Tonight our town had a trunk or treat.
I don’t really get trunk or treat.
Like, if you can’t go trick-or-treating — which, let’s be honest, is all treating and no tricking — then sure. I get it.
But there is plenty of candy to be found on actual Halloween.
How many times do my kids need to fill up a big ass bag of candy in the month of October?
Isn’t once enough?
It’s enough for me!
I have been to the town trunk or treat, and for me, it was not fun.
It’s like five million people in a parking lot.
If I’m going to be honest, I spend most of my time trying not to interact with people.
I knew my kids would want to go to this thing if I told them about it.
So I never mentioned it.
But they must have heard about it from friends because they asked about it a couple days ago.
Number 6 had a baseball game this afternoon, so I told them I didn’t think we’d be done in time even though the game was at 1 and trunk-or-treating didn’t start until 5 and I totally knew he’d be done in time.
But then Number 5’s friend invited her over this afternoon.
I told her mom she was free in the afternoon and that Number 5 would love to come over.
And then the mom asked if I minded if she took Number 5 to the trunk-or-treat.
Shit.
I mean, I’m more than happy for my kids to go with someone else.
But now the youngest two would know their sister was going, so I’d have to take them.
The first thing out of my mouth when they asked if they could go?
I THINK DAD WOULD LOVE TO TAKE YOU.
He has managed to evade the trunk-or-treat for 22 years of fatherhood.
Until tonight.
It was time.
Luckily Number 5 has had her costume ready for a couple months now.
But the younger two had no costumes yet.
I know Halloween is in five days, but you know.
Life.
After Number 6’s game ended this afternoon he had travel baseball tryouts.
He had the world’s longest game that lasted over two and a half hours.
So it was 3:40, trunk-or-treating started at 5, travel baseball tryouts hadn’t started yet, and I still needed to get two Halloween costumes.
I don’t know why I was so behind on the costume thing this year. Halloween kind of snuck up on me.
Anyway I went over to the dugout where Number 6 was sitting.
“What do you want to be for Halloween?” I asked him.
“A skeleton. No, a zombie. NO. A SKELETON,” he said.
“Okay,” I told him. “I’m going to get you a skeleton costume. Good luck at tryouts.”
My husband stayed at the baseball field, and I took Number 7 with me.
We went to one of those massive pop up Halloween stores that was just a mile or so from the baseball field.
There was no dog costume (what Number 7 wanted to be) and there was no skeleton costume.
And I didn’t have time to be crafty and buy black sweats and transform them into a skeleton with white fabric paint before 5 pm.
We went to a party store that was just down the road from the Halloween store.
We found a skeleton costume and a dog hat thing and a dog nose meant for toddlers that was acceptable to Number 7.
Number 7 still needed clothes to wear because we didn’t really have anything at home that we could use, so then we ran to WalMart.
Miraculously we found pants and a shirt that were an exact color match about 2 minutes after entering the store.
We grabbed some face paint, and we headed home.
Number 7 jumped in the shower because she had spent the last fifteen minutes of Number 6’s baseball game playing in a mountain of dirt and she was filthy and had been walking around with me like Pigpen from Charlie Brown in a cloud of dust.
At 4:55 Number 6 got back from travel baseball tryouts and we got costumes on.
Number 7’s dog nose didn’t quite work as planned and after a minor meltdown we decided it would be better to just draw a nose on.
I threw some skeleton face paint on Number 6 and by 5:30 they were ready for the trunk-or-treat and they left with my husband.
Around 6:25 I got a text.
It was a blurry picture of a billion parents, sent by my husband.
I asked him why he sent me a blurry picture of a billion adults.
“I just wanted you to get an idea of how busy it is,” he replied.
Well, now the cat was out of the bag.
Next year we’re gonna have to rock-paper-scissors to see who gets stuck with the trunk-or-treat.
But the biggest lesson I learned from today?
I used to go all out for Halloween. I hand-crafted all the kids’ costumes as well as my own.
Now?
I don’t know. I just don’t enjoy it so much anymore.
I wish I did, but I don’t.
I could have spent a shit ton of time making a super cool costume for each of the kids out of really creative stuff. But that does not bring me joy now.
Today I got the job done in less than 90 minutes.
Because the amount of time you give yourself to do something is the amount of time it takes to do it.
And my kids?
They were not just satisfied with their costumes, but they were really happy!
And while I don’t love the whole concept of it, if it weren’t for the trunk-or-treat, my kids would still need costumes, and I’d have this hanging over my head until Wednesday, most likely. Possibly Thursday.
So in the end, I guess the trunk-or-treat was good for something.
.
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