Friday, November 10, 2006

back to tired, and rotting gourds

I hit the 28-week milestone on Tuesday and just like that, I'm back to being tired. It's like my body instantly realized that we'd come into the 3rd trimester and began crying out for mid-afternoon naps. 'Course it could be that I've been going to bed after 11pm and getting up at 6:30.

Last year we didn't get to carve our pumpkin.

At around midnight one night, as Tim was getting ready for bed (I was already sound asleep as Kate was just about a month old and I was always tired) he smelled a terrible stench coming from the front of the house. Our front door was open, the screen door allowing the cool night breeze to circulate through the house. He thought perhaps someone had put food in the recycle bin just outside the door and that it had begun to rot. Upon investigation, he found that it wasn't icky food, but a pack of about 8 javelinas snorting their way through our front yard. Apparently, they stink to high heaven, although they are generally gentle animals. This group thought it would be a good snack to eat my yet-uncarved gourd, and proceeded to gnaw away at it until Tim chased them away. He failed to a) wake me up to see these animals that I have (still) never seen, and b) take a photo of the incident. There was a tired post-partum reprimand from me the next morning, although at the time I probably would rather have been sleeping anyway.

This year, I did carve the pumpkin that we got at Apple Annie's, and following my sister's instruction I waited until Halloween day to actually cut into the thing. She told me last year to wait until nearly the day was upon us, or our pumpkin would rot. No way, I thought. She was right, of course. Living somewhere for a decade does usually give you some knowledge of the area. Yesterday I had to run for a plastic garbage bag after Kate and I went outside to play and she thought it would be fun to try to roll the pumpkin around. I had noticed the pumpkin had started to look a little ... dark ... but thought perhaps it was just shadows. Not shadows. Mold. Gross.

The black stuff is not tricky lighting, unfortunately.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yuck! Our neighbor had a pet baby javelina that ran around our neighborhood with the dogs. Then, one day they had to get rid of it. It started growing up and getting that STANK smell. Ew.