HELLoween

by Cathy

Thank the ghouls and goblins that Halloween is over; the 'holiday' felt like it lasted for one full week.

In fact, as I was leaving my kids' school on Monday, after having spent the entire school day there planning room decor, shuffling snacks, large jugs of water and hoards of Pirate Booty, I exhaustedly sung to one of the teachers on my way out: "Bye! Have a nice weekend!" She stopped my exit short with a gentle hand on my shoulder. She lowered her voice and said calmingly, "Today's Monday...but I know how you feel."

I had in fact arrived at school at 8:30a.m. along with 12 other harried moms lugging boxes of witch cauldrons and bags of toilet paper for mummy wrapping. We dove right into transforming the school cafeteria into an obstacle course of Halloween play stations. Within the hour, 100 kindergarteners (my daughter being one of them) descended upon the room to partake in the activities. Another loooong hour later, as the kids filed out high on Halloween games, the moms flopped down on the mini lunch stools exhausted. Time for the clean-up, which consisted of millions of craft sticker backings, toilet paper remnants (which were stuck to pretty much all the shi-shi shoes in the place) and pumpkin balls rolling everywhere.

One kid party down - one to go. I had about an hour to spare for lunch, which I ran out and gobbled while checking email and texts. I raced back to school and began preparations for Bella's party. Five other moms and I hung skeleton door decorations, unpacked gallons of apple cider, pallets of bottled water, and millions of bags of popcorn and Pirate Booty. We set up 40 chairs for a game of Musical Chairs, cranked up an iPod belting out teeny bopper tunes and waited for the crazed fifth graders and their costumes to be unleashed into the clean room. In busted an assortment of random costumes, including a Christmas Tree, a Cupcake, Lady Gaga, Nerds Gone Bad, a Rock Star, Mother Nature and the Devil herself. A frenzy of makeup application and accessory staging began by all the moms on standby, running furiously to retrieve plastic bags from within plastic bags, cameras, smartphones and video cameras. After the primping and snack eating were complete, we had 3.2 minutes to play Musical Chairs, which consisted of me removing chairs at the rate of two per 30 seconds to keep up. I was suh-weating.

We snapped a few obligatory class pictures before we herded down to the school gym for the all-school Halloween parade, in which every child in the school parades on stage and around the gym by classroom. This was a lot of fun, save for the fact that it was standing room only. I made the best of it and bobbed to the music of Thriller, Ghostbusters, The Monster Mash and the theme song from The Adams Family, more times than I could count.

After a mad rush through cattle herds of crowds in the hallways to each classroom to retrieve both girls and their backpacks, costume bags, treat bags, snack bags and lunch bags, we finally emerged from the school, headed to the car and dropped off the kids at the in-laws for one hour of T-O-Ting in their midrise building. In the meantime, Joe and I ran home to clean up our disaster of a house before some friends and their kids came over for spiced rum, pizza and a of course, Trick or Treating.

After a quick sweep of dishwashing, tidying and Windexing, Joe was back out the door to go pick up the girls while our guests arrived. Since the girls were late in finishing up with the in-laws, we decided to pack into the car and just meet Joe and the girls in the area we were TOTing in - but not before we warmed up the spiced rum and took it to go in thermal warmers. (The best idea of the day.) After a few texts we finally met up and tried to make the best of navigating through thousands of people on the spooky, spirited streets. Bella and I were getting tired and cold, so we split up yet again so I could start heading home to pop in some pizza - it WAS dinnertime after all. That plan would have worked out great if Joe remembered where he parked the car in his discombobulated haste to get the kids there. We walked SIX blocks out of our way to NOT find the car.

The girls and I hitched a ride back with our friends - seven people in a car, baby, cuz that's just how we roll - while Joe went on a ghost hunt for the car. After we all safely assembled at home, we chowed on some pizza, had some good conversation, drank some more spiced rum and called it a night.

And what a hell of day and night it turned out to be. Until next year...when we get to do it all again! Mwaaah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha....[evil laugh fading]