Miss C has been enthralled with a Halloween commercial for Party City and wore me out with requests to truck out there all last weekend, although honestly that was the LAST thing I felt like doing on a beautiful fall afternoon.

We piled in my SUV and headed to the store. I cautioned her that it wasn’t really going to look like it did in the commercial but that it would be fun to look at the costumes and Halloween decorations. I didn’t want her to be disappointed. (See? Such a killjoy am I. See also speaking like Yoda.)

We walked in and she had this look on her face like “Oh, I get it now.” There was no creepy smoke or people walking around in scary costumes. It was just…a store. But still she was excited to look at the decorations and laugh at the macabre masks and begged me to buy a $19.99 plastic cauldron, which I did not. Insert evil mommy witch cackle.

When you’re a kid everything is literal. You see magic and smoke and ghosts and ghouls and mythical creatures on TV and your imagination grasps it and runs full speed ahead. Your whole life is filled with the endless possibilities fueled by imagination, wonder, and excitement.

And then you turn 40 and you have bills and deadlines and aging parents and a spouse who works too much and you’re running out of vacation days and wait, is the toilet leaking again, is the check engine light on, and is our dog, our “baby” from the early days of our marriage, really both deaf AND senile or is it normal for her to bark at a napkin left on the kitchen table?

Sigh.

I’ve become that “I hate to break it to you kid but this is kind of meh” kind of mother lately.

I think I’m in a delayed funk over turning 40.

There I said it. (Exhales.)

I’ve always been a glass half full kind of girl! A smiley face winky face emoticon kind of girl!

I’m fighting my tendency lately to look at the negative and the realistic tarnished side of things.

I’m fighting the funk because my girls have the world at their feet and they believe that every day is an adventure.

They believe that being a grown up is COOL, Miss C especially.

And hey sometimes being a grownup is cool. And I know that. (Smacks self on the forehead.)

I don’t ever want to rain on their parade, even when it takes us to the crappy Party City store down the road.

They deserve better than that.