Trick or Treat

I don’t care how old my kids get, I still love Halloween. It’s the only holiday that is just for fun, and the expectations are always met. No gifts to buy, no giant meal to make and then overeat. You don’t have to get together with your extended family and justify the choices you made in life.  If you drink too much, that’s on you and not your overbearing mother and emotionally distant father. Just costumes and candy. What’s not to like?

My daughters are in middle and high school now. They don’t wear costumes to school. They don’t have class parties with healthy nut-free treats. One of them isn’t even going trick or treating this year, much to my disappointment. Even though I don’t think fourteen is too old, she does. I decided I would put them in a holiday mood by making them a special Halloween breakfast. Maybe if they started the day with some Halloween fun, it would last throughout the day.

For the majority of their lives, my daughters ate frozen waffles or cold cereal for breakfast. They were never the eggs and bacon types, and who has time for French toast and pancakes on a school day? It turns out that, lately, I do. Now that they can get themselves ready and dressed and put on their own make up and shoes, I find myself with a little free time in the mornings. So between the time I make sure they are awake, which is never, to the time we rush out the door to drive to school, I cook a hot breakfast based on each of their personal preferences. Lately, they have been enjoying a Waffle House experience right here at home. Eggs cooked to order, turkey bacon or sausage, an assortment of fresh berries or other organic fruit to garnish the plate. Seriously, it’s getting all kinds of nuts around here.

I decided to go with pancakes this morning. I saw a sweet little idea on Pinterest for pancake spider webs, and thought, hell, that looks easy. It’s not like I am making pancake portraiture like that stay at home dad/engineer who is making all the talk show rounds. Just a little pancake batter X and some lines to make web spokes. No big deal.

No big deal if you have a squirt bottle. If you don’t, like me, well, there is no way you are making an X or spokes or anything other than blobs. I tried a small ladle, but no matter how thin I poured the batter, those pancakes looked like a mess of fat sticks. Instead of spider webs, my children had 2D rats’ nest pancakes. They cooked unevenly, and even the addition of pumpkin pie spice for flavor was not able to overcompensate for the poor visual presentation.

My daughters went with politeness this morning, begging off any extra pancakes because they were sooo full. Which meant I had a half a batch of batter and no takers. I decided to switch designs and continued cooking. This time, I went with a sort of free form ghost shape, like a lopsided ghost from Pac Man.

Again, my design did not meet my expectations. The heads of the ghosts ended up wider than the bodies, except for the base of the ghost, which was sort of broad and almost bumpy.  In short, the ghosts looked like penises.  Pretty scary, I’d say, but not in the way I intended.

The teen noticed right away, and refused to eat any. The tween, who is as wholesome as Laura Ingalls, had no idea they might be anything other than the ghosts I claimed, but was too full of failed cobwebs to have one.

My husband drifted into the kitchen around this point.

“Hey honey, wants some pancakes?” I said sweetly. The teen choked on her disgusting green machine juice she has every morning. I don't know how she drinks that cup of algae. What is wrong with a good old American glass of OJ?

“Nah,” he said. “I’ll just have oatmeal, like I do every day.” I am sure he didn't mean for that to sound like a hardship, but then again, he did not yet have a cup of coffee.

“Come on, they're fresh, and I hate for them to go to waste.”

He agreed to vary his morning routine. I set a plate full of pancake cocks in front of him and asked one of the girls to pass him the syrup. I almost said something, but from somewhere, a filter surfaced and kept my mouth shut. My teen gave me the look, the look that a mother is supposed to give, no the other way around. My husband, oblivious to the unspoken conversation that took place in front of him, ate up happily.

After I cleaned up, I went upstairs to find my phone and texted the teen. “I just served your father a plate of dicks.” She replied, “OMG.” She also refused to take any pictures for me.

I certainly hope the mummy hot dogs turn out better tonight.