We carried a tape deck that played a loop of the theme music. I miss that show!</p>
<p>I am a master of the low-effort, high-impact, Salvation Army-sourced costume. Give me $7.95, some masking tape, and some safety pins and I can make any kid a Jedi, The Hulk, whatever.</p>
<p>SBMom, I definitely got the mania from my mom. One year the 4 of us in my family of origin were the sun, the moon, the earth and a very cute little star. (That little sister, even at 39, is still cute). </p>
<p>For me, the costumes for my own kids were the one way I could still lay claim to being a MOM given that I have worked part time since S was 18 months and full time since he was 7. </p>
<p>It was also just so much fun. Don't you love love love glue guns? Cutting out the red felt heart for the Tin Woodman costume and gluing it on the little gray Target sweatshirt?</p>
<p>Wait, and the Great Dane put up with it????</p>
<p>Re: halloween costumes:
This was in incredibly poor taste, but it was funny. We live in Evander Holyfield territory. The year of the "big fight", my older s. went around with a stretchy rubber, gummy ear in his mouth and went as Mike Tyson.</p>
<p>The Dane was a sweetheart and cooperated as much as any untrained loveable family dog would. ;)</p>
<p>The Great Dane also had a very special trick. He would prance down to the school bus stop in our neighborhood every morning, and solemnly approach a tyke. Then he'd put one paw up on said tyke's shoulder. Petrified tyke would drop lunch bag, Great Dane would pick up lunch bag and hightail it home.</p>
<p>We weren't wise to the trick for some time, and kept being baffled by all the tiny shreds of brown bag, waxed paper and tinfoil we would find strewn all over the garden... then the AHA! moment came....</p>
<p>No, jym, celebrities are completely fair game!! One year I went as Tania Harding, with a glittery outfit, Marlboro Lights, skates slung over my shoulder, and a baseball bat.</p>
<p>My H and I tried in vain to find Charles and Di masks one year in the '80s for a party, so we could cross-dress. (Guess what our actual names are.) I still wish we'd been able to find them; now people wouldn't even have any idea who we were trying to be.</p>
<p>Love the Mike Tyson idea (shiver!). </p>
<p>Hey, I'm off to pour one, anyone join me? I started teaching the 16YO how to drive a stickshift today. He scared one of the little old ladies taking a walk down the sidewalk, LOL! She kept looking back over her shoulder to see if he was going to stall out again. We're all OK, but a good shot of something alcoholic is probably the right way to end the evening.</p>