of monsters and wolves

My son, who is in the 5th grade, has been practicing for a play for a couple of months now. And for a couple of months, I've been asking for details, you know silly things like when and where and what will you wear?

Monday he called when he got home from school to tell me that he needed a costume by Wednesday and he needed to buy it from the one and only costume store that is open year-round here.

Shit.

Now there are two things that people recognize in me quickly upon making my aquantance, I am ridgid as any OCD person could be about my schedule and routine and work much better when I am given several days to acclimate myself to change and I am cheap-- I won't even try to use euphanisms, I'm cheap. I will spend $100 on yarn for a sweater that I will wear for the next hundred years, but I will not, cannot spend money when I don't see an efficient return on my investment.

So, I did what my son has taught me to do. I called the teacher on Tuesday to confim his story. He did indeed need his costume preferrably on Wednesday as she feels the get into charecter better when costumed, but she preferred that the costumes be created rather then bought.

Ironically, my rigidity flys out the window when creating and craftiness fly in. So rather then a trip to the costume store (which I looked forward to as one would the Inquisition), I planned a scavanger hunt for "stuff" to make a warewolf costume (which I can more liken to Christmas).

I checked off in my head what I had at home, face paint from a previous holloween (check), black sweatshirt and black jeans (check-- jeans are in donations bag- rescue operation inacted), fangs (check-- boy has an obsession with vampires, a good set of teeth were actually worth their money) and an assundry of fabric paint. Missing white paint and brushes though and still really had no clue as to what I was doing. A sewing co-worker had some fake fur reminants (sewers, like knitters can't toss-- even when they have no use for the scraps of fabric)-- cool, cool-- we might make something decent.

We found paint, brushes and brown utility gloves at the store and that seemed to be all we needed. We turned the sweatshirt inside out for better texture and just dabbled with the paints--literally.

I'll take pictures when we feel we're close to complete-- which isn't anytime soon, I think. But I'll tell you what, nothing, nothing will ever dim the memory of my tween son claiming that his costume will be the best costume by far because of the time he spent with his mother creating it.