Dear Alex,
As I am writing you this letter, it is the week before Halloween, 2010. I imagine right now you are probably in the “jumbo shrimp with exaggerated Muppet eyes” phase of your gestational development. It's okay. We all start out shrimpy.
You are very lucky, dear Jumbo Shrimp Alex, because not only are you young enough to have all of the world's splendor and excitement ahead of you (Harry Potter, ice cream, sex and REO Speedwagon among many, many other things), but you are also about to be born into a family that will love and cherish you more than Lucy wants to sing at Ricky's club.
They will love you when you are at your worst. When you are at your best. When you are at your most in-between of behavior. These are the people who will scold you for flushing an entire roll of toilet paper down the toilet, causing the whole bathroom to flood with malodorous TP soup. These are the people who will obsessively tell their friends how wonderful it is that you moved away from formula (Because Alex likes his big boy food. Yes he does. Oh yes he does!). They'll gush about how you got your first pair of training underwear, ate your first crayon, got chewed on by your first goat at the petting zoo, watched your first movie in the theater, lost your first tooth, tied your first lace, stuck your tongue out at your first crush, went on your first school bus ride. These will be the people who will grin with pride when you walk down the aisle of the high school gym to accept your diploma. These will be the people who will help you paint your first single-serving apartment. They will cry when they take you toaster shopping for said apartment.
There is no doubt in my mind that you will have a happy childhood.
True, I do not know your father's side of the family very well. I went to high school with your dad, but other than my trying to embarrass him from time to time by telling fart jokes and other such instances of immaturity, we did not have a tremendous exchange of dialogue.
However, your mom and her side of the family have made a very significant and positive impact on my life, as I'm sure it will on yours—and on a much larger scale. You are a very lucky fetus.
I want you to know that your mother is a wonderful lady. Unfortunately, it took me a while to realize that my mother was a fantastic lady as well. You see, in my case, I saw my mom as my soda pop rationer, my homework slave driver, my own personal disciplinarian and the wiper of my butt. It wasn't until I got a little older that I realized my mom was her own person with her own talents and interests, only one of which is mothering my sorry ass.
Our moms are both multifaceted people. I want you to understand that, because your mother is one of my closest friends. I know how amazing she is. But I know how easily one can lose touch with that concept when that amazing person is using a turkey baster to suction snot out of your nostrils.
I met your mother the summer before we went into sixth grade. That's, like, an eternity if fetus years. We have been friends ever since. We've had millions of slumber parties. We prank called boys together. We went through our ugly scrunchy, Winnie the Pooh, bibbed overall phases together. We've gotten to travel together. Drink together. Get kicked out of Mr. Lewis' class together. Snicker at my father's “horny toad” and flatulent iguanas together. Drive down Main Street blasting opera music with the windows rolled down together. Your mother is a weirdo. However, she is also a whole lot of fun. She has one of the biggest hearts I have ever encountered. She is a wonderful person.
Your mother chose to be your mother. Other than drawing hilariously misshapen airplanes, I've never known her to do anything halfheartedly once she decided that was what she wanted to do. Her heart is all in it. And her heart is with you. Please be good to her, my shrimpy, little Alex. You have a whole lot of awesome to get done.

I sincerely hope I get to be a part of your life.
Love and best wishes,

Trish

Awk Toe Bur

I get disproportionately excited about Halloween and fall and, well, just about anything that fits into the month of October. Sure, it's sad to see summer end, but that's what we have September for: to be depressed as we nail the coffin shut on sunshine, general happiness, campfires, swimming and being able to walk around without wool socks inside of one's apartment because her Illinois resident landlord controls the heat.

But by October, I get over all that. Because. Ah. I start thinking about what I'm going to get people for Christmas, but I'm not yet stressed out about it, because I have a quarter of a year left before the Santa ho ho ho's me into a full-fledged panic attack. (“What if someone just shows up at my house with a present for me? Maybe I don't consider them a gift-giving friend, but they're ready to put me in their will? I should buy a few gifts to have around the house just in case so I don't make anyone feel bad. Like a couple bottles of wine from the local winery. Reasonably priced, but still trendy because it's all local and stuff. I have trendy friends. They'll like that and love me for being so darn, stinkin' considerate. But what if I have a bottle of wine laying around for this... And someone comes over with a beautiful fruit and cheese platter for me... And I run to grab their custom gift... And he or she is a recovering alcoholic or under the age of 21 or pregnant or Mormon? Or maybe his or her mother was stomped to death in one of those giant grape-mashing barrels and the thought of wine brings him or her to tears? Scratch that off the list, Trisha, you insensitive boob! Do you want everyone to hate you?!) But, like I said, I'm not going to stress out about Christmas until later. Now is the fun part of Christmas shopping, which is window shopping. It's free!

Pumpkin carving is another pinnacle of October enjoyment for me. I'm twenty three years old and I don't think I've ever missed a year of carving. Mind you, I'm not very good at it. Moreover, I have to use the kiddie pumpkin carving tools with the rounded edges because otherwise I'd most certainly lose a finger. But I have fun. It's so liberating thrusting your hand down into an ice-cold cavern of squishy pumpkin goo and yanking out its guts, imagining I am performing some sort of odd pumpkin-sacrificing ceremony to appease the pumpkin gods.

I love the apples. I'm dehydrating a whole bunch right now in my Ronco As Seen on TV dehydrator, which I was teased for purchasing. Jokes on them, because they're still spending fortunes on store dehydrated fruit!

October makes me feel homey as well. It's hard to explain, but I imagine it's the feeling pregnant ladies get when they're nesting. Suddenly, I want to do strange things like regrout my shower tiles and stay in my pajamas while making rice pudding on the stove and crocheting scarves that I will probably never wear.
But the all-time most enjoyable and important part of October, of course, is at the end. Halloween is a lifestyle. Once a year I can look around the room at people dressed up like ghouls, monsters and zombies and think, “these people aren't half bad.”

I usually get stoked about picking out a costume. However, I went a little over my budget last year with my Carmen Miranda costume, so... I will probably be Carmen until I either die or change weight too much to fit into it. Whatever comes first. Hopefully the fruit hat will hold up. Without the costume to make, I still find myself especially gleeful to know the holiday is approaching. I want to throw a party and serve peeled grapes and call them eyeballs. Most people can only get away with that once a year. This is it. Also, I have to redeem myself for the party I threw last year. I accidentally and forcefully threw a Kit Kat bar into a girl's drink who I didn't know so well. It splashed all over her. Yeah... That was sort of unfortunate. I was trying to make sure the candy was evenly distributed. Throwing Kit Kat bars across my jam-packed living room seemed like a good idea at the time... This year I will only throw eyeballs while inebriated from "spooky punch."

Fall used to be something I really, truly despised. It was synonymous with homework and getting cooped up inside. Now that I'm out of school and can leave the house after dark, it's rapidly turning into one of my favorite seasons. Now to go pick out a pumpkin and buy a green bunch of eyeballs.