On the eve of what is most certainly the most important election of my lifetime, I'm going to COMPLETELY change the subject and talk about nothingness. I've done that a lot for the past several years, primarily to preserve my own mental health. See, the hardest thing about this election and the last is that with every passing day, I observe more and more evidence that there are a lot of people I care about who are willing to do incredible mental gymnastics in order to justify their racism.
But make no mistake. It's racism. I see it.
So rather than write about those mental gymnastics, I'm going to change the subject. It's to distract myself from the audacity and awfulness around us. Maybe you need the distraction, too.
But ... know this. I will write about it eventually. We can't learn from the mistakes of the past if we don't look around and see our mistakes today. I need the girls to understand that those mistakes are all around them and being committed by people who claim to love their neighbors, even as they actively harm those neighbors. Just not yet.
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HALLOWEEN 2020 WAS SO WEIRD.
First of all, let me go ahead and acknowledge that my head wasn't in the game this year. Normally I am able to encourage an extremely productive conversation or fifty around costumes, which always leads to epicness. I mean, this? So good.
All of their past costumes have been good.
This year the girls agreed to be villains. Harley Quinn settled on her plan suuuuuuper early and quickly and we can all go ahead and acknowledge that everything about Mila being Harley Quinn makes sense? It's her destiny.
Alexis as Catwoman was a twist, though.
But here's the real twist. Alexis had an alternate costume because of dance. They dress up for every class during Halloween week, which means she had 5 costumes total, but the theme they went with for Thursday was AMAZING. Her dance team is almost all seniors in high school, so they were senior citizens.
I don't have any photos, but Grandma Alexis. It happened. And it was AMAZING. The grey hair. The housecoat. The cane. The bag of Werther's. It was all so good.
I'll get her to wear it again. There will be photos next time.
ANYWAY. Back to Catwoman and Harley Quinn. They did go trick-or-treating, albeit while wearing masks. I somewhat expected our neighborhood to be it's usual party because we are surrounded by people who think COVID is a hoax (I wish I were kidding), but was pleasantly surprised to learn that most people decided to take the safe route. Lots and lots of houses weren't handing out candy, but the majority of those that were did so while practicing social distancing.
For our part, we skipped houses that weren't doing self-service candy, and we extra skipped any that had people not wearing masks. As in, I had to literally tell the girls at every single one that it was okay to skip the house. It drove Alexis nuts because Miss Empathy felt bad that she might be making the homeowner feel bad but WHATEVER. If you don't wear a mask while interacting with the public during a global pandemic, you should probably expect that some people are going to skip you.
We only hit about 1/3 of the neighborhood and a fraction of the houses within, but it was okay! Because I had lots of candy at home!
I did the thing where I hid candy around the house, turned out the lights, and let the girls hunt for the candy with flashlights. And let me tell you, we will now be doing it every single year because OH HELL YEAH. Haunted House rules applied, which meant I got to sneak around and hide behind things and scare the crap out of the girls. The highlight was when I knelt behind the kitchen table, popped up and simply said, "HI!" and Alexis jumped so high she fell to the floor.
It was pretty amazing.
And Mila is still reporting that it was the most fun ever because being scared when you know you're going to be scared is hilarious. This is the kid who laughed in my face every single time I made her scream. Some day I'm going to take her to a haunted house and we're going to have the BEST time.
So it was weird. Normally I encourage the girls to run around like feral beasts and I do ... well, barely more than nothing. This year I had to put more effort into things, but it was a whole lot more fun.
And the candy is all stuff I bought, so it's exactly the candy I want to eat. That's going to come in REAL handy as I stress-eat my way through the election.