Halloween.

My 12 year old daughter's plan to ditch her little brother worked perfectly.

I agreed to let her trick or treat with her best friend who also has a 6 year old brother, only to end up with us two moms taking our 6 year old boys around the block, while my daughter for the first time ran with a pack of unchaperoned middle schoolers, all right on the boarder line of being too old to trick or treat really.

My husband stayed behind to be the one to hand out candy to people coming to our house, because that's the sad thing about trick or treating. You need one person to stay and hand out candy, and another to take the kids out.Otherwise while you are taking your kid out and no one is home, you have to turn your porch light off during that time, signifying, this house has no candy, no one is home, skip over this house. And no one wants to be that house, its too shameful.

Its one of the only times per year, if not the very only time of year, that the adults in our neighborhood actually exchange a few words. Families pass each other on the street, taking their kids out. People with fences or gates have them open for a change . And it was so unseaonablly warm that a lot of people including us just had our door wide open to the street! Too bad it takes free candy to make us talk to each other.

Taking a different route than usual this year, we hit a house that gives out religious pamphlets about how people who celebrate halloween are going to hell, instead of candy, just like one house in my old neighborhood when I was a kid! People like that should just be honest and leave thier porch light off.

At one point I came across my 12 year old daughter and her pack of juvies, punding on the door of a house with its porch light off. I walked up to them and pointed out look , their porch light is off, they're not participating, you have to move on. But one boy kept inisisting, NO! I heard someone in there! if there really was someone in there, I felt sorry for them.

Both my kids came back with their plastic pumpkin head buckets full to the top with candy. i had to go back out there and follow the sound of one of her friends very unique screaming, to find my daughter and walk her home. I could hear him from 2 blocks away! Since we live on a busy street, we hardly had any visitors ourselves, and way over bought our little individual sized bags of candy corns and cholcolate coins with halloween prints on them, that we were giving out.

My head, and even the back of my neck are still pounding. Maybe its not a sugar head ache, like I originally thought. I've decided its a tumor.

Here are some messages I wrote to my favorite message board, then pasted here:

Are School fund raisers not the biggest bunch of bullshit ever?

As soon as my 11 year old daughter's middle school started in early Sept, she got sent home with $30 books of 2-for-1 cupons for various local businesses , 95% of we'd never go to anyway and are no where near us. We bought one. Plus the high school girl across our back fence didn't know my daughter's school was selling the same thing, so she asked us to buy one and we did, because we're suckers, and buying the neighbor kids fund raising crap is one of the few good neighbor-type thing we ever, ever do.

Then 2 weeks later my daughter's school sent her home with a catalogue of overpriced crap including some pretty reasonably priced magazine subscriptions. So we subscribed to $70 worth of magazines. And to make matters's worse, this 3-week sales period has 3 different official turn-in events, at which the kids can win something different if they've made any sales during that week, so she's under pressure to sell things not just one big time, but 3 little times. So I brought her over priced crap catalogue in to work . It's in the break room. Everyone looks thought it and says wow what a bunch of over priced crap.

That same week, my 6 year old son also brought home a similar catalogue, that includes frozen foods like frozen pizzas. To give him equal time, we'll order stuff from him the day before his dead line like we normally do, and I'll bring his over priced crap magazine to to work for eveyone to laugh at next week.

I did used to sell Camp Fire Mints from door to door every single year of my childhood, back when a 10 year old could go door to door. But I don't remember being sent out to fund raise for my local neighborhood school like a damn street orphan, several times a year.

Yes that is exactly the case.
A professional motivational speaker comes to give a presentation to all the children at a manditory assembly and tells them all how wonderful it is to be a sales person and shows them a slide show of all the prizes they can win if they sell enough.

And that is a good point that this was all in the same month we had to buy their school supplies and clothes. The $30 cupon books came home on one of the first days of school.

And this is the municipal school, not a privately funded school.

And if they make the big mistake of joining the school band or gymnastics or something, then THAT organization makes the kids sell more stuff , for trips or uniforms or something.

You're right I should have said, not this year. I'll just buy you the water pistol or the koosh-ball you would have won, for 50 cents at the drug store down the street. Maybe that will be my spring fund raiser attitude.

And classroom party money.
And field trip money.
And $15 for a PE uniform.
$10 Scouts dues plus another $9 for upcoming hayride.
And of course both schools had to take school pictures immediately (appx $20 each)
Not to mention lunch money.
Free school is bankrupting me.
We even had to send boxes of Kleenex.