The Inevitable, Dreaded, Halloween Party

When costumes were easy.

Grace and I belong to a mother/daughter organization called the National Charity League.  The purpose of this organization is to give back to the community and instill in our daughters a spirit of volunteerism.

This past weekend, we volunteered to get up really early and be in Ventura to help the local chapter of the ALS Association set up for one of their important walk-a-thons.  It was difficult to give up sleeping in on the weekend, but it was worth it.  What they do is so incredibly important.

There are, however, with this organization, some mandatory volunteer events - which of course is a complete oxymoron.  This Friday is one such event.  We, along with the other mothers and daughters in our class, are responsible for putting on a Halloween party for some disadvantaged kids.  And I will tell you, as mandatory voluntary events go, this doesn't feel mandatory.  It feels like a real pleasure.

As is typical of me though, I just quickly glanced at the email that came several weeks ago:  "Friday the 19...okay...3:30...yeah, yeah...help clean up for an extra 1/2 hour of community service credit...blah, blah...  Okay, okay.  I got it."

TODAY, I received another email telling me that I needed to bring balloons.  I felt lucky to have seen this email as I rarely look at email anymore since it is so clogged (2,400+) of marketing emails from every business I ever dared to simply look at once online.  (While they all have "unsubscribe" icons, they are only there for looks.)  Anyway, it occurred to me that I might have missed other information about this event so I emailed the chairwoman asking if there was anything else I needed to know - at this late date - and she got right back to me that I had to wear a costume.

And now this feels like a mandatory volunteer event.

So now I am sitting here wondering what I have in my closet that could pass for a costume.  The best I can come up with is to wear my bathing suit and go as "insane".  But that really would be insane.  And extremely unattractive.  To say nothing of scary.

So now I have to be creative.  And that always means money.  

And by the way, Grace needs a costume as well, which narrows the options because she doesn't want to look stupid.  She wants to look cool.  

Cool Halloween costume.  Another Oxymoron.