act your age, not your shoe size

so we pretty much live out in the sticks. we've got our wal-mart and our home depot and an entire antique shopping district but as far as "real" shopping goes, well, we've got to drive all the way in to san antonio.

and as we do, we find it necessary to pass by the evil "bass pro shop".

now, i'm not saying there's anything intrinsically "wrong" with bass pro shops ... it's just that being married to the guy i'm married to we rarely pass BY the bass pro shops where we don't have to stop and GO IN TO the bass pro shops.

and that's just not my kind of shopping.

camouflage bedding.

beef jerky.

fishing boats.

turkey jerky.

guns.

alligator jerky.

did i mention that this bass pro shops it's absolutely HUGE? and that they carry jerky?

which means i can lose john in about 10 seconds flat only to find him 2 hours later caressing a 12 foot long smoker/grill you can actually hook up to a trailer hitch and cart around town.

it's enough to make me curl up underneath the stuffed elk and cry. you know the stuffed elk over by the indoor fish pond stocked with thousand pound catfish that terrify my 4 year old. actually, i find them kinda scary too.

you may have seen us going in to bass pro shops before. i'm the 43 year old adult splayed out on the million degree asphalt kicking and screaming. that tantrum-throwing adult? yep, that's me.

riley and i did discover a little somethin' way up on the second floor the other day, though, right behind the "bow hunting" department.

they carry women's shoes ....

and not just the hip-wader-slogging-through-the-swamp-frog-gigging kind of shoes but REAL shoes. girly shoes.

you know, the kind where your toenails show.

so, naturally, riley and i proceeded to go to town trying on shoes while john and "his" son were downstairs, lost somewhere in the bait aisle.

and that's when i realized my riley, my precious little 11 year old daughter, has surpassed me in shoe size.

in fact, nothing in the bass pro shops inventory fit her.

she's already a size 11+.

so we went toe-to-toe and it appears her big toe, the boss of all the other toes, is the culprit.

he's huge.

he's the goliath of big toes in the big toe world.

even in a pair of flip flops* her big toe hangs over the edge like a cliff diver eyeing the rocks below.

*sidebar: we used to call these "thongs" but daughter informs me that today's proper use of the word "thong" implies fabric being crammed up your fanny crack and therefore it's not appropriate to announce in the middle of the bass pro shop shoe department that we're intersted in TRYING ON THOSE THONGS. which, of course, gives me license to stand there saying THONGS THONGS THONGS THONGS over and over thereby driving her in to a humiliated pre-teen frenzy.

now, i have to admit, my first thought was "oh dang, she's outgrown everything i'm going to be able to buy off the rack ... she's going to require custom-made italian shoes for everything ..."

but then i was overcome with the "she's only 11 ... how BIG ARE HER FEET GOING TO BE?"

and then i looked over and realize this sweet little 11 year old girl also understood the unspoken - all the cute shoes she sees in nordstrom and macy's and neiman marcus and sometimes target aren't going to fit her.

and just when i think she might be tearing up she comes up with this AT LEAST WHEN SOMEONE TELLS ME TO ACT MY AGE, NOT MY SHOE SIZE I CAN TELL THEM I AM.

and i'm relieved 'cause she's let me off the hook ... i don't have to justify marrying and procreating with a 6'7" man who is the carrier of the "huge foot" gene.

last night we were "chatting" about uncompleted chores and she looked at me, serious as can be, and told me to "stop messing with the sasquatch" ...

sasquatch? did she just call herself a sasquatch?

AWESOME. THAT'S ONE LESS HALLOWEEN COSTUME I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT.

crap, it's almost halloween ...

at least it feels like it around here. day after day the catalogs roll in. fancy costumes that cost a fortune and fall apart while my kids are still standing in the driveway.

yes, i've bought them.

yes, i'll continue to buy them.

why? genetics.

you see, in spite of the fact that i do consider myself a fairly creative person, i inherited "costume-block" from my mom.

i just don't see it: how to take a relatively normal-looking person and transform them via wildly creative, innovative and inexpensive measures in to something akin to a mardi gras float.

my mom couldn't pull it off when we were kids and, so far, i haven't managed to overcome this disability either.

so, i resort to buying them.

one year i did manage to recycle riley's dalmatian costume by stuffing wyatt in to it and then dressing riley up like cruella deville. that was pretty cute and maybe my highest score yet.

but this year, dangit, the superhero thing just won't go away.

and now the catalogs have gotten greedy ... they're including costumes for EVERYONE ... including mom, dad and the dog.

so, picture this: one big happy family, all dressed up from "The Wizard of Oz", heading out for an evening of group trick or treating.

this is the subliminal message i hear: "if you love your kids you and john will dress up like a big dorks and walk around in the dark asking for candy from your brand new neighbors who still, at this time, are under the assumption you're relatively normal. that assumption, of course, will be dashed into a million tiny pieces when they spot a 6'7" transvestite named dorothy on their front porch."

so wyatt's been hauling around his library of costume catalogs and our recent conversations are going something like this:

wyatt: "i want to be spiderman for halloween."

me: "yeah, buddy, you just told me that 200 times while i was buckling your carseat."

wyatt: "oh, well i want YOU, mommy, to wear THAT (pointing at the wonderwoman costume)"

me: "wow. i'm not dressing up like wonderwoman. i gave birth to your giant 10 pound 4 ounce head. that gets me out of halloween costumes forever. it's in the rule book."

wyatt: "well, can aunt bea be "spiderdog" then?

me: "i don't know how to make a "spiderdog" costume, buddy."

wyatt: "you don't have to you can just buy it right here."

and sure enough, there it is: the "spiderdog" costume.

i don't know, it'd be pretty cute. a little boy and his dog. spider-buddies.

plus, it'd be pretty good revenge on aunt bea for all the chewing she's been doing. "fine, you want to chew up my patio furniture? then you're going in to "spiderdog" timeout. wear this for a while and let's just see how badly you want to chew on my stuff."

as for riley, my sweet little innocent girl who can't bear for my bra strap to slip out and expose itself because it's "inappropriate" ... well, she wants to be "bad sandy" from the end of "Grease", not "sandy in the stupid skirt" from the beginning. nooooo, she wants to be tight-black-pants-cigarette-smoking-red-lipstick-wearing-shimmying-on-the-carnival-ride-in-johntravolta's-face sandy.

like i said before ... crap, it's almost halloween.