Clowns, SpiderMan, Ninjas, Ballerinas, Fairy Princesses, Ghosts - all appear at my house with startling regularity every Halloween. Snickers, Kit-Kats, Milky Ways, Hershey Bars, Sugar Babies - all disappear from my house also with surprising speed every Halloween. (Ahem. Sorry about that - apparently this trying to lose weight thing is affecting me more than I thought!)

So, Halloween is on the horizon. It’s one of my favorite holidays - the excuse to walk my kids around the neighborhood with good friends, sneaking a candy bar or three out of my kids plastic pumpkins while drinking a hot coffee - well, there’s really not much to adore. Except for trying to find new costumes each year.

My kids have been scouring the catalogs for weeks now, planning the most elaborate outfits involving crowns, light sabers, glitter, sequins and cardboard boxes. All they can see is excitement, festivities, fun and partying, and all I can see is work. How much time and how much work those costumes will be for me. I mean, I hate to be a spoilsport and I don’t want to ruin anyone’s fun, but at the same point in time if I have to create a bunch of homemade costumes that will ruin MY fun - and I’m in the mood for fun not work.

In the past, my kids have been dogs, lions, pirates, ballerinas, Sesame Street characters, prom queens, iPods, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Padme Amidala, fall fairies, and a bag of jelly beans. We reuse some costumes each year but most need to be passed on since apparently its against the law for one of my children to wear last year’s outfit.  Last year I posted a bunch here on Zwaggle and of course, am planning on doing the same this year.  I mean, really - have you seen the costumes that are available right now? There are some really cute ones, and the thought that I could list one of ours and without spending anything, move it on to another family, while obtaining a “new to us” costume that would make my own kids happy - well, that’s just gold right there. So save the money you’d spend on a brand new costume. Trade your Zoints for one here and then use the money you saved to take yourself to dinner. You’ve earned it. I’m sure of it.

I do love to see the costumes kids come up with though, except for some of the costumes I’ve seen for preteen girls - I wouldn’t even wear some of them myself, much less send my 11 year old to walk the streets in them.  Anyway, don’t get me started.

I remember one year, when my son picked a costume - and I don’t remember exactly WHAT costume it was - but the mask was the entire costume. As in, the costume made no sense without the mask - and he refused to wear it. Without the mask, he was wearing a simple robe, and no one knew who he was, but he didn’t care. Or the year that my daughter was a fairy, but she refused to wear the wings, the tiara or the bodysuit - basically, all she wore was a t shirt and some pink tights. It bugged me like nobody’s business, but kids are funny like that - they can create a costume out of a robe and some spray painted ice cream cones with a snake on top.

What about you?  Tell us about some of your favorite costumes (good or bad) from year’s past or even a funny Halloween story.  We all have them.  And we all love to laugh.

So the school year has begun. It’s quiet in my house, and when I put things away, they stay away for longer than .12 seconds. I can pee in peace, drink an entire beverage without interruption, and I could (conceivably) take a nap if I wanted - which I do, desperately, but somehow it never happens.

I have big plans for this school year, though. I want to go to the movies at least once a week. I would like to be able to cook more balanced and - shall we say - BETTER meals that I made over the summer.  Those peanut butter sandwiches were good, but with cold weather coming I’d like to make some hearty stews, chilies and casseroles. I don’t know if anyone will eat them, but I’d like to make them. I want to resume running, really get out there and stretch my legs and see what I can accomplish after two pretty severe injuries sidelined me for most of the spring and summer.  I have one other goal - the same goal I set every single back to school season.

I want to organize my entire house.

I know.  I’m a bit of an overachiever.  It’s cool, I’m ok with it.  Admitting you have a problem is the first step, or so I’ve been told.

I’d much rather clean out one of my kids bedrooms when they are all away at school. I can match the game pieces, dress the doll babies, color coordinate the clothing and organize the bookshelves to my hearts content. I can pull out the easy readers that my son has stashed and move them to my first graders room, and move the more difficult chapter books down to the third graders shelf. I can take the opportunity to get rid of the beloved t shirts that I’ve seen so many times I’m sick of them.  You know the ones I’m talking about, the “I ran the race” raggedy piece of fabric that your son insists on wearing every.single.day.  I blast good music, pull out the empty boxes and get to work filling them. After all, holiday season is coming and there’s so much stuff in their rooms that they never play with - and in their quest to get more and more, perfectly wonderful toys and books are sidelined. If they aren’t going to use them, I’m going to find places to put them.

I’m setting a goal this month. I want to rid my house of five bags of trash from bedrooms. (Think this is a lofty goal? Remember I have six kids and they are all s-l-o-b-s. Five bags is probably too easy of a goal.) I also want to find at least ten really good items to list here on Zwaggle.  Then I can use those Zoints to look for holiday gifts for my kids and their friends, my nieces and nephews -because THAT season is all “Items in the mirror may be closer than they appear.”

And then, my friends, I plan to treat myself to a coffee. After all, a week (or two) of really solid work deserves a specialty gourmet beverage loaded with sugar and fat and caffeine - my three favorite food groups. I’d love to treat you to a coffee as well - leave me a comment telling me your plans for house cleaning and organizing - share your favorite tips and time saving moves - and I’ll use my favorite buddy random.org to send one of you lucky readers a Starbucks gift card.

Ready, set, ORGANIZE!

Have you heard of Twitter? Are you on Twitter? We are - are you following us? Or following me? Or Ally or Jody?

I find Twitter to be a great way to share my thoughts, update everyone on my life, learn from others and as you can see, vent a little.

Rather than blog about my past two weeks of fun, I thought I’d post some of my tweets here instead - with explanations, since sometimes I can be a touch, um sarcastic. The #symbol indicates a thread that you are contributing to - but I often make up my own, as you will see. Can you tell that my kids went back to school this week? I may or may not be just a teeny bit excited.  And I might need to scale down my caffeine intake just a hair.

I’ll bet you can guess what kind of a summer I had with my newly minted public school 14 year old.  Freedom from polyester plaid jumpers, green knee socks and brown loafers escalated my life to an entirely NEW level of fun.

I have actually been to FIFTEEN back to school nights. Apparently going to back to school night is no indication of being able to count. I think, though, that I could lead back to school night in my sleep - and yet, I attend every year because I’m CONVINCED I’ll miss something.  And guess what…I never do.

Chores, chores, chores. Many of my tweets are about my kids and how mean I am to them. It never grows old.

I have NO idea who planned to throw a birthday party for my daughter at the same time as a baby shower for a friend - the day before school started. There actually was alcohol served - a delightful champagne punch, so classy - and yet, I did not imbibe due to the taking of migraine medication at said 12 year old birthday party.

I tweeted this from my van while sitting in the parking lot immediately after dismissal. (Of COURSE I do not text while driving.  Of course not.  Only in the parking lot.) You know that moment when everyone is so so so happy to see you and they all talk at once and everyone needs to tell you the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER.  And then scream over each other? Yeah, this was that moment. Some days, it makes my ears bleed.

I think that this tweet is self explanatory. Also - UGH.

This, too, is self explanatory. I have a child with recently diagnosed learning differences, and I was dreading the first teacher email. Now that THAT’S out of the way, I guess I have nothing more to worry about, right?

I wasn’t much of a Twitterer (did I make that word up??) until I learned about Uber Twitter, a BlackBerry application. Now I lean more towards OVERSHARING - in case you didn’t notice.

What about you? Do you use Twitter? What do you think of it?  What’s your twitter name?  What’s your favorite tweet?  If you don’t use Twitter, tell us why not?