Monday Morning Quarterback on All Hallows Eve

After moving to Wisconsin almost three years ago, the State and city of Milwaukee have continued to woo me with it’s blue collared roots, multicultural festivals, and amazing integration of nature into urban settings. I am smitten until the last weekend of October.

The idealized and romantic notion of trick-or-treating has been decimated. Charles Schulz is rolling in his grave. I have inquired several times to our native friends of why trick-or-treating has been sterilized to city ordained set times of daylight that appear to be randomly chosen (Saturday vs. Sunday) and never on the actual holiday. The answer is typically unsatisfying. School nights? Nope, because Sunday afternoon falls into that category of unfinished homework and forgotten permission slips. Crime is lower during the day? Perhaps, but isn’t the concept neighborhood watch based on community awareness? One would think a street filled with lit up porches and adults patrolling their front doors at the same time would exemplify this requirement. Besides, I have yet to see an increase of police patrolling in my neighborhood during the current set day and time. What really upsets me are the children who run from their families minivans en mass without costumes to my door while their parents sit in the car waiting to drive them less than a mile to the next block. A costume isn’t expensive. A sheet as a ghost or a super cape would be appreciated as a token of homage before I give you a piece of the “good” candy.

This year I played Monday morning quarterback once again about how I would have handled the parents who were trick-or-treating for their 4 month olds in strollers, the grandparents who came to my door because it was too cold for their grandchildren who sat in the car curbside, and the children who proudly said they weren’t dressed up as anything but gladly took my candy. This year I even had one 40 year old male come to my door without children or a costume. At least the teenagers who were too old to trick-or-treat donned a Scary Movie mask. The parents have missed the point of this holiday. I found myself playing judge; a role I loathe. The kids who wore costumes got better candy and more pieces. The ones who actually said, “trick-or-treat,” and had manners got even more pieces of sugary loot. While I would have liked to have not given any candy to those who offended me, I didn’t mostly because I feared the consequences of property damage all because I didn’t give them a Snickers bar. But the real reason I didn’t is because penalizing the children wasn’t fair. It was their parents who made the poor choices and were terrible role models of entitlement and working the system.

The first year of living here I actually applauded the parents who brought their children to the safer neighborhoods for trick-or-treating. I even reframed the lack of costume as a lack of monetary resources to my neighbor who has lived in the same house for 70+ years. Go, social worker, go! Last year I became disillusioned when the first group of trick-or-treaters consisted of teenagers who had the audacity of opening my front door and taking the whole bowl of candy until J chased them down the street and they dropped it. This year I became bitter and feared what kind of role model I was becoming for my son.

What should be a fun holiday of community celebration has once again brought out my latent societal judgment of what is just versus what is fair. Most importantly it illustrates how the racial and social class differences are thriving and how each of us contributes to the divide, even if it is only in our thoughts. This frightens me as I mold and shape my son's evolving world view. I have lived in more segregated communities either by faith (Salt Lake City), social economics (Boston), and race (New Orleans). Only in Milwaukee have I ever had the concept of entitlement between the have and have-nots reinforced so strongly.

It is my plea to the elite neighborhood societies who organize their members-only trick-or-treating and the cities who publish their staggered approved dates and times to return to the roots of Halloween where children dress up, meet their neighbors, and become the ambassadors of community unity on the actual holiday during twilight and early evening hours. Or maybe I should have a get-off-my-lawn moment and suggest that if they want to regulate tradition of day and times, why not add in age limits (like Virginia, Seattle, and Illinois) as well as a costume requirement.

Cue the Beastie Boys

"Sabotage" may be my theme song, or so I fear.

This isn't a new topic for me, in fact, I've probably mentioned it a million times. Yes? No? If I haven't, it's only because I've written thousands of imaginary entries in my head about this topic. What might be called self-sabotage is what I like to call, "making life more interesting." But, unfortunately it doesn't. It just adds more problems I can obsess about which is not more interesting, but keeps the pharmaceuticals in business for my anxiety meds alone.

J and I have a host of expenses this month we were not exactly counting on hitting at once. Isn't this always the case? We had the renovation post-Rocky Raccoon's eviction from our garage (aka new roof). We are also finally painting the house in Salt Lake because our family painter/friend finally got an opening in his schedule after waiting 2 years. And we decided our house in Wisconsin also needed a fresh coat or two before the snow flies. And now we can wave buh-bye to the cushion in our checkbook.

The cushion has always been earmarked for one thing or another, but never spent. It also provided that false sense of security when making impulse purchases on Zulily or Amazon (damn those instant gratification websites.) Being psychotically optimistic, the large expenditures provided us an "opportunity" to actually construct a budget for the first time since residency.

Most of the day to day expenditures fall within my domain as Chief Family Officer. You know, groceries, vet bills, keeping H clothed, etc. Last week I offered to host a play date. Being budget savvy I baked a bunch of breads (banana, apple spice, and pumpkin chocolate chip) instead of buying snacks. Yea me!! But then I rationalized spending the money we saved on the vet bill and baking to then buy a bunch of pumpkins, gourds, and mums to decorate our house for October. Booooo! (Pun intended for the season and self-judgement.)

Needless-to-say, J was not impressed with my choices. And well, neither was I. $80.00 doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of these things, but $80.00 here and $40.00 there adds up to things that we could do like go on a family vacation or buy a second car or make extra payments to our debt. Here's the problem: like the cushion, we have all these wild dreams of what is possible without any solid agreed-upon goals with actual time-tables. So as a result we look at one another at the end of a couple of years and wonder why we have this great safety net and possibilities, but are still in debt without a second car. I know, total geniuses, right?

Because most of the day to day stuff falls on me, I have a tendency to take the blame unilaterally and begin to spiral thinking I am self-sabotaging. I realize I cannot control things like sending J to the store for just a jug of milk and he comes home with milk, two loaves of bread, some fun bakery items, dried cranberries, and a can of malted milk. Problem is, I also come home with random items like mustard because I can't remember if we have anymore in the cupboard and God forbid we run out of it while I'm trying to make something like a vinaigrette. These things add up and now we have random malted milk and two things of mustard cluttering up the pantry. We'll just shove those next to the beets that we haven't eaten in 2 years and the canned pumpkin just in case we want to make a pie one day.

This week, to atone for my budgetary indiscretion we are eating out of the freezer entirely. So far we have had homemade chicken pot pie, pasta, and frozen vegetables. It's been healthy, balanced, and economical. We won't be able to keep this pace up because we will run out of random leftovers even though J would like us to do this every week for the next 5 months. And because I will become very depressed just eating out of the freezer and pantry for weeks at a time. The pharmaceuticals don't have enough SSRIs to cover that kind of depression.

I have no idea what else we will have for dinner. I'm trying to figure out how to get creative with things we have left. For example, it can be difficult to make a coherent meal with things like frozen butternut squash, blueberries, fish, tiny servings of multiple wild rice mixtures, and a small thing of spiced beef. In all honesty, I may lose weight just because the potential creations of my options sound less than edible. But I'm proud to say we've only bought milk and bread at the store this whole week.