I swear October is the fastest month. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating L’s birthday and now here we are on November 1 bracing for the onslaught of Christmas commercials. Hell, they started Saturday, from what I could tell so we’re already in it. Fall break, a trip, and lots of basketball helped to make the month speed by.
Two weeks ago we were in the midst of one of the warmest Octobers in Indianapolis history. Today it was 33 when we left for school, and the high temps may not top 50 until next weekend.
Yep, things move pretty fast in October.
We had a split Halloween weekend this year. M and C both went to parties on Saturday. For the first time we were a little concerned about M’s plans. She and some school friends were going to some vague “party” hosted by some public school kids. Not that CHS kids don’t make stupid, typically teenage mistakes. Nor that there aren’t CHS parents who allow kids to get wild. But we feel pretty confident her circle of friends comes with parents who will not let kids get out of control in their homes. Plus, the public school is three times the size of CHS, so that makes it at least three times more likely something sketchy happens.
We just reminded her to make good decisions before she left. After she left S muttered to me, “And don’t get caught drunk if the cops show up.” Not that we worry about M acting out too much, but Halloween is the perfect night to start doing stupid stuff.
We checked in on her location occasionally. At one point she was on the total opposite side of the city where she was supposed to be. But she was also constantly moving. We guessed, and later had confirmed, that the “parties” they heard about were either non-existent, lame, or M and her friends didn’t feel comfortable and left early. Sure enough, she said the first public school party was filled with people they didn’t know, a second was mostly older CHS kids and they felt like outsiders, and they finally ended up at a small party about three blocks from where she was spending the night. So it all turned out ok.
C went to a party with a group of kids she’s been hanging out with all fall. They were at the home of people we knew, so we were confident things would be fine/safe there. Apparently two kids who were dating were acting “weird” all night and kind of ruined the party for everyone. Only 15 and she’s already run into the “awkward couple who might be breaking up at the Halloween party” phenomenon! She had a lot more fun at the sleepover she went to after the party.
L, on the other hand, stayed in on Saturday but went out trick-or-treating Sunday. She stressed for weeks on which group of friends to go with. She finally picked her group of guy friends because her girl friends were arguing too much about what to dress up as. Turned out the boys didn’t have much better of an idea, but at least they weren’t fighting as they changed their minds.
She went as an inflatable dinosaur. That was supposed to be the group plan but two boys in her group never got around to finding costumes so had random ones they found in their homes or borrowed from other friends. It all worked out. She went to a fancy, gated neighborhood where one of the kids lived. There were lots of full-sized candy bars which she was thrilled with.
S and I stayed home. This was our fourth Halloween in our new home. The first year we went to our old neighborhood and left candy at our door. According to our porch cam, we only had one group of trick-or-treaters that night. Year two it snowed and was insanely windy and we had no guests. Last year we had nice weather and only had a couple.
Last night we had four groups of trick-or-treaters totaling 10 kids, so a new house record! Two groups of neighbors and then two other groups of randoms. We live in kind of a weird spot – off a very busy street with no sidewalks and on the opposite end of the proper neighborhood – which really cuts down on the traffic. In our old hood I always stressed about whether I bought enough candy. And every damn year we had way too much. That’s not a problem here. I bought three small bags and we still have over half of it left. But with only one trick-or-treater, that means M and C have some to split for the next few days.
Now that November is here, there are a couple very big things on our calendar. One is this week for one kid; we’ll discuss that later. The other is a family thing that we’ve been waiting a long time for. We are praying that Southwest Airlines gets their shit together and we can pull it off. More about that, also, down the road a few weeks.