This is Complicated . . .

Firstly, a discovery - I probably shouldn't go through the spook alley so many times next year. I had a bit of a headache when I left work Friday, but I just chalked it up to a busy day. But by a couple of hours after I blogged it was well on its way to migraine status. By the time I picked Luke up from work at midnight it was pretty bad. Not fun. And since the whole sleeping-it-off thing that usually works when I have a migraine decidedly didn't . . . yeah. Yesterday was unpleasant. And especially depressing since the marching band competition was yesterday, and I'd been looking forward to it for, like, two months now. Blargh.

I'm not really sure what brought it on, but since my mom gets a migraine if she smells anything stronger than (practically) water . . . and I'm assuming that extends to the rest of the family too, because it seems like everything does . . . I'm just going to go ahead and guess that it was caused by inhaling all those fog machine fumes all day. By the end of the day I was going through with pretty much every group, so that's kind of a lot of fumes. So I spent yesterday doing pretty much nothing, and the headache slowly died off, and I skipped church today just in case it decided to flair up again, as it did a few times yesterday. And I think I might be back to normal by tomorrow. Woo hoo.

Anyway. I'm betting you all thought I was kidding when I said I had to start planning next year's costume now. Nope, totally serious. Well, sort of, at least. Among the nothing I did yesterday I was thinking a little bit about costumes, and I realized just how limiting it is to work at an elementary school at Halloween. There really aren't a lot of costumes that work there, beyond your standard and pretty generic "witch," "princess," "scary/dead person," or whatever. I mean, think about it -

I could totally pull out my Elizabeth Bennett costume from a few years ago, and while the teachers would probably get a kick out of it, it would totally go over the kids' heads. Same goes for pretty much all of the cool/clever/funny pop-culturally relevant costumes that would be way fun to do. The Progressive insurance girl? Totally not going to get it. (a friend of mine from Florida just posted a picture of herself on facebook in this one, and can I just say . . . brilliant idea!!!!) Pretty much any TV or movie character? Other than Hannah Montana, I actually kind of hope they wouldn't recognize the other ideas I've had in the last couple of days. Sue Sylvester? Yeah, not going to get it. Or any other character from Glee.

The thought occurred to me that I could totally go as Quinn Fabray . . . but there again, to the kids I would just be a generic cheerleader, and to the teachers too unless I specified, and costumes aren't as much fun when you have to explain them all the time. I could always make it obvious by doing the pregnant cheerleader thing, but that of course explodes into the MASSIVELY inappropriate for an elementary school area.

Then you have my costume from a couple of years ago. It was really quite brilliant considering I got home from work and was informed "we're going to this Halloween party in ten minutes and you're coming with us so hurry up and get a costume on" . . . when I hadn't planned on dressing up that year. So I did a slightly frantic google search and five minutes later, voila!



Kay, so it's kind of hard to tell, but I was a nudist on strike. And it had an added humor factor because I phrased it the way all the gazillions of union fliers you see all over the place when you work at Disney World. Simple, fast, and slightly epically brilliant if I do say so myself. :-)

Of course, it's also a bit of a double whammy being both inappropriate and so far over elementary school-aged heads that it might as well be on the moon.

So . . . yeah. This might be tougher than I thought.


Moving on. Another thought. Gotta say, I kinda love retro costumes. You know, hippies, disco queens and kings, blindingly bright eighties outfits. So fun. But can I just say - it's kind of weird to see seven- and eight-year-olds in those costumes. Which I saw Friday. They were really cute, but just . . . odd. To me anyway. But good suppliers of ideas. So if anyone has any fringed vests or polyester bell bottoms or neon clothes they (for some reason) haven't gotten rid of yet, I'll take them!

Random question - can Farrah Fawcet's feathered hairdo be done to any hair long enough, or does one need to cut one's hair in a specific manner to be conducive to feathering? I'm not quite that dedicated to this whole dressing up thing, and I kind of just missed that trend back when it was new.

Okay, I'm off to make sure Luke hasn't died in his sleep or something. Because, oh yeah, did I mention that he's not feeling well this weekend either? Good times all around. Can I just say it's a really good thing the Halloween candy goes on sale tomorrow? That's seriously the only thing keeping me motivated right now.

P. ost S.cript
So this is probably totally faked . . . but still funny. And I'm willing to bet it's happened for real somewhere too!!