Nightmare on Mom Street

Nightmare on Mom Street.... this is how a blogger dubbed Halloween, presumably because of the candy?  Getting together a costume?  But for me, the candy is no nightmare.  Each year, the American Embassy hosts a Hallowmen party at the USAID compound- and because the people at the compound are all privileged diplomats, they can order AMERICAN candy on the internet and hand it out to all the kiddies. 
Reeses, Smarties, Tootsie Rolls abound.  This is a dream, no nightmare, for a deprived sweet tooth like me. 

This year, however, there were two potential nightmares: The first was forced socializing/competition with too many type-A Americans-  at all these little gatherings, I get this deja vu feeling of the lunchroom cliques at Chaska High School...  and it just makes me want to barf all over again.  So, rather than pretending to like and mingle in the cliques that everyone else is pretending don't exist, all I wanted to do was sit under a tree reading Tina Fey's Bossypants, and chow down on Reeses peanut butter cups all by myself.  I didn't get the first part of this wish, but I did get the second part- the Reeses.  Yes, I shamelessly and pathetically went up to the American Ambassador, who was dressed as a hippie, and asked for a Reeses. 

The seond potential nightmare was getting Nalia's friend into the party.  American style, the event was well-planned, and you were supposed to sign kids up at least 5 days in advance.  While that may work in someplace like America, it doesn't work so well here.  As my Mozambican colleague says, 'in Mozambique, you can only get people to think about what to eat for dinner after lunch is over.'  So, while Nalia had promised her friend Francisca that she could go, Francisca was not on THE list.  Francisca is Portuguese and was uber-excited about the Halloween party... so I didn't have the heart to tell her we couldn't take her because she wasn't on some stupid list. 

So I told her she had to sneak in.  The problem was I couldn't figure out how to say 'sneak in' in Portuguese.  Luckily Nalia was able to explain what we had to do.  And since most of the Americans working in the Embassy here can't really speak Portuguese, we all agreed beforehand that we would use Portuguese as our secret language while the actual sneaking in was taking place.  When we got there, the community liaison officer checking the list was super-frazzled and stressed out, so Nalia and Francisa just walked in. 

The kids got good booty.  The morning after, while everyone was sleeping, I did what lots of moms do but never talk about.  I went into their loot bags. I used to feel bad about this, but don't anymore.  Maybe it's a combination of getting older and not caring what others think as much, along with realizing that some things aren't such a big deal.  I minimized hurt feelings and harm to my children by taking Whoppers from Nalia's bag (she doesn't like chocolate), and Bit-o-Honeys from Elios... what kid actually eats Bit-o-Honeys?  And they still haven't noticed.  To assuage my own guilt, I also let them eat 2 pieces of candy for breakfast. 

Nalia was a zebra wearing a black tutu. 

Elio in his homemade Batman costume...Darth Vader is Elio's friend, the one who climbed the roof with him