I just stopped myself from having a yelling episode (proposed theme of yelling: no one ever listens to me; no one cares about anything I say; no one changes their behavior even a tiny bit based on any of my reasonable requests, even when those requests BENEFIT THOSE SAME PEOPLE; I am unable to influence anyone in this house so hey how about I go live by myself; I have said all of this NICELY a THOUSAND times to NO EFFECT) by remembering how bad I felt the last time I yelled, EVEN THOUGH THE YELLING WAS RICHLY EARNED BOTH TIMES, (1) which is progress, let’s call it! and (2) which led me to want to link to the last time I yelled, but putting “yell” or “yelling” or “yelled” in my blog-post search field got too many results, which is discouraging.
I have an additional motivation for remembering when I last yelled, because after I suppressed today’s yelling impulses, noticing as I did so that it was more difficult than usual, I remembered that I donated blood today—and suddenly wondered if the day I last yelled was ALSO a blood-donation day. I do remember it was a Friday, and Friday is when the blood-donation center nearest me has their blood drives. This would be good information to have. If I am going to be yelling-inclined on blood-donation days, there are things I can do about that. I can declare Blood Donation Days to be household-chore holidays for the blood donor (both time the Yelling Impulse occurred while making dinner). I can take to my room, for everyone’s happiness and emotional safety including mine. Etc.
Let’s swing wildly to a different topic. I realized on Wednesday that I had apparently lost my mind: I had not purchased any Halloween candy. And at first this might seem entirely sane to you: we have lived in this house for three Halloweens so far, and we have never had a single trick-or-treater. And that’s what worries me, because that is why it seemed sane to ME to buy no trick-or-treat candy. I had thought it through, concluding that if we DID suddenly get trick-or-treaters, I keep enough individually-wrapped candy and snack-cakes in the house that we could muddle through. It was only on Wednesday that I remembered our household Halloween tradition of filling the two largest plastic mixing bowls with candy and eating it freely while watching Halloween shows. (I do not watch the Halloween shows. Paul and the kids watch the Halloween shows. I take my candy and go into another room.)
And when I say it worries me, I mean it actually does worry me a little! How could I have been coasting along without thinking of that?? It’s a little as if we got to December 20th and I realized, wait, I don’t just put up a Christmas tree for the VIEWERS OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE!! Well. Anyway. After work on Thursday I went to Target and spent…let’s not discuss irrelevant details. I was pretty relieved to see candy choices still available, let’s say THAT—because when I’d tried to arrange curbside pick-up, I’d found that NOTHING was available.
My birch trees are literally in a box waiting for me to unpack them! Do you feel like an influencer?☺️
Mine arrive today since I placed the order IMMEDIATELY after reading Swistle’s recommendation. Currently hunting for my mini ornaments to go on them!
You won’t be disappointed! They’re so fun!
We get a billion trick or treaters I never buy enough candy. I always mean to get more, and when I tell you I get it at the last second, I mean I run up to the target late afternoon Halloween day. They’ve always got PILES of it. I often wonder how much of it goes right into the target dumpster the next day. I never considered that they might run out. I guess target candy stick varies regionally 🤣
Where I live (San Diego, CA) the stores seem weirdly out of the fruity type candy (skittles, nerds, starburst) and over loaded on the chocolate but especially things with peanut butter. I do love chocolate and PB, but nana needs some starburst and nerds!
I have one kid who is very keen on Nerds, and I ALWAYS buy the little boxes of Nerds, and there were NO NERDS!!
I tried to buy nerds in August for a baby shower project, and there were no nerds then either.
Uh oh. This is starting to seem a little alarming.
Here in VA-just-outside-of-DC as well!! My MIL dropped off some bags of Reese’s and KitKats (they bought candy before remembering they’d be out of town) and I went to supplement with fruity/chewy/sour… and was SHOCKED to find I had to go to multiple places before finding any. Reese’s must have done some incredible marketing with suppliers this year…!
I know everyone loves October as a scary/ Halloween movie/ show month, but I HATE SCARY MOVIES. I will not watch them.
I have purchased full size chocolate bars because I am a Fancy Lady. Because I’m me, I immediately became paranoid we wouldn’t have enough candy and so I bought three giant boxes of “fun size” candies JUST IN CASE our house is overrun. This has never happened – last year we had 42, which was far greater than the previous years – but what if this is the year? Up here in Calgary, there seems to be no shortage whatsoever, there is a ton of candy at all the stores I’ve been to. We are a Candy Utopia I guess.
I always wanted to live in a place that got a lot of kids trick or treating; when I moved here in 2017 I got my wish! The town T/T hours are just 6 to 7 pm (you can leave your light on longer but nobody on my street ever does) so I thought maybe 4 bags of fun-size candy would do it. That first year, I ran out in less than 15 minutes. (!!)
Every year I increase my candy amounts, depending on weather (cold/rain/wind will lessen the numbers of kids). This year it is going to be 60 degrees in SW Michigan, and I have 400 pieces of candy. I don’t expect it to last me the hour (and that is with giving only one piece per child).
I did notice that the bulk bags of candy, which are what I’m forced to buy, are strictly miniatures. It would cost me over $100 to buy enough fun size bars for all the kids I get here. I felt bad about that until I realized the kids don’t notice or care – there are so many that I’m just doling the candy out so fast that they don’t have time to inspect it – ha!
I’m glad you found candy- the holiday creep is driving me mad. We were just at Lowes this morning and not only were pumpkins 50% off (because who could possibly still want one on October 29), there were no Halloween decorations avaiable at all- only Christmas. I get that if people are going to buy and display decorations, they probably already have, but it’s maddening nonetheless.
Usually, the only kids we get are the ones that live in the cul-de-sac; so only a handful. But you just never know! I panicked and bought extra candy today even though I know that, particularly with it falling on a school night, odds are good we are going to have a lot of candy left over.
“…let’s not discuss irrelevant details.” 😂 Thank you for the laugh!
I have been thinking about buying Halloween candy for weeks and have still not bought any! We almost never get more than two or three kids at the door, but as you say, what about ME?
Yay for scoring Halloween candy! I *just* remembered to buy some yesterday. We moved into a new neighborhood in 2020 and Halloween has been so weird the last two years. Who knows how many kids will come to our door?! I’m hoping my supply with last!
After not living in a neighborhood for 4 years so we didn’t have any Trick or Treaters, we now live in a small neighborhood. I asked about Halloween and the neighborhood only gets a handful of kids stopping by, if that. However, the neighborhood is across the street from a school for kids with special needs. And they come through in the morning on Halloween to Trick or Treat. I kept forgetting to grab candy for them so tried to add some to my grocery pick up order. Tried being the operative word. The bags I had in my cart were unavailable when they filled my order. I’m hoping there will be some large bags left when I go out this afternoon. If not, I guess I’m getting a whole bunch of smaller bags. Or a mix of candy and chips or teddy grahams. I will make it work.
Several years ago I read a comment on some post or article where a man declared that there is no excuse for yelling at your children. He said it was a sign of immaturity and lack of self control. Grown ups will simply be firm and have direct discussions instead of yelling at their kids. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that this person is not the one in charge of making sure the kids learned proper behavior or that the house got cleaned or laundry got done or that people left the house in weather appropriate clothing. This is the person who watches someone else do those things, tells them how it really should be done, then is confused when that person completely loses it on him. If he was the person who makes sure things get done, he would understand that sometimes yelling is necessary – to be taken seriously, to not be taken for granted, to be heard, and to not go crazy and murder one’s family.
Also, even if we concede that it is not “necessary,” it is most assuredly going to happen, and I don’t need some smug supervisory parent (if he even *is* a parent) telling me that I need an excuse to be human.
Currently not strangling my spouse for telling me what our youngest ought to be doing about college applications. And not in an “it is driving me crazy that he X” way, because I could join in with gusto, but in an “he needs to hear this because it is so very wise” way. I am stifling my counterproductive comments with my kid and am just about out of stifling energy. TRY ME, SIR.
I kept forgetting to get Halloween candy at the grocery store. I remembered at Costco. Not sure if there was a spot that I should’ve looked, but I ended up buying Christmas tree shaped Reeces Peanut Butter Cups. A little off-season, but I’m guessing they taste the same.
The last two Halloweens were pandemic years and we were lucky that our kids were on the verge of growing out of Trick-or-Treating. So we turned the lights off, left no pumpkins out, and stopped handing out candy. Instead we started a new tradition of filling 2 bowls per person – one of our favourite savoury treats (think chips, cheesies, etc.) and one of our favourite candy (candy bars cut into bite-sized pieces, skittles, etc.) and watching a Halloween-themed (but not horror) movie. And we love this new tradition; the kids asked weeks ago if we could do it again this year.
Then a couple of days ago I had this dialogue with my husband:
H: “I’m working then going to hockey on Monday night, but I bought chocolate bars for you to give out.”
me: *blink, blink*
me: …?
me: “But I had no intention of handing out candy.”
H: “But aren’t you planning on watching a movie in the living room and handing out candy when the doorbell rings?”
me: “No, we’re planning on turning all the lights off upstairs and watching a movie in the basement and pigging out on our personal candy stashes. Like we have for the last 2 years.”
me: *looks in dining room and discovers literally 2 cubic feet of full-sized chocolate bars*
Seriously, why would I want to revive a tradition I haven’t done for 3 years and which would mean a constant interruption of the planned evening’s entertainment? During a time when literally half the people I know are getting Covid? What was he thinking?
Update: before the movie we did some “reverse trick or treating” in which we proactively toted a bag of chocolate bars around to our immediate neighbours who have kids before we started our movie and yeeted candy at them and their parents. Then we got takeout and shut off the lights and retreated to the basement.
This is brilliant and I love it.