Horse Races & Halloween!

Let me backtrack to the weekend & tell ya'll about the horse races we went to/worked at. Our friends had their very first "Horse Training Sessions" last Saturday. It's called a training session, because we all know that you can't just open up a horse track out in the middle of nowhere & charge people to come in & start betting. I think that is completely illegal. What you CAN do however, if you have the land, the equipment, the facilities & the horses, is have horse race "practice" or training. David & I showed up bright & early Saturday morning at our friends place. They have many many acres out it the middle of the country. They had everything set up. My plan, of course was to sit back & watch while David worked "security". We ended up sitting at the bottom of the hill working the "gate". Basically that meant when a car/truck came in, we handed them a flyer, collected $15 A PERSON! from them, David had to say "No guns, no alcohol, right?" a hundred thousand times, he had to check each vehicle, then we'd let them through & send them up the hill. We got set up & ready for our first car about 9:00 a.m. At 11:30, we'd sent approximately 3 to 5 cars up the hill. We were starting to get worried. What if nobody came? Our poor friends would be out all this time & money. Not to worry. By noon, we had a line of cars backed up from here to Springdale! Oh my word! I can not tell you the pressure! It was great! We worked the gate until 3:30, and by then, we'd sent over 200 cars in! Did I mention that our friends are Hispanic? And that we had to have an interpreter with us to translate? Finally, Alex sent a couple guys down to take our place & we got to go up & watch the races. Well, I watched ONE race. It was very exciting! Except the part where I got hit in the head by a big clump of dirt when the horses sped by! I was pretty much done standing by the rail at that point. So I went to the tent to hang out with my friend Yolanda. She was selling home made tacos & tamales & cokes. $1 each! I'm not sure, but she probably made even more money selling her amazing food, than we made for them at the gate! If ya'll have never had REAL AUTHENTIC Mexican food, you don't know what you're missing. Since I speak little to no espanola, I pretty much watched her & her friends work. Occasionally I would understand something like "dos cokes" & would run over to the cooler & hand her a couple Cokes, but for the most part I was totally useless. David spent this time by walking around & making everyone pour out the beer & alcohol that wasn't allowed (and we're still not sure how they managed to sneak it in). By 5:30, we were exhausted, so we said our goodbyes & collected our pay for the day. We made a whole $100 between us. Not too bad, I thought to myself, until I figured it up & realized we made less than $5/hr apiece! Oh well, we were helping friend & I got to see my first horse race! We were both SO tired, I didn't even want to stop & get candy for the trick or treaters on our way home, but David convinced me we didn't want our doorbell to ring & us have nothing to offer all those HUNDREDS of kids that would surely be there soon! So, we ran in to our local Harp's (insert overpriced local grocery store here) & spent $30 on candy. Candy, I might add, that David picked out himself. We got home, I called Dominoes for dinner, because I knew I'd be so busy handing out all that candy - and I was so tired - I wouldn't be able to cook. At 6:30 our first trick or treater showed up! He was an adorable little guy, the son of a lady I work with, so I gave him lots of candy. (But not too much, I needed to save some for the rest of the kids, right?) Then I waited...And waited. At 7 the doorbell rang again! I jumped up & grabbed my huge bowl of candy & opened the door to....the pizza guy. I had to go back & get some $ & pay him. Then we ate. And waited. And waited. And waited. At 9:00 we gave up. Turned off the lights. Went to bed. ONE. ONE. I-HAD-ONE-TRICK-OR-TREATER! ONE. It hurt my heart. David however, was fine. Because remember? He'd picked out all the candy. And he picked all his favorites! Me