(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 44)

I almost didn’t buy a pumpkin this year.

I don’t know what it’s like by you, but the pumpkin selection around here this year has been less than appealing.

I was reading an article about it - I guess there have been worse years for the pumpkin harvest.

Farmers were able to salvage this year’s pumpkin season.

I guess they may not look great, but they're otherwise OK.

When I finally did pick a pumpkin, though…the one I picked was not otherwise OK.

I will say, I have a feeling this week’s weather had something to do with it.

It was hot and humid - way too much so for October…and very hot and humid in the house.

It was the kind of humid in the house that can turn bread moldy. (I hope this happens to other people and it’s not just something gross that happens to me for a gross, preventable reason.)

And, well, the pumpkin turned moldy.

Just to be clear (But you’re probably reading carefully and understand): This is NOT our pumpkin.

We had a design picked out for this year’s carving - the girls agreed on it - you can see it at the right there.

I was going to carve it up on Friday night…but on Wednesday started to get kind of gross looking. (Or more gross-looking than it was. It’s not like I picked a prize-winner in the first place.)

By Friday I didn’t really want to see what it looked like on the inside, and Kathy agreed.

So we didn’t carve a pumpkin this year.

I did ask if anyone was artistically inspired by the pumpkin’s moldy spot, and that’s how we turned it into part of the pumpkin’s face.

Usually we display the pumpkin from inside the window, where we can move it out of the sun if we have to.

A lot of people put pumpkins out front of the house - I usually start doing that on Halloween night and then leave it out there until we discard it. We get too much sun in the front of the house to leave a pumpkin out there during the day.

But this pumpkin?

Oh, it’s out there. We had to get it out of the house immediately.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

“I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it” - The 1975
“Southeastern” - Jason Isbell
“Like a Virgin” - Madonna
“Fuzzybrain” - Dayglow
Point Break
Ocean’s Thirteen
Moana
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Despite my best brain efforts this is becoming a race to total 365 and I’m not sure how I feel about that. (See third Notes bullet.)*

Notes

*When we do discard the pumpkin, we’ll be composting it. BIG composting news - Framingham has hit the threshold where the composting fee has gone down. So nice work everyone who signed up! Composting is still going great and even though there’s no longer incentive for me, I still encourage everyone to do it. If you’re local and interested let me know and I’ll get you the information.

*Even though there’s no jack-o-lantern to show off this year you can still relive my past glories. (And not-so-glories.) Here’s a link to last year’s pumpkin post, and then from there you can work your way all the way back. I think I’ve been carving fun pumpkins all the way back to 2013 or so.

*I don’t mind that we’re breaking tradition this year. It’s OK to skip things once in a while. (*See note in “What I’ve Been Enjoying.”)

*The B.A.A. Half Marathon is two weeks from today. I did a 12-mile run on Friday and I don’t know that I felt great about it. Either it’s just taking me a while to build the mileage back up or this is what it feels like to run 12 miles and I just forgot. Either way, I’ll be ready to go 13.1 on the 13th somehow.

*The social media links are below - lots of running posts at the Instagram if that’s of interest to you. Thanks for following along!