Thank God that's over

My house looks like a Halloween hurricane blew through it.
I found out around 11 this morning that about 10 eighth-grade boys would be meeting at our house to begin the candy quest.
Then the twins ransacked nearly every drawer and closet in their attempts to put together a "costume," which to them means "hat."
Over the years we've collected two giant Rubbermaid bins full of costume parts, many of which were part of my work wardrobe in the '80s.
After trying on and rejecting most everything they'd pulled out, Henry wore a $10 vampire cape over basketball clothes and Mason wore an old lampshade from the attic on his head. He was a lamp. See what he did there?
Owen, on the other hand, had pointed out which costume he wanted when the Costume Express catalog arrived two months ago: the SWAT officer.
The costume sat waiting for him in the dining room for three weeks.
I had a really weird moment later after I drove Owen to my parents' neighborhood for a visit. My dad walked around their subdivision with us, and for a minute I felt like an 8-year-old with him walking next to me.
As I watched Owen walk up to ring a doorbell and heard my dad saying, "Be careful on the steps," I literally felt like it was 1977 and I was the one carrying the candy bag.
Instead of heading home to dump out all the candy I'd collected in my pillow case, I had to drive my baby home and then drive around our darkened streets picking up all those eighth-graders who had walked too far to make it back on their own.
They only had a couple of minutes to admire their candy before bed. It is a school night after all.
Yep, Halloween sure looks different from a 42-year-old perspective.
When the kids get on the school bus, I'll be able to clean a little in the calm after the storm.

Incriminating receipt tracks hubby's whereabouts

I found something shocking in my husband’s pants pocket last week as I sorted our various whites, darks and in-betweens.

I have to check pants pockets when I do laundry because Tim is famous for scribbling “important” phone numbers on Post-It notes and filing them in his pockets. Most of the time, I find only work-related gibberish like the number 42, the word “rivet” and an arrow for emphasis.

This most recent search, however, yielded something different: an incriminating receipt.

From the time stamp, I could see that my husband had made a late-night trip to Publix. The itemized list made me pause: He’d bought a pack of gum, a 20-oz. Diet Coke and three 24-packs of toilet paper.

This, combined with our 14-year-olds’ recent string of sleepovers here, only pointed to one conclusion. My husband was helping turn our sons into suburban outlaws.

Yep, he’d actually driven them and three friends to our neighborhood Publix to buy toilet paper so they could meet some other neighborhood friends and roll the yard of the unfortunate friend who couldn’t come that night.

I’m sure they didn’t look suspicious at all; a bunch of giggling 14-year-old boys elbowing each other as my husband tried to decide if want wants his TP haul bagged in paper or plastic.

Apparently getting your yard rolled, or “TP’d,” as some may call it, is like a tip of the hat. It’s a sign of affection, if you will, not an insulting act of vandalism the way I thought of it growing up.

The first time my boys rolled someone’s yard, they were invited to go by a friend of theirs who had another friend sleeping over. No kid comes up with this idea alone, apparently. If yours does, you may want to make sure he isn’t turning into some modern-day Boo Radley.

Still, my neighbors and I all consider ourselves to be conscientious parents. Not wanting them to walk the streets in the middle of the night, her parents drove them to the intended victim’s house. Then her dad had to remind them to at least try to be discreet about sneaking up to roll someone’s yard. Not exactly hardcore rebels, they were sashaying up the front walk like they were calling on Sunday.

This particular house only had one new sapling and a huge euonymus bush in the front yard, so they wrapped about a dozen rolls around those two plants and then scampered back into the truck to try another house.

I don’t mind their rolling their friends’ yards because they usually go by the next day to help clean up. They never use anything permanently damaging, like eggs, or anything super messy like the melted Pudding Pops someone left in my mailbox once in seventh grade.

I suspect it’s much more of a social activity for them, since most of the TP is only half-heartedly tossed about eight feet in the air.

Back in my day, I knew a few boys who could throw so high they’d make you regret for three weeks that our society doesn’t still use a Sears catalog in the bathroom.

I guess I should be glad they’re participating in a physical activity outside rather than playing Xbox all night, right?

Maybe not, but there are worse things they could be doing. And worse things I could find in my husband’s pocket.

Remember what you're racing for

I love that our town hosts the Nashville-area Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K.
The survivors and supporters who show up to walk, run and raise money for cancer research are truly uplifting.
I do not love the way segments of the breast cancer campaign have turned the focus from the person to the body part.
Nowadays bumper stickers and T-shirts urge us to “Save the Ta-tas.” Well-intentioned supporters hold up signs or wear rubber bracelets that say, “I heart boobs.” Even though the Komen website does not sell such items, across the U.S. Komen 5K races are full of race teams with sassy names like The Tough Titties and Save 2nd Base.
But I think “the movement” has reached a sophomoric point where it’s achieving awareness while losing the meaning in the message.
Take the T-shirt that urges women to “Feel Your Boobies.” With a wink, it promotes early detection of tumors through self-exams.
And we all know that “Feel Your Boobies” gets attention through titillation. After all, boobies are way more fun to think about than self-exams.
See, it’s co-opting a word that once was naughty. Tee-hee!! Boobies! That’s right, I said, “boobies!”
Focusing on the body part rather than the disease trivializes the woman attached to it. If women spent the last half of the last century convincing men to look in our eyes when they talk to us, why step backwards into meaningless stunts like posting our bra colors on Facebook?
I always wonder how the survivors who’ve had mastectomies feel about the focus on ta-tas. For those who had preventive mastectomies, the choice between “saving their titties” and saving their lives was not really a choice at all.
What about the nearly 400 men who will die from breast cancer this year? They probably appreciate “racing for the cure” more than “jogging for jugs.”
Sure, there are only so many ways fundraisers can use a pink ribbon. Still, the “Save the Ta-tas” group is not a charity but a business that has raised a little more than $500,000 for research since 2004.
I understand that this kind of campaign also brings a little humor to a very serious situation. Some people think any attention, even attention brought on by controversy, is welcome if it brings donations.
This method hasn’t caught on with the other cancer support groups, though. Nobody “hearts” ovaries, the cervix or colons because, well, they aren’t as provocative as breasts.
I can’t imagine the day when guys will run through Maryland Farms wearing scrotum-shaped hats. Perhaps the testicular cancer organizations might get more money for research if they print T-shirts that say “I Heart Balls.”
The Komen foundation does raise millions of dollars for cancer research; it’s also very good at marketing. From grocery products in pink packaging to football players donning the most feminine of colors during October, there’s no doubt that we are aware of breast cancer. And awareness is one of the movement’s most prevalent catchphrases.
But its real goal is to save lives, not boobs.
I’m afraid that goal is in danger of getting run over by the boobie bandwagon.

All that for one casserole

This is why I don't make chicken spaghetti very often.