claire

One Step at a Time

I’ve done a lot of crying this week. And I know I’m not alone.

On a slight side note, I’ve been doing quite a bit of running lately, which is often, inconveniently, where many brilliant ideas for blog posts hit me. Of course, these ideas are gone as soon as my endorphins subside. I’ve sat down to write several times in the last few days and though the emotions ran high, the words just wouldn’t come. Even now, I’m hesitant, because everything is choppy and fragmented and there’s so much swirling in my head but nothing is landing.

I’m going to start with myself. I am supposed to be running a marathon in a month, for which I’ve been doing my usual type of training (which is to say, relaxed). My schedule as a stay-at-home mom of four kids has complicated things a little bit, as I knew it would, and was a pressure I was ready to work with. But the weather has been shit. Also, we’re apparently experiencing an unprecedented nationwide cold and flu pandemic which all the elderberry syrup in North Carolina hasn’t completely protected this house against. Then there’s this little business of my husband’s new part-time job, which he didn’t have a year ago when I registered extra early for the race, in order to pay the lowest price possible. Weirdly, all of these things seemed manageable, until about a month ago, when my knee started to hurt and swell after every run.

I haven’t made any major cancelation decisions yet, and I’m taking things one day at a time, adjusting training, nursing this injury, and pretending to have a mental toughness I’ve never had and probably won’t develop in life. But I’m also admitting that the entire thing has become a little more emotional than I wanted it to be. If you’ve ever dedicated a significant amount of time to something in your life that you then didn’t get to see come to fruition, you know the kind of emotional I’m talking about. Grief.

I say all this, selfishly, and transition to another topic that makes my suburban-stay-at-home-thirty-six-year-old-lazy-runner-grief seem exactly as big of a deal as it is. Because on Monday, John and I learned that our first friends in North Carolina (our longest co-friendship as a married couple) had given birth to a baby boy who died a few hours later. Complications in the pregnancy presented themselves at 20 weeks, and this family of faith shared their story immediately and moved forward in hopeful expectation of a miracle, medical or otherwise. It is my understanding that this was entirely possible, and John and I joined them and many others in praying with the same expectations.

This isn’t really my story to tell and I haven’t even asked permission to share it so I want to be brief and delicate in the telling of it. The boy was born a few weeks early and called back to Heaven a few hours later. This baby has three older brothers who were also eagerly awaiting his arrival.

Absolutely everything is more real because I am a mother.

And now, Florida. Another mass school shooting. The week of flooded news-feeds calling for action, activism, gun control, solutions, outrage, sadness, despair, and the promise not to be numb while we admittedly fight being numb. I’m a little numb.

But this is what we do, right? If we’re healthy? This is what we do when grief from any angle slams us on our butts and reminds us of our humanity, the ugly and difficult side of it. If we’re lucky, we turn outward and draw close to others. We talk, cry, hold each other, silently sit close to one another, pause a little longer with a little more patience and perspective than we had yesterday. Some people paint. Others sing. I write.

Then, one foot goes in front of the other. Grocery lists get made, school buses arrive, essays get written and papers get signed, and sock situations for the Daddy daughter dance are fought over but eventually decided upon. And the grief worm lingers, and creeps back at the weirdest times. For me, twice this week on a spinning bike in the middle of the fitness room while Lady Gaga blasted in my ear buds.

I don’t have any solutions. I don’t have any miraculous words of wisdom. All I have are some universally shared emotions that I hope bring me closer to others, expand my empathy, allow me to feel a little harder, a little deeper.

This post comes without any expectations. I am desperate to also ignore that creeping monster of snap-comparison. The one that says, “How dare you, your situation is nothing compared to so many others.” (Julia Cameron would label this a blurt and force me to face-it, then turn it into an affirmation.)

I’m by no means proclaiming my own inner turmoil to be any more or any less what someone else is currently facing. I’m simply sharing today because I’m grieving, and this is what I know how to do.

Confessions

Snow Days in North Carolina

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Last Wednesday I sat down and started a blog post with this: We’re having a snow day in North Carolina, which will inevitably spread into at least two snow days, and possibly three, because we really like to play things cautiously around here. And it only makes sense that Mother Nature would decide to give us such a gift for Martin Luther King’s birthday, because, you know, no school two Mondays in a row already on the calendar wasn’t really enough.

This is as far as I got. It turns out, we had an entire snow week, as predicted, and then didn’t, again, have school this Monday for a pre-scheduled mandatory teacher work day, which had stupidly not been slated as a potential snow-day make-up day.

Snow, without a mountain, is fun for exactly one day.

For exactly one day I don’t mind digging out the bibs and boots, and painstakingly working ten tiny fingers into too-big gloves. These are the same gloves which will fall off the minute the tiny hand reaches its first grasp of frozen cotton candy, and at least ten more times after that until the tiny hand finally goes numb.

For exactly one day, I nostalgically lounge in sweats and my Uggs from 2005, the ones I’ve attempted to get rid for several years now, and end up keeping just for such days. For exactly one day, I might even myself don a pair of snow pants and winter boots and trek outside to watch and take a few pictures of my kids. I nearly always have something ready for the crockpot and I nearly always have a half empty tin of powdered hot chocolate, and for exactly one day, I relish the opportunity to join the rest of the world in a giant pause.

We pause because it is quiet and beautiful and majestic and dare I say inspiring. But we also pause because it is nostalgic and all of us, even the parents juggling multiple children and possibly work and the uncertainty of the next day, relish just one day of feeling like a kid again. And truthfully, many of us pause because everyone else has paused, and though the 24-hour Walmart stays open, sometimes the 24-hour Harris Teeter does not. The roads are dangerous but empty.

Inevitably, John wakes up no matter the amount of snow, makes the trek downtown, remarks on the surprise emptiness of things, puts in a few solid hours at the office (commenting that the phones are eerily quiet), and then comes home early to take the kids sledding. Because even court closes in North Carolina for some snow.

These are our rituals. For exactly one day.

By day two, I’m ready for whiskey at 10am and looking at the hottest day in July with utter longing.

I did not actually grow up in the south, and the bulk of my childhood winters were much longer than my childhood summers. I admit I laugh and scoff at the way of things around here. I do not make snow cream. I am 100% at peace with the fact that I have not participated in the building of a snowman in over a decade. And I flip through Facebook and Instagram feeds for a few days without any guilt or longing for the bliss my friends are experiencing alongside their children as they play in the snow.

Despite my northern roots, I do actually avoid getting in the car and driving anywhere until I can see the road at the end of my driveway. I have a front wheel drive minivan that isn’t paid off. You know I’m not risking an accident that will likely hurt or kill exactly no one except my pride and my wallet.

So here, I must pause, and thank God for a husband who intrinsically understands the value of critical memory-making moments. Can I also thank God for the role distinction that Daddy equals fun? Is it okay that I’m actually okay with being the not-fun parent?

I think it is okay.

I’m okay with it, anyway.

My dad was also the one, big surprise, who played with us in the snow. He was up for building snowmen and igloos, and rigging the top of our turtle sandbox to a rope behind his Jeep Cherokee and engaging us in what would forever be deemed “Turtle Topping” even long after the sandbox lid had died and we graduated to using a toboggan.

This toboggan, in fact:

toboggan sled — Lesson for my southern friends: this is what I mean when I say toboggan.

I should pause to credit my mother here for just a minute. She did ride along with a VHS camcorder on several of these excursions to document the opposite of helicopter-parenting for posterity. And knowing her now, as I do, I imagine this was with equal amounts hilarity and dread, because it was fun and it was was hilarious but it was also ridiculously stupid. And my dad was just the kind of man who laughed in the face of putting his four offspring in potential harm’s way, as long as fun was on the line.

Also, I’m not sure that my mom owned any snow pants.

This was exactly as acceptable to me then as it is now. I am, in fact, delighted about the freedom I feel toward my minimal participation in snow days in North Carolina, without fear that my children will grow up one day and blame me for a lack of fun in their childhood.

If their experience is anything like mine, they won’t even realize I wasn’t really part of it. And this is the only way I would have it.

Meanwhile, snow week was largely me losing my mind over incredibly tiny and insignificant kid things, because I had geared myself up for my usual nine hours of child-free time, and those nine hours were stolen from me last week. I know they will only be young once, dear ninety-year-old-reader-who-likes-to-remind-me-of-such-things. I will absolutely miss their cute pudgy red cheeks poking out from behind wet mouths and mismatched snow clothes. I will absolutely not miss the round-the-clock noise and neediness, nor the pile in my basement of things that now need to be washed and stored, nor the dripping of muddy melt at every entrance to the house, nor the whining, the fighting, the food prep and cleanup, nor the kind of hunger that is only born from boredom and schedule disruption.

Snow week was fun for exactly one day. And I made the most of that day. Then, I collected myself and began the process of re-scheduling the three dentist appointments I had written down in three different calendars but failed to show up for, the day before the snow hit. Failed because maybe I was losing my mind a little bit before it snowed, even. The process of rescheduling three doctors appointments (one mine) and the arduous and guilt-ridden task of pawning my children off on someone else during that appointment, because school was closed and I am a stay at home mom. This time, that someone else was John who put in two hours of double-duty at the Winston Salem Children’s Museum, because it was a day when neither of us could really swing things.

Forgive me for admitting that my psyche thrives on those nine hours of kid-free time each week. Forgive me for sacrificing what others might consider non negotiables to make the bulk of those nine hours all and only mine. Finally, forgive me for also admitting that I have a husband who gets this, and as a result takes virtually no time for himself the way I take time for myself.

This post took a somewhat serious turn there, and I am reluctant to hit publish on an entire page of what has become a blanket of self-wallowing. The truth is, my attempt to make a lighthearted jab at what amounts to a very common reality and struggle for many moms probably failed today, and I’m choosing to be okay with that.

I still love my kids. I mostly like my kids.

And because I express it far less often than I should, I’m ridiculously thankful for my partner in this life, who is more often than not, physically carrying the team because he is caring for me. Make no mistake kids, Daddy was the fun parent, but he did it because he loved me the best.

Confessions

Happy New Year!

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.

It is one of my favorite days of the year. It really is. The weather is shit. Yes. But the sun is shining and there is change in the air.

Today I am de-Christmas’ing, reflecting, and planning. I’ve always been a bit heavy on the analytical side, so it isn’t like I need another excuse to evaluate things and make motions for betterment. But there is something sort of sacred about doing it on the first day of the year, despite the popularity of such a habit. (You know how I am with bandwagons.)

I woke up this morning and remembered (fondly) the John Oliver bit at the end of 2016, which culminated in dramatically blowing up the year in slow motion, some appropriate background music serenading the finality of it all. I watched it several times that year, each with tears of glee in my eyes. It was so funny. And at the time, I remember it hitting home so wonderfully hard.

I cannot tell you how happy I am today to say that I’d have to sit here and try to remember what was so bad about 2016. John and I did chalk it up as a bad year, one to shake the dust from. I remember kissing him at midnight with the final resignation that it probably can’t get worse for a while. But I cannot consciously bring to mind any specifics of what made it so bad.

And so we skipped into 2017, with few expectations, without any major habit changes on the horizon, and with a very simple and humble hope that perhaps it would simply be a good year.

And it was.

Something I Did Well in 2017

Have I ever mentioned the fact that I’m not just a maker, but a keeper of resolutions? There’s like 8% of us in the world and if you can’t claim to be among us, now you can say you know one. I don’t know if it is my key to success, but I will say that I’ve tried this thing where I only make one resolution, and for the last several years, I’ve started it in December.

Last year, I made a commitment to spend one morning a week volunteering at Clemmons Elementary. I did so for the first three weeks in December and continued through the last week of school. And I’m just going to say it: go me. Because if you knew me when I first moved to Clemmons (read: first became a stay-at-home mom) you know there was virtually nothing that was going to interrupt my few precious hours away from my children each week. But Carter was struggling through another year in a row, with behavior problems and alarming test scores and more teacher emails than I am typically comfortable with. I remember looking at John and saying, “As much as it pains me to think about it, I feel fairly confident it would help if I started volunteering in her classroom.”

Former teacher here, just running so super hard to win this parenting race.

It turns out the experts were totally right on this one. And everything changed for the better. And I started not just liking Clemmons Elementary, but sort of loving it.

I did not make as firm of a time commitment for this school year, but I’m definitely still poking in and around both preschool and elementary school a few times a month and no longer resenting the me-time I’m giving up.

Unexpected Surprises of 2017

My husband ran for mayor and won. I’m not sure if it would surprise people or not to hear that politics was not something John has had in his back pocket, ever. This wasn’t a stepping stone to bigger better things. This wasn’t an aspiration that was finally being realized.

To put it as simply as possible, and I paraphrase him here, it was truly a moment of filling a need. When you are a born problem-solver you don’t typically say no to spearheading the solving of problems.

So here we are. I still get a little weirded out when people introduce me and include the byline “Her husband is the mayor,” because truthfully, it sounds a lot more glamorous than it actually is. I mean, within two weeks of the election, all the stress and anxiety and tension and feeling like people were out to get us ended. It ended exactly as abruptly and exactly as completely as the former mayor assured us it would.

Also, we still go places in Clemmons and maintain our usual amount of anonymity, which is to say, we typically recognize a few people everywhere we go because we know them from church, school, or the gym.

Oddly enough, election season was the worst part of my year, and yet, now, I think it was one of the best things to happen to our marriage and friendship in a long time. When life is easy, it is easy to forget what you love about each other. It is often because I am so spoiled that I dare tread through the luxury of petty complaints.

It turns out there is nothing quite like being on the same side of a fight.

Is this why so many people play sports?

Things I Continue To Be Grateful For

When it comes to this parenting thing, I have no frame of reference for the difficulty level as compared to other times in history, or in other parts of the world. But like so many other unknowns, treading into each new problem necessarily requires us to compare ourselves to others, for no other reason but to gage if we are landing somewhere in the vicinity of normal.

I know comparison is unhealthy. And I know it isn’t likely to change much of the decisions I’m making on a daily basis. But it’s there, always, and I’d be lying if I said I am oblivious to it, or that I don’t frequently deal with the insecurity that comes from wondering if I’m doing this one job as well as I could be.

This is the one thing John and I analyze and evaluate the most about ourselves. We have four kids who have been spawned with our genetic codes. Like, we’re trying to maintain a semblance of balance in a space containing, at at any given time, five of ourselves. The thing that is so stupid and difficult though, is that we’re not getting the refined versions of what we are now. We’re getting the raw, unfiltered, and disconnected frontal lobe versions of ourselves. And all of us who are so lucky to have our own parents still living can attest to the fact that grandparents are very little help in the resource department. Even though these people eventually succeeded in turning out relatively respectful and functional adults, ask them if they can remember a single thing they did to make that happen.

God love them. They remember nothing. (A future I look forward to myself.)

What I am grateful for is that despite my hourly existence which is so often filled with futility and frustration, when I turn my kids loose on someone else, more often than not, they surprise me for the good. So mark my words. I am thankful for children who are generally respectful in public.

And on that note, I am even more grateful for a very specific handful of women who have inserted themselves into our family with one offer, a long time ago for each, to keep our kids. It has never been something I take for granted and it never ceases to fill me with an equal measure of surprise and gratitude that the gift is ongoing.

Truly. Childcare was the one thing I worried about the most when I was pregnant with Eliott. Not only finding people I trusted, but then affording them. Multiply that by four, and you can see where I assumed it would be at least twenty years before John and I ever experienced alone time again.

But alas. We thrive. And I don’t know what level of the Heaven Hotel these ladies will be on one day in eternity, but if it was up to me it would be the penthouse, with a personal chef.

Looking Forward to 2018

I frequently spend the last few days of December scouring Pinterest for to-do lists, new calendars, bullet journals, organized spaces, and other well-groomed pictures of intentional living. I find it terribly soothing, browsing through other people’s success stories, without any notion that I’m going to undertake any of these things in my own life.

There was definitely a time in my not to distant past that I made lengthy and detailed goals for habit changes, spiritual growth, physical accomplishments, and relational pursuits. But I’m just not there any more.

It turns out, when my head and heart are clear, I’m pretty comfortable with myself. I’ve noted in several other blog posts my journey to hormonal stability, which I truly believe starts with what I’m eating. This is probably going to be my singular focus for the upcoming year. That, and a new commitment to a different kind of prayer, which obviously affects everything. Both of these are going to be more about steadfastness in an entirely boring way, but I am confident that results will be both immediate and noticeable, so I’m not terribly fearful of failure.

If today has found you similarly reflective, I’d love to hear all about it. Either in my kitchen with a hot or cold beverage, below in the comments, on Facebook, or even in an unexpected text message or phone call.

Happy New Year.

Avery, Carter, Confessions, Eliott, Isaiah

Life with Eliott and Carter, 2015

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.

I have been mostly out of the blogosphere for several weeks now and getting back into it is a lot like deciding to go to the gym after weeks of physical inactivity. Nothing is comfortable. My work-out pants don’t look right, I can’t figure out what to do or where to start, and at the end of the day I’m left wondering if I should have just skipped it after all.

But this post has been long in coming. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t just sit around trying to get my kids to say funny things. And when I’m not on my A-game, I actually forget to write down plenty of what comes out of their never-silent mouths. Also, I keep waiting for the day that Eliott outgrows this list, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe that is completely impossible.

The following memories are things I jotted down directly after their original occurrence or utterance by one of my children. All statuses are cut and pasted directly from my Facebook feed. At this point, Eliott is 7, almost 8, and in 2nd grade at Calvary Baptist Day School and then 3rd grade at Clemmons Elementary School. Carter is 5, turning 6, and in 1st grade, also at Calvary, then 2nd grade in public school. Isaiah has just turned 2 and Avery turns 1 in August.

January 20, 2015
A little Tuesday afternoon visual for you: Isaiah, his cherub chub in all its naked glory. A bubble bath. Water mostly all over the bathroom floor, walls, mirror… At the top of his lungs, singing on repeat, “Let it go, let it go-oh…”
You’re welcome.

April 8, 2015
Today I told the girls about a friend (of our family) who is pregnant with her 5th child. Their responses:
Eliott: What?! Mommy she’s winning! You gotta catch up.
Carter: Oh no, Eliott. Mommy is NOT having any more babies. She wants no more little terrorist-es.

April 13, 2015

May 13, 2015
2nd grade “Author’s Day” is Tuesday. The name of Eliott’s story is “Lalaloopsy Missionaries” and I am so proud, for all the wrong reasons.

June 26, 2015
Segment of recent discussion with Eliott, about the neighbor’s escaped dog:
“…then me and Anna, like a dog and a farmer moving the cows over to the next field, just led Buddy over to the porch and had to haul him in there…”

July 7, 2015
Overheard from the playroom, decibel level exactly what you’d expect:
“ISAIAH! Argh! THIS is why I’m never having children! Not even a girl. And DEFINITELY NOT A BOY!!!!”
Happy birthday Carter Wait. May all your dreams come true.

July 30, 2015
So I’m officially done problem solving for my bickering daughters. Today’s moment of clarity comes after a physical (slap) fight where both girls are mad at each other and neither has apologized.
Me: Fine. Carter. What do you want? What do you want from Eliott right now that would make this all better?
Carter: Her money.
The birth of the American justice system right there, people.

August 13, 2015
Eliott in the backseat, doing “cootie-picker” fortunes with Carter: Three? Uno, dose, trace…. okay. Roe-joe? You will be rich when you grow up.
Me: Roe-joe?
Eliott: Yes. Mom. It means “red” in Spanish.

September 2, 2015

September 4, 2015
Isaiah: Mommy. Where’s my toast?
Me: I haven’t made breakfast yet. It’s not even 8 o’clock. Do you want a bagel?
Isaiah: Yes. I want tater tots, and ketchup, and strawberries. And blueberries or something.
*Or something.*

October 6, 2015
A glimpse into Eliott’s transition from Baptist school to public school:
Me: No, it isn’t Spirit Week, it’s a thing for ‘Say No to Drugs.’
Eliott: Say no to drugs?! Like we’re going to eat drugs?
Me: Do you even know what drugs are, Eliott?
Eliott: No. Not really.

November 15, 2015
Standard, contextually irrelevant conversations with Eliott:
E: Mommy. What are cappuccinos?
M: Coffee. Like the kind of coffee you get at Starbucks but without any milk.
E: Is there another kind of cappuccino? Like, parents or grownups or something?
M: Chaperones?
E: No. It started with a ‘ch-‘
M: Chaperones?
E: It was c-h- … cappuccinos.
M: Eliott where did you read this? Was it like, chaperoning a dance or something?
E: Diary of a Wimpy Kid. They were cappuccinos for a lock-in.
M: Chaperones.

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December 15, 2015
When an older woman pointed out baby Jesus in the manger-scene table decoration at a Christmas party last weekend, Isaiah rolled his eyes and very calmly replied: “No. That is not baby Jesus. That is Avery.”

December 18, 2015
Quote of the night: “I’m a first-grader! How am I supposed to know all this stuff?!”
Touche.

December 27, 2015
Eliott’s dinner table discussion about how she’s basically the only white girl in her class who is friends with these two specific black girls ends with, “Well it makes sense because I’m pretty much black. I mean, when we put our arms together they are practically the same.”
#somuchtruth

There’s More Where This Came From

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Confessions

Beating the Holiday Blues

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.

Thanksgiving weekend nearly always coincides with John’s November 28 birthday, a fact which makes his choice of pear pie over birthday cake both a welcome and easy change of traditional pace. Not this year. This year, he was able to take advantage of Black Friday sales to get all his birthday shopping done. (Reasons our marriage works #76.) We’ve already eaten through the turkey leftovers and we are still a full month away from Christmas.

What sort of Christmas Elf wizardry is this?

I’m guessing it is some kind of planetary alignment that causes this to happen once every seven years or so, but I’m calling this extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas the daylight savings of holidays, and plan to take full advantage of it.

Because, like I write about every single year, it is difficult to enjoy the magic of Christmas when you also must be the writer, producer, and creative director of the magic of Christmas. Let’s face it. I seem to have more mom-on-mom conversations about dreading the holidays than I do about looking forward to them. Maybe it was exactly this way for our parents, but it is a reality that is only getting worse with time.

Real Simple actually has a holiday prep checklist you can download here. Spoiler alert: the very last item on what appears to be at least 30 things to do is “Sit back and relax: enjoy your family and friends and relish the traditions you share.” Can we call flipping out once every 48 hours at our kids or spouse a tradition? Or must we simply resign ourselves to the fact that, like the actual eating of the Thanksgiving meal, the Christmas prep-time to enjoyment-time ratio is about 24:1.

I swear it doesn’t have to be like this.

But things aren’t going to happen on their own either.

A big part of it is changing my things-to-do attitude to a spirit of enjoyment. Can I be the first to admit that this is actually difficult for me? I’ve never been a procrastinator, but that doesn’t mean that prepping for major exams or tackling semester long projects wasn’t still a dark and very focused hole I went into and only managed to enjoy when grades came out.

If I’m ever going to truly appreciate the reason for the season, it is going to take a complete rewiring on my exceedingly Type A (and possibly OCD) brain.
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But this, I believe, is possible with practice. And practice it, I will. I am also somewhat convinced that if I am going to be stressed out by a seemingly endless list of things that probably should get done, it serves me well to enter my hole and accept the stress early, and potentially prolong the enjoyment of the grade. So here’s how I plan to make use of my extra week of holiday prep this year.

Claire’s Christmas Checklist:

A Guide to Eminent Holiday Happiness

Create and share my Christmas checklist on Quip with John, and avoid the impending burn out and resentment that used to happen before I chose to speak my husband’s language. Total time: 15 minutes.
Hike the scary hidden ladder to the bonus attic and select the perfect (only) artificial Christmas tree, adorn it, add some wreaths and candles to the windows, and deck the halls with our one Sterilite box of Christmas decorations. Total time: 3 hours.
Reserve Christmas picture books at the library. This was one of those little things I added last year and I’m so glad I did. I used this list for ideas and then found dozens more thanks to the electronic Dewey Decimal system. Total time: as long as I want.
Get the bulk (if not all) of my Christmas shopping done on Cyber Monday. I cannot stress this one enough, and in my experience over the last 5 years, unless you have one very specific good deal item for Black Friday, the Cyber Monday sales are exactly as good as Black Friday. On top of sales, lack of crowds, and shopping in my PJ’s with coffee, another bonus: Ebates rebates go up to 10% cash back for most stores. Total time: TBD.
Coordinate the calendar, and plan one fun family outing each week leading up to Christmas. The fact is, my kids are going to go bananas with or without any additional excitement leading up to the big day. But for us, putting something on the calendar each week (and not surprising them) gives them something to channel that excitement into. It also gives us some behavioral leverage when every single daily chore is filtered through undeveloped brains on Christmas crack. Nobody said memory-making cannot be effectively masked as bribery. (Or maybe “incentive” is a better word.) Total time: ongoing.

And that is pretty much it. I admit I only made one kind of Christmas cookie last year, despite all sorts of goals, and it turned out to be okay. We still do not have a “traditional” meal that we serve every year on Christmas, and that’s okay too (though stuffed mushrooms and Bloody Mary’s seem to make it on the menu every year without fail). This year my kids will likely be re-wearing their Christmas PJ’s from last year because they undoubtedly still fit, and purchasing the movie Elf was one of the better moments I’ve had in the middle of a summer on Ebay. I’m not sure it can be watched too many times.

For those of us fighting the commercial and consumer driven comparison-culture to do and buy and be everything for our kids in the name of Santa, I appreciate any and all stories from the motherhood trenches of things that are working. And I hope that you will join me in spending this extra prep-week productively, especially if it means getting to that “relax and enjoy” checkbox a little quicker.

Some Christmas Books that Do Not Disappoint

Even if you don’t have kids, do yourself a favor and get this.

My all time favorite Christmas book.

A gag gift one year at my parent’s house that I can’t un-remember. So many funny lines in this book.

Confessions

Notes From The Mayor’s Wife: On Winning An Election

Is there any way to express the level of gratitude I’m riding on today, which is possibly the last burst of energy that is keeping me awake and going?

Yesterday was arguably one of the more difficult days of my life. I need to forget the weather for just a second, which was cold and rainy, and the number of hours so many people stood in it, plastered with smiles, hopefully expectant, but realistic. Forget even the fitful sleep I had the night before, and the day starting before sunrise, already full of things to do and people to coordinate, with several group text messages going to prove it.

I wasn’t exactly a wife brimming over with patience, pride, or grace for my husband at 5:47am.

Politics has never been an idea that I thought I’d be banking in the experience folder of my life. And I actually believe there are plenty of insane people who do. Listen, I watched West Wing and The Good Wife. I’ve even seen the first couple seasons of Scandal. And if you want to put aside fiction for a second, we’re all pretty well informed of the national news. If TV is doing anything well, it is scaring average people out of ever wanting to be involved in politics. And in case you missed my post about small town political races, you can read all about my experience here. This business isn’t for the faint of heart.

I can’t say that a mayoral race for a town of 20,000 people can be accurately compared to either the real life White House or not-real-life Olivia Pope, but my stress level yesterday would have indicated that they are in fact identical.

One thing TV doesn’t very accurately portray: the crippling level of emotions swirling throughout all of it. I like to pretend I’m not a particularly emotional person, but the fact is, I am a fortress made of toilet paper tubes.
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I spent the majority of the day at the elementary school my kids attend, greeting voters, handing out sample ballots, and thanking people for coming out. I should have been answering questions, but realized after a few that it was better if I just smiled and defaulted to one of the actual candidates to say what everyone wanted to hear. I brought candy. I didn’t wear warm enough clothes or have on any makeup. I felt weird and awkward and completely out of place. I was one of those people doing that thing that used to completely annoy me when I was just an average voter.

I hugged complete strangers all day long, genuinely surprised and pleased when they would approach and say they were voting for my husband. I took every icy stare of the “informed voters” as a prick to my heart and a confident and hard NOPE to my candidate. (You know, the people who–like me–make their way through the last campaign gauntlet visibly insulted by the suggestion that they would have dared show up in a position to be swayed.)

More than once, a neighbor came through with a smile and a hug, and to these, I just burst into tears. Like I was so hungry for even the tiniest display of actual kindness.

As the day bore on, John and I separate for much of it, I received periodic updates from others around our town at various polling places. Some places were downright contentious between the candidates I was supporting and the opposition. Insults were traded. Cutting last minute remarks were made, arguably on both sides, out of anger and that final exhausted desire to be done with all this.

It was by no means a gentleman’s competition.

I don’t even like sports. I’ve never been a particularly competitive person, and when it comes down to it, I like to fight battles with humor. It is maybe my only weapon. Not a lot of room for jokes on the campaign trail, I discovered. I’d actually describe it as downright hostile for anyone simply trying to be authentic. I was sick to my stomach for most of the day, and likely not hiding the general feeling of doom very well from my face.

Is it always like this?

Because John’s main opponent was a write-in candidate, the official results took an eternity to be released. But each polling place can do a print-out of their numbers as soon as the polls close. Each of these were collected. The results were an astounding landslide for all three incumbent council members and solid win for John as the new mayor. Walking in the freezing rain under the awning of Clemmons Elementary, John said, “We did it. We won.”

The feeling was almost identical to the moment I crossed the finish line in my first marathon and pretty close to how I felt when Eliott was finally born. Pride and excitement trickling through a thin veil of utter emotional and physical exhaustion. I typically only have one response to this feeling and last night was no exception.

We went to bed celebrating, while our phones, Facebook pages, and even email blew up with words of congratulations. We awoke to it this morning, and I had to stop myself from cut-and-pasting my thank you’s.

Because right now, I’m nothing if not thankful. Grateful, is probably the better word. And not because John won. I mean, yes, I’m pretty grateful enough people came out and voted to make this win a reality. Yesterday I was genuinely worried and believed he might, in fact, lose.

But more than that, I’m again, overwhelmed with the outpouring of help and support we received. I guess that’s how it always is. When we are most under attack, we find that our people are still there, still fighting for us and with us. Still praying, offering food, keeping our kids (and feeding them), and then showing up at odd hours in unfamiliar places, rock-steady smiles encouraging us despite the internal storm that only John manages to hide.

So here it is. My husband is officially the mayor of Clemmons, words I never expected to utter, not in my lifetime. Full disclosure: I didn’t feel any different when I woke up this morning, and John and I both keep sort of checking in and saying, “Nope, hasn’t really kicked in yet.” Listen, I’ll try not to let it go to my head. In the meantime, I’m ready to settle down for a just a bit, to dust my boots from campaigning, and to have my husband back on the weekends.

Clemmons, you don’t actually know and will probably never appreciate the full measure of this good decision that you collectively made yesterday, but I have no doubt you will not regret it.

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Confessions

Small Town Politics

My husband is running for mayor. People keep asking me how it’s going. And I keep wondering if they really want to hear the answer.

The fact is, it’s going. In every single direction, every single day, and most evenings. And it isn’t easy.

Some Background Information

From the mouth of a mostly uninformed average resident, me, I give you what I knew of small town politics before I invited any of this into my living room.

Clemmons is a village of about 20,000 residents. It has a mayor and five council members who meet twice a month to make governmental decisions about super important small town stuff: management of leaf and limb pick up, recycling, street lights and road upkeep, where to put the new library, the putting up and taking down Christmas lights and American flags during holiday seasons, cutting ribbons for new businesses, setting and balancing the budget every year.

I don’t actually think we even have any parades.

This year, an off year in terms of elections, the mayor seat is open, and three council members are up for re-election. One of these council members has been serving for the last 26 or so years, and if I’m honest with you, up until this year, I didn’t know a damn thing about who she is or what she’s done.

Also, I didn’t vote in 2015, the last time one of these small town elections took place.

In fact, only 1500 out of 20,000 people did vote. And that is the reality of small town politics.

A whole bunch of decisions are being made on a biweekly basis, and the majority of the citizens are taking for granted that the people in charge of these decisions are actually doing what is best for the good of the whole.

This is where you and I get to be surprised that small town politics is not the innocent well-oiled machine we all naively assume it is.

The Current Issue

Certainly, it is not the only issue, but the primary concern of this year’s election has to do with a plan to build a median down the middle of the main road in our town. The reason? Some say safety. Others say efficiency.

What’s not being said: “Whatever, we don’t have to pay for it. At least it is something.”

In September of last year, our council approved a plan to go ahead and slap down a median, which would be built in 2025, and more than partially funded by NCDOT.

I don’t know how many average residents knew this plan existed. I certainly didn’t.

Until several small businesses along that main road started making it public. Because they are against it. Because a median would likely kill their business.

As knowledge of the plan became more widespread, several citizens also voiced disagreement, in the form of petitions and a Facebook page that grows by the day, citing that, yes, traffic is indeed a problem, but a median would only make things worse.

Not everyone holds this belief. But several do.

As for where I stand? I don’t want this median. I want something. But I don’t want this median.
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It Started with Some Signs

John’s decision to run for mayor was made neither lightly nor quickly.

I had two conditions. One, I wasn’t erasing anything on my social media or my blog. Two, I wouldn’t allow us to pretend to be something we are not in the name of votes, or popularity, or, dare I say it, silence.

John agreed, and got to work. He and the three candidates running for council seats are all opposed to the median.

They, along with an independent political action committee who wants to stop the median, went out one night after dinner, several weeks ago, and spent a number of hours putting their political signs up and down the road in question.

The next morning, I went out to see how it looked.

Every single sign stating “Stop the Median” had been removed before 9am.

It only escalated from there. Several of the new council candidates were noticing their signs being stolen from area businesses and even residential properties.

John had received permission from every business owner before placing signs on their property, but then he noticed his own signs being stolen.

He was able to let this roll off his back a lot easier than me. “I have a lot more signs, I’ll just replace them,” was his casual response.

“Screw that! Those things are $3 a piece and we paid for them! I want them back!” was mine.

I’m nothing if not fiscally conservative.

But here’s the sentiment that is a little harder to convey. Three-dollar-sign-stealing aside, the real blow here was knowledge of the fact that someone doesn’t like us. Someone doesn’t like us enough to go out and do something illegal in order to make that point.

It is a weird feeling, to realize that someone who doesn’t even know my husband could possibly care enough to hate him. Or, at the very least, to send that public message.

It Continued in Writing

So the sign stealing could be seen as small and petty. But things started heating up in a more intellectual realm as well.

Because in addition to some campaign signs and car magnets, my husband, the attorney, the writer, the fact-checker, and the definition of Type-A, created a website.

There, he took to writing about what is not very widely publicized in small town politics. He started explaining more than a few of the decisions that have been made over the last couple years, not just about the median, but about sidewalks, and business growth, and money.

It turns out I’m not the only one in this family who is somewhat good with words.

Things started getting dirty.

Dirty, how?

Jabs in the local newspaper, for one. Then there is the ongoing and impolite though sometimes full attack-mode Facebook commentary, directed at John and other anti-median candidates.

If you’ve never been a victim of Facebook trolling, you should know that even things said by complete strangers have an almost embarrassing ability to cut very deeply. And, I am positively astounded by the number of people, most of them strangers, who can manage to present themselves as both victim and attacker in the same breath.

Apparently we live in a world where we can no longer agree to disagree. Disagreement equals attack, and everything is suddenly very emotional and very personal.

It also doesn’t feel especially good to be judged by these same strangers with their inexperienced opinions of my husband’s “lack” of experience, or his youth, and the fact that because he was not born in Clemmons, he cannot be trusted.

I very wrongly assumed we had all graduated from middle school.

Surprise kids. You might grow up, but you never fully outrun middle school bullshit.

Perhaps not ironically, smack dab in the middle of all this, my 5th grader comes home with the word “duplicity” on her vocabulary list for the week. Duplicity: deceitfulness in speech or conduct, as by speaking or acting in two different ways to different people concerning the same matter; double-dealing.

The number one thing I announced from the outset that we would personally avoid. And likewise, the as yet undefined standard that I was holding everyone else to. The standard that doesn’t exist anymore.

It turns out I wasn’t supposed to be surprised by this.

Political rhetoric. Double-speak. He said, she said, nobody said, nobody did.

I was surprised by this. I still am. Because like so many of my neighbors, I have been living in relative harmony with my town, and I have been assuming that the friendliness and non-fakery we’ve experienced from most people, is in fact, completely normal.

Since when did we as a society lose the ability to stand up for what we think is right, even if if others disagree?

At this point, median or no median, it isn’t personal, but if you are in favor and you are facing a crowd who is not, have the courage to simply state your position and stand by it. And if you take back your original opinion in light of new information, simply state that you were wrong and are willing to make things right.

But that doesn’t happen anywhere, does it? The actual taking of responsibility for actions. Words. Beliefs.

I’m not claiming to be perfect. Obviously. But one thing even my own kids can all tell you, if I come to believe I’ve done something dumb, or screwed something up, I’m going to admit it and move on. And if I don’t think I’m wrong, I’m going to fight for what I believe is right, OR, not fight. But then I understand I have no right to complain when nothing changes.

The End is in Sight

I’ve been told by more than one experienced person that all of this ugliness will magically disappear come Wednesday morning, the day after the election booths close.

John is confident that no matter what happens, he’s going to move forward next week the same person he is right now.

But I can’t help but have this looming feeling of distrust and that bitter taste of reality mixed with a little disappointment left in the back of my mouth. Disappointment in humanity, maybe. Disappointment in a system that should work and should be civil and should be treated as a privilege, but isn’t any more.

18,500 people in Clemmons couldn’t even be bothered to vote in 2015, and I was one of them. I’m embarrassed to admit that even I can do better.

But a pretty big part of me is still saying, It doesn’t have to be like this.

So. Claire. How is it going?

For a while there, I was tired. My spirit was weary.

The king of our castle, who still holds his full time job by the way, and has managed to eek out my Dadderday despite the number of plates he has been juggling through all of this, is working overtime, emotionally holding three times the load he is used to, and carting our children around with him, whenever he can.

My marriage and my family are under a stupid amount of stress that we signed up for, and I think maybe average people are unaware that this is what it is like.

But maybe I’ve come full circle.

Because I’m also hopeful. And I’m encouraged. There is still an even greater number of people who are speaking words of truth, love, support, prayer, and encouragement over me and my family every day.

The town that I know and love is still here. The people who have become family to us have stepped up, again, and again, and again. And, despite my weariness of the election, I really do have full faith that no matter what happens on Tuesday, we’re going to wake up on Wednesday the same people we are today.

By that I mean, exactly as awesome as we always have been.

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Books, Confessions

Oh Hello, November

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Yes. That weird month where the weather has my kids cursing me every day after school for either freezing to death or boiling alive, there’s enough candy in the house to last us until my birthday next August, the rotting pumpkins on my front porch won’t fit on the compost pile, and that dreaded phone call to the ACA looms, since the website has somehow locked in our IP address and permanently blocked us out of an easy digital sign up.

Sigh.

I’ve been gone.

I know.

A little thing called Small Town Politics has kept me busy for the last four weeks, an experience I plan to fill you in on tomorrow, if I can get my act together.

Also, I admit, I just found Outlander, and I’m embarrassingly deep in a red-headed Scottish rabbit hole. Both the book and the show.

Guys.

It’s real.

I met the author several weeks ago, and she mentioned the phenomena known as the “Outlander Effect” which is the overwhelming urge to talk about the book or the series, when you are reading or watching it.

I scoffed at first, figuring anything that is this popular cannot possibly be good. (I’m such an elitist when it comes to literature.)

I was right about Twilight. I gave up two chapters into book 3. I was right about 50 Shades, which I didn’t even have to pick up.

But. I ate my words with The Hunger Games. I loved every minute spent devouring both the books and the movies.

And I eat my words with Outlander.

My only regret is that the first book is like a thousand pages, and the first available at the library was a first edition hard back. That thing weighed about five pounds, which seems like nothing until you’ve been holding it out of the bath water with one hand for 30 minutes.

Had to go e-reader on this one, which diminishes my reading experience. You know I need spoilers, and it is difficult to skim ahead when I’m reading on my iPhone.

Thus – the TV series, simultaneously.

I cannot even say one is better than the other. They are not equal and they are not exact, but they compliment each other.

It is weird for me to be so comfortable riding on a bandwagon. I can’t wait to discover all my new friendships as a result.

Leave a comment, or shoot me a text, if you want to join me in my escape from real life for a while.

Confessions, Health and Wellness

Coffee Addict

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I had my last cup of coffee exactly one week ago Saturday.

And I have some things to say about caffeine withdrawal.

Because here’s the thing. I’m going through it. And hard. And it is awful. And it seems like I went into this idea completely ignorant of exactly how awful it was really going to be.

On the whole, I’m sitting here thinking that deciding to give up coffee, on a whim, was maybe not one of my better ideas. But I’m in it now, and there’s no going back, and so I have nothing left to do but write about it.

And maybe laugh about it later.

But probably not.

It started with this book, which I read in a total of 3 days.

I might sit down and write a more full review of it later, but suffice it to say, it was an excellent read and I do highly recommend it.

As you know, I’ve been chronicling my journey toward natural hormone balance.

This author maps out a pretty good list of instructions to really get started, and includes a four-day-cleanse to kick things off.

Hooray!

Who doesn’t love a good skinny-white-girl detox?

Four days? Even I can do that, said me, still blissfully unaware of my caffeine dependent happiness.

A mere forty-eight hours later, I was Googling “caffeine withdrawal symptoms” and coming up very short on details concerning what in the fresh hell was happening to my brain and body.

(My brain was either imploding or physically consuming itself, and my body was perhaps suffering the secondary effects of that.)

I’m writing this post for posterity. But also for anyone who, like me, just needs some company for their misery.

Claire’s Caffeine Withdrawal Diary

Day 1: Sunday: 24 hours Without Caffeine

This is easy. No headache. No brain fog. Didn’t even crave a cup of coffee upon wake up. Made it through church on a damn bowl of fruit dressed in lemon juice and flax meal and wasn’t even abnormally hangry at 11:30, as I often am.

This is going to be easier than I thought!

Potentially related: Took a solid nap on the couch with kids running around from 1-3pm and I did not poop today.

Day 2: Monday: 4am

Awoke with a metaphorical pick-axe jammed into my left eyebrow. Blurry vision. Nausea. Hot and cold sweats. Chills. Everything in my body hurts and my hands are numb.

I stumble to the bathroom to pee and think, “I should take something for this.”

Excedrin, my go-to for this kind of headache has caffeine. Also, it has been so long since I’ve had this kind of headache that we don’t even have a single Excedrin in the house. I find a bottle of unopened Motrin and choke one down with water before returning to bed.

Guess what is the opposite of delicious before the sun comes up when all your body wants is a cup of coffee?

9am: After dropping off preschoolers, I return home and go back to bed fully clothed for 2 hours. John mentions, as I drift into my pain-induced coma, “Honey, maybe you are actually coming down with something.”

“Or maybe caffeine and crack are not-so-distant cousins and I was under the impression that I wasn’t as dependent as I apparently am. Go to hell, husband, I need to die.”

(Things I do not mean, but say anyway because it is impossible to stop myself.)

My headache alleviates from an 11 down to a manageable 6 in this time, which is enough for me to get on the Googler.

Noted: It is too late to taper off slowly, which I clearly should have done.

Noted: Headaches could last between 2 days and up to several weeks. This time span is entirely too broad, but upon seeing “irritability” further down the list, I believe I must be on the right track for diagnosis and my urge to throat punch Dr. WebMD subsides.

I take to the live-advice provider known as the Facebook Mommy Network and the consensus is to give it a full week.

Potentially related: There is a metallic taste in the back of my mouth on either side of my tongue, which feels swollen. I took another nap around 1pm and still fell asleep on the couch at 9pm. The headache fluctuated all day between a pain level of 6 and 11, and while that retched book encouraged me to eat leafy greens and more fruit, and drink lots of water, the only thing that sounded good was nothing.

I think I had some soup.

Also, I did not poop today.

Day 3: 72 hours Without Caffeine

Poop. Just before 11am.

So that’s a start.

Also, my appetite is moderately back, though because I’m doing this stupid cleanse, I don’t get to eat any of the things my body is telling me to eat, like coffee and donuts and coffee. Started the day with a smoothie because a big bowl of fruit, first thing in the morning, is difficult.

Also, I ate some form of protein every hour, on the hour, as well as three round meals as dictated by the book. I started putting fresh ginger in hot water and sipping on it throughout the day, which was weirdly satisfying on a few levels.

Headache was at a level 4 pretty much all day, though there were probably one or two moments where I wasn’t acutely aware of it.

Took a 20 minute hard power nap while the kids watched Thomas the Train. Was tired to the point of groggy all afternoon and evening. Irritability and patience levels were exactly as expected (DEFCON 2) and went to bed early again.

Potentially related: awoke at 6:30am ready to get out of bed. Of course, in that quiet half hour all I wanted was coffee, and nothing in me felt particularly good until around 9am, but I did not have the desire to keep sleeping.

Have felt mildly disconnected from reality all day and can distinctly describe a feeling of loss or emptiness. Unsatisfied. All day. It is also cold and rainy out, which doesn’t help.

I sure do miss my old friend Coffee right now, and I’m mildly in mourning.

Day 4: 96 hours Without Caffeine

Awake again before 7am, and feel rested. Still have a looming all-over pain level 3-4 headache. Have been adding turmeric to my smoothies every day for good measure. Nothing to note about that.

My bowels are finally self-regulating, a feat which I am still celebrating. It was disheartening to note that all these months of claiming magnesium as my newfound best intestinal friend, and I was completely ignorant of the help it was receiving from coffee.

I have to pause here and apologize about all this poop-talk, but here’s the thing: it is one of the best methods for measuring our overall health. As a mom I quickly learned that poop is a singular sign that anything is amiss with a baby who cannot speak, and the quicker I got over my Western fear of toilet bowl analysis, the sooner I started revolving meals around foods that seemed to be optimally healthy for my kids.

Admit it, young parents. You talk about poop far more now than you ever have in your entire lives.

If this is a regular measurement for the health of our kids, why don’t we use it on ourselves?

I went to the gym twice today. (This is strange by itself and unrelated to coffee.) I did a moderate weight routine in the morning, and later took a Pure Barre class that just happens to meet when my big girls are at piano down the road.

Felt fine through both, but the headache still has not gone away completely.

Drinking water is getting easier. Naps are not going anywhere.

Irritability is decreasing. I’m still sad and missing coffee and was advised to create a new routine that revolves around some really good tea. I’m having a hard time imagining such a thing even exists.

Four-day-cleanse technically ends today so I indulged in a ceremonial epsom salt bath, which was wonderful (as always) but did in fact bump my headache level up a notch.

Potentially related: I’m sleeping like a damn baby, and that is a feat in and of itself. Ever since having kids, I went from being able to fall asleep in my freshman dorm room at 10:30pm, still full of people and lights, and sleep through all the fun, to waking at the sound of a sneeze from an entire floor and two closed doors away.

Add to this sensitivity a husband whose resting body temperature hovers right around 200 degrees fahrenheit, sciatica, three kids who sometimes talk in their sleep, and one kid who continues to suffer from occasional “night terrors” and you can understand why I feel justified in sleeping until 10am every Saturday if I want.

And I do.

Day 7: Saturday

Though technically the cleanse is over, I’m not about to reintroduce coffee after suffering for 96 hours and not yet experiencing the supposed bliss at the end of the rainbow. And so I continue with this cleaner eating approach and no caffeine.

Days 5 and 6 blurred into each other and were much the same as day 4, with the exception that I did not take a nap and was able to stay awake until close to 11pm.

Today was by far the best day yet, though I can’t say I’m completely headache free.

I’m going to try to stick this out until I feel awesome or until I give up, whichever comes first.

Final Thoughts:

I did not realize how much caffeine affects me as I never considered myself a heavy coffee drinker. And it is true, I only drink up to 16oz a day, and not even that much every day.

Also, I cannot consume coffee after 1pm and expect to fall asleep at a reasonable time, so I’ve been pretty good to completely cut myself off before lunch.

But.

We do like our coffee strong.

And, I’ve been doing this for almost 2 decades.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not one for extreme habit changes as I find them to be mostly unsustainable. I’m not hoping that my life going forward is forever coffee-free.

But I could be sold for some better sleep. At this point, it is difficult to target if the improved sleep is related to the lack of caffeine or the lack of sugar in my diet, as I’ve cut out all refined carbs and all desserts this week.

I’m going to keep going. And you know I’m usually good about reporting back.

In the meantime, if you’ve stumbled here via random headache-induced Google search, feel free to leave me a comment. I promise to update when I can claim a day completely free of anything that even resembles a headache.

Confessions

Costume Love

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Holy crap, it’s October.

Thank you, North Carolina, for masking that fact through yet another Indian Summer. You know I’ll never complain about being too hot.

But seriously.

It’s October.

And that means costumes.

And you know how much I love costumes.

Yesterday I braved my one morning with both kids home to tackle the Big Box store strip. Mm hm, Winston-Salem, I’m talking a little HanesMallBoulevard action. I hope you strapped on your shopping shoes, kids, cause we got cat food, a coffee maker, shampoo, and cereal to buy!

Everywhere we went Isaiah noted the displays, and commented, loudly, “What?! Again?! It isn’t even Halloween yet!”

To which I replied, 47 times, “Actually, it basically is.”

And what better way to celebrate than with a little gallery of all my favorite adult dress-up moments (and a few kid moments thrown in for good measure).

It turns out, John and I do costumes for couples with more than just Halloween regularity.

(It turns out I do costumes for free food with more than just Halloween regularity.)

But seriously. If you are in need of some costume ideas, inspiration, or just a reason to be excited about the change in weather and the upcoming loss of an hour of sunlight, this should help.