Booooo to Boo-ing

I came home on Friday afternoon after dropping Will off at the airport (a little late, due to the fact that we made it halfway to the wrong airport before either of us bothered to check if we were going to the right place) and as usual, Emily ran up onto the porch while I unloaded the car. She came running back a couple seconds later, with her hands full of lollipops, pencils and glow sticks. I wondered if she had taken out an early trick-or-treater while I wasn't looking, but when I got to the porch I saw a bag filled with goodies and a note informing me (in verse) that I had been "Booed". I was to make two copies of the note, boo two other people within 1 day, and post the note on my front door so that I didn't get re-booed.

I managed to hide most of the candy from Emily before she delved too deeply into the bag (she was pleased just to have the pencils, glowsticks, and a lollipop) but then I started worrying. First of all, Will had taken the laptop with him to Chicago, and the laptop is the computer that I always print from. Our printer is a crotchety old jerk, but it seems to get along well with my laptop and I didn't think it would take too kindly to being asked to work with a whole new computer. Will informs me now that our scanner/printer is actually also a copy machine, but I was not aware of this fact so I didn't know how I was going to make copies of the note to tuck into the two bags I was now charged with assembling. Second, I had only stopped by my house to pick up our dog and head up to my parents' house, where I was planning on spending the next 3 days. I could take the note with me to copy at their house, but that would leave my door note-free and I might accidentally get boo-ed again, which is strictly against the rules (according to the happy little ghost on my note). Also, I had planned on this weekend being a vacation of sorts for me, and I didn't want to drive the hour roundtrip back to Frederick on one of my days "off" to go shopping for the two boo bags I now needed to fill and deliver within 24 hours.

I quickly decided that I just wouldn't worry about the time constraint, I could just boo people when I came back home on Monday. And because I'm lazy, I didn't ACTUALLY get around to assembling boo-bags until today.

What to put in them was another problem. I am not really into giving kids tons of candy...I am willing to relent on Halloween, but the last thing kids need a week BEFORE Halloween is a bunch of pre-holiday candy. So then I had to assemble totally awesome bags to make up for the fact that I didn't plan to put candy in them. Oh the pressure!

But now, almost everyone I know has a note on their window. I didn't want to give a boo-bag to someone without kids because they'd probably just chuck the thing, and most of the fun of it (at least for me) was how excited Emily got when she discovered it. I could pick out a random house where I have seen young kids hanging out, but then how do I know how MANY kids live there, and therefore how many of each item to put into the bag? And I know for a fact that one family with kids has a daughter who's severely allergic to pretty much anything, and giving them a bucket of stuff her brothers can have but she can't would be super-mean.

So I have them now, I have a plan, I'm ready to boo some people, but today it's kind of pouring rain. I put the buckets in plastic bags, but I am still not sure they'll fare all that well sitting in the rain for a long time. If I wait until this evening when people are home I'll have to ring the doorbell and run (like it says I'm supposed to on the note) and I don't think I can make it out of sight fast enough. Plus hiding in someone's bushes is creepy. And not the good kind of Halloween creepy, more like the "I'm taking out a restraining order you stalker" kind of creepy.

So that's how being an antisocial procrastinator has turned this fun little Halloween game meant to foster neighborliness into a stressful project that has me darting glances out the window at the people across the street and shaking my fist because dammit, what are they doing home in the middle of the day? And why is it still raining? And no one else better boo them in the meantime or I might have to go out there and make some enemies.

Fun.