Choosing a Halloween Costume, the Hard Way

Not Mr. NSF's costume this year... or is it?

I’m not the biggest fan of Halloween. While I (sort of) think it’s cute when little kids get all dressed up, I can’t say the same for myself. Each year, dear friends invite us to a Halloween costume party, and every year, I acquiesce. I suck it up and head to one (or six) Halloween store each year to pick out a costume I’m sure to hate. I’ve yet to actually enjoy a costume as an adult, so why would I start now?

Mr. Not-So-Frugal goes crazy over Halloween every year, at least when it comes to costumes. No homemade costumes for him — we have to buy some gruesome mask and prefab outfit that immediately starts unraveling once you take it out of its non-returnable package. Most years, have to make some sort of alteration to it.

This year is no exception. After a long day of driving around the northern part of the state and running errands on Saturday, we still had to stop at three stores for the magical Halloween costume for Mr. NSF. He had some idea of what he wanted, but couldn’t quite get it together. He didn’t find exactly what he had in mind and we finally headed home, where I was free to ignore his costume ramblings.

At the crack of dawn on Sunday morning, he was out of the house. He hit not one, but TWO Halloween stores, and came home with a mask from one and the rest of the costume from another. When he heard me stirring awake and hitting the head (my morning pee is now so long, it puts Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own to shame), he jumped into the costume and decided to scare the crap out of me soon as I emerged from the bathroom. After taking off said costume and shaking it at the cat, who proceeded to run like a bat out of hell throughout the house to get away from it, Mr. NSF realized the costume was damaged. This was followed by a second realization — he absolutely was not happy with said costume. Well, that lasted all of 3 hours.

This necessitated a trip during halftime to store #2, where he COULD return the $29.99 costume. The $15 mask that went with it, from store #1, was not returnable. He came home with a completely different costume, also costing another $29.99.

I won’t reveal his sacred costume here lest I ruin the “surprise” part of dressing up for our friends’ costume party. And also because, who knows, perhaps he’ll change his mind AGAIN. After all, he still has 4 days to find yet another costume…

You may be wondering what I’ll be wearing to the party. If I have my way, I’ll be using my bulging baby bump to get out of dressing up for this ‘holiday’ celebration. Don’t get me wrong — I’m more than happy to hang out with my friends and nosh on all the delicious food and chocolate. But the costumes, I can do without.

Just show the pregnant lady the candy, and no one gets hurt!