The Dynasty Continues!!

Once again, team Karma DOMINATED the Costume Contest at the Pevely Flea Market! Seriously, I don't know why anybody else even bothers to show up.

First, I should mention that Pie Potter took 3rd in his school's Trunk or Treat contest on Friday night. We've gotten GREAT milage out of that costume.


Tito wore his pirate costume, and Beebie was a Spa Girl. That's a Lush mask I put on her. It smelled really good.

On Saturday, I wasn't really feeling as gung-ho as I normally would prior to a Pevely Flea visit. I knew I wanted to go, but I just wasn't into it and I didn't know why. Then I woke up at 3:30am and couldn't go back to sleep.

R asked me what was wrong, and I told him that I didn't like the costumes the kids were wanting to wear. THESE are the things that keep me up at night, people.

Pie wanted to be the bloody surgeon Beeb was last year, Tito wanted to wear a store-bought Thomas Train costume (I hate store-bought costumes in costume contests), and Beeb wanted to be the Spa Girl again.

Here's the thing about me. I'm a FIERCE competitor. To a fault, perhaps. I know I've mentioned this.

I love the rush I get from working really intensely at something with the goal of blowing away the competition and leaving everyone gobsmacked in the wake of my genius. And when I have a vision, either get on board or get the fuck out of the way. I get super-focused, super-efficient - I feel superhuman. I love it.

Believe it or not, it's not even about the prize part. If it were, I might be tempted to cheat, which I would NEVER do. There's no satisfaction in a hollow victory. I genuinely enjoy pushing my own limits and giving my best effort - competing with myself, in a sense. I get myself all fired up and the competition itself makes ME stronger and better.

And if I'm not satisfied with something I'm working on - any sort of project, knitting or otherwise - even in the 11th hour I will trash everything I've done to that point and start all over. Nobody would notice one way or the other, and it was probably good enough before, but if I'm not happy with it, then I'll scrap the whole thing.

So obviously this costume contest thing was coming up. We placed in two of three age groups last year, click HERE to refresh your memory, and I wanted to put each Ape in a costume that could be a first-place contender. And I didn't think what we had was going to cut it.

At 4am I was obsessing about it. To any other human being alive, including my kids - the ones who would actually be participating - this contest is no big deal. But to me, it's an opportunity to showcase my talent. And I want my best work on display.

R totally gets it. Who else would put up with me when I'm like this? In fairness, though, when I take on a project and I am finally 100% confident about it, R knows it's gonna be a good time. Or else it's going to be a really funny disaster. Either way - memorable, no?

Once again, my R proved his devotion by voluntarily getting out of bed and Google-ing "Quick Easy Costume". We found three projects, all of which required items easily available at my 24-hour Walmart, and at 5:40am I left to pick up:

A black long-sleeved shirt
A plaid flannel shirt
A black hat
A camoflage hat
Purple sweatpants
Black sweatpants
Black tube socks
Fishing line
Tape
Purple Balloons
Polyfill Stuffing
And some caffeine to get me through the day.

Here's what we came up with (we took the individual pictures when we got back home because we were in too much of a hurry to take them before we left):


A spider (note the googly eyes, a last-minute addition)

And yes, I know he has ten legs, but it looked weird with only six arms on the sides.


A bunch of grapes



And my favorite, Larry the Cable Guy.

I even taught Pie to say "Git'R Done" and "Got'R Did".



If you're not familiar with Larry's work, check this out (unless you're at work), so you can see how spot-on Pie really was:



It's all about playing to your audience. To give you a sense of my target demographic, the costume contest judges were NXWA wrestlers Gravedigger and Hellfire. Could I possibly make that up? And Pevely is located in Jefferson County, Missouri - home of NASCAR's famous Wallace family.

So here's what the three of them looked like when we got there:


Brilliant, right?

The kids were in different age groups, which was cool, but instead of three winners in each age group, there were only two. Tito didn't place in his age group. The kid that placed first was really cute, he was dressed as a Juice Box, and he deserved to win, but Tito lost out to a little girl in a store-bought pirate costume, which was total bullshit. Tito was robbed, but he was a really good sport.

Then came Pie's category. Pie took second to a girl dressed as Strawberry Shortcake. Again, store-bought. Grrr. My favorite part of the whole day was when Pie was announced as a winner, and Tito gasped and said, "We won!!!" I was so proud of his attitude. I commended him on being a great team player.

After the 7-8 year-olds came Beeb's age group. FIRST PLACE, baby! BOO YAH!!! And the prizes were buckets full of candy and McDonald's coupons. Again, I don't even care what the prize is, I just like to smoke the competition.

I know I'm not normal.