The One With the Obligatory Post- Halloween Post**

I Vant To Suck Your Blood

True to form - my girls did it up. I know this because contrary to all I've griped about this past week ...we hauled in some major booty. And, after the sneaking the best bites for myself

careful sorting - ever on patrol for the errant razor blade or open wrapper-I'm hauling around some extra booty in my booty. If anyone has found a Charleston Chew...which they won't 'cuz they don't seem to make them anymore...you can send it right over here.

And as for the band of marauding teens who smashed pumpkins and stole the entire "help yourself" bowl of candy? You just wait kids...pay back is a bitch. You too, someday, will have brats not unlike yourselves. Can't wait for that.

And as for the houses in the 'hood that dole out candy for the little ones and adult beverages for the parents! Kudo's to YOU!!!! (even though I had my own little party in the wagon)

Our school is collecting extra candy for Manna Food Bank. I brought in a Lawn and Leaf bag full of it this morning. I am not all heartless, you know.

What are you doing with yours?? Besides the obvious, that is.

***********

In other news, Emily and I went shopping yesterday for intimate apparell. For. Her. Oy vey.

Rachel asked me if I was getting 'real bubble holders' like the kind I wear or little cami's like Emily usually wears. She just about busted a seam cracking up when I told her we were getting the real deal. I promised Ray Ray, when her day comes - we'll go shopping just the two of us, too. It was a good time for Emily to have our bonding moment. And our monthly "Women's Business Time" chat.

Hormones suck. Hers. Mine. and Ours.

**edited a few hours later . Alternative title to this post is The One in Which She Knows She's Old Because Her Favorite Candy is Considered Retro. So I added a link to Wikipedia for all you youngin's to see what you've been missing.

***edited a few hours after that....I just had a flash, and not a hot one this time! Well maybe it started out as a hot flash, but something brought me here: to a memory flash of maybe just why I dislike Halloween and all things pumpkin.

{{cue wiggly wavey flashback thingies}}

4th grade...World Festival. We all had to choose a country and write up a report about it, convert our desks into a 'market' stall and display wares from that country. We also had to create a popular food or export to serve to the class and all the classes that paraded through our little United Nations of countries. I was absent for some reason on the day we chose countries. I got Venezuela, the country that nobody wanted. Sure it had Angel Falls - the world's tallest waterfall - and Simon Bolivar but other than drawing a picture of it, that was all I could find. And back in those days, we relied on our trusty Encyclopedia Britannica to get our informaiton. No Google searching. No FoodNetwork.com. No information superhighway. No instant gratification. Just me and the last volume of the encyclopedia and maybe, if I was lucky - our elementary school library had something on microfilm about Venezuela.

So picture the double classroom of desks that were turned into a wending maze of nations and little old me down at the end stuck next to Zaire and the eraser cleaning machine. By the time people got to Venezuela, they had already been treated to crepes, and salsas, and french fries, and sweet treats from around the globe. Hell, they even liked the borcht from Russia and the lutafisk from Sweden. And right before my lame desk of all things Venezuela - the students and faculty got to sample apple pie from the good ol' US of A. And they get to me...and I have this huge pot on my desk under a rather lame albeit colorful depiction of the export map of Venezuela . A huge somewhat chunky pot of ...pumpkin soup. If I started the day with a crock pot full of this junk, I ended with day with a crock pot minus about a teaspoon of this junk. Then, at the end of the day, I slunk down in my seat and managed to pull that big crock pot of this junk off my desk and onto....my lap. Ick. Just ick. Orange ick.

{{ end scene}}

that explains it. stained for life.