November 1, 2015 and gray hair.......

It's National Blog Posting Month (NaNoBloPo) and National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). A couple of times I've registered for these challenges and failed. Who has time to write 50K words in a month? Who has time to blog every day?

So, this year I'll do something different. I'll SAY I'm going to blog every day, but I won't register for anything and I won't make any promises, so that if I fail, I haven't let anyone down. And, worst case scenario, I crank out a few blog posts, since my blog has been a little quiet lately.

So, why the "gray hair" in the title? Because today I washed away my grays. Except, they didn't all wash away. Damn it. I just did this two weeks ago. This is my life now - every two weeks, I get visible gray, no, WHITE hair at my roots and I have to "do my roots" again. EVERY TWO WEEKS! I'm so sick of this but I'm not ready to embrace my gray. NOT READY AT ALL. I've let it grow a few inches before and.....oh my gosh, it's scary. I mean, I can actually get a glimpse of what I will look like as an old lady and it frightens me. I'm 47. Maybe when I'm over 60 I'll cave to the gray, but not now. I just wish there was something that would prevent this from happening every two weeks. Does my hair really grow that fast? Do the gray roots just resist the color? I can't afford to see my hairdresser that often. I've pretty much stopped going because I have to take care of my roots every two weeks, so what's the point? Even when she does my hair, I see gray in two weeks. I hate it! After I colored, I decided I needed to cut and thin my hair too. Which basically just involves me cutting randomly and dragging the thinning shears through my hair. You can't tell if I did a bad job because my hair is so curly and thick. But you also can't tell if I did a good job because my hair is so curly and thick.

Yesterday was Halloween and we have leftover candy. Which is so bad because I don't even really like candy but since it's RIGHT THERE I've been eating it randomly. I mean, I pretty much never just buy a candy bar. But I'll eat five of the bite-size ones out of the Halloween bucket. Why? They're not even very good. Hopefully the kids will eliminate the excess calories by the end of the week. I'm trying to cut back on sugar but it's hard with all the candy, the soda we were gifted when we got "Boo-ed" the other night, and the SIX varieties of ice cream my husband bought when he went to the store for ONE half-gallon of vanilla because "it was one sale" (trust me, it was not a great sale).

Today was daylight savings time (FALL BACK!) so I got an extra hour of sleep, I guess. Except I got up at 5:30 a.m....on the one day I could sleep in. I put away all the Halloween decorations, put a roast in the crock pot, did all my laundry, planned (in detail) an upcoming trip, put up all the Thanksgiving decorations, dusted, and gave away stuff on my Buy Nothing site. It feels like 9 p.m. but it's only 6. And, true to form, I started panicking about the holidays. I mean, Thanksgiving is only four weeks away and Christmas is like one minute after that, so it's time to panic, right?

Planning holidays with older kids is tough. Everyone drives, has a job, lives their own life. It took us almost the whole month of October to plan a short trip to the pumpkin patch. We spent $70 on pumpkins we didn't even carve! What was the point? Thanksgiving is tough because, since we're a blended family, we have three households to consider. I booked a plane ticket for one kid to spend Thanksgiving with her mom, and figured the other three kids would be spending the holiday with their dad and his fiancee at their new house. This might actually be the first Thanksgiving I really do have tacos for dinner, since it will just be Jeff and I, and we can do whatever we want. We can't leave town because he's on call for work, so it might just be really low-key. It's bittersweet because there's nothing I love more than a big family Thanksgiving, but I won't miss the big family dinner because I'll just do it the weekend before.

Christmas is fun, but also a nightmare of logistics. Plus, every year I think we'll do something "different" and every year I end up buying too much, and it's all over in a matter of minutes. I much prefer all the fun activities leading up to Christmas. It's the "stuff" that gets me. Recently, all of my kids have produced boxes of "giveaway" items that included unopened Christmas gifts. How much do they really need? I think the whole holiday needs a major overhaul, especially as the kids get older. But what changes should I make?

These are the things on my mind on November 1. We'll see what the week brings!

What to do with all that leftover Halloween candy........

I stole that title from the many, many articles of the same (or similar) title I've seen in the past few days. What on earth can we do with all that leftover Halloween candy? Do a candy buy-back? Let the kids pick their five favorite pieces and chuck the rest? Take it to the break room at work? Let the kids conduct science experiments with it?

Here's an idea. EAT IT! Yes, that's right, I give you permission to eat it. Or let your kids eat it. Or let your kids eat the stuff you don't like but steal the stuff you do and hide it in your nightstand drawer. Or whatever. The point is, if you really, really do not want your child to consume a vat of candy, then don't let them go trick or treating for it in the first place! If you only want them to eat five pieces, then only go to five houses. But I say if you dressed them up and trotted them out in public begging for free candy, then the least you can do is eat it!

Let's face it, what other time of year do you walk around getting free candy? How many times do you bring home a haul of sweets in a pillowcase? So, go ahead and eat it. I'm not condoning letting your kid go all-out and consume a bowlful of candy in one sitting. No way. 'Cause you know who's gonna clean up the barf later.  I'm just saying that it's ok to let your kids eat their own Halloween candy.

When my kids were little, I'd sort through their candy under the guise of "checking it." That was code for "let mommy pick out her favorites and try to convince you that Reese's are yucky." Then, and I'm not embarrassed to admit this, I'd put it all together, sort it into varieties, put the yucky stuff in a container (dubbed "the candy jar" even though it wasn't a jar) and let the kids have a piece now and then. I'd put some in their lunches for a few days and after a week or so, they had pretty much forgotten about it. I'd then feel bad about throwing it away so I'd come up with some sort of dessert to make with chopped up candy, which was generally a fail, but somehow it felt better to throw away a Snickers cake than a bag of Snickers. Go figure.

And the good news is this - there will be MORE candy on Christmas! Yes, Christmas is an official Candy Holiday, too. So, before all the candy corn is gone, there are chocolate-covered cherries and candy canes. So, I throw out the Halloween candy (if there is any left over) and start collecting Christmas candy. After the first week or two of January, looking at a candy cane generally makes a person sick, so it's time to clear out the candy jar for....Valentine's Day! Yes, those conversation hearts and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates are sure to be entering your house so might as well toss the Christmas candy and get ready for the heart day sweets. Now, there is a bit of a candy drought between Valentine's day and the next official Candy Holiday which is Easter, but if you play your cards right, you can stretch it. Easter brings jelly beans and chocolate bunnies, which, if you get the large, solid chocolate variety, can last well into early summer. My kids were once given huge, solid chocolate bunnies which they never even opened. Again, I felt bad just throwing them away so I painstakingly chopped them into tiny bits and baked them into a banana cake. Yum!

Once the jelly bellies are gone, one must not despair for July fourth is just around the corner and all manner of red, white and blue candies abound! The Great Candy Drought comes between July fourth and Halloween, but it's tempered by the many chocolate candy bars consumed in summer s'mores.

So, you see, the candy is here to stay. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If your kids don't eat it all, you will, and if you don't eat it, you'll just pass it on to someone who will. I used to have a hard and fast rule that I'd only buy candy for Halloween that I didn't like so that after the holiday, should any be left over, I would not feel bad throwing it out. Laffy Taffy? Yuck! Skittles? Ewww! Starburst? Ick. But Hershey's? Reese's? Three Musketeers? Yummmmm!!! See a pattern?

I ended up this year with a whole bag of unopened candy corn. And, lucky me, I happened to find a recipe for white chocolate fudge topped with candy corn and containing bits of pretzels. A salty-sweet combo that sounded too good to be true. I'm going to make it. I'll let you know how it turns out. In the meantime, if anyone has any leftover Reese's, send them my way. My kids finally figured out that they're not yucky.

Condom Candy!

Yeah, I bet you're wondering what THIS post is about......and it IS about condoms. Which are NOT candy. But can appear deceivingly so when packaged with bright colors and placed in plain view at the pharmacy. Today while waiting for a prescription to be filled, Harrison and I were waiting amongst the display (right in front of the pharmacy counter) of "his and hers" KY hot oils, flavored "personal lubricant" and an attractively packaged box of Lifestyle "colors" condoms. He definitely got the part that it was for S-E-X (which he later confirmed for me and yes, he DOES know how babies are made) but he did NOT know what a condom was and what it was for. So, there I am, driving to pick up the girls explaining to my son about "ejaculation" and birth control. Nice. Thank you Fred Meyer for giving me such a wonderful "jumping off" point for a conversation about the birds and the bees and their many accessories. I think I'll start getting my prescriptions filled at the drive-thru window at Walgreen's.