Busy Bee and the pedantic penguin

I am hoping there are some better pictures of Maya on my camera which Naomi has at the moment. Ms. Maya is becoming harder and harder to photograph as she is constantly in motion. Busy bee...from one of my favorite movies Best in Show from when a neurotic dog's even more neurotic owners go ballistic as the dog's favorite toy, Busy Bee, goes missing.

She went trick-or-treating in Josh's neighborhood as the houses are closer together than in ours and his sub is especially kid friendly. This year, we still have daylight saving time so it is light out at 6, the time I showed up in his neighborhood, all ready filled not only with the kids in costume but the parents and the dogs.

She was out there only about a half hour as she was getting cold and besides, she can't really eat the candy though I gave her a little piece of a peanut butter cup and someone had given her goldfish. She was perfectly happy to rush to the door, along with Sunny, the German Shepherd, to greet the kids.

Such elaborate costumes these days!

At one point, I went to the door myself to find a boy of 8 or 9.

Oh, what a cute penguin costume!

It's an emperor!!!!

Huh?

I'm  an EMPEROR penguin, not just a penguin.

OK. (I should have asked him if he was sure he wasn't an adele)

As he waddled off, Josh tsked-tsked that this poor boy probably got beat up a lot at school. Aside from being alone although perhaps a parent was waiting on a sidewalk (boys that age like to travel in packs), there is a certain age at which little boys do not want to be cute any more and refuse to dress up as cute animals. Maybe when they are 5?

I thought back to my childhood to a boy in 6th grade who hands down, was the cutest boy. All the girls had crushes on him. He and I had the same birthday. One day he showed up minus his long, black eyelashes and a good part of his eyebrows. I asked what had happened.

Tired of being cute.

Josh, a cute boy if there ever was one, bristled when he heard the word. Below at ten holding Naomi who is one.

It was a nice Halloween. Josh fretted that he hadn't bought enough candy and started being very stingy, a fact noted  by some of the recipients. I asked if he wanted to be known as the crappy candy guy. True he got some points for his glowing UM carved pumpkins, his cool dog, his really pretty wife dressed with cat ears but one 'fun-size' milk duds box? Milk duds...aptly named.

We had some wine, rationed for me (love it when your kids tell you what to do) and freshly roasted pumpkin seeds. Back at the home front, Steve reported few treaters. We have plenty of the fruit snacks left over. Indeed for a while, only the med students collecting canned goods for the homeless showed up. (I was prepared for them). Across the street, the miracle baby's parents (baby in question is now 14 but has many problems due to her extremely early birth) go all out and had all these flashing lights, blow up ghouls playing an organ, dancing skeletons, etc all over their yard. I brought Maya over earlier to admire them up close and she was terrified.

Back in Boston, the kids slogged through snow to return to a powerless house. Not so fun plus Oliver became ill.

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