Taking a risk

Unless you live far, far away from these United States, you probably had more than a few kids at your door begging for candy on Saturday night. It's kind of a big deal.

So a few months ago, my daughter decided that the "Cone of Shame" used on the dogs in the movie UP was pretty hilarious, and she wanted to fashion her Halloween costume around it. We gathered all the makings of a humiliated dog and put them in the closet until the big day.

Saturday morning, it was time for a trial run. She dressed in her costume, ran to the mirror and...cried. Tears, sobbing, the whole deal. She just didn't have the confidence she needed to pull it off. It's a fear I know well. Looking stupid. Failure. If I'm trying to be funny in my speech, will I flop? If everyone knows I'm writing a book and then it never gets published, will I crumple up in a ball and die?

She searched through some safer costumes left over from years past. No one would laugh at a colonial girl or a knight, perhaps she should go with that? I told her that was fine with me. It takes guts for a 10-year-old to walk around in public looking completely uncool. She's also entered the age where everything is just sooo embarrassing ohmygod. If she was doing the funny costume thing, it would be a risk. She just had to be all, "Yeah, that's right! I look ridiculous. Ha!"

In the end, she decided to go for it:

Thank Dog it was a hit.

How about you? Are you taking any risks lately?

It was just that kind of weekend

It's freezing on the East Coast, so all I did all weekend was watch movies. One was an all-time favorite, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Which, incidentally, I'm pretty sure I saw in the theater when I was 11 years old. It was rated R, so that means my mother probably dropped me off at the mall and my friends and I bought movie tickets for Black Stallion Returns. Then sneaked into Fast Times.* Masturbation! Teenage sex! Drugs! How appropriate!

I read about a book coming out soon called Free Range Kids--that pretty much describes my childhood. And somehow I survived.

Anyway, not the point. I noticed something about the teenage actresses from movies in the 80s: no one looked pin-thin, like many today. Everyone looked, well...healthy.

Observe....

Jennifer Jason Leigh, how cute was she back then? And who didn't want to be Madonna? This is a much better look then, say, this:

Or this:

I'm hungry.

Yikes.

We also watched Beetlejuice (with the kids, who loved it, although I didn't remember quite so much cursing when I saw it last. Oh well.) and a really bleak thing I ordered from Netflix called Half Nelson (most assuredly WITHOUT the kids, since it's all about drug addiction.) Can't say I recommend the latter.

So, how was your weekend?

*Sorry, mom! It's true!