Menopause Madness Mondays and Halloween Pictures...Practically a Match Made in Heaven!

It's Monday! I've been really bad the past two Mondays about the Menopause Madness post, but I think I'm back on track. I was trying to think of what to say in this post and started to wonder if maybe I wasn't running out of steam about the joys of menopause. I don't want to sound like a broken record. In fact, I'd like to come up with some positive things to write about menopause, but thus far, I'm drawing a blank on that one. Ain't nothin' makin' me happy about menopause, I gotta tell 'ya. So what's my current biggest gripe about this particular little wonder of nature? Well, I'll tell you. It's the weight gain. I've packed on a few pounds this year. Oh, who am I kidding? I've packed on a lot of pounds this year. I can't tell you exactly how many because I refuse to come within 30 feet of a scale. This is absolutely ridiculous, demoralizing and just plain humiliating. I've gone up 2, count 'em 2, pant sizes since this time last year! I can't even begin to explain the joys of being grossly overweight and having hot flashes at the same time. Talk about good times. Just last night, I slept with the ceiling fan on, the stand fan on (2 feet away from me and pointed directly at my torso) as well as the air turned down. And I still felt like I was baking alive. I'm about 3 degrees away from emptying my freezer and standing in it myself. (I'm kidding, of course. My fridge/freezer is a side by side. No way I'd fit in just the freezer section!). But I've got my eye on this jumbo size cooler at Wal-Mart that I think will do nicely....
How about you guys? Anybody else suffering from weight gain and horrific heat? Or am I all alone is this misery? Come on, peeps...tell me I'm not alone!

Moving on (before I get so worked up that I spontaneously combust!).... Since Halloween is creeping up on us, I thought I'd post a few pictures every now and then of my kids Halloween costumes over the years.

These three pictures were taken in 1991. Nicholas was Dracula, obviously. Yeah, we had a hard time convincing him that the Count actually wore jeans, but I think he turned out looking pretty flippin' cool!
This is Desiree' as a clown (duh, right?). She was adorable. I have to say, we made a lot of our kids' costumes. We had to. We couldn't afford to buy them all a store bought outfit every year. Back in 1991, Nick was the "lucky" one. We bought his cape. That was pretty much the extent of our Halloween Costume Budget for that year. lol This clown costume is one that we made. You guys already know I don't sew. Can anybody guess how this costume was held together? Good old hot glue, of course. lol We had a heck of a time getting her into it without tearing the "seams". By the end of the night, she had so many safety pins holding this thing together that she never could have made it through a metal detector. But man, she was cute, wasn't she?
And here's little Kaleb (I was pregnant with Jake...no pictures of him this year!). It seems so clear to me, but maybe I should explain, just in case anyone out there can't tell...Kaleb was dressed as a bag of M&M's. (We thought we were so clever! ha) The sides of his costume were hot glued, too, but I did use fabric glue to hold on the lettering. I'm not a total moron, you know. lol