There is no elf on our shelf

Posted by TakingItAStepAtATime

I have never attempted  “Elf on the Shelf” with DC. It looks like fun but I am not quite sure that he would “get it”, and if he did, I would be terrified to ruin the whole thing by forgetting to move the elf every day.  Unfortunately, the anxiety of forgetting is still never a guarantee that I will remember when it was time for Elf to move to a different spot. Then,  as *Geri said to me on Wednesday, “I don’t know where I put Derek the Elf last year. I have to find him by tomorrow” – I would always be in that same boat – I am notorious for putting things away that are never to be seen again.

Not participating does not stop me from harassing my two co-workers with clever photos of Elf ideas that I come across. If I am not going to do this, then they darn well better get creative about it for their kids. I mean someone should use the ideas that I would have used if Elf lived in our house, right?

(please pass the “pressure”)

Last year, Elf seemed to be everywhere. I do not know if it had become more popular or if it was due to the fact that two of my friends/co-workers, *Al and *Geri were elf’ing it for their children and that many of my instagram friends were posting daily photos of elf and his/her activities at their house. Whatever the reason, I found myself feeling guilty not having done this for DC.

After thinking about it for a while, trying to come up with something else to do in place of Elf, something that didn’t depend 100% on my memory –  I thought about his love for Christmas ornaments and our annual “ornament ritual” and came up with an idea.

DC loves ornaments. He always did. When I come across an ornament of a character, book, food or object that he loves, I buy it and save it for Christmas. Our tree generally goes up the day after Thanksgiving. DC loves going through all of his ornaments and hanging them on the tree. He is at the point now where he can unwrap and hang them all himself. He has accumulated so many  over the years that there is no longer room for any other ornaments on the tree – my Star Trek collection has not seen the light of day in many years.

Kirk, out!

Depending on the amount of ornaments I have stockpiled ahead of time each year, one is placed under the tree every few days. DC knows that if the gift is wrapped in aluminum foil, he has permission to open it.

I decided I might try hiding the ornaments around the house every few days. In making up this new tradition, there were no rules and appointed times that I needed to adhere to. I decided I would not tell him about this hunt, but I would hide the fist one or two new ornaments in places where he could not possibly miss seeing them, until he got used to not finding them under the tree.

I hid the first ornament on the shower rod, knowing there was no way possible that he could miss this. If he didn’t see it the second he walked into the bathroom, then he would definitely see it the moment he looked in the mirror. There was no way he could ever miss this ornament!


He missed it……

It hung there the entire day. He even took a shower and did not notice it. Finally I had to tell him that I thought I saw a new ornament hanging in the bathroom – only then did he find it.

I hid a new ornament the following day. It was sitting right on top of the shoe basket. One of the first things DC does when he walks in the house is take his shoes off. There was no way he would not see this one.


He didn’t…….

This was not going as well as I expected. He was happy as he always is to receive a new ornament, but the whole surprise of just happening upon a new ornament was not what I’d hoped it would be. I just about had to point them out to him. I could have just continued on with the ‘aluminum foil package under the tree’ tradition.

I decided I would leave a note each time there was an ornament to be found.

This helped in his search, but still,  the ornaments that were right out in the open and visible seemed to be the most difficult for him to find.




For a child that never misses anything, he was missing a lot.

Even odder – the ornaments that were hidden well out of plain sight, were found almost immediately, before reading the notes or clues. He went right for them.




By the time Christmas rolled around and the last ornament was hidden and found, he had finally gotten the hang of it. He was having fun with it.


So, we’ll chalk last year up to a ‘trial run’. Here’s hoping this year I can get a little bit more creative with the hiding places and clues. But still, our new tradition is not Elf on the Shelf – funny how these silly, little things can make one feel so guilty.

My stockpile this year does include a “Buddy the Elf” ornament which will be hidden on the shelf.

That counts, right?

The ritual of it all

It is Friday evening, 5pm. I arrived home from work about an hour earlier and DC has just come in from the library with Mrs. H.

The moment Mrs. H. leaves to go home, his Friday ritual begins.

“Mom, may I ask you a question?”

Now I know what this question will be, there is only one question he asks in this way. He asks it in the exact same way every weekend. I am sure that somewhere along the line, when DC wanted to use his computer, I told him to “ask me the question, instead of using one word” – and this became “Mom, may I ask you a question?” He asks no other questions in this way, only this one. The question is not really even a question, it is a statement. The only actual question we have here is him asking me if he ‘may’ ask me a question…… but close enough.

“Yes, DC. What is your question?”

“I would like to play computer please”

“Sure you can.”

And he’s off.

DC has his rituals. I know them – I am used to them. It’s only when I sit back and watch the whole thing from beginning to end do I realize just how involved some of them are and just how long many of them take to complete.

During the week as soon as Mrs. H. leaves, DC runs up to his room to get his book. This book must be on the chair next to him at the kitchen table. He has his chair at the table where he reads or edits his books, but the chair next to him is also off-limits because this is where his book must sit. No one can sit in his chair and Mrs. H. is the only one allowed to sit in the book chair.

The 3 book rule was instituted because DC would travel from room to room with his pile of books. They were not the books he planned to read, they were the books he moved from spot to spot in the house according to what room he was in. With his pile of books in place he would then go and get another book to read. This pile of books grew and grew until I was afraid that he would fall down the stairs carrying them because he could no longer see over them. These were also not small paperbacks, they were large heavy books. The 3 book rule meant that he was only allowed to carry around 3 books at a time. The 3 book rule was hard for him. He would try to “hide” an extra book or two in the pile, so the three book rule was adjusted. The 3 book rule is now the one book rule. This seemed much easier for him to manage. The temptation to try to hide and additional book in the pile was gone as there was no longer a pile. The one book gets moved to the chair when he is in the kitchen, the corner of the coffee table when in the living room and a chair next to his bed in his room.

DC is only allowed to use his computer and/or watch DVD’s on the weekends as they tend to distract him from wanting to do anything else (see Disney, Disney and more Disney).

He has accepted this rule and it has worked well for us.

When Friday comes and Mrs. H leaves, it is officially ‘the weekend’ for DC.

“Mom, may I ask you a question?”

“Yes, DC. What is your question?”

“I would like to play computer please”

“Sure you can.”

And so it begins……

• 1st - he gets his laptop out of the drawer,  and sets it up in his spot in the kitchen.
• Next – he goes up the stairs to his room to get his one book and brings it to the kitchen to sit beside him.
• He goes back up to his room to bring down a pile of DVD’s that are sorted in some order that is known only to DC.
• He goes back up to his room for a separate pile of DVD’s from a different ‘DC category’ that is also not apparent to anyone but him.
• Back upstairs again for a smaller stack of DVD’s which is surely an entirely different category.
• Back upstairs for an even smaller stack (all stacks are arranged on the table in separate places with the largest stack on top of the one book on the chair).
• Another trip up to his room for his 4 ‘sound machines’ because one can not watch a movie or video with out adding applause or other sound effects.
• Into the living room for his earphones.
• Back up to his room to put on his pajamas (his signal to me that he is done for the night and will not be going out anywhere else).
• Lastly he collects an assortment of colored sharpies from the overflowing sharpie basket in the corner to line up next to him on the table.

At this point, I would be exhausted but now he is finally ready to watch his DVD’s.

After all of this back and forth, up and down, does he actually watch any of the movies he so carefully sorted, stacked and arranged? Rarely. He opts for YouTube.

This entire ritual is performed in reverse when it is time for bed.

And then Saturday morning comes…………..

and so it goes...................

SD& Peanut Butter

You can not imagine how much I love this meme and I am sorry –  I just have to share. (found on instagram)

Just in case you were not aware of my Peanut Butter addiction….. here you go:
 (from #StopDropand…. just for fun – September 2014)

#StopDropAndConfess -

 

My confessions: 1. I have a serious peanut butter addiction 2. David Boreanaz is the handsomest man alive 3. I also have a serious thing for Colin Ferguson One friend that I tagged had an issue with the peanut butter jars being upside-down and others right-side-up, complete with hash tag #TheyAreComingToTakeMeAway  – that may very well be one of his confessions .There is a perfectly logical explanation: Upside-down are unopened – stored that way so that the oil mixes. The others have been opened. Why is there more than one jar open??? You will have to talk to DC about that. There always seems to be more than one of everything open in this house – he just can not use the end of anything…..

...... and they cancelled Halloween - part two

~As you may have read in Part One – during the “Halloween Nor’easter of 2011, we lost power on Saturday night, October 29th~ Now it was Monday.

Monday, morning came. It was Halloween and still no power. I regularly take Halloween off from work, so luckily we did not have anywhere to be. DC had his ‘un-toasted’ toast for breakfast. I realized in my fervor to find coffee the day before I never had anything to eat (“The Storm Diet” was a ‘terrific’ diet while it lasted) – so I joined DC for some ‘untoasted toast’, went to work again on the ‘RS Room’ and began mapping out a new coffee hunt.

Before we left on our coffee hunt, DC’s Dad showed up. He delivered a contraption that he made from a car battery. This was, in my opinion THE best thing ever! A place to charge phones, plugs for lights or whatever else I needed to plug in, although the coffee pot did not occur to me at the time, lights for DC, did.


The downside…… he wanted to take DC with him to his house. Now of course I want DC to be somewhere warm, with power, water and without a RS Room, but on the other hand, I don’t ever want DC and I to be separated during any sort of emergency type of situation; I just want him with me, plain and simple.

Now feeling very cut off from the world, I began my ‘coffee quest’ alone. The Dunkin Donuts I found the day before was no longer open. I stopped at a nearby hotel – knowing full well that there were no hotel rooms available in the state, but I was there, so I may as well check it out. I felt silly even asking and of course there was nothing available.

Tonya, Coach and I tried to keep tabs on each other during this whole fiasco, but with my phone not really working, it was difficult. Fortunately, Tonya called while I was still out driving. She called to say that another friend, Pat, had just had her power restored. She had invited us all to come for dinner and trick-or-treating in her neighborhood. Our kids trick-or-treating together has become somewhat of a tradition. No matter how many Halloween parties DC attends and no matter how many different costumes he gets to wear before Halloween, he still wants to wear a costume ON Halloween. I, for one was tired of the stares and comments when out trick-or-treating with an 18, 19, 20-year-old alone. Going out in a group just seems to work out better. 
I immediately called DC’s Dad and told him he could keep him there for the day, but he needed to be home at 5. He was not going to miss Halloween if I could help it and if Pat had her power back, it wouldn’t be long for us.

I kept myself occupied the rest of the afternoon alternating between working on the RS Room and searching for coffee. Finally DC came home. I got him into his costume while it was still light out. I have to say, we planned this costume well…… “Elf” complete with a snowy background.

Dc was happy to see his friends, happy to be celebrating Halloween and happy to be somewhere with power. Pat and her neighbors were happy not to be stuck with all of the Halloween candy they had purchased ahead of time.






Elf, “Gabriella Montez” (from High School Musical), Sly Stallone and Pebbles were ready to hit the road for trick-or-treat. Surprisingly, almost every house was ready for this last-minute Halloween. Trick- or- Treating with snow on the ground was an  experience they will not soon forget, I am sure. I will never forget it, for sure.



After covering the neighborhood, carrying full bags of candy, it was time to head home. I was still living under the delusion that this would be over by the time we arrived home that night – it was not. We piled on our “storm wardrobe”,  comforters, blankets, etc. and went to sleep. I had to be back at work on Tuesday and when Tuesday morning arrived I still wasn’t sure that there was power at the office, but off we went. Driving to work, I realized that I was preoccupied with hanging branches. This preoccupation lasted for many months after this storm. Even now, when it is windy or stormy, I find myself watching the trees as I am driving.

There was power at the office and DC was able to sit and watch some movies on his laptop. I was just considering bringing him back there that night to sleep in my office, when my mother called.  Her power was back so we made plans to go there.

The next two days went pretty much the same as Tuesday. Work, home, check for power, work on RS Room, pack some things and go to Grandmas before it got dark.

In the morning –  stop home, check for power, work on RS Room, go to work with DC. I really have to say that for a child so very afraid of storms, lightning, clouds, thunder and the power going out – he was a real trooper. I was proud of him. It was almost as if he was able to put his fears and the behavior that goes along with those fears on hold for the duration of this storm and aftermath.

On Thursday night at about 8pm,  I called my landline – another thing I did regularly when we were out of the house,   and the machine picked up! We had power!

My mother wanted us to wait until morning to leave but I could not think of anything else but getting the RS Room working and clean. DC was beside himself yelling, “My powers is back!” (DC-speak; his powers)

Home – RS Room fixed and clean  - everything went quickly back to normal.
All but one party was rescheduled - our “cancelled Halloween” had become a weeklong event running into the second week of November.



Best Buddies held their party on the following weekend – Pebbles and Bam Bam attended – with “Gabriella Montez”, and Best Buddy, Steve of course.





Many of the surrounding towns officially cancelled Halloween and rescheduled it for the following week – our town did not. We did receive a flyer in our mailbox from a neighbor with young children asking that the neighborhood join in for an hour-long  trick-or-treat on Saturday night.  DC and I participated and then headed out to the next town over – where Halloween was officially rescheduled - to visit a friend and celebrate “Fake Halloween”.

We just happened to have one more unused costume set on-hand that we could not let go to waste.

“Yes, Captain Hammer’s here, hair blowing in the breeze. The day needs my saving expertise”*

Because “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” * (and a Mom too)



I do understand that others had it much worse. My friend Steve had no power for 11 days. 11 Days!!!!! I would have had to just move away at that point. I hoped that because DC had gotten to the point during this whole ordeal where he seemed to be able to put his fears aside, that this new attitude would carry on through to the next storm – it did not.

School had been cancelled throughout this whole power outage. Between hurricane Irene in August and the Halloween nor’ easter, all snow days had been used up for the school year and it was only early November.

On the UP side……….. I did loose 5 pounds on the Halloween nor’easter diet and I did get one of those store-bought contraptions from DC’s Dad for Christmas that year.

It does have to be charged every few months and each time it comes out, DC gets nervous.

(*Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog – 2008)

I walked @CharityMiles for ………..

Posted by TakingItAStepAtATime

My Facebook status yesterday:

” I walked 4.445 @CharityMiles for @wwpinc (Wounded Warrior Project) sponsored by @TimexSports! — at Essex Street Pedestrian Mall.”

It was nice to post this status yesterday as I have not been very diligent about my @charitymiles lately and I have been feeling guilty.

I began using the Charity Miles app back in early March 2013. At the time, I used the app to support Autism Speaks. I do not support them any longer and I am not going to get into all of that, but that is where I started. (see Day 100 #AutismStreaks!)

I am not a runner, never was, never will be, but I always loved to walk. I can and will walk for miles when time permits or when I am not in the midst of a slump where I can not get motivated to do anything exercise-related, even with the added incentive of raise funds for charity.




I walked a decent number of miles between March and June 2013 and in late June or early July, I decided I would join a few other folks on a 100 day streak. This meant walking every day for a 100 days, with 1 mile being the minimum walk. I was never one to bother with a mile. In my mind, a mile – 15 minutes was not worth the effort fitness-wise and if I could not do at least 3 miles, it was not worth the time. Unfortunately, this is still my mindset and I know it is wrong – any type of exercise beats doing nothing at all, but that one mile minimum did help get me through the streak. Most of the time I was able to walk 3, 4 sometimes more miles on any given day, but on rainy days or stormy days, that mile minimum came in handy. Of course all of the miles I walked between March and June did not count as they were not always consecutive days.

So I had my motivation and between June/July and September, when I hit my 100th day, I was able to book

“294.15 miles, Average 2.9 miles per day! Maybe not an impressive feat for some, but for me; who can talk myself out of any form of exercise faster than DC can eat a cheeseburger, it IS!”

I continued the walking streak for another 38 days, and then just decided to  walk, without the pressure of having to make the time every single day.
I met all of the Challenges:

September 70

September 23, 2013 – @charitymiles – I hit #September70 with 71.253 #charitymiles today! (Also day 99 #autismstreaks )

October 80

October 23, 2013 – I hit #October80 @charitymiles 80.696 miles in October (streakday 129)

November 90

November 30, 2013 – I Hit #November90 – by the skin of my teeth – 90.10 @charitymiles in November for @MichaelJFoxOrg, @specialolympics, @LLsusa & @wwpinc #woundedwarriorproject

December hit and I was beginning to slack off. It was cold and I am a baby when it is cold.
I ended 2013 with 669.00 miles clocked and promising myself to beat that total in 2014.

I didn’t………

I gained some weight….. which just makes me even less motivated.



I do realize that weight gain should be motivation in itself, but it works in the reverse for me. I am one of those people who won’t go to the gym until I lose weight.

Photo Credit – Gilmore Girls In the Clamor and the Clangor

Lorelai: It’s my gym card.
Luke: You joined a gym? … Luke: Did you go?
Lorelai: God, no. I was way too fat.
(Gilmore Girls: Season 4 – episode 11 – “In the Clamor and the Clangor”)

My facebook, twitter, instagram and Charity Miles friend, Grove added me to his charity miles team and I have been a sorry excuse of a team member. I check the stats often hoping I am not the team member at the very bottom, so far I am not THE bottom, but I am close.

I accepted a challenge made by fellow Blogger, Paul that I have yet to live up to.  Now it is November and I have done next to nothing.

So after 3 or 4 days of  posting an “I walked” status, I am feeling a little more motivated. I understand that a mile/15 minutes is better than doing nothing at all. I know I have to change my mindset about fitness in general. I am working on it.

Most of my miles since the 100 days ended have been to benefit MichaelJFox.org or Special Olympics. DC has the app on his phone as well. He knows how to turn it on, pick Special Olympics and get it started. I will have to get him back “in motion” too.

I am writing this post with the hope that publicly shaming myself may just be my motivation.
So, Paul, your challenge is accepted (again) and Grove, I am hoping to climb out of the bottom of the leader board.

7lbs 6 oz – my actual birth weight

  From September  24, 2013 – Day 100 #AutismStreaks!



Check out Charity Miles at: http://www.charitymiles.org/

A Series of Ridiculous Events – Revisted

 

Busy week, so….. a repost from last year. This series of events will forever make me laugh ~  From November 2013

 

 

 
Many of my stories are about my son, DC and his autism. I suppose this is one of them, in a round-about kind of way. Ten years later, this series of mishaps still makes me shake my head and laugh.
DC does not like to have “baby-sitters”. He is good with the people he had after school and now that he is finished with school, the people he has after work.  He is fine with that because they are here when he gets home and I am not; I am still at work. If I am home and then leave him with someone; that is a whole different ball game. He doesn’t tolerate it well, at all.
Add that to that the fact that he will not go to sleep until I get home. He is alright for a few hours but after awhile he will begin asking/ repeating “Mom is coming home soon”. There is nothing anyone can say to make him stop asking/repeating that phrase.

(File that, bit of information for later)

Now, onto Doug…..

Doug is always the last to embrace any sort of technology. In 2003 (or 2004), he did not own a cell phone. But, in his defense, that was still a time when not everyone owned cell phones. We were still required to actually KNOW other people’s phone numbers.

Doug had my cell phone number programmed into his landline – “Speed Dial #2” – my home phone was “Speed Dial #1”.

Many times I mentioned that this was not the best idea. Some day he would need to call me and he would not be at home to hit “Speed Dial 1, 2 or 3 (3 being my work #) and he would not be able to get in touch with me.

(File this bit of information for later as well)

That particular year a group of parents got together and decided to make an attempt to pressure the Town Park and Recreation Department to develop Adaptive Recreation Programs for our special needs children. There were really no programs available at that time and we believed that it was only fair to have programs available to our kids just as they were available to all of the other children in town.

This project required quite a lot of time, parent meetings, petitions, and meetings with Boards, Commissions and the Town Council. It did not help our cause that this was a particularly hostile budget year; a proposed Zero budget increase year.

On the night of the Town Council meeting when they were to approve or not approve the proposed budget, Doug came over to stay with DC, so I could attend the meeting along with the other parents in the group.

I told him it would probably run very late since, as I said earlier, this was a very volatile budget year.

(“Very late” – another point to file for later)

I told him he could try to get DC to go to bed, but if he couldn’t he should just let him “relax” on the couch and with any luck, he might just doze off.

The meeting was long… very long. I checked my cell often to be sure there were no problems at home. I even went out into the lobby to call home around 9:30 and told him again that it was going to be late.

When it got to be about 11:00pm, I started to worry that if DC was still awake, and chances are, he was; he was really going to be driving Doug crazy asking for me. It was also a school night and I didn’t want him to be up that late.

One friend, knowing how obsessive I am about weight and my backside, said jokingly “If you get up now, your a## will be on live TV” as the council meetings are televised live (file that too!). So I stayed. After another 15 minutes, another friend and I decided we would risk it and got up and left together.

I got home around 11:30 to a note on the kitchen table:

It’s 11:15! Where are you? We went out to look for you.

So now I’m home, and they are out looking for me! Doug had no cell phone, remember, so I couldn’t even call to say I was home.

It was another 15 or 20 minutes before they came back. DC is now upset because not only was I not home, but Doug dragged him out at 11:15 to look for me as if I was lost.

I asked why he didn’t just call me  if he was so worried or if DC was driving him that crazy.

Blank stare…… crickets……..

BECAUSE HE DIDN’T KNOW MY CELL NUMBER AND HE COULD NOT HIT “SPEED DIAL #2”!

He then told me that they were searching the Dunkin Donuts hoping to find me there.  When he didn’t find me at the Dunkin Donuts’ in town, and the one in the next town over, he decided to look for me at my friend Donna’s house, because he assumed we were there  “gabbing”. Luckily they stopped back at my house first before barging into Donna’s house at 11:45PM.
!!!???!!!

Why didn’t he drive to the Town Hall? They had to go right by on the way to the first Dunkin Donuts and again on the way to the second.

“Who would ever think that a meeting would go on that long?! You people must be crazy to sit at a meeting that long!” (I said VERY LATE, I did, TWICE!) – If we go back to our “filed information” we remember that the meetings are TELEVISED –LIVE and he only needed to turn on the TV to see it was still in progress.

To add insult to injury, he wrote the note on THE BACK OF DC’s HOMEWORK!

So now, I am trying to get DC to bed and desperately trying to erase the note on the back of the homework page and seriously considering “loosing” his homework just so his teacher wouldn’t have the impression that I was out gallivanting (yes, gallivanting, I’m old) to the point that they had to go out looking for me.

So what did I take away from this series of events, you might ask?
-          Wear a long coat to all televised meetings.
-          I obviously don’t get out much, so 11:15 is cause to send out a search party.
-          I must spend much more time at Dunkin Donuts than I ever realized.
-          I should leave messages at random Dunkin Donuts in the event people may think I am missing.
-           Trying to erase crazed notes written on the back of my son’s homework is futile. –  Fortunately I had a parent/teacher conference the following week and his teacher got a kick out of the story. And… yes… she did see the note.

And regarding “Speed Dial #2”

– Never pass up the opportunity to say “I told you so”

but......no one will know what you are supposed to be

In the event that it still isn’t apparent to everyone…….. I LOVE HALLOWEEN, and I couldn’t be happier that DC loves it as much as I do!

“But, no one will know what you are supposed to be”, is something I have been told quite often on Halloween over the years. I sometimes have a very odd sense of what is funny or what, I’m sure other people will get. They don’t always ‘get it’ but I am cracking myself up so no one else needs to join in.

DC and I begin planning Halloween in August. He must have a costume for every event he attends and me, being me, just LOVES this!

As I can always come up with the odd costume, again, thinking I am just totally hilarious, more often DC will come up with a costume that is not a costume at all, just a character wearing regular clothes or worse, a costume that does not exist or that no one has ever heard of except for DC – who is watching very old or obscure musicals or Disney movies.

There was the year that he wanted nothing more than to be “Charlie Bucket” for Halloween……..
Basically, Charlie Bucket is a boy with blonde hair.

(Charlie Bucket – Photo Credit – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

Alrighty, then…….

In my mind Charlie’s birthday scarf was red – it wasn’t,  but I think I duplicated the jacket (doesn’t show up well in the photo, but it was very close), the hair and hat as closely as I could. I added a Golden Ticket to his trick-or-treat bag, for added recognize-ability  and I think I came pretty close to turning DC into “Charlie Bucket”.

and ……on a side note, the bag must always match the costume….

Even with the addition of  Willy Wonka and an Ooompa Loompa , people who did not know DC personally had no idea he was in a costume..

Then there was the year that DC wanted to be “Daddy Warbucks” from one of his favorite musicals,  Annie. I had planned to dress as Annie, but I broke my toe – the first in a very long line of toe-breaking incidents – so I could not walk around the neighborhood with him. Still,  I assumed that most people would know who Daddy Warbucks was even without Annie by his side………They didn't.

Even with the addition of Sandy the dog to his trick-trick-or-treat bag, most people thought he was Mr. Six.
(Mr. Six was one of his choices a few years later and yes, everyone “got it”)

(Photo Credit – Six Flags Amusement Park and *Al (at work) – Graphic Artist who works magic with my Halloween Pics every year.)

I always do try to embrace his costume requests especially when he does come up with a character from a TV show or movie that is more age-appropriate than his usual choices. Generally when he does actually choose something or someone from a television show, it is usually a show that has not been on the air for years. He tends to discover favorite TV shows long after they are out of the public eye, but progress is progress and I will take it.

This year, he surprised me.

DC’s first costume of the 2014 Halloween season was “The Doppler Effect” (Sheldon – The Big Bang Theory) – He loves the Big Bang Theory and as I said,  I will go out of my way to encourage anything he might like that is more age-appropriate than the TV shows and movies he normally gravitates to. Obviously, he did not say “I want to be the ‘Dopper Inact’ (DC-speak)” but he did want to be Sheldon, which would have been easy to do, but as he’s worn his Bazinga shirt to death, so we went for the Doppler Effect.

(Sheldon, The Doppler Effect – photo credit
teamliquid.net)

No, not everyone knew who he was “supposed to be”, but he didn’t know or care. It was funny to the people that did “get it” and that is good enough for me.

Our next party costume was one that, not only did I think no one would have any idea about, but it was really difficult to find a photo on-line to copy from – The Timekeeper from “Spy Kids, All the Time in the World” – and yes, we are required to say the full title of the movie every time it is mentioned.

(Timekeeper – Spy Kids All the Time in the World – Photo Credit: Disney – Spykids)

Fortunately, I found some “Bag O’ Gears” on Amazon along with goggles that looked close enough even before gluing said gears all over them. The costume, of course was not exact, it really wasn’t even close, but gears were added, a pocket watch and a flask with a compass, looking close enough to a clock to fit the theme. I thought it made the point and more importantly, DC loved it. As it turned out a few people other than DC  had actually seen this movie and knew right away who he “was supposed to be”.

The Timekeeper,the challenge of our Halloween season, “nailed”, according to a few reviews, we moved on to our final party before Halloween night.

The Beast…. because of course, there must be at least one Disney animated character in the mix.

This was not DC’s first Halloween as the Beast, but years ago, it was much more difficult to find a Beast costume, so again, we had to go “makeshift” and put random pieces together to get the effect. A friend of mine happened to have a mask, so that really helped.

This year, he had the real thing, straight from the Beast’s wardrobe – because, as you know, the Beast is no longer a Beast, he is a handsome Prince, he has no need of this outfit anymore.



The one costume that continues to make the list from the time DC was very young and still to this day is “Jim Dear” from Lady and the Tramp.

(sigh….)  A man in a suit…..

Not my idea of a Halloween costume, but – this is not about me….
……not ALL about be, anyway.

(“Jim Dear” and Lady – Photo Credit – Disney’s Lady and The Tramp.)

This year, while purchasing a 40’s style hat for DC to wear to an event we attended, I came across and purchased a derby type hat as well.

Next year I will give in to his request for a  “Jim Dear” costume. I suppose I will be shopping for a stuffed Lady and Tramp, and whatever else I can come up with to make “Jim Dear” recognizable. I have 7 months to think about it.

I began writing this post almost two weeks ago after DC attended his first party of the season, holding off publishing until the last costume of our season ‘dropped’ – on Halloween night.

The following is a combination of my encouragement of DC’s affection for something popular, age appropriate, something he actually thinks is funny, and me thinking myself quite hilarious.



We are just going to let you guess.