We were actually supposed to go back to the States for Halloween this year. The plan was to spend the time with my second sister near Memphis doing the trick or treat thing and then visit my brother and his family in my old stomping grounds. That obviously didn’t happen. Anyway, Sister the Second decided that if we couldn’t make it for Halloween, she’d send Halloween to us.
Let me just say here that Global Express Mail is a rip-off. Five days? Our package was mailed on the 19th. It should have arrived on the 24th. It didn’t. It came this morning, finally. 31-19=12, right? I don’t think that 12 = 5, even when you figure in weekends. At least it did get here, even if its late arrival caused me lots of anxiety.
I spent the afternoon in Joinville, doing what has almost become tradition around here—helping a bunch of kids carve pumpkins. Why do I do this? My kids drive me nuts. Other people’s kids drive me completely over the edge. Add to that my serious lack of materials (every year the same kid breaks at least three of my saws), the kids’ total lack of listening skills (slight exaggeration; but only slight), and the general chaos of one of those days made for kids by people who have none, and boy, tonight I need a bottle of scotch, four lines of cocaine and about sixteen joints.
Anyway, after the pumpkin carving fiasco, I flew home to pick up our monkeys for the costume contest. Marc had them almost 100 % ready by the time I got home so I wasn’t as insanely neurotic as I could have been. And back we went.
Monkey is the little brown lion and Piglet is the chick being held up by the not-too-hard-to-look-at guy. I’ll have to torture the kids some more later and take better pictures. Matthieu took first place, and Christine came in fifth—not too terribly bad for someone not quite able to walk across the stage, eh? Oh, and those are the pumpkins.
