asking, answering, and coming home

I spent hours yesterday and today looking for a set of vampire teeth. Not for me. For my sister, who is going to be a vampire a la Twilight, meaning as smoking hot as I can comfortably allow my 12-year-old sister to be. So far we have blood red lipstick and blood red nail polish, or, as an alternative, black lipstick and black nail polish. She's going to decide on one or the other once we've figured out her eye makeup. Seriously.

On the other side of the gender line is my 17-year-old brother who was asked to his school's Halloween dance last week. It's this Saturday and when I showed up yesterday he still hadn't answered. Which was a better place than where he was on Tuesday, when he wasn't sure if he could even go to the dance. Once he found that he could dance the night away with Sally (no nym needed), that was all he needed. But girls need closure, and this is the easy kind. She had asked with the classic "I'd pea my plants if you went to the dance with me," except she somehow managed to use candycorn instead of peas, which ruins the pun. Oh well. We (and by we I mean I came up with the idea, executed it, and drove him to Sally's) answered with a pair of dollar-store Halloween boxers filled with peas and displaying the lines "I was so excited you asked, I pea-ed my pants. Yes."

I'm not sure if this post counts as griping or celebrating. I love being home with Maryn and Seth. And I like helping them plan costumes (Seth is going as Ricky from I Love Lucy--apparently Sally's a redhead) almost as much as I like reading over their English homework or leaving them and the house behind to take the dog on another round-the-neighborhood walk (for the record, our neighborhood consists of two rather steep hills that we live in the "valley" of). The view from the mountain is perfect and I really don't mind getting up at 6:20 to wake Seth up and then being told he needs his eggs.

Really.