HALLOWEEN SUCKS

This was the most awful night...and it makes me wonder how mothers of kids with A.D.D. don't lose their minds on a regular basis.

It all started out with the best of intentions. I took Lewis to the dog run early so that he wouldn't need a walk right after I picked the kids up from school, the point being that this was going to be a very nice, organized, non-chaotic day. (Yeah. And then she woke up.)
We were going to go to Tae Kwon Do practice and then return home at 5:30 to meet Maclyn (Adam's friend) and Brett (Brian's friend) and trick or treat in my building as well as receive some trick or treaters on the tail end.

As always, I dressed for the occasion. This year, I was Willie Wonka, complete with brown dandy suit, velvet top hat and auburn pageboy wig. Lewis dressed as Darth Vader, complete with black cape, which quickly got peed on and went into the trash. I picked the kids up from school at approximately 3:00 p.m., which is when all hell began to break loose.

Complication Number One: At first grade pickup, Maclyn appeared by our side, sans nanny, sans mom. It seems that there had been some confusion, and Maclyn was going to spend the ENTIRE day with us. And what could I do about it? Oh well, there went our plans to go to Tae Kwon Do. Instead, we all went back to my apartment, whereupon Kelly, Maclyn's mom called and said that she needed Maclyn home to do his homework before he could go trick or treating. OK, so...then why did she write a note to the teacher saying that he should go home from school with us?

Anyway, Kelly picked up Maclyn, and Adam and I sat down to do homework (since a first grader cannot be relied upon to do his homework himself). Brian went into the playroom to watch TV since he was given no homework, other than to come in tomorrow with a piece of candy for his teacher (and thank GOD for that. Brian has at least an hour of homework a day, and I am responsible for making sure that it all gets done properly, which can be quite a trial at times). I soon realized that Adam had somehow helped himself to a LOT of the candy that we had sitting around waiting for trick or treaters, and Adam was quickly morphing into a wild beast, a la Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

Right about the time that we were done with homework, Brett arrived. Shortly after that Maclyn came as well. Maclyn and Adam became VERY silly. Brett and Brian are fairly mature and quite well-behaved. But still, it's Halloween. And it degenerates pretty quickly into little voices screaming "Gimme candy...OK bye..." followed by motherly shrieks of "Say thankyou! Stop running! Stop screaming in the hallway!"

It didn't take all that long to get through the entire building, since there were only about three participating apartments on each of our fifteen floors. But no worries, each of the boys managed to fill up their jackolantern buckets to the point of overflowing. When we arrived home, the silliness and the craziness continued uninterrupted. Only now, Lewis the Beagle wanted to get in on the act. He is essentially a puppy after all, only bigger. And he is every bit a boy.

Did I mention that my boys went as baseball players? That was fairly simple. The complication was that Adam insisted on being a DEAD baseball player, and that meant covering his face in white, black and red theatrical makeup. And that meant that there were makeup smudges all over my apartment and a six year old covered in warpaint who needed to be cleaned up before he went to bed.

So, there we were: Brett, Brian and Maclyn playing pretty wildly, Lewis the Beagle running around in circles, me desperately trying to clean makeup off the walls, a la Lady MacBeth, never seeming to be able to get rid of that last spot, and Adam endlessly soaping up in a very messy shower without being able to remove much makeup at all. Eventually, I had to intervene with some Ponds cold cream (why do I even HAVE Ponds cold cream??), which meant that the entire bathroom ended up being rained upon. Adam's clothes lay in a wet pile on the floor.

Finally I managed to get Adam clean and quarantined on one side of the apartment (so that his continuing sugar-induced mania would not influence any of the more well-behaved kids). That's when Brett started screaming that Lewis had taken hold of his shirt and wouldn't let go. I got Lewis to release the shirt, but not without leaving two giant canine-teeth-sized holes on the bottom hem. I promised to sew them up, right after I finished cleaning all the Adam-smudges off of all of my walls and all the water off of the bathroom floor.

You get the point. And I simply can't write anything coherent at this point.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Sir noticed that my breath was deeper today and that my practice was much improved for it. Interesting, because I was VERY late to practice because I attempted (for the LAST TIME) to drive downtown. It may work in the summer, but it sure as hell does not work now that everyone is back from the Hamptons. It took me 65 minutes to get from 79th Street down to Shala X. Amazingly, I just stayed calm and committed to getting to Shala X and not turning back. I decided that whatever time I got there, I would practice, and I would practice until time was up, and that was that, no drama, no rushing. And that is what I did. I didn't even finish Standing Series. But it was good.

YC