Pickles & Dimes

Halloween sort of snuck up on me this year. Normally Jason and I carve pumpkins and string up scary lights and adorn our front step with leaf garlands and think up cool costumes, but this year, with the wedding and everything, Halloween kind of got the shaft.

I told Jason today (wearing my pajamas to work for my costume since I was too lazy to think of anything else; I went as “sleepy) that if our good friend Lynn doesn’t resume her Halloween parties, next year we’re having one at our house. I must start planning NOW because I’m all excited, even though this year I couldn’t be bothered.

Anyway, please tell me your best and worst Halloween costumes. If you’re like me, your mother made everything from scratch, even when it was easier and/or cheaper to buy something ready-made.

My best costume was around 6th grade when I went as an Indian. (Please don’t be offended. My school’s nickname at the time was the Indians. Also, I’m like 2% Native American, although that’s not enough to qualify for college scholarships.) My mom used an actual burlap sack for my dress; she had some kind of Native American jewelry for me to wear; she painted my face (in a completely non-offensive yet subtly Native American way); and she even found a braided wig. It was cool and all kinds of awesome and I won first place, which more than made up for the costume I had to wear the previous year, which was:

A cheerleader.

Oh, what’s wrong with that, you ask? EVERYTHING. Every part of this costume was handmade or found around the house. And while I can appreciate my mom’s creativity and fiscal responsibility now, 1985 wasn’t really the year to be rocking the homemade look.

Instead of spending a few bucks on real pom-poms (I know they’re technically called pom-pons, but I refuse to call them that) my mom painstakingly collected thin strips of plastic from our horse feed bags. I KNOW. I have no idea how long it took to collect enough strips to make a pom-pom, but I’m guessing that in that time she could’ve made at least one trip to the local Ben Franklin to buy real ones.

My “skirt” was actually a pair of black sweat pants because I didn’t own a pleated skirt, and my “monogrammed” sweater was a sweatshirt with our school’s initials pinned on it in orange construction paper.

S-U-C-K-Y! What’s that spell? How I felt when I went to school in that costume and one of the other girls in my class was also a cheerleader. A nice, store-bought pom-pom-brandishing, pleated-skirt-wearing cheerleader. Go, team!

OK, spill it. What’s your best and worst Halloween costumes?

Last night, Jason and I went downstairs to eat in front of the TV. (Because we are fancy.)

Right before I sat down, I smelled cat poop.

“Ugh!” I said. “Someone just dropped a dook!” I quickly disposed of the deposit, subconsciously noting its smaller-than-normal size, before sitting back down to my plate before Sunny filched my deliciously marinated steak.

After doing the dishes and coming back downstairs, I still smelled something stinky. I checked the litter box again, but nothing was amiss. No litter strewn about in a happy-go-lucky manner, no missed deposits, no cat dragging their butt along the carpeting.

But yet, every few minutes I caught a faint whiff of crap, to the point I was starting to doubt my sanity. I thought maybe I was experiencing a stroke or having olfactory hallucinations. “Great,” I thought. “Some people smell flowers or baked goods. I smell poop.”

Jason even went on a poop hunt for me, looking underneath our coffee table and checking the cats’ butts. All clear.

And yet the smell of phantom feline feces remained. After a few more minutes, I sat up on the couch and said, “I can still smell CAT POOP.”

Jason then sat up and with a comical eye pop, pointed to the floor and said, “That’s because there’s some RIGHT THERE!!!”

And he wasn’t joking. There on the carpet, less than four inches from my foot and even more importantly, less than 10 inches from where I had been eating, sat a perfectly formed and horrifically long cat turd.

“EEEEWWW!” we both screamed, as I ran to get toilet paper to clean it up and Jason rubbed his arms to get rid of the giant case of heeby-jeebies he recently acquired.

“Jesus,” I said, incredulous. “How did we not see THAT? It was practically touching my FOOT!”

“God!” Jason said. “That is freaking disgusting.”

“It was on the floor all along, right? It’s not like it fell out of the blanket I JUST PUT ON MY LAP, RIGHT?!?”

And then we spent the rest of the night alternately screaming and sanitizing everything in our house while the cats napped, the end.

I’d like to thank my very brave wife for mustering up the courage to sit down and watch “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects” with me.

They were the first horror movies she’s seen since a triple-feature about four years ago. That adventure ended with us staying up until 3:00 a.m. with all of the lights on playing cribbage.

Now if only I could convince her to go see Rob Zombie and Ozzy Osbourne on Halloween night.

Today at work was our last Spa Day (it got extended due to its popularity, wonder of wonders). I immediately signed up for another massage because DUDE. Free massage!

I also signed up for a free makeup session. The makeup guy was totally professional, knowledgeable, sweet and most importantly, gushingly complimentary toward my face. (Apparently, my eyes aren’t “brown,” they are a “pretty shade of amber.” And instead of referring to my skin tone as “corpse-like white,” he called it “porcelain.” HA.)

I’m pretty sure his greatest challenge, however, was preventing himself from rolling his eyes at me every time he asked a makeup question:

“What kind of eye makeup do you typically use?”

“Uhhh…you’re looking at it.”

“Oh. So you don’t typically wear eye makeup, then.”

“That is correct.”

“Does your moisturizer have SPF in it?”

“Umm…I don’t use moisturizer…or SPF…but I use Carmex on my lips! Does that have SPF?”

Luckily, he didn’t laugh or chastise me, but instead carefully explained exactly what he was doing as he masterfully mixed shadows and daubed on liquid eye shadow and patted my lids with brushes and Q-tips, and generally stuck his fashionable boot-clad foot over the line that indicates Nearly Touching My Eyeball Land, while I squirmed and fidgeted and tried not to blink or think about how my contacts will later exact their revenge.

And I learned, finally, the correct way to apply eye shadow, which, let’s face it, is the main reason I never wear eye makeup, unruly contacts notwithstanding. I have no less than three 4-color eye shadow sets and yet I have no clue about how to layer the colors. None. So I stick with the boring brown shades and instead of making my eyes pop, I essentially make them invisible.

So, girls (and rock star boys), here’s what I learned today about applying multiple colors of eye shadow (you probably already know this, but I am a makeup moron):

[The four colors he used on me were pretty natural: white, taupe, pink and charcoal gray]

• Start with the neutral shade (in my case, taupe) and apply it with a small, rounded brush from lash line to eyebrow.
• Take a smaller brush and apply the next-lightest color (white for me) in a thin line under the brow line. Dab a teeny amount in the corners of your eye lids to brighten your eyes.
• If you want, at this point you can use a liquid eye shadow on your lids to add shimmer and to act as a base for your main eye shadow color. (He used a shimmery white on me.) Use the brush from Step 1 again to apply your color (for me, pink) on your lids over the liquid shadow.

  Note: Your eyes will start to feel heavy with gunk. Do not be alarmed. Apparently, this is normal. Also, your contacts will imagine they have 517 specks of dust in them. They are overreacting. Ignore them.

• Finish with a skinny square brush by sweeping a line of shadow (for me, charcoal gray) along your lash line.
• If you want eyeliner, apply it in your lash line, not above it. And apply it starting where your lashes are the thickest, not right at the corner of your eye. This way it will emphasize your lashes at their thickest point and make your eyes pop.
• Apply mascara in a downward motion first, so it will get rid of any eye shadow powder that fell on your lashes previously. Then apply a second coat while brushing upwards. You can either curl your lashes before this or use a curling mascara.
• Ta-da! You’re now beautiful and can call your husband and beg him to take you somewhere nice for dinner instead of sitting at home eating leftover spaghetti with bacon. Although it’s spaghetti with bacon, so maybe you’ll just eat at home looking all sultry and sexy.