Snap Out Of It......

KidsAreTheThing
DadVille

So, a while back I was whinging on and on about a season of full of deadlines, and time away from home, and all sorts of other jetsam and flotsam associated with the thing I do that I get paid for (and mostly enjoy a heckuva lot).

Anyway, the frenzy officially came to an end, at least for now, last Friday night when I got home from the final trip of the fall.

And payback time began almost immediately when C. took off for Victoria the next day to visit friends and relatives for the weekend which was followed by a workshop she gave yesterday, Monday.

All of which left me home alone to get the two E's get ready for Halloween.

And to prepare the 'Bigger E.' for her very first round of massive, stress inducing high school tests coming up this week.

And to get the 'littler e.' through the aftermath of her first tooth extraction, a bad baby molar brought on by too much candy last spring - probably my fault for letting her use her allowance to buy sour candies and gummy bears after tap dance class every Saturday morning (I'm a sucker for old-fashioned corner stores that actually sell no longer penny candy).

Anyway, we made it through the analgesics and the discomfort for e. as well as the Science studying for E. on Saturday ('twas cells and microscopes; ha! easy for me, although maybe a little too much info for E. - I doubt they'll actually ask her about the physics behind confocal scanning laser microscopy); then we went to the pumpkin patch (on Westham Island in middle of south arm of Fraser River where it meets the ocean - small, DIY farm, great fun) on Sunday morning where we got freezing soaked by a freak hail/rainstorm, but still got our four gourds (38 lbs total), went through the haunted house, and had hot chocolate with marshmellows and whip cream in the greenhouse; Sunday afternoon was Social Studies studying for E. (man, I am stupid when it comes to the voluminous nit-picky details of the world's four major religions - why do you have to know so much about so much in high school anyway?) and a birthday party to and from with e. (had to say no to caramels and chewing gum from the goodie bag on the way home so she gave them to her sister and her friend P); Sunday night was movies - actually put my parental foot down on 'Clueless' being too much for e. so we split things up with something with the kid who was in 'Matilda', only it wasn't actually Matilda but instead had something to do with Fairy God Mothers and Martin Short which wasn't actually as good as Matilda but it was OK, and so was Clueless, as far as teenager movies go, but it was no 'Pretty In Pink' which I'd rented once before for E. and her friends and their slumber party (I was a big hit that night, lemme tell you).

On top of all that there were also other assorted and sundry items all weekend long, things like shopping and meals and baths and dictee and figuring out who goes where with whom during all the carpools, not to mention filling out forms and dispensing fees and dues and finding the My Fair Lady CD so that the two Ee's could show me their latest dance routine........

But nothing prepared me for the costumes.

As in getting them together and getting them to look right, and having them look appropriate to wear to school, etc.

In fact, even now, late on Halloween afternoon, I'm not sure what E. will be wearing when she goes out with her pack of teenager friends tonight - I'm just hoping it will actually involve clothes that will keep her from freezing to death. I guess I'll find out when I pick her up for the back end of one of those carpools later this evening.

As for e.? Well, she decided a long time ago that she wanted to be 'Edna Mode' from 'The Incredibles' (see above).

Leave it to e. to pick Edna instead of one of the actual superhero kids from the movie.

I mean, do you think there is anything at Toys 'R Us, or Zellers, or even evil Mr. Walton's place, or anywhere else for that matter that would have anything even remotely approximating an Edna costume?

Sheesh.

Anyway, to be fair, C. had purchased/acquired a bunch of the individual components before she left.

So it was left to me to build the long black cigarette holder which, luckily, e. thinks is a pointer. And then I had to help get everything together in preparation for the big day.

The glasses were relatively straightforward from a kid we know who is obsessed with H. Potter, the dress took a lot of work which C's Mom finally finished sewing in Victoria and thus came home late last night; the boots we got last week; the tights caused no end of problems because of the way they felt under the dress; and the wig, well it was from our favorite dollar store but it had an unfortunate 'supermodel' label which caused e. to yell, in heavily germanic Edna-speak, 'I hate them, dahling - stick figures with pouffy lips!'.

Anyway, because e. is in grade 2 she wanted to wear her costume all day long today which caused a lot of keffufle and consternation before school this morning - especially with E. getting more and more worked-up about her tests and the fact that she was going to start this evening's escapade at her friend H.'s house, which was making her more anxious because H. is one of her new highschool friends.

So, do you have it all straight now?

And do you have a feel for the level of craziness at our house this morning that ratcheted up to infinity at 8:15am precisely when we finally got outside and found that there was frost all over the windows of the not-so VW microbus which signalled that we were going to be late for school for sure.

Which, of course, got my own bad mojo rising because I had a first-thing-in-the- morning meeting of an administrative nature that I had put off for weeks that still hadn't prepared for because, well, you know......

But then, just as I was fussing and muttering under my breath while trying to find the scraper that hadn't been used since February, e., who was strapping her now Edna-ized self into her booster seat, looked up and blurted:

"Snap out of it Dad..... Have you forgotten who you are?..... You are Mr. Incredible!"

Which, of course, is a lot of hooey, because the only thing I learned this weekend (for about the thousandth time) is how much more C. does than me about 99.9% of the time. Still, Edna's utterances made me smile in spite of myself.

And they also made me hope and wish that E., in all of her emerging anxiety-ridden teenagerness somehow manages to have even half as much fun today as I know that e., in all her happy-go-lucky kidness, will have for sure.

In fact, now that I think of it, I hope that all kids everywhere have even half as much fun as e. today.

Because if they do it will be an incredible Halloween for everyone concerned.

OK?

.