It’s Halloween. Apparently, My Brain Is Providing the Spooky Story.

Today included a call from the police, 33 packages, a GPS with questionable qualifications, and my brain briefly casting me in a true-crime documentary.

Happy Halloween, y’all.

My favoritist holiday of the entire year. And apparently, the spooky shit comes complimentary.

The police call was about one of my kids stealing from the local convenience store.

I love my children to the ends of the earth. Every single one of them.

I am also fully aware that I did not give birth to, marry into, or otherwise assemble a collection of angels.

Some parents worry about letting their kids walk or ride their bikes to the store because something bad might happen to them.

I worry about that, too. But I also have to consider what my children might decide to do once they get there.

Because I live with these people. I have information.

The boundaries we practice at home do not always become boundaries they enthusiastically honor when nobody’s watching. Sometimes a line in the sand appears to be interpreted as a suggested starting position.

So, yes, I limit certain freedoms based on the choices I’m actually seeing.

I would love to make decisions based entirely on their potential. Unfortunately that is not my reality.

Loving my kids and recognizing that they need supervision can exist in the same sentence. So can loving them and being completely fucking triggered by another boundary being pushed after the parenting year we've had.

Everyone recovered from this well though, I must say. Halloween on my friends. We will survive!

And then there were packages to deliver.

Thirty-three packages today. One location sent me on a wild goose chase because the GPS kept directing me into a forest area.

Wonderful.

Unless this package was addressed to the Keebler Elves, we had a problem.

When I finally found the actual address, a police officer was there talking with the people who lived there.

An ordinary thing to encounter, potentially.

Except I had been listening to Morbid’s series about the West Memphis Three, and my brain was already neck-deep in a story about an investigation gone terribly wrong.

So naturally, instead of thinking, There’s the house. Let’s deliver the package, my brain went:

What if you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time and somehow become a suspect in some elaborate criminal case?

Ma’am.

We are delivering a package.

We have not been invited to participate in a documentary.

But there it was: a whole imaginary catastrophe, apparently available for immediate streaming inside my skull.

I caught it before it got much further.

Delivered the package. Got the hell up out of there. Turned the podcast back on.

Yes, I recognize the insanity of returning to true crime as a distraction from the frightening scenario that listening to true crime had helped inspire.

I was too far in to turn back now...

What gets me is how quickly my brain can move between a problem that actually needs my attention and a completely fictional situation it has generously created for me.

A call about my kid’s behavior? Real. Needs handling.

A wrong address? Real. Annoying. Needs finding.

My future appearance in a documentary because I delivered a box near a police officer?

We do not currently have evidence to support this production.

I’m learning to notice that difference a little sooner.

Some things need action. Some things need a boundary. Some thoughts need me to say, “Thank you for your submission, but we will not be moving forward with this story.”

I had thought we might have a fire tonight, my honey and me.

Instead, we ate dinner and got comfortable on the couch.

That was our Halloween.

I love this holiday. I love the spooky, weird, playful permission of it all. But tonight, after parenting and packages and my brief imaginary career as a person of interest, the couch was pretty damn convincing.

I can love Halloween without producing an entire Halloween experience.

Apparently, that is allowed.

We’re planning a camping trip soon. Before it gets too cold, but while it’s still cool enough to feel like fall.

Just us. A tent. A night in the woods.

We have a camper, but I keep wanting something simpler this time. I don’t want to pack a crap ton of stuff, organize a temporary household, and spend the trip managing all the things I brought to help me relax.

I want a hike.

Something cooked over a fire.

Coffee made over that same fire the next morning.

There is something about that first sip outside, with cool air on your face and nowhere you immediately need to be.

That sounds really good right now.

I’m sure my thoughts will come camping, too. Those little bastards travel light.

But maybe I can give them a cup of coffee and something quieter to look at.

Tonight, I’m on the couch with my honey.

Thirty-three packages delivered. One ridiculous mental rabbit hole successfully exited.

That’ll do.