Something truly scary... and this year's Halloween costume

On Saturday morning, I woke up to radio reports about the flooding in Bangkok, and decided it was time to moodle about climate change again. I hate moodling about climate change, because it scares the heebie jeebies out of me. It's too easy to imagine that my own addiction to fossil fuels has no impact on anyone else... until Bill McKibben writes this op/ed piece about it, and Stephen W. Thomson makes it visual (see below). I am frightened, because who's to say the same sorts of things can't happen here? And I worry about my brothers and sisters in Thailand. How will they manage?

Here are more reasons to be a hummingbird, to live simply,
and to try to get by using as few fossil fuels as possible.

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On a lighter note, after her successes as laundry basket, traffic light, and radio over the last few years, here's my youngest hobgoblin at school in the Hallowe'en costume she made this year!

Here's my girls' pumpkin art.

Happy All Hallow's Eve!

We survived... another Halloween

Halloween is over for another year. In the end, it turned out to be as much fun as ever. When you're in the midst of costume angst, however, it's hard to remember that it usually turns out to be fun. Little Bo Peep had fun making a shepherdess' crook out of a sunflower stalk that was rescued from our garden, but it got stolen at the school dance, and was seen in the office later, probably confiscated from the thief by a teacher. The Belle of the Ball looked stunning for the dance with her peacock feathered masque, but opted for the opposite extreme this evening because it would have been too tricky to trick or treat in a hoop skirt. Belle became a green faced witch.

And the child with the creative Halloween costume angst that had her in tears three out of five evenings this week? She did just fine as a radio, though in the final analysis it wasn't very practical to plug herself into a wall, and the batteries her dad supplied her with didn't last until trick-or-treating! Though she soon tired of climbing up and down peoples' stairs in her box costume and decided to call it an evening before the rest of her friends, she and I took a little side trip to the local over-the-top Halloween decorated yard, and all the people who love her the most were suitably impressed by her costume creativity, so the day was a success.

She's already talking about how next year's costume won't be a box...

The Halloween saga continues...

T minus seven days - Julia decides that it might be okay to go with her original plan for this year's Halloween costume. Sigh of relief.

T minus four days - Julia discovers that a small but critical part of her costume is missing.  After turning the entire house upside down and not finding it, Mom tries once again to convince Julia that it might be nice to be a blue-haired hippie girl. Heavy sigh.

I don't actually hate Halloween.... but...

Two years ago, my youngest daughter developed her own Halloween costume and had a bit of a creative crisis because of it, but came through with pride and pleasure. The whole event struck me so funny that I turned it into a little piece for the Toronto Globe and Mail's Facts and Arguments page, published last year on October 30th. I called it, "I hate Halloween," but really, I don't. Hate Halloween, that is. I have enjoyed most Halloweens as a mom. It's just the costume crises I hate.

After 2008's costume success (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/i-hate-halloween/article1344324/), I thought we might be on a roll. For the second year in a row, Julia was a smash with the costume we built out of a box last year. As we made our way around the neighbourhood, not only did we see a couple of girls dressed as laundry baskets, but when we arrived at one door, a neighbour called her daughter, saying, "Come quick, here's the little traffic light everyone has been talking about."

These successes seem to have gotten Julia's creative costume juices overflowing. In the past year, she's mused about all sorts of possibilities for next week's costume, coming up with ideas about everything from alarm clocks to ballpoint pens. I listened to each suggestion and countered with, "and how are you going to do that?" and she would give me elaborate explanations, to which I'd reply, "that's an interesting idea. We'll have to keep it in mind."

About a month ago, Julia made her decision from among many ideas, and put in an order for some cardboard boxes. I brought a couple home from the cardboard corral at the SSVP Distribution Centre, and she insisted we get some bristol board from the dollar store. She and her dad set to work, and soon the costume was finished. She was very excited... until this week when a friend came over to play and saw the costume, spoiling everything in a way that I didn't understand. When I questioned Julia, her answer was that someone might copy her original idea like last year's laundry basket girls did, and then it wouldn't be original anymore. She insists now that she needs a new costume... and we have only a week to go.

I don't hate Halloween, really. It's just I rarely get through it without some sort of headache. Stay tuned.