Have you come to sing pumpkin carols?

Linus: "Tonight the Great Pumpkin will rise out of the pumpkin patch. He flies through the air and brings toys to all the children of the world."

Sally: "That's a good story."

I will dress my dog in her bee costume, hand out the cute little boxes of temporary tattoos (CVS!) for the kidlets, watch a marathon of American Horror Story on FX and wait for the Great Pumpkin to arrive.

Happy Halloween!

Sometimes you have to go looking for it....

There have been a few times in the past couple of years when I've tried to remember the last time I felt happy and couldn't do it. It makes me sad just to say that, to say that I had no memory of those moments when you stop and suddenly realize, "I am happy." I could say I was surviving, that I was getting by, that I was making it through the day, that I was productive, that I carried on, that I kept my chin up...but happy?

A few weeks ago I was talking to my BFF from back home and recalling going home for the holidays, how wonderful it felt to be with my family and friends, how great I slept in my mom's guest room, how loved I felt. And when I returned home, after a two-day drive, to my roommate packing up to stay the night at her daughter's house (it was New Year's Eve) and how I had to hold back shrieks of pure joy that I was going to have the house to myself and a quiet night and a shower and clean sheets and my cat and my dog curled up in my warm bed...and I realized it was JULY and the last time I could remember being happy was in fucking JANUARY (well, technically December 31). It made me sad, but before the pity could kick in, I took a giant step back and asked myself, "have you been looking?"

I hadn't. I'd been so consumed with surviving that I was failing to thrive. In pediatric medicine, this is something infants can die from: failure to thrive. It can also be applied to adults, mostly geriatric. I wondered when I became such a grown up that I forgot to look for the joy. One doesn't need freedom from worry to be happy - or money, or the perfect job, or any job, or confidence, or all of the other things on my crazy mental checklist that I waited for so I could finally thrive again.

Granted, in the past couple of months I have been able to cross a few things off that list. I have a roommate to take some of the pressure of the bills off and a new job that I really like, which means a regular paycheck every two weeks. But I was still holding back, still denying myself, still insisting on frugality, refusing to spend a penny on anything I deemed "unnecessary."

Last Saturday, I went to lunch with the roommate and a friend and we stopped at a big box store afterward so the roommate could return something. I found myself wandering the school supplies aisles with my friend, exclaiming over pencil cases and notebooks and gel pens. I had a wonderful sense memory smelling a box of crayons. I remembered that the best thing about the new school year when I was a kid was the new school supplies: a brand new notebook, pens, pencils, a binder (or if I was lucky, a Trapper Keeper, pink - and damn, do they make cooler ones now), paper and dividers and pencil cases. And the waxy smell of crayons.

Standing there, in the middle of rows and rows of Hello Kitty notebooks and pencil sharpeners and multi-packs of pens and wide-ruled filler paper, I realized this was me being happy. Feeling joy. Remembering the possibilities that came with a new school year. Thinking about the possibilities that lie ahead of me now. And I bought that box of crayons. Even if I never use them, I am going to keep them on my desk at home to remind me of what possibility really feels like. Possibility smells like a new box of crayons.

Where a kid can be a kid...

[insert list of lame-o excuses to why I haven't posted in two weeks here...include home a/c crapping out, followed by office a/c, heatstroke, hairballs, business, book edits, another chapter, work, work, work.]

The past couple of weeks are a blur, so I'll skip it and jump right to how I spent yesterday afternoon. Or where I spent yesterday afternoon, rather. Chuck E. Cheese. For my niece's third birthday party. For two hours. Seriously.

The party was at the Chuck E. Cheese on Rivers Ave. because my niece's mother thinks it is cleaner than the one West Ashley (I took her word for it, as I have no point of reference because the last time I was at a Chuck E. Cheese I was in third grade). I thought I'd show up, play a few video games, give my niece a card full of cash, then leave. Had to scrap the video game idea because my 2-year-old nephew was also there; his mother put him down and he took off. She pointed and told me not to let him out of my sight, and that was it for the day. The kid is two, but he knows what tokens are (and part of the fun for him is shoving two, three, four into any machine that would take them, including the tampon dispenser in the women's restroom).

When we finally did settle down at the table (which is right in front of giant video screens playing the Chuck E. Cheese devil music), half of the little ones were terrified of the "live" Chuck E. and the other half cried when he went away. The pizza looked like it was from a freezer box, so I went for the salad bar (ended up with mostly lettuce and dressing because of the "unidentified" objects in various salad bar containers...I think I saw a plastic monkey in the cottage cheese). I gave up on chasing the kids down and concentrated on not going insane from the volume and screaming (mine) and being shaken down for tokens every three minutes.

If you want a little taste of what the experience was like, turn up your speaker volume past 10 and play this fifty times in a row.

After I got home, I took a long, hot shower to get the blue frosting out of my hair and the pizza party-kid vomit-bad pineapple smell out of my nostrils. Also realized the only way I'll ever be able to do the kid thing is to also give myself permission for a full-blown valium addiction ("yes, sweetie, mommy's passed out on the couch again"). Otherwise, no way, no how, not now, not ever. Ask me again next week.

My inner teenager can beat up your inner teenager...

As if I needed more proof that my taste in movies (and television) is probably closer to a 16-year-old than a woman in her 30s: I haven't been able to find a single person to see the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters with me. There is a part of me that knows I should be watching something more age-appropriate on PBS or BBC instead of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, but I just don't find Charlie Rose as entertaining as Family Guy (seriously, if you can watch this without laughing, I don't want to know you). I have a 16-year-old brain in my 30-something-year-old body, which also explains my frequent use of: "WhatEVER!"

I would argue that you have to be a grownup to appreciate the subtle humor in ATHF or Family Guy. Like this spoof of a song from Little Shop of Horrors, another favorite FG clip. Unfortunately, explaining something like Aqua Teen to others loses something in translation ("so, the little one is a hamburger? A wad of meat? And the french fry guy can fly? And they fight crime?"). I usually just tell them to watch "Hand Banana" or "Meatwad's Birthday."

My inner teenager also thinks farts are funny, completely ignores anyone she has a crush on, refuses to make her bed every day, and uses eyeliner with sparkles.