Two trips to AT&T Park in a week!  That is seriously unusual for us.  But the week after our free giants game was free opera day at the ballpark. This is one of the amazing perks of living here–free world class arts events.   And we got to see Verdi’s Aida.

We almost took the kids, but I think it’s good that we waited till they’re a little older.  Not because of the content of the show, which was fine, but because of the lateness of the hour.  We didn’t get home until after midnight and they simply wouldn’t have been able to stay awake and be happy that late.  Aunt Kim volunteered, unasked, to babysit at her apartment that evening and made it memorable for them with macaroni and cheese, strawberries, chocolate, and a golden sunset viewed from the roof of her building.  Then they all sacked out on her floor until we came to pick them up.  Aren’t we lucky?

Speaking of lucky, isn’t it amazing that I got to marry a man who likes opera?  Colin loves just about all styles of music, but I’ve been particularly impressed at how much he appreciates opera.  Even more than I, most of the time.  As we sat in the stadium, Colin wearing his new Giants t-shirt from the week before, the man in front of us laughingly commented that I must have tricked him into coming by making him think he was going to a baseball game.  It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about, the concepts of tricking him and him not liking opera were so foreign to me.   When I finally caught on, his benign comment made me love Colin even better.

We attended with Colin’s parents and a friend from church, which made it all the more fun.  Sonja brought Subway sandwiches and cookies and we brought water and cookies, so there were plenty of cookies for everyone!  The official attendance headcount was over 32,000 people in the park and it was really neat to look around at everyone in their casual clothes eating baseball food watching a transcendent opera.

I’d never seen Aida–never even heard the story till I read the synopsis online a few days before.  The story is fine, the music was great, but the visual parts of it were my favorite.  The costumes and sets and lighting were really, really cool.  Bright, intense blues and golds and elaborate, memorable wigs were the order of the day.  The sets featured an ever-growing Egyptian hieroglyph that looked like an eye.  All on a humongous screen with a background of the bay and a gorgeous full moon.

FYI, my sister Emily says that the woman pictured in this post is “fired” because her hat looks like a “dessert got stuck in a fan.”

Halloween used to be in my top three holidays (behind Christmas and my birthday). I loved dressing up! But sometime since college I’ve lost my excitement. I finally have an idea of why my mother always seemed less than enthusiastic. Between the energy expended to dress the kids, my expanded post-baby body self consciousness, and the lack of widely available, modest, flattering, affordable women’s costumes, I’m about ready to put on my mom uniform of jeans and a T-shirt and leave the fun to the kids for the fourth year in a row. For me, it’s a little depressing to see otherwise sane women using Halloween as an excuse to dress provocatively. But I haven’t seen much between that option and a huge ugly gorilla costume on the store shelves.

When I asked my out-of-the-box husband what I should be, he started out with “It would be funny if you were…” To which I blurted the reply “I don’t want to look funny, I want to be pretty!” He said “Great, be a princess!”

Isn’t there anything slightly more creative than a princess, with more coverage than the average party-store mini-skirted pirate costume, less dark and scary than a witch or gorilla, that doesn’t cost me my Christmas budget, and that I can look pretty in? I know it’s a challenging list of requirements, but I’d really love to re-discover my love of Halloween dress-up.

This year I asked Degen if he wanted to be a dog, a cat, or Bob the Builder (all costumes I thought I could manage).  He chose Bob the Builder so we'll see if he still wants to wear his hat this evening.

Maggie has an orange and black outfit on right now that could work, but I may try to find our old ladybug costume if I have time.  Or she would be a very pretty kitty in he sweats with a pink nose and eyeliner whiskers and a headband with paper ears attached.  So many options…

Colin wasn't allowed to dress up for work, so he wore his orange and black sweater to be festive.  I haven't planned myself a costume yet…we'll see if I can come up with something this year.

We bought a big pumpkin for $2 earlier in the week and put it outside next to the front door.  Degen likes to say hello to the pumpkin and give it a hug every time we come home from being out and about.  Then he points to it and says "stay there!" as he walks inside the house.  When we first got the pumpkin, Degen wanted to bring it inside the house and I told him it had to stay outside (I wanted it to be decorative) and ever since I guess he has to explain to the pumpkin that it can't come in.  Pretty cute, no?

I don't like gross things, even on Halloween.  Like the arm hanging out of the trunk of your car.  It may be a little bit funny in a bag with brightly-colored marketing slogans at the store, but once you arrange it on your car it becomes gross and nothing better.  Please don't do that anymore.

Scarey movies that make light of mean people hurting others aren't funny, either, and I don't like flipping through the channels on TV during October for fear of my little ones having images of violence and horrified faces of victims of yuckiness etched on their little brains forever.  Suspense is one thing, horror is quite another.  We have plenty of real horror around to deal with without dealing with the contrived stuff, too.    

So, buy candy and put big plastic bats and spider webs around your house and dress up as Frankenstein's monster, but don't pretend that the truly sick and gross and horrific is funny or appropriate just because it's Halloween.