There I was...

...holding my jigsaw with pumpkin guts all over me and the saw. My memory was fuzzy. I looked down and in horror saw 4 dead pumpkins. The oldest was obviously a victim of my saw but what about the others? What happened? I started to think back...

It was a brisk autumn day and I decided that I was going to somewhat celebrate the pagan holiday of all pagan holidays-Halloween. But, knowing that i was far too lazy to wander around in the dark w/ my kids I decided to start small and just get some pumpkins. I rushed home from work and picked up my two boys who eagerly had been asking about halloween even though we've never done anything before. We made the quick trip over to the produce stand (on steroids) and proceeded to wander around in the cold not knowing what to do. I prefer my food to be dead, cooked and on my plate. This was a new experience. Finally I asked someone about pumpkins. After giving me a stare usually reserved for dudes and deadbeats, she gave me the low down. If we wanted to, we could take a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch and get sweet, juciy, ripe, and beautiful pumpkins there or we could look at a pile of mangy cast-offs. I chose the castoffs. I let the boys pick their pumpkins (of course I had veto power) and then I picked a couple baby ones for the girls. When we got home we started the messy business. I started Titus off first and while he was disemboweling his, I did the two girls baby 'kins. Typical girls. did not want to get their hands dirty. Finally, I got to Forrest's 'kin. I thought it odd that his had a different texture but didn't pay much attention until later. I tried using the same knives on his pumpkin only to bend them. Finally I had a hole in it but cutting was a nightmare. I alternated between a serrated knife and my gerber multi-tool saw blade. Talk about frustrating. Finally, I decided that the risk of slipping and cutting a nearby observer was too great and I went and got a bigger hammer. Figuratively that is. Literally, I got a saw. I came back to the table with a gleam in my eye and a fresh battery. I got the blade in and started cutting. It was beautiful. It was like a knife through butter. Not hot, but not cold. maybe about 60 degrees or so. room temperature if you like it cold or are trying to preserve a body and throw off the time of death for the medical examiner. But I digress. I was careful and finally got the top of the 'kin. And there I found the reason why it was so hard to cut... it was made of gold! Yes it was, wait, no. Well, it turns out it was just really thick-skinned. I'd say it was at least 1/8" thick. probably more but i'm not very good at the maths. less than 1/4 but more than an 1/8. 3/16? maybe? Anyway, everybody was happy. except the pumpkins

I'm not sure using a saw counts as carving

Sigh. somehow I wiped out my blog post. needless to say, using a saber saw on a pumpkin makes for great fun. if anyone cares to hear the whole story, comment and I'll write it up again. Otherwise, just content yourself with knowing that I have pumpkin guts on my saw.

It's so quiet

with only two kids around. I don't feel well (flu-ish) and stayed home and kept Trin and Titus. Trin is so mellow that for the first hour she just sat with me or wandered around. Now that Titus is inside he's playing with her, too roughly, it's a bit louder but still much quieter than all 6. 

Last week we received a generous gift from somebody anonymously. Well, the week before last week. So, last-er week I guess. Anywho, this gift was extremely timely as I had planned some very specific things for Rebekah's birthday But our bank account went dry which was going to seriously dampen my enthusiasm for spending money. Money isn't important to me until I don't have enough to pay my bills and meet my needs then it's very important. So, the money came in and we were able to get somebody to babysit all day. We were gone from 9ish until 7 that night! Pretty wild huh? So we left our 6 urchins with supergirl Hannah and went to the big city of Boise.  After a marvelous fast food breakfast, we then hit the mall in Nampa. I like that mall better. Smaller, less crowded. Even has some guy stores (translation: no clothes).  After rebekah came down from her shopping high we went to goodwill. She got some random stuff there but I found a cool home-made bookshelf for $13! It fit our house perfectly. Rustic, yet sophisticated. Ok, not really. It was a neat design but done by an amateur. Probably some kids shop project. But even with some rough edges, I "fell in love" with it. No. No, I didn't. But I did want it. So, I crammed it in the suburban. Next up on the day of fun was lunch at the Brazilian restaurant Tucanos. Now, I'm not big on ethnic food but the way they do it is very cool. First you pay them lots of money. Then you can eat what you want off the salad "festival" and then they bring meat and stuff around to your table.  It was in a rotation, so you feel a little frustrated at first since you want your food and you want it now, but be patient and they bring some pretty groovy things around. Rebekah was even brave enough to eat a marinated chicken heart! Sheesh. After eating leisurely we left before we were stuffed (imagine that!) and journeyed to the Outlet mall. It was a bit pruned down since we had been there last, but more stores for the little woman at least. I suggested we stop in the Levi's store and that was a mistake. The chick there started trying to "help" us and rebekah threw me to the wolves. I didn't want her help. I was 15 feet away facing away from her and she tries to talk to me. Doesn't she know how this works? Talk to the female companion of the male shopper. She is the intermediary. I don't talk to chicks about clothes unless I know them. Just another example of the moral decay of America I guess <sigh>.

Anyway, things were good and the money was great and now I feel kind of rotten and I have been having headaches. I'm going to go read a book if I can. Thanks for reading, and remember Keep Smiling!

 

Clubbing

I always want to start my blogs with something about clubbing. I'm not sure why, but it's probably because my parents didn't love me enough or they didn't get me the GI Joe w/ the Kung Fu grip or something. Either way, whatever sanity I have sometimes doesn't seem quite enough. God seems to provide (if you're a heathen then I guess insert an empty space where I wrote God) what I need but it's pretty darn close sometimes. The boys have been doing better because we've been keeping a daily accounting of their behavior. If they've been bad they end up w/ a "frowny face" and their reward/punishment is bare bottom spanking. Thankfully, that's been pretty rare because we give them a reality check when I get home. Then they get the opportunity to turn it around but the best they can do for the whole day is and OK. Basically, I define that as "Kids are not small adults, and therefore they will make mistakes and I will not crush their spirits too much." A "smiley-face" is "I about passed out because when I came home my wife wasn't in hysterics and screaming "Why did you do this to me!?!" and I am able to enter the home and go to bed at night w/out almost having a heart attack. Also, you probably did something without being asked and did a good job. Oh, and you ran and got me water whenever I asked for it." 

A frowny face on the other hand is much much grimmer. It consists of the aforementioned hysterical wife with details such as "he said i hate you." or lying and bullying the girls or wanton destruction or some such evil that is wicked (as were we all once) children. I worked with Forrest on proper nouns. Ok, forget all the complicated stuff. Proper nouns are nouns that are always capitalized. Get that, then work on what makes them special. I don't do much w/ helping schoooling (yes an extra o for the extra work) but Forrest was working on greater than/less than. Ya know < & >? I remember being confused on those. I swear I was in sixth grade. What the heck? why was I doing that in sixth grade. I gotta be wrong on that one. Anyway, I finally figured it out so I told forrest to picture the symbol < as pacman eating the bigger number. I drew a partial circle (come on, you can picture it) and threw on some eyeballs. I even added teeth. That seemed to help him a lot and it made it more fun to boot.

Anyway, something is always going on here. Rebekah and I are currently in tense negotiations over Turkey Day. Plans changed since her lazy sister moved away. Right now i'm looking at a multiple-hundred $ expense to drive to Colorado. I will stop now before I get in too much trouble. Rebekah gets these blogs. She's shopping right now while I sit here like a zombie. Granted, a zombie with higher brain function, but still a zombie.

We are also looking at refinancing our house. I'm a little frustrated over homeowners insurance of all things because our house is old. Hopefully we can put that to bed soon. I've committed to an appraisal though so if things go belly up now, i'm on the hook for $500. If not, it'll get rolled into the loan (i think). <groan!> See why driving to Colorado stresses me out? Not to mention the 6 small children and an over ten hour drive. Sanity, I'll see you on the flipside :)