One thing I detest about Fall is that so many poor pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns get kidnapped from their porches to be smashed unmercilessly* in the road. For some odd reason I have a particular affinity for pumpkins, so to see mangled and run-over pumpkin bits in the street makes me sorry for both the pumpkin and whoever owned the pumpkin. I should probably also admit that this shenanigan happened to me more than once as a little girl, so I know how traumatizing an experience it can be for a child.
This year I was given three pumpkins by a very generous friend who grows them herself. One is a sugar pumpkin, which I intend to bake and make into bread. The second pumpkin is about the size of a basketball, and then the last one is about the size of a large grapefruit, or maybe a small cantaloupe. Or at least it was.
The grapefruit/cantaloupe-sized pumpkin started to rot early for some reason, even though I hadn't carved it. Its skin was getting soft. I put both it and the bigger pumpkin out by my porch to be festive (you couldn't really tell from a distance that the smaller pumpkin was rotting). They sat there for a few weeks. Finally, I decided I needed to do something with my poor little rotting pumpkin.
You know how sometimes when you see a spot of mold on your cheese or your bread or some vegetables left in the fridge you just leave it there to see what the mold will look like as it grows? Well, I had this vague idea that it would be neat if I could watch my little pumpkin as it rotted. With that in mind, I removed it from the porch and put it on a small tree stump behind the garage. It's a very hidden stump, out of view of everyone except my downstairs neighbors, and then only if they go out their back door (which they never do).
Unfortunately, my downstairs neighbors had a party one night. It was quite a party. It involved all sorts of interesting chemicals and substances, and when I came home around 12:30am there were people wandering randomly around our yard, and even into our neighbor's backyard. It was… quite a party.
The next morning as I looked out my front window I saw a smear of orange in the road. My first thought was that it was a pumpkin, but it was way past Halloween, and my own pumpkin was still intact on my porch (I checked), so I figured the smear must be leaves. I didn't give it much more thought after that. As I left for work, however, I noticed that my little rotting pumpkin was not on the stump behind the garage, and the truth hit me: it was a pumpkin in the street, and it was my pumpkin.
Sigh.
I wonder what it is about my pumpkins that scream, "Take me! Throw me on the asphalt!" Maybe it was because it was soft and rotting. Maybe they figured it had been forgotten and they were helping me out. Maybe they were drunk.
Maybe I should stop leaving my pumpkins on the porch.
*Did you know that "merciless" and "unmerciless" mean the same thing? Weird, huh?
I'd forgotten how hairy long hair is, how it sheds all over the place, clogs the drain in the shower, clogs the drain in the sink, leaves shining strands on shoulders of sweaters and coats…
I'm used to cat hair all over the place, but long hair—even when it's my own—is a different matter entirely.
Blech.
I always have a difficult time remembering how many Cs are in the word occasion or occasionally. Tonight, however, I sat down and thought about it. I played around with the letters and spelled occasion, ocassion, and occassion. Ocasionaly. Occasionaly. Occasionally. Occassionally.
It's a tricky word!
Then I thought of the word piccolo. I always know how to spell piccolo. I don't know why. I just know how to spell it. There are two Cs in piccolo. There are two Cs in occasion, occasional, and occasionally.
Piccoloccasionally.
Now I will never forget it.
I don't live with Tree-Hugger anymore. :o( BUT, there are good things about the new place I live. Here are 13 of them.
1. I'm in the same ward.
2. My room can be really dark, so it's great for sleeping in.
3. I'm not in the basement. I wasn't in the basement before, either, but I just really hate basements, so I consider this a good thing.
4. There's room for both my big bookcases, as well as my three smaller ones.
5. My new place looks kind of cute inside. If you don't look closely.
6. My house looks cute from the outside, too.
7. The hardwood floors look nice*.
8. The hot water is just the right temperature, and comes out after just a few seconds of running the water.
9. I got to pick out the window treatments!**
10. Once I get all my boxes from Mother and Father Edit's garage, I'll have all my own kitchen stuff again! I haven't seen my kitchen stuff in over 3 years. Boy, I've missed it. How can one miss measuring cups and mixing bowls, you ask? Hey, they're really nice measuring cups and mixing bowls!
11. I have adequate closet and storage space, which is nice.
12. My house is architecturally interesting.
13. There are a lot of electrical outlets.
Bonus 14, because it's mixed: I don't have wireless (no wireless = problem for online student), so I've bought a device which allows me to access the Internet via the 3G network. It basically turns my laptop into a big phone, so I can get an Internet connection wherever I can get phone service. Woohoo!
THE END
*When they're swept. Remember how Anya is carpet-colored? Yeah, well, I no longer have a carpet, and carpet-colored whitish-tannish hairs really show up against a lovely dark hardwood floor.
**I honestly wouldn't be so excited about this if I hadn't been the drapery specialist at BB&B. But I was, so I am.
I started practicing Christmas hymns on the organ on Sunday. Hooray! I am going to make Joy to the World all brassy and sparkly, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing will be powerful and mighty. I still don't know how to handle Once in Royal David's City though. What am I supposed to do with those scales in the bass? I need an organ class.
The last few times I've used my scale, the display has flashed "Lo" on the screen.
That means I'm losing weight, right?
Honestly, is it too much to ask for a nice private one-bedroom home, with room for all my bookshelves and my piano and my desk, that'll let me have a cat, isn't at the top of a hill, looks cute, has a/c and laundry and a garbage disposal and good plumbing, isn't part of a huge complex, is located in a good part of town, isn't infested by bugs or critters, has off-street parking, and goes for under $400 a month? I mean, I'm not asking for the world here, just the basic amenities. Sheesh.
Oh, and a pool would be really awesome, too, but that's totally optional.
;o)
During the summer I usually don't use my blanket when I sleep—at least to begin with. Instead, I fold the blanket over at the foot of my bed, or sometimes I just kick it off the bed entirely. The magical thing is that when I wake up in the morning, I am always wrapped up in my blanket, though I can never remember retrieving it from the floor. Do I grab it in my sleep? Do the magical nighttime fairies cover me up as I slumber? The world may never know… though sometimes when I wake up, the blanket is turned sideways so that my feet stick out. Maybe that's a clue; I think the magical nighttime fairies would at least turn it the right way.
The time has come to start blogging again! Can you even believe how delinquent I've been? Seriously? You can't? Oh. Well, I can. :o)
Speaking of time, here are some crazy cool watches:
Sweet pocketwatch (I have a thing for pocketwatches.)
Beautiful wristwatch (which I would want if it weren't so darn huge)
This doesn't even look like a watch.
This one is super easy for me to read, but considering it looks enormous on that man's arm, I'm guessing it would look even more gigantic on my own arm.
I love that site. I love looking at their watches. They're not even watches, really, they're more like… art time pieces. I think that's how they describe them. So, so lovely.
I have cat hair all over my computer. How did it get there? Blech.
Yesterday I received the June issue of The Friend magazine. Yes, I still subscribe to this children’s magazine. I like it. Plus, I want to see if they’ll ever print the story I sold to them. Anyway, the monthly “Trying to be like Jesus” section of the magazine includes short anecdotes from children who have done something good. The stories usually include stuff like being nice to a sibling, helping someone with chores, saying hi to a loner, etc., and they’re pretty cute. This month (June) I read the following:
“One day at school I was reading a book from the school library. I had a bad feeling because there were some bad words in the book. During recess I went to the library and told the librarian. She reported it to the headmaster. They took all the copies of the book out of the library. I felt good because I chose the right.”
Isn’t that just fantastic? I wonder what the book was. Was it Harry Potter? That has some bad words in it. Or Huckleberry Finn? That does too, though it’s probably too advanced for her age group. Or maybe Bridge to Terabithia? James and the Giant Peach? The Great Gilly Hopkins? How to Eat Fried Worms? The Catcher in the Rye? Ok, if it were my elementary school and they had Catcher in the Rye, I would probably pull that from the shelf too. :o)
I’m not saying I like bad words. I don’t. In fact, if you look through any of the books I own, you will find that most of them have black lines and written-in revisions where the swear words used to be (though sometimes I just revise books because the writing is terrible). But removing books from the library? There are certain books I have not started or finished because I didn’t want to deal with the language or subject matter. But in that case I just put the book back on the shelf and moved on. I could understand maybe marking a book cover with a warning label, if the community or area requires such a precaution, but removing a book entirely?
I think it’s not so much the story but the underlying philosophy that upsets me. Carried to other areas of one’s life, what does this mean? If someone says a bad word, should we rat on them and have them reprimanded? What if it’s our teacher or boss that is swearing, then what? If a person does not live according to the standards we uphold, does that mean we shun them and banish them, remove them from our lives? What if that person is your brother? If your friend orders coffee to go with her donut, do you turn your head every time she takes a sip?
I know we’re told to avoid the very appearance of evil, but we’re also told to seek after anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring instigated riots when it was first performed, but I would say that it is worthy of praise. Does the fact that it has to do with a human sacrifice mean we should never listen to or perform it? And what about the Bible? That’s not exactly without violence, sex, scandal, or swear words.
Don’t get me wrong: we need to teach our children to judge good and evil, and we need to provide them with age-appropriate reading materials. But if something comes up, like a bad word, wouldn’t it be better to teach them how to deal with it, rather than just make it disappear? Eventually, they’re going to have to face problems they can’t just ignore, things they can’t just make go away. Then what will they do?
Actually, now that I think about it, I would want my daughter to do the same thing she did. I would want my daughter to come tell me about the bad words in the book she's reading. But my solution wouldn't be to take the book away and get rid of it (most likely). I would just give her a black gel pen and tell her to have fun.
