Thanksgiving turkeys and a beautiful Thanksgiving turkey GIF

Happy Thanksgiving, America!!!

In honor of one of my fave holidays, I am once again going to be drawing some turkeys for you!

We start with the standard hand turkey, where I pretend I've traced my hand and drawn it into a turkey:

Gooble Gooble indeed!

My god it's adorable!!! Much better than the hand turkey I attempted to draw several years ago:

Next, I decided to up the realism with this bad boy:

Once again, light years ahead of what I sharted out two years ago:

Okay, so what's next? An incredible animated turkey GIF?!?!?! YOU BET YOUR ASS!

I'm gonna make you scroll down to see it, because I don't want to spoil the surprise. You're going to love it though!










Keep scrolling -- you'll be there soon!












OMG so excited!











This turkey is gonna blow your mind!

Well, if this doesn't put you in the mood for Thanksgiving, there's simply nothing I can say or do to help you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Eat dem turkeys.

Why Santa is skipping our house this year: Volume 1

I'm not one of those "I'm not going to lie to my kids by telling them there's a Santa when there isn't" kind of people. I love Santa, and goddammit my kids will believe in Santa until they're 12 if I can pull it off.

However.

This year, I don't think Santa is going to be stopping at our house. Why? Because Audrey is VERY VERY NAUGHTY. In fact, this post is merely Volume 1 because I have a strong feeling there will be many more disciplinary infractions over the next month.


She threw plastic bags all over the kitchen

This little monster walked herself into the pantry and ripped the bag of plastic bags off the wall -- hook and all. She then marched back out into the kitchen and, bold as you please, turned the bag over and shook it until all of its contents had fallen on the kitchen floor.

"A big bag full of fun toys for babies to play with? Tell Santa I know exactly what I want!"

She made sure to maximize the damage by spreading the bags everywhere. At least 60 plastic bags blanketed the kitchen floor. By the time she was done, you couldn't even see the laminate anymore -- it was bag world.

Also, she was wearing some Christmas jammies at the time, and her shirt said "Dear Santa: I can explain!" Best start talking, kid.

It took a lot of effort to get ALL the plastic bags out, but when it comes to vandalism, Audrey is nothing if not fully committed.

She threw Christmas ornaments all over the kitchen

I decided to get a head start on Christmas decorating, so I brought the box of decorations downstairs and opened it up. As I switched out pictures and hung stockings by the chimney with care, Audrey took it upon herself to open the tub of Christmas tree ornaments and remove them one by one until they were all over the floor. Naturally, the hooks to attach the ornaments to the tree all managed to fall off, meaning the mess I got to clean up consisted of 50 colorful balls and 50 little green hooks.

You get coal in your stocking, child.

"Don't worry, Mommy; of course I am going to clean all this up when I am finished." 

If you look carefully, you can see several ornaments have been shoved into the planter amid the fake flowers. You know, for science.

She threw her binkie behind the dryer

Audrey's diaper changing station is on top of the dryer in the laundry room. Usually, I can keep her distracted during a diaper change with a singing elephant, a tube of butt paste, and a couple rounds of If You're Happy and You Know It.  But not always. The tube of butt paste has ended up behind the dryer on several occasions.

Audrey loves her binkie. She doesn't get to have it very often (mostly just naptime and while sick or teething badly), but she always wants it. If she sees it and isn't immediately offered it, she loses her mind. If I take it away from her, she loses her mind.

So imagine my surprise when she pulled her binkie out of her own mouth mid diaper change and threw it behind the dryer. The worst part? She then looked right at me, smiled, and said "uh oh!" Like it was a friggin accident.

That was not an accident, kiddo. I watched you take it out of your mouth and throw it back there. It was a first-degree premeditated binkie-tossing.

And of course, since she loves her binkie so much, she then stood there crying, whining, and trying to pull my pants down for the entire 10 minutes it took me to get the damn thing out from behind the dryer using a broomstick and duct tape contraption.

Santa will bring you one present this year, and it's this:

She took the ornaments off the tree and threw them

I had a feeling that decorating the tree with ornaments would be a big risk this year with a curious and mobile toddler around. But ever the optimist, I decided to do a little trial run to see exactly how Audrey handled it. So I pulled out those shatterproof ball ornaments and hung a few of them at varying heights.

Audrey immediately grabbed any ornaments she could easily reach and yanked them off the tree, chucking them across the room. As for the ornaments she couldn't easily reach, no problem -- she just used the tree to pull herself to a standing position, used the tree to pull herself onto her tip-toes, and then pulled down on the tree until the ornaments came within reach.

She then chucked those across the room too.

"I don't like where you've put this one. I think it would look much better under the dining room table."

We're going to try decorating the tree with tinsel instead, and then bows as the final backup plan. If all that fails, we'll have a naked tree with nothing but the built-in lights instead. And Santa will save a little time by flying directly past our place.



She keeps stealing the snowman

There is a family of stuffed snowmen that lives on a side table, and Audrey is obsessed with them. She waves at them every time she sees them, and steals the smallest one whenever she gets a chance, hiding him in her usual spots (the Zany Zoo, the tree house, and now of course the Christmas tree. Yes, she hides things in the branches of the Christmas tree).

I tried moving him out of her reach, but that turned out to be an even worse idea. Next thing I knew, she had pushed a box over from next to the recycling bin and was attempting to climb on top of it so that she could reach the snowman.

So now I just let her kidnap the snowman as needed. I rescue him, she kidnaps him again, and on and on we go until Christmas comes and goes and Audrey receives no presents whatsoever.



She threw scrambled eggs on the floor while making full eye contact with me

The throwing of food on the floor I could handle. That's just something that toddlers do. But the fact that she held eye contact the entire time, staring directly into my soul as she picked up the piece of food, moved her hand over the side of her high chair, and then flung it onto the ground while daring me to do anything about it? That shit was uncool.

YOU ARE NOT THE ALPHA, AUDREY. I AM THE ALPHA.

SANTA AIN'T BRINGIN' YOU SHIT.



Except I'm 100% full of it. Of course she's going to get a million presents. Because of course she is.

Look at that little face! How can you not give a child that cute all the plastic bags she could ever want!??!

(don't answer that. I know.)

Volume 2 is located here

An art gallery of beautiful things I've drawn that you haven't seen yet

You guys think I just draw pictures for this blog? FALSE! I draw pictures to annoy other people on the internet as well! But don't you want to see them? They're fantastic! Please enjoy this gallery of some of my beautiful artwork that has graced other corners of the web. And of course, I shall present these with no context whatsoever, because it's way better that way. I assure you that there WAS context. Probably.


"Benjamin Franklin sleeping but pretending to be awake with the help of some ultra cool glasses"
Vandalism of another picture
$5,000

"Bird that has flown into a window and shit itself upon impact" 
Tracing on a photo
$10,508

"Cannon that dispenses babies via laboring woman in the cannon's depths"
Original artwork
$1 million

"Pirate captain of large log being dragged by a dog"
Vandalism of another picture
$8,351.54

"Happy meal? More like MURDER MEAL!"
Vandalism of another picture
$6

"Happy guy's day gets ruined by gravity"
Original artwork
$1.43

"The elusive Retarded Yellow Fish of the Southern North Whatchamacallit Ocean"
Original artwork
NOT FOR SALE

"George W. Bush tells Hurricane Katrina to stay away from New Orleans"
Original artwork
$27 million

I hope you've enjoyed this gallery showing. Now please hit up the open bar!

The worst movie roles

Sometimes, when I'm watching a movie, I zoom out and start thinking about the actors playing the roles. Especially the small roles -- not quite extras, but not exactly stars, either. People whose role will be listed in the credits as a description instead of a name. "Guy in bar." "Girl on street." 

I imagine that they're hardworking people desperately trying to get their big break, and if it's a big-budget big-name movie I'm watching, then I imagine they're really excited to have a part in it. Even a small part.

Even a part like ...


Racial Slur guy

I first became painfully aware of this guy while watching the movie Red Tails, which was about the Tuskegee Airmen. If you're unfamiliar, the Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military aviators in the US Armed Forces. They fought in WWII and did some pretty fancy shit.

So in this movie, at one point the Tuskegee Airmen are stationed somewhere in Europe that I can't remember. And they have some time off, so they decide to go to a bar in town. So off to the bar they go ... but when they enter, somebody in there immediately yells out something like "get out of here, n*****!" One of the Airmen then punches him in the face.

Proud moment for this fella.

Just think about that actor for a minute. Imagine he's been in soap commercial after soap commercial, struggling to get enough work just to keep his SAG health insurance. And then finally he gets his big break -- a speaking role in a big budget movie starring tons of big names! Terrence Howard! Cuba Gooding motherf***ing Junior! George Lucas poured a bunch of money into the project, too! GEORGE LUCAS FROM STAR WARS, Y'ALL!!!

GEORGE MOTHERF***ING LUCAS.

This guy must be so excited!!! And then he gets his copy of the script, and sees that his speaking role consists of calling someone the n-word and then getting punched in the face.

Wamp womp.

There are so many movies with this character in them. Some nobody who has three seconds of screen time, but those three seconds are spent shouting the worst things imaginable at the plucky underdog protagonist of the movie. You're not even a villain at that point -- you're just a piece of shit. For two seconds, and then you're gone.

And of course this poor actor/actress will invite their whole family over for a viewing party, where they'll all sit around the TV with popcorn. Our star will pause the movie before her line, making sure everyone has refilled their drinks and been to the bathroom. Once everyone's full attention is on the screen, the star gleefully hits "play" again so that everyone can hear her scream "YOU WORTHLESS F***ING JEW!" and then spit into someone's face.

Her aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends will then all clap her on the back and tell her what a great job she did. "I've never heard anyone call someone a 'worthless Jew' with more disgust and anger than you did. It was a beautiful performance. The way you hit the hard J in 'Jew' just warmed my heart. So convincing! You deserve an award for the performance, truly."

It's especially fun when "racial slur guy" is a young child. Solid parenting for sure right there.


Unnecessary naked person

Nudity absolutely has a place in movies. Don't go thinking I'm some prude who doesn't enjoy seeing boobs every once in a while. Even boobs that aren't strictly necessary to the plot can be fun sometimes. Like Halle Berry's boobs in Swordfish -- was there any reason for her to be topless in that scene? Nope! But it's cool, man.

But there's a big difference between having a main character do a nude scene that actually makes sense with the plot of the movie, and ... just randomly being nude for no reason, briefly, as your only role in the movie.

The kind of nudity that makes your name show up in the credits of the movie as "Naked Woman #4."

That's rough.

Once again, I imagine the viewing party you have to celebrate your role in the newest big budget gangster movie. Your grandparents are there. Your father is brimming with pride.

Your scene is coming up, so everyone stops talking and focuses their gaze on the screen just in time for the camera to pan through the strip club where the main characters are meeting and focus momentarily on you, naked, grinding some old dude's face while he shoves dollars into your garter.

You are not a porn star. You are not a stripper. You are an actress, in a real movie that a lot of people are actually going to see. And all you do in that movie is grind your naked ass in someone's face briefly, for no reason whatsoever except to beef up that R rating.

But at least you have that health insurance, right? So you've got that to be proud of, Naked Woman #4.


Embarrassing failure guy

This guy shows up in a lot of movies too. His three seconds of screen time are spent doing something super embarrassing -- either trying to throw a ball and winging it way off target, or getting thrown up on, or hit in the face with something, or falling off the back of the Titanic and hitting the propellers with your legs on the way down ...

Ha ha remember this guy?

And from that point forward, your only claim to fame is to say "I was in Titanic! Yeah, I was the guy who couldn't even fall off the ship properly. Broke my legs."

"Hey look, everybody -- there I am! And here comes ... okay right now ... THERE! The main character just vomited into my mouth! An Academy Award nominated actor just threw up in my mouth in a major motion picture. Isn't that incredible?!?"

At least you weren't naked when it happened, though?

Except for the times when embarrassing things happen to naked people and that's their entire role in the movie: to get hit in the face with a bag of dog poo while naked.

At least they weren't shouting racial slurs at the time, though?

Except that's probably happened too.


I'm glad I'm not an actress. These are likely the only roles I would get.

Here are some of my favorite GIFs

I've been collecting my favorite GIFs from all across the internet for a while now, and they are hilarious and make me very happy. So, instead of doing another drawing practice post today, here are some incredible GIFs:


This fellow is going for a ride on his bicycle after a bit of heavy rain:

This dog is not very good at soccer:

The dog was just waiting for an opportunity like this:

Feeling lazy? This robot will put Cheetos directly into your mouth! Sort of.

Being cool is hard, guys:

I often feel the same way.

Weird, mysterious, and funny things I've caught my kid doing

Audrey is at a very fun age now. She is incredibly curious and always seems to be on some kind of mission. It seems like she is constantly attempting new reckless ventures, just to see how they turn out. She has no sense of danger, no sense of risk, no thoughts of the future and no ability to feel embarrassment. She just ... does things. Dumb things. Funny things.

Here is a record of some of the more interesting things I've caught her doing lately:

She opened the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom and pulled out a box of tampons. My general rule is that if it's making her happy and it's not expensive, fragile, gross, or dangerous, she can pretty much play with whatever she finds. Which in this case meant that she happily crawled around our bedroom with a wrapped tampon clutched tightly in each fist.

Then she got one of the tampons open, removing it from the paper wrapper. I was curious to see how long it would take her to figure out how to eject the tampon itself from its applicator, but Jesse refused to let the experiment continue so the tampon and applicator wound up in the garbage instead. Undeterred, Audrey pulled it out of the garbage and continued playing with it.

Here she is testing gravity with empty toilet paper rolls she pulled out of the garbage. She holds them both up as high as possible and then drops them at not-quite-the-same-time. And is amazed to find that they then hit the ground at not-quite-the-same-time. This kid is gonna be a hell of a scientist someday. All you gravity-deniers, get ready to have your world rocked.

One time, she dragged her Baby K'tan (a sling for baby-wearing) all the way down the hallway so that she could see what happens when a Baby K'tan is placed in a toilet. Answer: lots of shouting and a very wet Baby K'Tan.

She dragged a pair of my shoes across a room so that she could put them on her Zany Zoo wooden toy. 

This is the Zany Zoo.

This is the Zany Zoo being stuffed with adult shoes for some reason.

I'm not sure what the goal was. She also regularly wedges blocks under the bead tracks of the Zany Zoo, for mysterious and unknown purposes. One time, I caught her putting Cheerios through a slot in the top of the Zany Zoo like they were coins into a piggy bank. I lifted up the Zoo to get the Cheerios out, and I found three pens, a hair bow, a baby sock, and a bottle cap. In addition to all the Cheerios, of course. I assume she was putting them all through the slots to keep the Zany Zoo Gods at bay.

She is constantly taking her socks off and hiding them.

She steals things and puts them in her treehouse. Her favorite item to squirrel away in there is the TV remote, but I've also found a package of baby wipes in there, shoes (both hers and ours), and a magnet from the refrigerator along with the piece of baby art it was holding up. And so many socks.

There are always non-balls stuck in the ball chute. A triangle block, a piece of Lego, a Jenga. I don't know how many times she's going to have to test the hypothesis "things that are not round will still be successful at rolling down the ball chute" but apparently the answer is 'at least 100 more times'.

Here she is trying to put a BOOK into the ball chute. Spoiler alert: it didn't work.

She took two Halloween pumpkin wall hangings (one in each hand) and brought them upstairs. She had a lot of trouble climbing the stairs with them, but when I tried to take them away, she went absolutely bonkers so I let her keep them. As soon as she got to the top of the stairs, the pumpkin wall hangings were abandoned. No word on why they needed to be brought upstairs in the first place.

One of her favorite games is to try to put the lid back on my Nalgene bottle. She will sit and put the lid on the bottle then take the lid off the bottle then put the lid on the bottle then take the lid off the bottle for fifteen minutes nonstop. One time, I thought I would teach her how to screw the cap on and then unscrew it. NO. I screwed it a quarter turn, so it didn't come off immediately when she tried to take it off, and she became so enraged she knocked the whole bottle out of my hands and soaked both me and the kitchen floor. We don't play that game anymore. 

Every night, Audrey has a bath before going to bed. And every time we get her clothes off, she immediately takes off down the hallway like a little naked bullet fired from a gun. She crawls insanely fast without the restriction of clothing and diaper, and she laughs the entire time. Just crawling down the hallway at Mach 3 laughing like a lunatic. This happens every night.

She also enjoys standing up in the bath and trying to run and jump. This ends poorly.

Every morning, I bring her downstairs and change her diaper. We stop in front of the mirror hanging on the laundry room door, and I point at our reflections and say "look! It's Mommy and Baby!" She then says something that sounds like "baby" (it's a work in progress), and grabs the mirror and starts violently shaking and banging it against the door. She doesn't know who that baby is on the laundry room door, but she hates that motherf***er.

She wants everything that I am eating. Everything. If she decides she doesn't like something, she will pull it out of her mouth and either put it back on my plate, or drop it on the floor. She put a half-dissolved bran flake back into my bowl of Raisin Bran and I just ate it because f*** it, her body exists because I made it with my own, so I can't suddenly get squeamish about eating things that have been in her mouth.

What I will not eat, however, are pieces of sweet potato that she pulls out of her mouth and then squeezes through her fist like balls of Play-doh. Delicious sweet potato that I made just for her, I might add. Asshole.

Yesterday, I picked her up from daycare and then immediately got to work getting her dinner ready when we got home. But after spending all day at daycare, she didn't want to be left alone while I made her dinner -- she wanted Mommy's attention and she wanted it now. Cut to Audrey toddling across the kitchen towards me, crying, while clutching the book "Are You My Mother?" in both hands. And the cat's in the cradle with the silver spoon.

Oh, and this morning I caught her putting a bunch of Legos into Jesse's slipper. I didn't remove the Legos from the slipper. I'm pretty excited for Jesse to find them.

LEGOS YEAH BUDDY.

So, in conclusion: how's the parenting situation going? Pretty great, duh.

Conversation ideas to make you a big hit at parties

Let's say you're at a wedding, seated at a big circular table where you only know your date and nobody else. Or let's say you're at a party where everyone is chatting together, when all of a sudden everyone falls silent at the same time and awkwardness sets in.

What can you do in either of these situations to get everyone talking again? Simple! Just initiate a circle jerk.

Everyone loves a circle jerk. What's a circle jerk, you ask, being as you are not exactly hip to the lingo and such? Literally, it is when a group of males stand in a circle and each jerks off the person next to him. I do not suggest you initiate this at weddings and private parties. No, in this circumstance, a circle jerk is the type of conversation where everyone just agrees and agrees and agrees with each other. There is no debate, no disagreement, no nay-saying; just everyone telling each other how right they are, harder and harder and faster and faster until ... well, you know.

Here are some topics that are guaranteed circle jerk initiators. Break the ice and be a hero!


1. "People who try to merge onto the freeway at low speeds are the worst! Learn to drive already!"

Nobody likes a shitty driver, and there are few more widely accepted symptoms of bad-driver-itis than trying to merge onto the freeway at 40mph while traffic flies past you at 65.

So if you hit one of those conversational hiccups where everything goes quiet, try announcing that "this morning, some guy tried to kill me on my way to work!" Tell everyone how slowly they were merging onto the freeway, and without even looking. Maybe add on that you saw them trying to type something into their iPhone at the time (using your phone while driving? Ummm, why not just hit the self destruct button, buddy!). 

Watch the circle jerk develop, as everyone in the group shares their own story of bad drivers trying to murder them. Nobody will ever defend the bad drivers -- they're like murderers only worse. There is no 'other side of the story'. There is no fair and balanced. There is only doling out vitriol towards a completely anonymous and probably mostly invented other driver. "The jackass in the white Lexus SUV" is happy to play the villain in your story, and everyone will agree with you so hard they'll need new pants afterwards.

Completely accurate non-exaggerated artist's rendering of that motherf***er who cut you off yesterday.

The entire party will soon be putty in your hands. You will be a hero for initiating this feel-good dick stroking fiesta.



2. "Parents need to stop letting their kids run wild in restaurants!"

It can be tough to initiate a good "parents need to ____" circle jerk, because there are lots of parental apologists out there and all it takes is one to destroy your circle jerk. 

This is 100% true, holy shit. If you see a parent "doing nothing" while their kid has a meltdown in Target, realize that they're (hopefully) not a shitty parent; they've just figured out that the only way to get their kid to knock it off is to refuse to give them the attention they seek.

So you don't want to complain about kids in the grocery store, or kids on an airplane, or kids who might possibly have mental issues that make it difficult to control their behavior. If you blame the kid, or talk about how much you dislike children, people will not be on your side and your circle jerk will never leave the ground. 

The issue is with the parents -- specifically, shitty parents who clearly don't discipline their children ever, and even encourage their children's terrible behavior because they find it amusing. And if you want to start this kind of circle jerk, mentioning kids who run wild in restaurants is almost always a safe topic.

Nobody is about to defend the parents of a kid who throws food everywhere while running around a restaurant screaming and tripping the wait staff. And everyone has a story about horribly misbehaved children in restaurants. There's 'kid who won't stop screaming and the parents do nothing'; there's 'kid who paints the walls with ketchup and the parents just laugh and think it's funny'; there's 'older kid who curses aggressively at the waitress and the parents think it's the funniest thing they've ever heard'; the list goes on and on.

And are you starting to get a little salty right now, picturing a kid squirting ketchup all over the booth and walls while its parents laugh and encourage the behavior? ME TOO! Everyone gets salty about that! This particular circle jerk is great because it really gets everyone involved -- parents and non. The non-parents can gloat about how they don't have kids so they don't have to deal with this shit. The parents can gloat about how their own children are absolute angels in public (due to their unbelievably great parenting, of course) and would never dream of doing something like this. Everyone can gloat about how well-behaved they personally were as children, and then turn it into a discussion of "kids these days" and "entitlement" and pretty soon the circle jerk is a mad frenzy of mutual masturbation and you are its KING.

3. "Comcast sucks!"

Have you ever had Comcast as your cable provider or ISP? Have you ever had to call their customer service, or have a technician come to your house to install or fix something? If not, do you know anyone that has?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you know that Comcast sucks and you could probably go on for at least ten minutes uninterrupted about the exact nature and degree of their suckitude. 

And so can everyone else you know.

So if the party gets quiet, mention how your internet service has been spotty lately and you're thinking you might need to call Comcast customer service to get them to come out and look at it.

The party will not be quiet again for at least an hour.

I didn't even have to make this. I just googled it and there it was.

4. "Tourists are fools!"

Even though we've all probably been a tourist somewhere at some point in our lives, that doesn't give us even the slightest bit of empathy for tourists who visit our neck of the woods.

Tourists are idiots. They stand in the way of things; they don't follow local customs and are a nightmare on public transport; they ask stupid questions and talk too loudly; they dress stupid and wear socks with sandals (it's okay when I do it, but don't you even think about it).

F*** tourists, is what I'm getting at. Bring that shit up at your party and watch everyone's faces spread into smiles as they get in on that sweet sweet tourist-bashing action.

YOU'RE A JACKASS AND EVERYONE HATES YOU AND I HATE YOU THE MOST.

5. "You know who sucks? Roommates!"

Roommates who don't clean up after themselves. Roommates who steal your food. Roommates who bring weird strangers over into your house. Roommates who let their weird boyfriends move in and sit on your couch in their boxers all day watching Botched marathons. Roommates who move out and stick you with the bill for the damage they caused to the place.

Shitty roommates are everywhere, and even if you've never had one, you've certainly got at least ten stories about other people's bad roommates.

This circle jerk is my favorite. The stories are usually so funny, and so frustrating, and they make me want to laugh and scream and choke a stranger. And there are so many of them! It can go on for hours! Literally hours!!!

F*** anyone who thinks this is an acceptable way to leave a shared kitchen.

So yeah ... what's your best 'bad roommate' story? You know you've got one, and I've got time to listen. :-)


Circle jerk on, my friends. Good luck.

2014 Halloween Roundup!

Another Halloween has come and gone, which means it's time for the post-Halloween roundup, where I recount all the various failures and flops that accompanied this year's favorite holiday.

The shenanigans started with the pumpkins. This year, instead of just going to the local grocery store and buying our pumpkins out of a giant cardboard box, I insisted that we take Audrey to the pumpkin patch. She did not care at all about this trip, and will have no memory of it later. 

"I don't understand why you gave me this."

The field was extremely muddy, which meant that Audrey's boots got muddy and the wheels of her stroller were caked. It was really awesome putting the mud-encrusted stroller and mud-encrusted pumpkins in the back of my car. In a rare moment of clear thinking, the mud-encrusted child had her boots taken off before getting back in her car seat.

"Why am I even here?"

As soon as we got home, Jesse and I set to work carving the pumpkins. Or rather, we set to work hollowing out the pumpkins -- a task that takes at least 8 times longer than the actual carving. Someone needs to invent a sort of cotton gin for pulling the seeds out of pumpkin guts ... and this device needs to cost $10 or less because let's be honest, I'm going to lose or break it annually.

The good news is, the pumpkin carvings actually turned out pretty well. As did the roasted pumpkin seeds. The bad news is, I am addicted and can't stop eating the pumpkin seeds. They are extremely salty and give me dry mouth for hours afterwards, and they mess up my insides and give me a headache. Don't care; ate pumpkin seeds.

"lol"

On Monday, Audrey's daycare had a pajama day, so of course I dressed her up in her pumpkin duds. She was not pleased.

"I am angry for undisclosed baby-related reasons!"

Something seemed familiar about this, though. So I scrolled through my phone looking for photos from Halloween last year, and what did I find?

Halloween's biggest fan two years running!

When Wednesday night rolled around, it was time for the first Halloween costume to come out! We were headed to a mom's club trunk-or-treat event, so Audrey dressed up in her dinosaur costume. Jesse did the same, dressing as Dino-Daddy.

Everything was going well until we realized the worst possible thing had occurred: Audrey had been suffering from a bit of runny bum that day, and she had runny bum'd out of her diaper and into her dino costume. We cleaned her up and changed her dipe, but the smell lingered. And the smell had transferred to the arm of Jesse's dino costume as well. Audrey had forgotten the first rule of Halloween:

"Hallowe'en" is spelled all douchey so you know this is legit.

Friday night: actual Halloween! We started out in an elephant costume inherited from Audrey's cousin. This one took a bit of getting used to ...

I like to think of her as a were-elephant completing her transition.

... especially crawling around while wearing it. The hood threw off her vision and the padded body threw off her center of gravity, so there were many faceplants. She looked as drunk as I hoped to be later in the night.

"I'm diggin' these gourds, Mom."

A few more pictures and it was time to put on the kitty costume for trick-or-treating. Jesse and I put on our owl and flying squirrel costumes as well. We were ready.

I'm not gonna deny that there's a certain amount of shame involved in taking a baby who can barely walk and isn't allowed to eat candy trick-or-treating. I would carry her from house to house, and then as soon as we rang the doorbell, I'd stand her up on the ground with her little pumpkin bucket, trying desperately to make it seem like any part of this was her idea. And then I would pick a Reese's cup out of the candy bowl, because of course I did. I'm not a moron, guys.

We didn't buy any for our own candy bowl because they were too expensive, so I had to get my fix from the neighbors. This is called "being a selfish dick."

After five or six houses, we headed back home and Audrey went to bed. The trick-or-treaters started in earnest soon after that, as it finally started to get dark. One of the neighbor kids was dressed as a witch, and she came to our door several times, always with different groups of children. Her sister also came around multiple times, first as a horse and then as a fish and then in her sister's witch hat. On the fourth visit from the witch, I asked her how her Halloween was going, and she confessed that she had been to our next-door neighbor's house seven times already.

Seven times.

That kid knows how to Halloween.


Then again, I'd like to think that I know how to Halloween too. I mean yeah, I have a little kid now, so things are a bit different. But I got candy, I drank beer, and I didn't shit myself even once. That sounds like a successful night in my book.

Awwwww yiss.

Hope you all had a lovely Halloween as well, and if you have little kids and they wore costumes, I wanna see!