When you wait until the day before Halloween to buy your pumpkins? You wind up with Heritage Pumpkins, the only two left in all the mall at that. (Yes, we buy almost everything at the mall, if not the far mall, then the near one. These came from the near one.)
Saint Aardvark came home with them in the stroller and Trombone in the Bjorn. I had questions. Are we sure they’re not “gourds” and thus purely decorative? Should we even be carving them? Why are they called “heritage”? Are they endangered? What will the strata council say? He just handed me a knife. Brave man.
It’s been a long time since I carved a pumpkin. . I had forgotten how squelchy the insides are; how the seeds tangle in the threads. When I closed my eyes and reached my hand in, it felt totally familiar. I wonder if anything else in the world feels like pumpkin innards. Probably other kinds of innards.
We had a handful of trick-r-treaters. One was definitely too old, another definitely too young (if you don’t have all your teeth yet, do you still get to carry a plastic bag for candy? I say no.) But I neglected to put on my cane-shaking-old-lady costume so it would have been out of character to deny the 13 year old devil any candy. Besides, she’d gone to the trouble to dress up in red polyester, paint her face red and go door to door with her mom. Yikes. Here, kid, have all the candy you want.
(Mine’s on the left, SA’s on the right. Yeah, there’s a lot of detail on mine you’re not seeing? Like the cut-out-stuck-back-on nose? Just keep that in mind before you decide his is better. Right?)
Tomorrow is November. On with the show!