Smunch was a medieval knight. Unfortunately, no one thought to have him try on his costume until Halloween rolled around. And it was significantly too small. Just getting him into it was a huge, painful struggle...both at school and at home. And that put him in a foul mood...just like last year.
Oh yeah, we had a lot of normal Halloween stuff too...like regular ol' carved pumpkins and our own little front yard graveyard...all sort of hastily arranged, but festive nonetheless...
When it came to me, however, I knew it had to be Sergio Romo. Sergio Romo, erstwhile setup man and now super popular closer for the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants. I've met him before too. He's a super nice guy. He was part of the team of "beards" in the bullpen in 2010 and signed a baseball for Smunch with the inscription "Fear It!" on it. Funny guy.
Anyway, Romo has a great roar he lets out when he successfully closes a game and I wanted to carve that. So here goes...
This is one of those. I don't know that it's no longer worth telling, but the lustre has worn off. Had I written about it earlier, it would have been a more charming story, no doubt. But I wanted to have it for posterity, so here it is regardless.
This Halloween season (Really? Is there a whole season now?) I was invited to a Halloween party. That's pretty rare. The last time I went to a Halloween party was probably 15 years ago. This party was sort of a team-based mystery/scavenger hunt thing and part of the game was that all the teams were supposed to go around and "haunt" the other team's houses. Each team had a name...like the Devils & Demons or the Spiders & Skeletons and we "haunted" others' houses in theme with our team names. So, there was a week in there where my house was being haunted nightly...sometimes multiple times. It was always fun to peak out the door and see what might be out there next! Our windows were painted in window graffiti, there were bats hung from the porch, a doormat replaced with someone else's, super spicy brownies, streamers, lollipops dressed as ghosts... This kids found this all VERY entertaining.
This was sort of a school-based party, so I knew most of the other guests and the folks haunting my house. But there's a little boy who lives on our street who doesn't go to the same school as my kids. He saw all the new decorations around our house. I think Mam must've explained them to him. And he was jealous! Mam said he really wanted for his house to be haunted too!
I'd been planning to meet some friends for brunch in San Francisco Sunday morning, but the Giants pulled out the miracle of returning from St. Louis with games left to play and Smunch was going to Game 6 with his dad, who suddenly had tickets that were good for something. So, I stayed home with Mam...and we went shopping.
Of course, this wasn't girly shopping. The first thing she insisted upon was a screaming doormat. Ohhhh-kay. Nothing's too good for our neighbors! We went to every drugstore in town...Rite Aid, CVS, Walgreens...and scooped up whatever was on sale or just looked too fun to pass up.
Fortunately, I also happened to know that our neighbors were going to a soccer tournament in Carmel in the afternoon. They wouldn't be back 'til late evening. So Mam and I hauled our bags and a ladder down there and staged the best darned haunting EVER.
Mam could not wait for them to get home that night. Unfortunately, it was far past her bedtime by then, but as she was going to sleep she said to me, "Mom, this was one of the most fun days, ever!"
A little while later, I received this e-mail entitled "Is everything okay at your house?" It read: "We just got home and our house has been haunted...really, it's really scary...is everything okay at your house? p.s. are you missing some scissors? we have them here."
And if the rumor I heard was true, one little boy came home to a very spooky house and declared it the BEST day of his life!
In fact, here's Smunch at Game 2 of the NLDS...where the Giants lost 9-0. To say he was disappointed is an understatment, but he also wasn't crushed, and neither was his team. They lost two games at home, then went on to sweep the Reds in Cincinnati and win the series.
That prompted a very rare NLCS-related event in my house...the spirited self-manicure.
People who don't know me always think my October fingernails are about my Halloween spirit. Admittedly, a group of folks at school have really gotten into that this year...so much so that my house has been decorated multiple times a night for the past week.
But that's really not what I'm about to write about at all. This was more of a red-white-and-blue event than an orange-and-black one. See, it's also election season. And while I was an avid Obama supporter four years ago and I still support him now, I'm not a hugely political person. Still, when my friend T invited me to a concert in The City, I was inclined to go. This was a big deal.
We spent a lot of time standing around, but it was a fun evening! We collected our tickets at will call, waited in a line for a couple of hours and finally got in to the auditorium, where we found we had standing spots on the floor. Nice and close to the stage, but no seats.
And finally, right on time, we reached the main event.
Still, it's something I can say I've done. And it was a great evening out with a couple of old and good friends.
And, now, back to working out just how to get into that Halloween spirit. I accepted an invitation to a Halloween party. I don't know why I didn't realize that would require me to have a costume. Ergh. Fortunately, I had a little creative moment yesterday and managed to make one myself...
I was back again on Friday morning, helping the third graders with "pumpkin math". I couldn't believe the group of kids Smunch's teacher gave me. I had Smunch, but the other three...all boys...are some of the least motivated goofballs around. It was challenging, but ultimately, it was fun...estimating weight and size, guessing how many seeds were inside, seeing if it would float.
Naturally, Friday afternoon was the big Halloween shindig. I got both kids into their costumes, then helped set up the third grade party. I watched the school-wide Halooween parade, but didn't take any decent pictures. I don't love the kids' costumes this year and Mam's wig was sitting on the side of her head. Both costumes really required makeup, but no time to do that at school. They looked ridiculous. Really.
Of course, the first grade parties always have the cutest stuff!
Thankfully, there was no baseball on Friday, so we got a little break. Thursday evening, Matt Cain threw a 9-0 shutout in the Giants victory. Giants were up 2-0 and headed to Arlington, TX.
Yeah. Something like that, but different. 
But you'll have to wait until Halloween...or sometime after that when I get around to posting...to see the finished product!
So I worked really hard on this pumpkin carving...mostly just to see if I could pull it off. I could point to all kinds of things that went horribly wrong, including how the whole face fell out on Sunday afternoon (bummer, I wanted to light it up again!). Plenty of things weren't quite how I'd planned, but it still turned out pretty cool.
I cropped it so that only Timmy's face showed and then ran it through Photoshop's "Cutout" filter that made it look something like this:
I used that as my template, but it lost some detail, so I had Daddy go back and find me an appropriately sized SF logo for the cap and I added the white of his eyes, which you could see in the original photo.
It looks like it took a lot of work, but it hardly looks like it'd be impressive. i was pretty psyched when I first checked it out with a candle inside. Totally worth the effort!
