Halloween 2011

Did I take my daughter trick or treating? No. Why not? Because if I showed up to your door step holding a fussy baby, who only drinks milk, asking you to give her a Butterfinger because it's her favorite... you'd slap me in the face.

With that said... I did score some candy from my CrimLaw professor. That and a nasty story about a guy who bit off the fingers of his girlfriend when he was tripping on LSD. Spooky and delicious (the candy was delicious, not the story...)

Our Halloween night was spent with my parents who were in town for a few days to celebrate my dad's birthday. We grabbed some dinner, then headed back home to hold the last round of the 3rd annual family pumpkin carving contest. I come from a freakishly fairly competitive family. You dangle a prize in front of our beautiful faces and it's on. With almost the entire family being in different states from each other, we each were responsible to carve pumpkins and take photos of them. Then we'll find a completely unbiased judge to pick the winner, hopefully mine.

What did I carve you ask? Oh, just a grotesque witch that I carved out of the pumpkin complete with straw-like hair and a nasty mole on her face that rivals any pumpkin carved on Food Network's Halloween Wars. Do I think it should win? Of course I do. Will it win? Probably not because my dang father carved a pumpkin inside of a larger pumpkin and the crowd went wild. The Mrs.? She carved an Apple apple in the pumpkin and called it iPumpkin. I'm telling you folks, this is some serious business up in here.

When all was said and done, the freakiest thing we saw on All Hallow's Eve was Derek Hough on DWTS. What did he do? Nothing special, that guy just freaks me the heck out. 

Till next year pumpkin carving contest... till next year.

Etiquette.

There is an unwritten rule in the cannon of church etiquette that grants high school girls the privilege of wearing their prom dress to Church the Sunday after prom. Some girls even try stretching the rule to cover two Sundays. But with that said, this same rule does not apply to Halloween costumes being worn to church. 

This rule especially does not apply when you are thirty. This rule double especially does not applies when that costume is a witch. Just saying, the leggings and eye makeup were distracting. 

FYI, if you're trying to watch the scary movie about prom, you want "Prom Night" not "Prom". While both are highly disturbing, only one was written to be.

Again?

Again. Again is such an interesting word. Pair it with any corresponding punctuation mark and you enter into vastly different territories: Again! Again? Again. Again; (does anyone really know how to use a semicolon? See my attempts below...) you get the general idea. When I think of the word again I can't prevent the little radio in between my ears from blasting B-Spears' classic "Oops! I did it again." (notice her lyricist- yes, I'm assuming, rather confidently, that she does not write her own music- used a period after again; very declaratory of your Brit Brit). She sings it so enthusiastically that I almost immediately assume trying to do something 'again' is something to sing about while wearing a skin-tight red leotard. Well, I'm not really sure that I'm feeling that way with the start of another blog. I don't typically wear red.

I believe there are two kinds of writers: ones who have to write to get their words off their chest, using their literature as a confidant, hidden from the rest of the world; and the ones who write so others will read, hoping their meager thoughts transcend beyond the glow of the screen. I'm the latter of the two. I worried with other blogs that I would write and write and write and no one would read. I approached each "post" with a mixture of trepidation, anxiety, and excitement hoping I would write the post that would magically yield a bevy of comments. I never wrote that post. I imagine I never will. But I guess this blog is completely worth it if one day, years from now, my daughter will read it (and other future kids- although no mom, this isn't any announcement). 

She's only two months. She's learning that her hands are hers and how to make spit bubbles. She's in a world where almost everything is entirely new. She's got one heck of a mom, who intuitively knows how much lotion to use post-bath, if a diaper is on too tight, the difference between a grunt of conversation and one of devastation (diaper devastation that is), and whether or not a feeding is in order. And she's got a dad who's trying his best. 

I'm calling this blog "Nightlife to Nightlights" as I am journeying into the role of fatherhood. Things in my world are so vastly different than they were 11 months ago. This blog will certainly highlight many of them, although not exclusively. I'm certainly no authority on this transition, and thus won't devote this entire forum for wisdom- instead it will mostly likely be wisecracks.

While with a group of friends tonight, I was explaining how becoming a father doesn't seem to have taken my life in a different direction; but rather, that I became on an entirely different track than I was before; a track that greatly prevents me from remembering what it was like not to be a father. Life, in every way, is better with our little Gooby. It was the right time to have her. We regret none of it. I hope Gooby won't either. So one day Gooby, you'll hopefully read this and laugh as your old man figures out how be come an "old man". 

FYI, Blogger does not limit how many blogs one can start and abandon. So here it goes; again.