Carrying the grocery bags into the house, I stopped just inside the door, smiled, and took a deep breath. The whole house smelled of my handiwork.
I wanted to just stand there and savor it, but I had so much to do. Only half my party decorations were up, and while yes the house was taking on a wonderfully creepy feeling of macabre, the end result would be so much better. I needed to finish pulling the cotton cob webbing across the door frame corners, I had light bulbs to change out in half my lamps and the dry-ice fog machine was not working right yet.
At least I had the graveyard in place. The PVC iron fence was freshly painted flat-black, and I had gotten it placed around the two sides of my front yard. All the Styrofoam tombstones were in their normal spots, I had touched up the stone gray paint on them as well.
Now. Back to work in here.
Sitting down the bags on the counter, I saw my sons "crap" all over my island. And, of course, I could see where inroads had been made into my
finished
boxes of candy.
"ROY!"
I was answered by a distant "Yeah, Mom?"
"GET YOUR BUTT DOWN HERE!"
I tried to make a guess at what all had been plundered while I waited for him to show up. There were a half-dozen chocolate-covered cherry mice gone. My Pop Rock
acid
pops were also showing signs of candy snatching.
The pumpkin fudge!
The boy was lucky as hell that there was a knock on the back door just as he arrived. Not that seeing the pimply- faces of his friends Zane and Jeffery, standing there when I opened my door, was any better. Jeffery showing up was guaranteed to cost the party a handful of white chocolate pretzel haystacks and Zane ....
Zane, I just didn't like.
While it was nothing new for a guy to be looking at my boobs when he talked to me, it really creeped me out when it was a teenager ... a punk, greasy-haired, smelling like he bathed in AXE, teenager. He wasn't three feet in the door when his eyes took up permanent residence on my breasts. Like the horny little fucker had never seen anything bigger than a c-cup before. I eyed both boys, and my son too for that matter, with mild disgust when they looked at the dozens of boxes of candy sitting around the kitchen and dining room. If it wasn't sex it was food. Teen fucking boys!
I gave Roy a look while his friends piled their own "junk" on the island next to my son's "crap" making an even bigger pile of "stuff" in my way. Enough is enough.
"Mom can we ...?"
"No. Not a chance. Don't even ask, I'm already mad at you." I pointed the finger-of-death at my son and then turned to the other. "And you two, even more so, no. Enough already. I have twenty-five guests coming here tomorrow night, the house isn't half-finished and I am going to need all that I have made so far, and then some, for the
Treat
bags I make for my guests. No more candy till after the party." I picked up an armload of my candy making ingredient, (various tools, and boxes of confectioners' sugar, chocolate bark, edible glitter, caramel cubes, and powdered ready-to-mix colored icings) and all but pushed their mess off my counter. "I want all of you out of my kitchen, and certainly out of my candy boxes, for the rest of the night."
"That's what I was just about to ask about," said Roy defensibly. "I wanted to see if I could go hang at Zane's tonight ...."
"Get! I don't care, so long as you're out of my hair." With a final look at him, I went past the other two other teen boys in my kitchen, avoiding Zane's attempt to be enough in the way so that my boobs might brush him in passing. Fuckin' scummy-smelling, hormone-driven, little toad. His trying to get either a peek or a "brush-feel" of my breasts at least once per visit was getting so damn old, so damn fast. As I went out the door, to retrieve the rest of my supplies from the car, I knew the horny perv's eyes were on my ass.
Out at the car, I stopped and took a deep breath. "Rick, you fucking prick I need you." I cussed my ex-husband, Roy's father. Leave it to him to decide to have a midlife crises--and run off with a twenty-year-old convenience store clerk who smiled at him--just as his son hit the difficult mid-teens. In the three years since the divorce my son, my once so loving son was getting out of my control so quickly. He wouldn't listen to me anymore, talked back more often than he listened, and to make matters worse was more and more often hanging out with little punks like Zane.
As I watched the three of them, laughing and pushing each other, walk out to that battered up old Mustang--with it's too big wheels and crappy as hell flat black paint job--I wished I hadn't snapped at Roy back there. Telling him I didn't care what he did was worse than anything I could do but I was just so frustrated with him. Half the time he didn't even seem like the same kid I raised.
I sighed and shook my head when the garage door twenty feet from me started to open and I saw my neighbor, Gabriel Cooper, standing there with his weed eater. Suburban warrior ready to tackle his lawn, yet again. For at least the next four, un-muffled-gas-powered-yard-tool-after-yard-tool, hours. I looked to the trees, mentally wishing for all the golden and red leaves to suddenly drop at once, so that maybe ... please maybe, this would be the last time I would have to hear his fanatical levels of yard clean up for the year.
He smiled and lifted a hand in greeting when he saw me.
I nodded, smiled back and waved. Why had I invited him to the party tomorrow?
Yeah, he was cute, in a salt and pepper gray goatee way. Yeah, he was single, a not too unattractive fact that I noticed more and more often of late. But he was also nutty as a squirrel turd! Since he had moved in last fall he had done more yard work that three landscaping companies combined. Every day, three to four hours per day, he would be doing ... something! ... a loud, noisy, or simply uber-obnoxious as hell at ungodly hours ... something.
"Hey, Lilibeth." His smile was an ear to ear grin. I saw his eyes dart from my nose to my toes and back quickly, he was one of those kinds of guys. Wanted to look, was going to look, but didn't want to look like he was looking. Men! "Or should I call you Mrs. Wonka? I've been smelling candy for days now. Any samples?"
His grin was infectious, and if I hadn't been dealing with teen thieves for days I might have been more susceptible. I shook my head. "I'm already behind in what I need to make. I'll have you a goody bag tomorrow night, don't worry."
He gave me a nod. "I'll be looking forwards to it. I think I put on twenty pounds last year because of your holiday candy. I'm going to need to do more yard-aerobics to keep in shape this season."
Oh, Joy.
With a nod that I had heard him, I took the last of my groceries out the trunk, shut it with a magical combination of elbow and hip, and headed inside ... to find they had raided my damn pumpkin fudge again!
Grabbing my phone, my thumbs flew as I texted an angry message, but then didn't send it. I sighed. Candy was meant to be eaten and they are just boys.