Bits of Our Weekend - Halloween!

This past weekend was Halloween. I loved Halloween as a kid. Dressing up and trick or treating was a blast of course, there were always Fall Harvest type events going on at school and in the community, and most memorably, my family had Halloween parties every year.

Two of my three siblings and I are close in age but our birthdays are spaced out through the year. Instead of having three individual birthday parties, my parents held one big Halloween party. Back then we lived in a big house with a semi-finished basement, so the party was set up down there. One part of the basement was turned in a little haunted maze, another area was reserved for games and the main area was set up for dancing. My parents owned their own DJ company back then, so they provided the entertainment. Even my grandmother got involved. One year she did up her makeup to look like a corpse, popped her head through a hole in a table and scared kids walking by.

So I have fond memories of Halloween as a kid. The excitement wore off as I got older, but now I get to enjoy the holidays as a parent. Not only is the holiday itself fun, but the build up to it is exciting - parties, Halloween themed events at preschool, checking out decorations in our neighborhood. I decided to take off work for Halloween this year so we could head out to the Poconos. Our neighborhood has awesome decorations, but its so insanely crowded. It has apparently become known for its Halloween enthusiasm, because people from other neighborhoods/boroughs come to Chelsea. Last Halloween was the first year we really went trick or treating (the year before was Hurricane Sandy, so we stayed in and the prior year Audrey wasn't even a year old so we didn't do a lot). We could barely walk, so I wanted to try somewhere less crowded this year.

 

Some awesome carved pumpkins at Chelsea Market

We went trick or treating in Stroudsburg, in the neighborhood I grew up in, and I'm glad we did. There were a ton of kids, but the streets were closed to cars so it was easy to walk, although the sidewalks weren't bad. Audrey had an entourage - my parents, sister, younger brother, man-friend and a family friend Audrey adores. My stepfather also invited his coworker and her daughter, who is only a little older than Audrey. The little girl showed up in the exact same costume as Audrey - same Elsa dress and crown. So the two Elsas had a blast together. It seems every other little girl was Elsa - I counted 30 in an hour and a half of trick or treating :)

Queen Elsa and Uncle Ian.

 

Audrey and her new friend. They called each other Elsa all night

 

Audrey said I should be a princess kitty

Post trick or treating dinner at good old Friendly's.

The weather the rest of the weekend wasn't great, so we didn't do a lot outside of my parents house. I ran some errands Saturday (party preparation - snacks and baking supplies and decorations, oh my) and Audrey hung out with my mom. Saturday evening man-friend and I had some grown up hot chocolate and watched Chef. We went home Sunday afternoon.

Mmmmm

Our Halloween in the Poconos increased my indeciveness about living in the city. The build up to the holidays in the city is unbeatable, but the day of - holidays you go out to celebrate especially, 4th of July, Halloween - are always intolerably crowded. I could never move back to the Poconos, but there are parts of New Jersey that are appealing. In a perfect world, I'd keep my apartment in the city but also have a country place, as well as a car to make getting back and forth much easier. But since I don't live in fantasy land, I obviously need to make up my mind sooner or later.

Yes, Please!

I'm very excited to read Amy Poehler's book, Yes Please, which came out Tuesday. I'm currently rereading Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood, one of my all time favorites, but Yes Please is next on my list.

I've read some excerpts here and in People magazine while in my dentist's waiting room, and I've loved everything so far, so I'm sure the rest won't disappoint.

My favorite excerpts so far:

"It's a wonderful day when your child gets old enough to be bribed. It's a whole new tool in your arsenal."

"Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier."

"Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself."

"You can create something and the world will be forever indebted to and dependent on you."
-Courtesy of The Huffington Post

"When your children arrive, your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, you start to see the world a little more. It can be hard, this life. Beautiful too. Mine is beautiful, mostly. Lucky me."
-Courtesy of People Magazine

Also, Amy recent did an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit - worth reading.

No, I will not donate ...

.. to your scholarship fund, NYU. Not now, probably not ever.

I've gotten several emails/calls lately under the guise of reminding me about my five year reunion, when really they just want to hit me up for donations. I'm starting to get a little annoyed.

Let me start off by making it clear that I paid for almost my entire tuition. I received next to no financial aid, although my parents made well under $100,000 a year when I applied. But apparently, the only way to get anything more than a couple thousand bucks is to be at poverty level. There was no way my parents could contribute a dime to my education either, but the powers that be determined that didn't matter. I made my choice to go to NYU knowing what kind of debt I'd be graduating with, though. That isn't my complaint. What I do resent is the badgering to donate to the scholarship fund.

First of all, they call it "Give BACK to NYU." What exactly am I giving back? I wasn't gifted my education. I paid for it. And will be paying for it for many years to come. Does this mean that my cable or cell phone company is going to start hitting me up for donations because they too provide a service that I pay for?

Second of all, WHO exactly is this money going to?? Like I said, my parents couldn't contribute a dime to my education, but I didn't get anything from this scholarship fund, so how do they determine who gets a free or greatly reduced ride and who gets saddled with hundreds of thousands in debt?

Third, I particularly scoffed at their second argument for donating (Their 6th most popular reason, 'I hear you, but I'm broke.') Seriously? If I have $18 and change to spare, and I'm going to donate it instead of, you know, putting it towards that $180k in debt I have, I can think of many, many more worthy causes. Homeless children. Animal shelters. Cancer research. NYU's scholarship fund falls very low on my list of causes I'd give what little money I have to.

If more people had donated, maybe I WOULD have gotten scholarship money, you say? Well, they didn't. If this campaign for donations means future kids who are more like me, who don't fall below the poverty line but would still have to take out massive loans to go to college, can have their load lightened, great. Good for them. But for the time being, let the people from my class who DID get the help, either from NYU or their parents, build up that fund, and let me worry about getting this massive student loan debt off my plate.

Bits of our ... Month

I hadn't done a weekend post in a while because, to be honest, the first few weekends of the month were rather uneventful. It rained a couple Saturdays in a row, so other than gymnastics, we stayed indoors. Most of our Sundays were spent at the park, running errands, etc. One Sunday we went to check out a party supply store in the Village to see what they had as far as Frozen party decorations (mostly a waste of time, same stuff that I found on orientaltrading.com, but twice as expensive - although it was fun to browse the costumes) and then hung out in Washington Square Park for a while. Another Sunday, man-friend and I went to see St. Vincent, which was very good, while Audrey was with her father.

Trying on ridiculous hats at the party store

 

 


One of our wonderful walks in the pouring rain to gymnastics

This past weekend was the first in a while we had more going on. On Friday, the practice group I work in had a Halloween party, and kids were invited. So at lunch, I went and picked Audrey up from preschool and brought her back down to my job. She changed into her Elsa costume there and then we went to the party. She loves my coworkers, and got a lot of attention at the party, as well as tons of sugar. My coworkers bought her a little Frozen purse to go with her costume, and she went home with it stuffed with candy.

 

She looks like she's rapping with this pose.

 

This was the reaction to "You've already had more sugar than you're usually allowed to have so no, you cannot have any more."

We went to the Halloween Harvest at Luna Park (Coney Island) this past Saturday. We lucked out with some gorgeous weather. The park was decorated for fall, and a lot of kids came in costume. They also had a bunch of activities going on, outside of the usual rides and games, such as pumpkin picking & painting, trick or treating for kids, free caricatures, among other things. One useful fact I learned: the park right next door, which you can literally see from Luna Park, is a whole separate thing. Any credits or wristbands you buy at Luna Park aren't valid there. I knew the Wonder Wheel was separate, but didn't realize all the other rides were as well, so I bought more credits than we actually needed, thinking there were tons more rides for Audrey than there actually were. Luna Park only had a handful of rides Audrey could actually ride, but at least the credits were good for games too. We played more games than I ordinarily would have, mostly because we had still a bunch of (nonrefundable) credits to use after Audrey was done with the rides.

 

 

This stuffed slice of pizza was one of the prizes we won. Probably one of the best carnival game prizes ever.

Next weekend is Halloween. We're both very excited. One of the perks of having a child is the new approach to the holidays - remembering what it was like as a kid, getting to see your own kid enjoy it, the preparations leading up to the holiday (picking out a costume, decorating, Christmas shopping). I'd stopped caring about holidays in my twenties pre-Audrey, so its fun to be excited about them again.

Little Black Dress

I'm in love with this Ann Taylor dress. I originally saw it on an episode of The Mindy Project and thanks to Google, was able to track it down online. Marked down to $129 with an extra 40% off sale items ... trying to talk myself out of it.

Loooove

Fruits & Veggies

I've had this link in my bookmarks for a while and randomly clicked on it this morning. I forgot how surprising this was. Each of these pictures is a representation of your daily recommend fruit & vegetable intake:



From "Here Are 10 Pictures of Your Daily Recommended Servings of Fruits & Vegetables"

 
Doesn't seem like much, does it? Most days I get at least this much into my day, although this weekend was lacking ...
 
Related: Jack LaLanne ate at least ten raw, fresh vegetables daily. Although some of his other habits were probably a little more strict than I could ever tolerate, I'm inspired to make sure I get at least the minimum fruits & vegetables daily.

Links & Pictures

Mash-up of pics and links ...

Excuse my dirty floor. I swear I vacuumed shortly after I took this pic. Anyway, I caught little miss Maddie under the table like this. I walked around to the other side to see what she was doing ...

Sure enough, something naughty. She's obsessed with trying to steal the cat's food. She prefers it to her own, apparently. We've had to feed the cat on paper plates lately because whenever she managed to get to his food, she'd eat it then promptly to destroy the plastic bowl. She went through three of them. I ordered him a new one, and this time went with metal.

One of the kids in Audrey's preschool class brought in a lawn gnome for show & tell. I don't know why I found this so funny, but I did.



Currently reading one of Stephen King's recent books, Mr. Mercedes. Love that he referenced It, the movie that was based on one of his own books. Being able to use your own work as a cultural reference is pretty bad ass.



I probably used many of these as AIM away statuses back in the day :)

Love this article about hyper-parenting

And this similar article about parenting. To sum up both: Calm the hell down.

Emma Watson's awesome HeForShe speech (this links to the text, with a link to the video at the bottom)

Mmmm, ice cream.

Will definitely have to watch this

Love seeing how quickly this map is changing