The top of my top three holidays is close upon us, and to welcome the onslaught of ghoulies and ghosties, the little voice in my head and I went to the annual Monster Ball at her school. The highlights included my daughter turning to me in her matter-of-fact voice (the one that always makes me laugh because no matter what interesting information she is imparting, she sounds like she could just be describing the weather) reported that this year: Zombie Cheerleaders are really big this year.

Also, she has a kick-ASS pirate costume this year, so she entered the contest for her grade. But I knew as soon as I saw this little sparkly Marilyn in a custom-made dress (whom I hoped with my whole heart was NOT in the fourth grade - I'll admit it) that she could not win against THAT.

Imagine my whole heart bursting with maternal love and devotion when my daughter unexpectedly and without any affectation ran up to her and told Marilyn that she was glad she'd won, and that she had been rooting for her the whole time they were on stage. (It made me completely forget that Marilyn's mom had been a pageant mom the whole time and I'd wanted to kick her in the crotch.)

Ahhh. Motherhood.

It was an end to a day that started with a rain of righteous parental fury that provoked me to write a two page letter regarding the front office manager of my daughter's school who also almost got one in the babymaker which resulted in a speaker-phone call with the principal and the offending party who both told me I was completely right and had a lot of constructive ideas for the discipline of children. I accepted the apology from the offending party, but also suggested that she apologize to my daughter as well, since she was the victim of her harsh and unwarranted reprimand.

Auntie Sis read the letter and said it was so good I should frame it and hang it on the wall to prove that I could be as KICK ASS as Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. Actually, she said everything up to and including the ass-kicking part. I added the Linda Hamilton analogy.

To close out the night, my sweet little voice said that we should watch "Michael Jackson's Thriller mini-movie" and we had an interesting discussion ranking the scary, scarier, and scariest types of zombies.

Scary: Slow-moving zombies that want to eat your brains. At least you have the time to run away or shoot them in the head with a shotgun.

Scarier: Fast-moving zombies that want to eat your brains. Can't get away from those as easily.

Scariest: Zombies that dance really cool and want to eat your brains. They distract you with the cool dancing so that you're mesmerized and suddenly you realize that they've danced right up to your face and they're about to eat your brains.

Again, a toast to motherhood...Ahhhhh....