Whoops

I guess I kind of fucked up that whole "I'm going to post every day for the rest of the year" thing I was attempting to do when I dropped the ball yesterday. If you're the excusing kind of person that I hope you are, then you'll realize it wasn't my fault. I was frustrated because yesterday morning, rain that nobody called for moved in and soaked the yard, thus keeping me from mowing the lawn and trimming the front bushes like I wanted to in the morning. I ended up then with a bout of cleaning Tourrette's, and I cleaned and mopped the kitchen and directed the children to clean up the living room so that I could sweep it. This ended up being that I mostly cleaned up the living room and they jumped off the furniture until I sent them to their rooms. I love how modern parenting methods dictate I can't duct tape them to a wall for punishment.

Frustrations aside, I finally got everything together and cleaned in time for me to go get some pizzas for dinner and then get everyone ready to go out Trick or Treating. Again, the weather man and I almost had a falling out. "Oh don't worry," they said, "the rain will hold off until after Trick or Treating hours are over," they said. "Nothing to worry about at all," they promised. You know what comes next.

Predictably, about halfway through our route, it started to sprinkle. A few seconds later, it started to rain harder.

Oh, fuck! thought I. What the fuckity fuck fuck am I going to do now?

Fortunately, we were under a particularly tree-lined stretch of neighborhood so that, five minutes later, when the rain stopped, we weren't too wet. The only problem was that now it was really humid and my kids started whining about being too sweaty. Hey, guys, you're getting bag loads of candy. Maybe it's a good idea to sweat some calories off prior to attempting to make the varsity Third Level of Hell team.

The rain held off so that we could make it through our usual route. We made it home safe, sound and dry. More importantly, my timing was excellent in that we went on our usual tour (minus a couple of houses without lights on this year) and made it back by a quarter till eight, which was important because that was about the point that Notre Dame kicked off. All-in-all, it was a night filled with candy, ghost hunting, slutty cow girls, and football. Win-win-win-and-win.

I did, however, have one of those parenting faux pas last night. We were all watching Ghost Hunters on SyFy (even typing that causes me to shudder) and they were showing the top five most haunted places they had been. The one where they were in the lighthouse in Florida--where the ghost leans out over the railing to look at them--was on. This scared the little boy (he's five) and so he climbed up onto my lap and curled up into a little ball. I patted his little legs and he eventually began to drift off to sleep.

However, Golden Tate ran a touchdown in for Notre Dame and I said, loudly, "Touchdown!" which startled him awake. And then I felt bad. So I patted his little legs some more and he fell asleep on my lap until halftime, where I carried him up to his bed, read him a little story, and tucked him in for the night.

My daughter, however, was enthralled with the ghost hunting and was sitting with my wife, poring over the live-feed cameras that they had set up in this old, abandoned hospital in New Jersey. Eventually (around 10 o'clock), we had to pry her from the computer and television and force her into bed.

So, overall, it was a pretty good Halloween around these parts. I realize I'm a touch belated, but, Happy Halloween, everybody! I hope yours was as good as mine.

Now, I'm going to go do some more laundry and not watch Sports Voldemort square off against Dumbledore (the Packers) in the basement of the Ministry of Magic (Lambeau). We have more important things to watch down here in the Carolinas, like seeing just how many interceptions Jake DelHomme can throw to the Arizona Cardinals in one game this time. I'm putting the over/under at three and taking the over.