Halloween was a total blur, mainly because we spent the week leading up to it trying to iron out the bugs of the community website, and as usual I waited until the last minute to buy candy and the only thing left at the grocery store was really expensive dark chocolate that makes little kids throw up.

Great.

So now not only are we the reclusive Internet people who run some sort of online website, have you heard? That house where that little shit of a dog escaped the house one time and chased that woman who was jogging along, minding her own business, and caught up with her and grabbed the bottom of her pants with her fangs? HELLO HEART ATTACK. AND LAW SUIT WAITING TO HAPPEN.

Some people have heard it's porn we do. Some people think we're Satanists and drink the blood of aborted hummingbirds. HA! IF THEY ONLY KNEW! They'd be so thoroughly disappointed and would probably remove my name from the prayer list.

Now we're the house that gives out crap candy. Except one kid dressed up as a hippie saw the bowl and was all DUDE! I LOVE DARK CHOCOLATE! That's a boy beyond his years. I bet he's a good listener and routinely hugs his mother.

Leta went over to her cousins' house and trick-or-treated with all of my sister's kids, and they say that she got fatigued after about an hour and started dragging her feet going I'M SO TIRED. SO TIIIIIIIRED. So my niece said, fine, let's go home, and then Leta realized that going home meant an end to the waterfall of candy, so she'd say, okay, JUST MORE HOUSE. ONE. MORE. And that exact dialogue continued for twenty more houses. And I was all, really? That happened? How surprising.

And then this morning when she refused to get dressed and I threatened to take away all that Halloween candy? Apparently I was treating her "like she was zero years old." I didn't see that one coming.

We stayed home with Marlo to hand out candy and troubleshoot the website. Meaning I made it all the way to 8:30 PM, and while I slept Jon sat beside me in bed with his laptop straightening out code. 8:30, y'all! Can I get a very awkward high-five and a HOLLA! That was the latest I had stayed up in MONTHS. SOMEONE STOP ME! Next thing you know I'm going to be spiking my Metamucil with blackberry schnapps!

Next week, the dogs in costumes! Coco is still exhausted from all the brain power it took to remain still for a photograph.

I found this question from Becky O a little difficult to answer at first, and of course I had to keep pushing "never trust a man with two first names" out of my brain. Because that's just a dumb rule to live by. Because come on. CLIVE OWEN. I would trust him with my everything.

Leta and I enter her room after eating breakfast, and because I haven't slept in several days I forget the structure that we've implemented in order to get her to focus her attention on tasks that need to be completed before school. Recently we've been making a game out of getting dressed, timing her with our iPhones to see how fast she can switch out of her pajamas and into her clothes. I KNOW. The fun here NEVER ENDS. If I send you an invitation to our tooth-brushing game, you better RSVP the shit out of it.

So I've forgotten about the game and just say, "Leta, let's get dressed." And because she gets so distracted in the morning I might as well have said, "Je m'appelle le croissant."

She dives head first into bed, throws the covers over her head and plays dead. I've got little-to-no-patience at this point (insert reference to major project launch, ill-timed vasectomy, and baby who wakes up at 4:30AM since the time change) but I summon what I can and say, "Leta, I need your cooperation this morning. Get up and get dressed or I'm going to take away your Nintendo DS." You know, A THREAT. That's Quality Parenting 101.

And hoo, I don't know if it's just my five-year-old girl who is going through this phase, but she uncovers her head, slowly limps her way out of bed and mumbles, "No you're not because I'm going to hide it and you won't find it and then I'll play it without you knowing." Like Dennis the Menace, except it's Dennis the EVIL.

Now, If I had said this to my father when I was growing up, I wouldn't be alive today.

So I get right up into her face and say NO YOU DID NOT. You are not allowed to talk to me this way DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Not to instill fear, necessarily, except, yes. To instill fear. A little bit of fear is good. Oh dear god, the mail I'm going to get about this one.

And that's when it starts, what we call her Academy Award Winning Performance, and she starts saying things like, "Now I'm sad and I'm going to be sad forever. For the rest of my life, MOM."

And I'm like, dude, you can be sad. You can choose to feel this way, but we're getting dressed. Here put on this shirt.

"But you hurt my feelings and I'm never going to be happy again. Ever. For the rest of my life."

And I'm all, I know what it feels like to have my feelings hurt, that must be hard what you're going through, but now we're putting on these pants.

"But now I'm going to have a bad day because I'm sad, and then I'm going to have many bad days forever."

And there is that irresistible, generation-spanning urge to go, you know what you need? A trip to Humble Camp, a place called AFRICA. But I nip it, I shut off that valve, and I say, "I'm sorry you're feeling sad, that must be hard, now put on these socks." SOCKS THAT KIDS IN AFRICA DON'T HAVE.

And I'm not even kidding, she looks up at me and says, "You made me sad, and I don't know how to go on with the rest of my life."

A half hour later as she's gathering up her backpack and lunchbox and headed toward the car, her head hanging down in a pout, I pull Jon aside and give him a heads up that Leta is going to start her period ANY DAY NOW.