So I have to take him to the doctor.

And the Boy Child? He's never sick. So he doesn't know how to act at the doctor.

We are in the examining room and the nurse, who has spiky pink hair, takes his temperature and his blood pressure. He's very concerned about what his blood pressure is. He's very concerned with his surrounding and I can see him reading all the posters on the wall.

Finally the doctor comes in. We talk about Boy Child's symptoms. He feels his stomach. He listens to his heart. The works.

Boy Child is very quiet throughout this ordeal until finally, as the doctor is having him breathe in and out, he asks, "What was my blood pressure?"

Halloween is tonight and there are some hard-and-fast lessons that I've learned through the years.

I urge you to follow my advice lest you end up on the trick end of tonight's festivities.

1.  Don't go trick-or-treating if you are in the thick of puberty.

I have a separate candy stash that is just for the "too-old" kids.  You'll receive my choice of a single smarties package, a single small tootsie roll, or a "pretend" candy as I stick my hand in your bag and "flick" it with my finger giving the illusion that you actually received something.  If you're 15, you should be escorting your little brother, or at a party with friends.  You should not try to be mooching my full-size candy bars that are for cute little kids in costume.  The double whammy is if you are 15, and show up in one of your older brothers football shirts in hopes of getting candy while putting the very smallest amount of effort into putting on a real costume ... You'll only receive ridicule from me. (perhaps this is why my pumpkins are always getting smashed)

And now we continue with our next installment of Formerly Fun's BlogOpera.

When we last left off, our heroine flirted casually with the tousled, attractive barista at the local coffee shop. 

They laughed, they twinkled, they connected.

And they finally had a real conversation.  In a moment of boldness ... she gave him her address.

She returned home and began cleaning house when the doorbell rang ...

- F. Lawrence Caslin

The day was unusually warm for the end of October, nearly seventy degrees with a hint of a breeze.  It had just rained and a light mist permeated the air, blanketing me with the aura of early Spring.  It was a nice day for yard work and I decided to transplant some ferns from the woods behind my parent's house to the natural area at the edge of the road. 
 
The ferns were strong and healthy, wild plants with bold leaves that sliced through the air as if serrating their place in the world by force.  The contrast to the surrounding foliage would be nice. 
 
It was warm enough to wear shorts.  So I did. 
 
I lugged a shovel and wheelbarrow out to the edge of the woods.  A creek ran just below the steep hill that harbored a colony of the ferns I sought.  They were peaceful there, sprouting out of loam so thick and rich you could smell the nutrients.  

And now, Suzy Soro's unreleased book continues ...

Suzy met a dentist at a divorce party and gave him her cell number inside of 12 minutes.  But he's married and his wife has Mad Cow Disease.  He proceeds to tell her all sorts of uninteresting things and Suzy decides it may be time for another fake cell phone call.  

Instead, she fakes a migraine.

It’s no secret, the economy blows. I don’t need to keep up on the latest word from the Wall Street Journal to figure it out. I simply look in my back pocket.

My wallet – a male symbol of maturity, of post-adolescent togetherness – was at one time filled, often to capacity, with crisp, green bills and an abundance of condoms. No longer is that the case. I look inside, searching for remnants of the past, a better time, but sorely I am greeted only by loneliness and the fleeting thought of what once was.

The crappiest part about it is that, concerning money or sex, you can be happy with one or the other. When you have money, if you aren’t shackin’ up with a gold-digging beauty, you can still be happy with your money. If you don’t have money, you can say, “Well, at least I’m getting my hump on,” all the while retaining some sense of dignity.