Today I’m pissy. I haven’t talked to my husband and the underwire broke in my bra. The clouds keep coming in and there’s just a tiny bit of rain. Then the clouds part and we’re back to the miserable hot that makes me grumpy enough to punch a kitten.

Despite the oven-like heat, the fall semester has started, which means a few things:

I am already officially frustrated with the classes that I thought would come most easily to me.

Campus is swarming with every seventeen-year-old flippy-haired, patchouli-smelling high school graduate in Colorado Springs (except for those going to actual colleges).

I can now purchase candles and plug-ins that make my house smell like baked goods. Fall and winter are the only two seasons where cinnamon, apple, or coffee scented things are allowed in my home. Otherwise, I’d gain another hundred pounds and you’d find me sitting in my closet, eating carrot cake mix out of the box. I’m just saying.

We’re almost ninety days into this CRAPCRAPMEGACRAP deployment. It feels like it’s moving at a snail’s pace (if the snail were on crutches and in high heels). But ninety days is three months, and three months is a quarter of the deployment down. I guess 25 percent isn’t so small, percentage wise. Hells bells, those math classes are paying off.

It also means that we’re creeping up on the Midget’s third birthday, and the first Halloween that he’ll actually have some understanding of what’s going on. It’s a double-edged sword, though, his understanding Halloween. Sure, he can walk on his own, he’s old enough to pronounce “trick-or-treat,” and he’s decided to dress as Daddy, which is the cutest EFFING thing I’ve ever seen. I know, I know, it really seems like any downside would be simply overshadowed by all of this, right? WRONG.

“Why?” You ask?

Because, people, genetics are a BITCH. He loves all the candy I love, which means that I either have to sneak the good pieces out (hello, Reese’s, you delicious mofos) or actually share. I think it’s crap, to be honest. I thought that one of the simple pleasures of parenting a toddler was getting the good candy. I mean, I bought the costume, I’m the one taking him out in the cold and making sure he doesn’t get hit by a car or doesn’t end up on a milk carton.

I think I may have found the only acceptable solution.

I’m telling him the good candy tastes like vegetables.