Watching: Sports Night and Once and Again.

Impulse Buy of the Day: The video of Young Frankenstein for $6 at Wal-Mart.

Halloween Shopping

Halloween Countdown: Three days until the Halloween parade and party at Daniel's school, and five days until Halloween itself.

I suddenly realized I am far behind on my Halloween preparations. I needed to pick up inexpensive black sweats for the twins' bug costumes, and yellow fabric paint to create the bee stripes on Matthew's shirt. I also needed red and black makeup for Daniel's Darth Maul face, treats for the Halloween goodie bags for Daniel's class, and candy for the trick or treaters on Sunday. So this morning, the twins and I went to Wal-Mart.

Now, I can bash Wal-Mart with the best of them, but when I need to get a lot of disparate items and I'm short on time (when am I not short on time?), Wal-Mart is usually where I end up. Today was one of those days.

The parking lot was full; apparently I'm not the only Halloween procrastinator out there. We had to park at the end of the lot and walk in. At the last minute, I remembered to go in the left hand door to avoid Elwood. Elwood, the greeter at the right hand entrance, is an elderly man who enjoys giving out yellow Wal-Mart smiley face stickers to kids. Enjoys it a little too much, in fact. He plays a game with the twins: putting the sticker on his forefinger he waves it back and forth for awhile, then holds it out to Matthew. Just as Matthew reaches for it, Elwood jerks his hand away. He dances the sticker around in front of Matthew's face, then offers it, and then pulls it away again. This goes on for awhile until Matthew becomes noticeably frustrated, at which point Elwood gives him the sticker. Then he does the same thing to Stephen. I'm sure poor Elwood means well, but it is incredibly annoying. I've finally learned to avoid his door altogether.

I managed to find everything on my list, and then some. I had the most trouble selecting the proper brushes for my two painting projects. I finally decided on several sizes of sponge brushes for the bee costume and four different sizes of natural bristle brushes for painting Daniel's face as Darth Maul.

Halloween is becoming almost as much work as Christmas. Knowing how much fun the boys are going to have makes it worth it, however.

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