Moving into a home of our own has proven both challenging and rewarding. No one has taken note of the rewards more than Mooter. She has wanted so desperately to live the life her school friends and their suburban lifestyles have bragged about. The older she’s gotten, the more these things are impressed upon her which, ultimately, trickles down the chain of demands. After all, Mooter is queen. The world is her subject.

It is usually around the holidays we are all affected just a little bit more, watching our neighbors put up their decorations for the varied special day. On our old street, no one did such a thing. Not unless they wanted their belongings stolen. Now we are lucky enough to live on a street where holidays are not only displayed on lawn fronts like greeting card vomit, it’s celebrated. This would thrill my eldest child to no end if it weren’t for the fact that her parents have not been financially able to put up cob web or pumpkin the first. And what terrible people we are for letting our neighbors show us up! And we are told every waking moment this very fact. “Why can’t WE have THAT in OUR yard, Mommy?! I want a pumpkin! Can I have a scary man? I want to have the spooky noises and dead people on our grass, Mommy!” You mean the same dead people that frightened you so badly last year that you forced all of us to cut our trick-or-treating short, pile in the car, and drive home IMMEDIATELY? “But, Mom,” you say, “I was in Kindergarten, then. I am in the FIRST GRADE now!”

Excuse me. My mistake.

And while finding affordable ornaments should be the least of my worries with this one, I was given yet another Halloween shocker. After work, I am tasked with picking up both girls. Mooter is with my Mom, Booger is still in daycare terrorizing fellow two-year-olds. I pick up Mooter first since she’s closest, plus it gives the two of us time to talk without Booger interrupting every second with “juice, juice, juice, juice, juice, juice, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, shickenfries.” Before I could tell her for the millionth time to please put on her coat and at least be ready for me when I get to the door and not be standing in the middle of my mother’s living room barely unable to tear herself away from SpongeBob SquarePants, although riveting he may be, she slaps a small piece of paper in my hand. On the paper, in pencil and large font, are numbers. Seven of them. “What’s this?” A phone number, she says. “From who?” Carter, she says. Pause. Name sinks in. Pause again. “Carter… the BOY, Carter?” Yes, she says. My mother, inches away from my face, is eating her lips to hide her smile. I shoot her the look of “Oh, hell” and quickly chastise Mooter. “You’d better be glad you gave this to me and not your father because he would have your butt in a sling and, no, before you ask, you CAN NOT call Carter the boy because he is a BOY and you are SIX and I am going to have to talk to Carter’s mother about this.” I have just turned into my grandfather. And this does not phase her, this rant I’m on. It is entertaining. Comical. A moment where, silly Mommy, she’s moving her lips and doing that loud talking thing again where she’s not really saying anything. Let me pat her hand and walk her out to the car.

I am more than ready for a shot of bourbon right now.