Never too busy for gourds

I've had a busy week and a frantic weekend--in a good way! I've got Diva T here as a beloved houseguest, I've been entertaining and grading and watching the semester and my deadlines skitter away from me. As part of the Year of YES, though, I'm still doing my damndest to take advantage of any invitations sent my way.

This weekend I carved pumpkins. (My boy Jack, who now guards my upstairs window, is here for your approval.) But this wasn't some sort of pun'kin patch ordeal with children, mind you, this was a group of professors armed with honest to god pumpkin paraphernalia and two greyhounds. It took us two hours to get through the process, and I left early!

First, we washed the pumpkins. I have never washed a pumpkin in my life and was suddenly overcome with disgust at my soiled pumpkin past. Then, we had to gut them. I HATE THE INSIDES OF PUMPKINS. But our charming and lovely hostess had tools like pumpkin scrapers--surely now available at Williams Sonoma--at our disposal and so we had a new advantage. Then we had to tape our patterns to the pumpkins. (Has everyone else been doing it this way? I've been freestyling it for a long time! There are patterns?) People were making cats, ghosts, bats, and moons on their pumpkins! You must poke holes (with a pumpkin poker--not kidding) through the pattern and then cut the dots with your . . . that's right . . . pumpkin carver! I chose a larger mouthed face, which is how I like to do things. Simple, see?

We chatted about work drama and life drama as we got slowly covered in pumpkin. We were all orange to the elbows and somewhat covered in squash string, but the Oktoberfest brew from Sam's helped that process, and the results were really pretty impressive. I've never seen a holiday decoration approached with such . . . gravity. (Except for my own Christmas decorations, of course. I think I can get two trees in my new place, by the way. Should be excellent.) But it was hilarious fun regardless, and we were able to take out a lot of stress between the knifing and the poking.

So greetings from Megarita and her new friend, Jack the Pumpkin. Sorry I've been so busy.