There appears to be a max number of words I’m able to write a week. My current writing course requires 1,000-1,500 words, 3-5 pages double spaced, per week.

My blog posts average 500-600 words every two weeks ish. To say I’m struggling to do both, for a total of 2,000 words per week, more than my total previous word count for the entire month, is generous.

I’m not struggling to do it. I’m not getting it done. I would love to get it done. Just not sure which other thing to not get done.

I already stopped keeping up with the laundry and I was already doing the bare minimum food wise, so there’s no time to be saved there, unless we just live on Halloween candy for a couple weeks. That should get rid of it.

This past weekend I could’ve been writing, but I was following a shirtless Captain around.

We went to our first adult-only, Halloween party since we had kids. That’s six years of dressing up in family-friendly outfits.

So maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that the minute we got the invite this past summer, Captain went the no clothes route.

He had his heart set on being a hairband rocker. We were going for generic 80’s rockstars. We got mistaken for Tommy and Pamela. I did NOT stuff my dress. The only way I could’ve had a smaller chest was if I had no chest, but the size of my hair made up for it.

What I didn’t realize through all the months of costume planning our trophy-winning ensemble, was that the party was outside.

That’s right. I have a trophy in my kitchen. It has made me happier than I ever thought a jack-o-lantern trophy could.

We drove the half mile to the party. It was 50 degrees and dropping and Captain was determined to make a topless entry.

He didn’t shave his arms and apply temporary tattoos for nothing.

As we walk up the driveway, music and party sounds are unmistakable.

Captain turns to me,

“Is this party outside?!?”

“Nooooo. Couldn’t be.”

It could. It was. Captain stayed committed, stayed by the fire and pounded beers.

I attribute our trophy to his cold-blooded rockstar status.

We showed up with a case of Budweiser because I was committed to drinking in character, even if the taste of that first beer was tough.

Nobody believed we were really drinking Bud. Multiple times I was accused of pouring something else in the can. Forced to choose, I’d much rather drink a Bud than a hard seltzer.

A minion pointed out that if we really wanted to be in character we would’ve finished the Bud and switched to whiskey ages ago. But I’m not sure that applies to wannabe rockstars in their forties.

We went to bed as rockstars and woke up as hung-over parents home alone. I can’t say enough good things about being home alone after a party.

Two days later, on Halloween morning, 3-year-old RB, who’s been planning her mermaid costume as long as we’ve been planning our hairband duo, decided a crown was not going to suffice. She NEEDED mermaid hair.

And if that “NEEDED” didn’t sound like a throw-down tantrum on the kitchen floor, it was. I showed her my hairband wig. She looked at me like I’d lost my mind and shouted,

“It needs green and pink and rainbow colors!!”

She went down for her nap screaming about mermaid hair, but she slept and I created a masterpiece. I delivered the rockstar turned rainbow, mermaid hair to her and she sighed,

“It’s so beautiful!”

If there’s a trophy for parenting through a crisis, I’d like to be considered.