Confession: I hate Halloween.

Confession: Halloween is Hell.

I have a new, least-favorite holiday. Previous choices include Easter—it’s not about God anymore but manic, egg-laying bunnies and exorbitantly expensive little-girl dresses; Valentine’s Day—a diabolical competition amongst women to see whose significant other is the most pussy-whipped via the extravagance of the gifts; and New Year’s Eve—a night when one either gets dressed up and spends too much money to get trashed and pretend to have an amazing time or stays at home and feels like a loser for not getting dressed up and trashed and definitely does not have an amazing time.

Stuart’s job takes care of two of the three. He volunteers to work Easter—gets Holiday + time-and-a-half for it—and the girls and I get to mooch ham dinner off my mom. All cops have to work New Year’s Eve. In case you live in a cave—or on the East Coast—and are unaware of New Year’s in Lake Tahoe, allow me to explain. The entire sheriff’s department gears up in full riot gear—helmets, masks, shields, the whole going-into-unfriendly-urban-territory shebang. The SWAT team brings the tanks and the K-9 units and places their competition-shooting-snipers on the casino rooftops. The men patrol the street in squads of 5, marching in strict formation. The reason? The strip is closed down from 9 – 2 am and drunken revelers spill into the narrow ½ block and proceed to hang from the light posts, flash their breasts, kiss everything that walks and commit other bacchalelian antics. We wives meet at someone’s house, watch the ball drop in New York and settle into our beds by 10, pretending not to worry about our husbands.

Valentine’s Day remains, but we have slowly negotiated acceptable levels: Stuart spends a small fortune on the pointless gift of already-dead flowers, we buy the kids a new movie to zone out to and he cooks me a romantic, eat-at-the-kitchen-table-in-comfy-jeans-and-socks dinner.

Other holidays I love. Thanksgiving—excuse to eat a meal that requires 6 pounds of butter--; Christmas—obviously; all 3-day weekends as I get them off; and any others I’ve forgotten. Mother’s Day is a love-hate holiday and the subject for another chapter.

Halloween is Hell.

This year, we managed to celebrate All Saints’ Day, or All Hallow’s Eve, or Dear-God-Where-Is-The-Wine Night for about 9 days. It began with my husband in tights and ended with my fingers down the dog’s throat.

None of these things were my fault. I blame ALL of them on John. Yup. Every last one of them. Bastard.

What did he do to earn such wrath? He invited us to his birthday party.

The weekend before Halloween, John threw himself a birthday party. It was a costume-Halloween party. I hadn't completely dressed up for Halloween in years (other than one of my stand-bys: either a black outfit and cat ears or old cheerleading skirt and sweatshirt). I hate to spend money on grown-up outfits, and so instead raided my closet, the thrift stores and my girls’ costume trunk and invented, ‘Christmas Came Early’. I dressed Stuart in red tights (‘Queen’ size, salvaged from a dollar bin), jingle-bell boxers and hat (White Elephant gag gift at last year’s staff party) and God-awful Christmas sweater (recurring not-gag-gift from his 90-year-old grandmother). I was a Christmas present. I basically wore red thigh-highs, sky-high red shoes, at tag on ribbon as a choker at my throat that read ‘for all naughty boys and girls’, a huge bow hair-piece I’d made for Kate’s Christmas Dance Recital (actually, I made 75 of the things and figured taking one home was justified payment) and a big red ribbon around my waist, the bow curling playfully just over my ass.

That's it.

The evening was bit awkward. First, I had to tie my white trench coat over my mostly-nakedness to do the ‘here’s the phone list, we’ll be home at one’ spiel to our teenage, in my first-period-English-class, works-at-our-Christian-preschool babysitter. Second, I kept coming un-tied during the evening.

My girlfriends had fun teasing their husbands as they re-tied me.

Anyway...poor Stuart had to work both Saturday and Sunday, so he was not drinking. As I was basically not dressed, I WAS drinking.

When it came time to go home, I donned my coat, forced my feet back into my 6-inch red patent mary-jane platforms (I have a new-found respect for strippers), grabbed Stuart’s arm for balance and toddled my way to the minivan…only to discover a problem: off-duty cops can't park worth shit. Probably a result of not having to worry about little things like lanes or blocking people in or ROOM when parking patrol cars.

We couldn't get out. As the only sober person on the property, Stuart didn't much feel like moving EVERYONE'S car to get ours out. Plus, he's a man. Apparently, it's instant penis-shrinkage if you cannot magically maneuver your wife's cute minivan around 3 huge-ass trucks, two minivans and one patrol car. Instead, Stuart simply decided to back out over the lawn.

In his defense, he was a bit distracted. I get kinda...we'll call it 'flirty'...when I drink. Stuart would also point out that there was no moon that night, it was the wee hours of the morning and John’s driveway/lawn is not very well-lit. Either way, my lovely, SOBER, designated-driver husband managed to avoid the trees, the assorted vehicles, the puker on the lawn (yuck), the basketball hoop and Brooke’s roses. He did not avoid the mailbox.

When I heard the distinctive, grating ‘crunch’ of car exterior on sharp, hard substance, my hand stopped its journey up his tight-clad thigh (seriously, my husband has gorgeous gams…who knew?) and I looked at him in askance. Noting my glassy eyes and flushed cheeks, he convinced me that all was well and he had simply run over one of the kid’s toys. I didn’t protest, even though I had noticed that we were, for some reason, driving on the lawn. After all, who was I, drunken slut, to challenge my sober, deputized husband? My hand resumed its wandering and the fate of my car was forgotten in a lovely sexual haze.

Sunday morning I awoke to several things. 1. a confusing text from my neighbor reading, ‘are you ok? Call me ASAP!!”. 2. a confusing text from John: "ha ha ha ha ha!!!!" 3. 'fantasy' coupons on our nightstand: apparently Stuart and I won a prize—a coupon book of sex—for our costumes. 4. parental horror. While I was making pancakes for the girls, Kate came in carrying the coupons. Turns out my kid can read: 'mommy, what's p-p-p-o-o-r-n-n?'

I dealt with these crises in order. Called my neighbor, Grace, to find out why she was concerned for me. “Uhh, what happened to your minivan?” I am not at my best the morning after and mumbled something incoherent. Grace took pity on me and walked over, two coffee mugs in hand. Mother of two herself, she deftly turned on kid-crack (Disney channel), grabbed my hand and pulled me outside. Our garage door was open (guess Stuart was sufficiently distracted by drunken me to forget to close the door) and there, in its place of pride, was my minivan. With a HUGE, mailbox-sized dent in the back. Huh.

At least this discovery explained #2. John had watched the whole thing from his window and found it vastly entertaining. His mailbox, in case you’re concerned, is just fine.

For the fantasy coupons, I simply took them back from Kate, hid them in the goody drawer (and if you are my friend and anything should ever happen to Stu and I, you will IMMEDIATELY report to my house and clean out the top drawer of the highest dresser before my mother discovers that her daughter enjoys, ahem, ‘toys’!!!)

And with that hangover, Halloween Hell Week had just begun. That afternoon the girls had Halloween Golf requiring golf-friendly costumes. We settled on being kitty cats as the tails and ears did not interfere with the girls’ emerging swings. Wednesday we had the Halloween Dance recital which required two white, punk-ghost costumes (so long, Pottery Barn sheets!). Thursday was Western Day since our rather conservative valley and elementary schools now dictate which costumes the children can wear to eliminate the ones that replicate evil. Actually, I do not blame the teachers for this a bit: the children are little demons as it is once they get some sugar into them: imagine if they actually had horns and a tail? The poor teachers probably would have nightmares for weeks.

Friday was Jeff’s 30th birthday party…on the 30th. Caryn threw him a Pirate Party, complete with copious amounts of rum. I borrowed Brooke’s sexy little Pirate Whore outfit (really, I need to stop going out in public dressed for the Playboy mansion) but chose to be the DD for this night as I figured my checkbook couldn’t handle any more of Stuart’s brand of sober driving. Had to carry around gingerale and pretend to be drinking as no sober woman would cavort about at a party in knee high boots and a lace skirt that did little to cover her ass.

And finally, Saturday night was Halloween. Did the usual trick-or-treat marathon with all the little ones running manically down the street, begging strangers for candy. We all collapsed into our beds, crashed out from mainlining sugar. I was so dead to the world, I missed the evil spirits visiting in the night.

Some idiot government official decided November 1st should be day-light-savings, so HMMs country-wide awoke to the confusing sense of not knowing the official time. I, however, awoke long before any alarm. Marshmellow, our little white miniature schnauzer, was howling. Screaming, really. I rushed into the mudroom to find Kate and Jennifer on the floor, also screaming because their puppy was in pain.

I had no idea what was wrong with the dog. After running around outside in the pre-dawn chill for a while, she seemed fine. As we were all up, I began the Halloween Morning After negotiations. No Candy until all children had eaten a healthy breakfast. No More Candy until rooms are clean. No More Candy until….

Honestly, to an uninitiated person without kids, this would seem like an excellent bargaining chip. Those people have never spent the better part of 20 minutes arguing about how many candies constitute a ‘piece’. In child-logic, a box of Nerds, containing roughly 500 hard little balls of sugar, equals 500 pieces of candy while 1 fun-sized Snicker’s bar is only one. In mommy logic, an entire bag of Whoppers should not be consumed all at one sitting while the 2 Starburst contained in a Fun Pack are acceptable.

You can understand the headache.

Stuart, of course, had to work. He knew enough to send a very sympathetic look my way as he backed out the front door. And to bring me flowers, a bottle of wine, and draw me a bath that evening, sweetly locking the door to our bathroom and announcing to our strung-out children, that mommy was officially ‘closed’.

In the middle of our first round of ‘talks’, Marshmellow—recovered from her earlier malady—got ahold of a LaffyTaffy candy. This sent Jennifer into howls of ‘mine mine mine mine mine!’, causing her residual Princess Make-up to run down her face in Tammy Fae Baker style. Kate launched into a lecture about guarding one’s candy (she was engaged in sorting and tallying her own haul: I later found a neatly-printed spreadsheet in the bottom of her candy bag with color-coded cross-references. And I only wish I were kidding!).

And I, I completed the Hell Marathon. I pried open the tiny jaws of my miniature dog, stuck my fingers deep into her throat and pried the half-masticated Taffy off her pointy little teeth.

Then I ate 40 fun-sized Reeses, piled the kids and dog into my dented minivan and drove straight to Hell-Mart for the after-Halloween discount sale.

Next year I’m attending John’s birthday bash as a sexy zombie.