night of the living franken-grinch

yesterday started out like any other. ben has been working out of town all week so i knew i'd be spending halloween night all alone but i was ok with that. i didn't have any costume planned this year either because a) i'm pregnant and have lost all motivation and creativity, and b) ben and i have no couple friends in calgary and as much as i tried to drop big hints that i would have loved to be invited to a halloween party, alas none were extended our way. luckily, my mom sent me one of those skeleton shirts with a little skeleton fetus on it so i wasn't completely sans-costume. i put on the shirt and went out the door to go to a few appointments and run some errands.

(just taking a quick bathroom mirror shot before i had to give a urine sample.)

after my appointments, i decided i wanted to buy a pumpkin since carving one seemed like an appropriate halloween night activity. i went to the nearest grocery store and started searching for the pumpkin boxes they always have at the front.

they were all empty. 

except for one pumpkin that was literally the size of a 12 year old child, and weighed about as much too (no wonder it was the last one left). i tried really hard to pick it up from the bottom of the box, but ever since i've started growing my own pumpkin things have gotten 10 times heavier. even the stock boy i finally waved over couldn't pull that sucker out, so after about 5 minutes we gave up.

i was a little bummed about the huge-ass pumpkin ordeal, but i still had a lot of other things i could kill time with. i have been working on a baby quilt for the past 12 million weeks, and was close to finishing so i decided i would work on that while i waited for "trick or treaters" to come by in all of their cute little costumes. i was really excited to hand out candy since it had been the first time in a long time that i lived in a place where i actually could!

at around 5pm i put a bowl of candy by the door and took out my quilt to work on. i turned on netflix to see if i could find a halloween movie to watch, but of course it was acting up and wouldn't load any of the movies properly. so i settled for basic crappy cable and began sewing away. my quilt was looking a little crooked so i decided to cut some of the end off to make it straight. well, rule of thumb for those of you who want to take up this time consuming hobby, make sure you're looking at the quilt straight first before you "cut" anything. my quilt started looking like a painting from the "cubism" era.

frustrated, i threw the quilt to the side and looked at the clock. it had been a whole hour and not ONE person had rang my door bell yet. i looked out the front window and saw kids walking around our cul-de-sac, so i made it very clear that our house was open for business by turning on the porch light and trying to make the front walk as welcoming as possible (aka: i threw all the garbage that had blown into our yard into the trash bin).

i was starting to get restless as this point, so i took out my phone and surfed instagram for what felt like a long time. every photo on there was of people and kids and couples and pets in all of their halloween garb, heading out to trick or treat or attend a party. saying i became jealous would be an understatement.

you see, ever since i got knocked up there's been this beast living inside of me (and no, i'm not referring to my unborn child, although it could be blamed for a lot of unwanted changes that have occurred ) and sometimes it gets poked. before pregnancy, i was a pretty calm and delightful person, but now, the littlest thing will set me off. i almost lost it on a tim horton's employee the other day when i ordered an egg salad sandwich and he politely told me that they had discontinued it at their location. he kindly suggested all the other cold-meat sandwiches available and i not-so kindly told him that i was pregnant and asked if he wanted to be responsible for killing the growing life inside of me.

i settled with the hearty vegetable soup, which was mediocre at best (that's another thing, pregnancy skews your judgment too.)

anyway, the beast had become unleashed and i was an emotional mess. by now it was almost 8 o'clock and still no trick or treaters. i watched out my window as i saw children and their parents walk by our house without even looking at it. maybe they wouldn't come by because we live next door to a creepy abandoned duplex that once was a breeding ground for methamphetamine production (and may very well now house the occasional junkie/homeless person looking for a place to hit sleep). or maybe it was the fact that the porch light i thought i had turned on was burned out (i later discovered this)  causing the complete opposite effect of "inviting". it was a little foggy and cold out so i could understand if parents just didn't want to endure that with their children, but i began to take it to heart. i couldn't believe they thought their children wouldn't be safe coming to our house, as if i was some sort of pervert!

ironically, it was at this point where i started watching re-runs of dateline's "to catch a predator".

by 9:30, i decided i'd give my quilt another go and started sewing the last step----which turned out to be a disaster because i had messed up the tension on the machine and the thread got all bunched up. i got my seam ripper out and began taking everything apart. i must have been "ripping" with a bit of force because all of a sudden i ripped a massive hole into the fabric.

and then i bawled. 

no, not cried. bawled hysterically in the middle of my living room floor by myself on one of my favorite nights of the year. you see, i'm also discovering that when anything goes wrong while you're pregnant, it's your husband's fault, so i started to curse ben's name too. he decided to work on halloween on purpose, i thought, seeing how i knew how much he loved to dress up (not). and how dare he leave me alone on one of the spookiest nights of the year! does he not know what kind of neighborhood we live in----there could be perverts running amok! and then i started cursing halloween too; what a stupid peigan tradition, i thought. if i was a parent i wouldn't want my kids going around the one night of the year where it's socially acceptable to receive candy from strangers.

and then, out of nowhere, my doorbell rang. 

i was stunned. i quickly wiped my tears away and ran to the door. on my step were the creepiest looking masks i have ever seen.

"trick or treat!" they yelled, in deep voices.

ok, so the only kids that came by were of the high school variety, but i was was ecstatic. i held out the bowl and told them to take as much as they wanted, and they said thank you and were on their merry little way. i smiled.

so halloween wasn't what i expected it to be and even though my doorbell only rang once the whole night, i felt like it ended on a good note. my quilt still looks like crap and i didn't go to any parties, but i do have a whole bag of left over candy with my name on it.

...and ben owes me BIG time, like, we're talking halloween party and costumes and pumpkin carving galore next year.