With Halloween coming on strong, here’s some tips to help keep yourself organized and make the most of the craziness:

• Photojojo offers some great tips on Halloween photography. Favorites: Take costume pics at dusk, before the light disappears and the sugar rush kicks in making clear shots impossible. Light the outside of your jack-o-lantern with a flashlight to highlight its outlines. Stick a orange or red gel over your flash — they recommend this for external flash units, but I see no reason not to do this with a point-and-shoot; just cut a tiny piece of gel to cover your flash. Try putting a piece of matte cellophane tape (the kind that “disappears” when you wrap presents) over the gel to diffuse the light a little — point-and-shoot cameras ten to have terrible flashes and produce harsh lighting).
• ParentHacks offers an easy way to remember next year how much candy you actually used this year. Open bags one at a time and keep track of how many you open; then stick the number in your clanedar under “October 31″ with a record of what the weather is like, so next year you can look back and compare how many you’re likely to need.
• Cool Mom Picks points to the Baby Candy’s generic Halloween costume for a stylin’ getup. The front of this plain white onesie says “This is my ________ Halloween costume”; you fill in the blank with a Sharpie. Ironically, to get this last-minute costume you’ll have to order now, or it won’t get to you in time for Halloween.
• While I’m on the subject, my recent piece at lifehack.org, Don’t Panic! Stop Worrying and Enjoy Halloween looks critically at some of the scary Halloween myths that have essentially ruined Halloween — trick-or-treating at the mall?! No thanks! Fortunately, there’s little to be so worried about — nobody’s ever tried to poison neighborhood kids with tainted Halloween candy, and there’s little to fear from needles or razor blades, either. The one Halloween poisoning incident in history was a father who poisoned his child to collect the insurance, hiding the poison in the Halloween candy so nobody would suspect him. Almost all the needle and razor incidents have been pranks carried out by family or friends, too, and nobody’s ever been seriously injured.

Have a happy Halloween — I’ll be back with more as I come across it.

Today I posted an article on lifehack.org called “What to Do When It’s All Too Much”. We’ve been facing some difficult situations here, stuff that deeply affects the kids (which I’ll post about later when I can manage), and the post is my attempt to get down how I’m managing to keep up several writing gigs, a full-timer’s teaching load (though I’m technically “part-time”), and all the stuff I need to do to keep everything together at home.

I’m posting about it here not because I want to show off but because the comments have a lot of good wisdom, advice from others on dealing with life’s crises, and I want people to read them. Read my post, too, by all means, but make sure you take in the comments — there’s lots of good stuff there.

Leo at Zen Habits offers Eight Keys to a Happier Marriage and they’re really good (and applicable to any romantic relationship, not just marriage). A lot of the advice seems like common sense — communicate, be prepared to put work into your relationship, that sort of thing — but it’s surprising how many people I see that need to be reminded or maybe even informed) about these simple principles. Take his third tip, “Speak Plainly”, which is about playing mind games:

The very worst thing you can do in a relationship is play games with each other. No, not the twister or monopoly varieties, I mean mind games. It’s tempting when you are in a bad mood or when you don’t want to be hurt to be passive aggressive, to not say what you mean, to make veiled hints in order to test the other person and so on. Tempting, but it doesn’t go anywhere except sour.

In every relationship I’ve seen that was in trouble, mind games were common — even my own. In my last failed relationship, it was at the first sign of mind game playing that I knew the relationship was doomed, even if it took several months for that to happen. Let me give an example: if housecleaning is an issue, and one partner purposely leaves a mess to see if the other partner cleans it up, that’s trouble. Especially if the other partner sees the mess, relaizes he or she is being messed with and leaves it just to prove a point. That’s double trouble!

Mind games are a betrayal of trust. They say “I don’t trust my partner enough to air my grievances without them throwing a fit” or worse, “I’m afraid to talk to them because they might not love me anymore”. I see relationships — if you can even call them that — where the entire focus of the partner’s lives has become to “win”, to not let the other one “score points” on them, and so on. At this point, you’re no longer in a relationship, you’re in a cage match — no matter how good the sex still is. You might get some sort of twisted satisfaction out of a situation like this, but not happiness. And if there’s no happiness in your relationship, why bother?

This picture frame keychain is an amazing gift for dads (among others): the TAO 1.5-Inch Digital Keychain Frame. I got my dad one for his birthday in August and everyone oohed and aahed over it so much he barely had time to play with it himself! The software allows you to drag and drop pictures onto the device (via USB); it holds 35, if I remember correctly. Since my dad isn’t all that techno-savvy, I loaded it with pictures myself (I asked other family members to pick a couple of their favorites and email them to me) and repacked it in its very nice box.

I’ve seen other brands, including a $20 one at Wal-Mart, but the TAO ones are incredibly well-made (with metal bodies instead of plastic and really strong keychains) and good-looking while the others are plastic and cheap-looking. For Christmas, birthdays, or if you can remember that long, Father’s Day, these are great — and at around $45, they’re not too expensive, either.

One of the deepest fears a lot of parents have in this digital age is that their kids will fall into the seedy side of the Internet — or, worse, head there on purpose! When my partner decided it was time to get her kids a computer, I took a good hard look at the kinds of Internet filtering software that were available. To be honest, I find this kind of thing incredibly distasteful — it smacks of limiting free speech, and that’s not really a lesson I think we should be instilling in our children. Yet I also don’t want their lack of experience on the Internet, and frankly their lack of good judgment, to lead them into something they’re unprepared to deal with or understand.

With some hesitation, I settled on and installed K9 Web Protection, and I couldn’t be happier with the way it’s worked. It is not heavy-handed in its filtering, and it offer me the ability to choose which of 55 categories of site I want to filter. The stuff you’d expect is there, of course — porn, sites with foul language — but I can choose some categories I’d have never thought to block, like sites hosted on free webhosts (which may be amateurs, but may also be fly-by-night porn operators). And if it blocks something it shouldn’t, I can easily override the filter either for good (for a site I know is ok) or for the next 15 minutes. K9 also offers the ability to limit Internet usage by specific times, or block certain sites at certain times, but I don’t use this feature. It would be useful for a family that shared a single computer, though — mom and dad can have unfiltered access at night after the kids are asleep, and the kids can have safe access the rest of the time.

Best of all, it’s absolutely free for home users! Other filtering software charges a monthly fee for updates, and is expensive to begin with, and I wasn’t about to pa for software that, as I said, I felt pretty ambivalent about using. K9 makes their money from institutional sales — libraries, schools, and businesses — and I think pretty decently offers the same protection to families without charge.

Our experience has been entirely positive. I’ve had to override the filter only three times, I think — once for a games site that I decided was ok, and once for 15 minutes when my stepdaughter was doing research for a project and I wasn’t sure what the site was she was visiting. The third time was when we decided to allow them to use MySpace (all of their aunts and uncles are on there, as well as their grandmother, so we decided thy could build profiles so long as they kept them set to “private”; I should say also that we keep their PC in a public area where we can easily monitor them. I should do a post on computer safety in general…). The kids know that when they see the K9 page the site they’re trying to reach might not be good for them, and they’re pretty good about figuring out why. What we’ll do when they get older and more computer-savvy and ultimately figure out how to disable the filter I don’t know, but fo now, they’re still new enough to the computer and trusting enough of our judgment that we don’t have to worry.

I’ve been a fan of Charles de Lint’s work since I was a young teenager and picked up a copy of Moonheart. Moonheart probably isn’t for younger readers, as it includes some pretty graphic sexual descriptions and some pretty dark situations, but minus the fairly adult sexuality most of de Lint’s work would easily appeal to younger readers. The central idea of all de Lint’s books is that there exists, somewhere between the corner of our eye and just to the left of reality, an Otherworld peopled with all manner of fairy-tale creatures, from goblins and fairies to darker things: soul-stealers and giant spiders and evil spirits. A great deal of his early work draws on the mythologies of the British Isles and Ireland, but the last decade or so he’s turned more and more to the mythologies of Native America for inspiration.

Little (Grrl) Lost finds de Lint once more exploring the more familiar terrain of European fairy tales with the story of a Little named Elizabeth Wood, her Big friend T.J. fresh from the farm, and the great big world of gnomes, fairies, goblins, and other magical beings they find when they take a step away from the safe, comfortable world the girls’ parents had created for them. A Little, it turns out, is a 6-inch tall person, and a whole family of them are living between the walls of the suburban house T.J.’s family moved into when their family farm failed. Full of punk energy and teenage angst, Elizabeth runs away from home far enough to meet T.J., in whose room the front door of their home is. Frightened by the discovery of their girl by the Big, Elizabeth’s parents quickly move, and in search of clues as to where they might have headed, T.J. and Elizabeth try to contact an author, Sherri, whose books about little people seem real enough that the girls think she might just know about real Littles like Elizabeth. And then things start to go wrong…

Little (Grrl) Lost is, like all of de Lint’s novels, a pretty fun read, and I imagine that any fantasy-minded young teen would enjoy it. Long-time readers of de Lint will probably enjoy it as well, although at this point de Lint has settled into a pattern (maybe even a rut) with his characters and plot elements that take a little of the fun out. For instance, one of the recurring themes in de Lint’s books is sexual abuse, especially of children. In other books, he’s delved deeply into the trauma and personal consequences of victimization. At the beginning of Little (Grrl) Lost, T.J.’s parents mention a man harassing girls on the main drag of their suburban center, and T.J. of course has a run-in with him a few pages later, but it’s incidental and does nothing to forward the plot other than give T.J. and the readers a scare. He could have been left out and nothing would change about the book — except de Lint doesn’t seem able to leave the topic alone.

Another issue I have with this book is one that’s been building in much of de Lint’s later work, which is the off-hand and almost bored way his characters react to their discovery of the supernatural. I think de Lint himself is bored with depicting the surprise that is natural when, say, a 6-inch person steps out of your baseboard or a 2-foot gnome appears out of nowhere. Earlier books revolved around the difficulty people have wrapping their heads around things that defy all their ideas about the normal, natural, and rational; nowadays, though, characters just seem to take it all in stride, often without a second thought. “Oh,” they seem to say, “faeries are real. Neat. Hey, how’s your stock portfolio doing for you, anyway?” It’s as if magic has become so everyday for him that he’s forgotten how to be amazed by it.

These aren’t really deal-killers, though; they probably wouldn’t be noticed by someone who is just being introduced to de Lint’s work, and there are quite a few good reasons to introduce yourself. Nobody imagines and fleshes out the Otherworldly as well as de Lint, and the underlying message of all his books is open-mindedness, awareness, and community — not a bad message for young readers and adults alike. The characters in Little (Grrl) Lost learn to stand up for themselves, and to stand up for others, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either. For readers from 11 or 12 to their mid-teens, I’d recommend it, especially if they’ve already started getting into fantasy — de Lint is head and shoulders above the typical swords-and-sorcery stuff out there. Older readers might also enjoy it, although I fear de Lint’s dialogue and his characters’ reactions might come off as a little corny.

If I were using a star system, Little (Grrl) Lost would get three stars out of five — a good solid book with a few non-critical flaws.

Amy at MotherLoad describes how to make cool glass fridge magnets. I’ve actually been making these for years, and I can attest, they are way fun and really easy. I use silica glue instead of Modge Podge to stick the magnets and glass marbles together, but otherwise I follow the same directions she does. One piece of advice I could add is to pick up a scrapbooking hole punch that makes 1/2″ or 3/4″ circles (depending on the size of magnets you’re using) — makes it much easier to cut the designs you want from magazines, wrapping paper, or whatever.

This is a great project to share with kids, by the way. Looking for designs that will look good as 3/4″ magnets forces them to pay attention to detail and see things in a whole new way, and can help them understand the artistic drive behind something like photography, where the creativity is in how you frame the world. Keep a stack of old magazines to rummage through for images to cut out. They also make great gifts — a couple years ago I bought some small party favor bags from the wedding aisle of a local craft store, put 6 magnets in each on, and tied them to the front of all my Christmas presents as an extra little something. Everyone loved them!

Carrie Kirby of the blog Wise Bread shares some advice on responding to toy recalls with a little more rationality and less panic in How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Recall. The recent rash of toy recalls sucks, absolutely, but with a little knowledge and patience you can minimize your children’s risks without depriving them of their favorite playthings.

When you hear about a recall in the media, the first thing you should do is check out a detailed source. The newspaper or TV news usually doesn’t provide enough information for you to know what to do. A great place to start is www.recalls.gov, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission site on this topic. Alternatively, you can almost always find a detailed release on the site of the toy manufacturer, such as this page set up by Mattel. Compare the photo and description of the recalled product to what you have. Some manufacturers provide helpful yes/no “wizards” to help you determine if your toy is part of the recall. Often the release provides certain serial numbers, found on the packaging or the product itself, or a date range.

Read the whole thing for more. One thing I’d add is thatyour pediatrician can run an easy test to check for heightened lead levels during your children’s next check-up. Or you can contact your local health department (they’re usually organized by county) and ask about lead testing — lots of health agencies offer them for free. If you’re staying on top of things, chances are your kids aren’t in any danger, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure. I wouldn’t schedule a special visit to your doctor’s office or anything, just ask next time the kids are in.

No fair me taking credit for this one since I learned it from the kids’ mother; then again, she can start her own blog, right?

Here’s the hack: we always keep 4 or 5 juice packets (Capri Sun) in the freezer. She started doing it for the kids’ lunches — it would keep everything in the lunchbox cool and would melt to nice, cold juice by lunchtime. But their uses don’t end there! They make great ice-packs for owies around the house. Since they’re bigger and cheaper than most commercial cooler packs, they’re great to throw into the cooler with sodas and whatever else you want to keep cold, even if you’re a grown-up who’s moved beyond the juice pack. And they’re tougher than “normal” ice packs, so they don’t burst as easily and can be reused over and over.

One of the trickiest aspects of being a step-ad is that, unless your partner is a widow or has absolutely no contact with her ex-, you are automatically locked in a relationship with her ex. And, given that your partner left him for a reason, chances are he’s a jerk.

I’m lucky enough to have not one but two dads to contend with, and as it happens, they’re both jerks. One’s a recovering (we hope!) drug addict, the other an insensitive boor with a history of violence. Both have had a hard time taking to the new state of their kids’ household — one I’ve never even spoken with, though I see him just about every week when we drop off his son (the 5-year old). I understand their position — I get to spend far more time with their children than they do and that has to gall (though I’m not very sympathetic — they’ve both made bad life choices which are directly responsible for any lack of time with their kids they may be experiencing).

Although I know for a fact that both of them go out of their way to belittle and undermine me (”My dad says you’re a bad guy,” says the little one almost every time he comes home from dad’s), I’ve tried to keep myself out of their relationships as much as possible. I think that, as much as possible, the kids should be allowed to develop and enjoy strong relationships with their dads.

Here are some general rules to help keep things as clear as possible:

• Discourage the kids from calling you “dad”. We’re on a first-name basis here. Sometimes the kids slip up, the older ones because it’s habit, the younger because he’s still learning basic command of language (sometimes he calls me “mom”, too). The 12-year old, who is having a real hard time with his father right now, recently told me that I’m more of a dad to him than his own dad; my reply was that while I try to do the right things, he had to remember that his father is still his dad. Meanwhile, one of the reasons his father and him are fighting is that he calls me his “step-dad”, so sometimes you just can’t win.
• Don’t second-guess their father. If you and your partner have made decisions about the children that fly in the face of the father’s wishes, let her be the one to explain it, not you. The last thing you want is to hang your relationship with your step-kids on opposition to their father, who they love and even worship. At best it will just confuse them, at worst they’ll side with dad and actively oppose you. What won’t happen is that they’ll side with you (unless their father is a very bad man and they’re old enough to understand that).
• Don’t badmouth their father. Oh boy, is this a hard one! Especially since he will badmouth you, unless he’s a really, really great guy. You have to take the high road — first of all because you’re trying to set an example and if their dad can’t be a mensch you have to step up. Second of all because sooner or later anything you say will make its way back to dad and then all hell will break loose. And third of all because this is their dad you’re talking smack about, and they’ll defend him — maybe not to your face, but in their hearts. And that will make it all the harder for you to sort out your own relationship with the kids.
• Keep it casual and cordial. If you can’t stand the guy, just don’t talk to him, but if at all possible, treat this relationship exactly as you would with a stranger you have to share time with, say on line at the bank. Sport scores, the weather, general chit-chat, and then he’s gone. You won’t be friends, but you don’t have to be enemies if you can help it.
• Support mom. Your partner is required by law to maintain a relationship with a man she probably hates. This can take a lot out of a person. Be a little more than your usual great self when she’s wrapped up in dealing with him. Even though you’d handle things differently, defer to her judgment about how to handle visitation times, late child support payments, decisions about school or other activities, etc. Of course, be honest about how you see things, and offer advice when needed, but when it comes time to make a decision, give her the final word and support her to the extend of your abilities.

You’ll do all this and still things will suck. But at least they won’t suck any more than they have to — you’ll be along for the ride instead of contributing to even worse problems. The most important thing is to avoid setting up a rivalry in your kids minds between you and their dad; as much as possible, keep these relationships in completely different “silos”. If they’re having trouble with their dad, be there for them, agree politely, chastise them when they go too far, but don’t get yourself in the middle of it — sooner or later, they’ll patch things up and then you’ll be the odd man out.