Bless Me Great Pumpkin, For I Have Sinned

It has been three years since my last carving. My intentions are the best, but let's face it: I am the bah-Humbug of Halloween, a sinner on the devil's holiday.

I have been sick on more October 31sts than I can count. Once, in an ICU and this year in the ER for a migraine. (Didn't even get the 'good stuff' but that's another story.) And now, we are a diabetic family with an insatiable sweet tooth, which is a perfect disaster in the making. The Candy Man is my nemesis.

For dress-up, to sew would be divine, but those intricate, delightful and oozing with love handmade fairy costumes have never materialized. Haven't saved a dishwasher box to convert into a Rubik's cube, either. To top it off, I had simply the greatest idea for my own costume and swore to hell and half of Georgia that this year, I would make it happen - A Rod in a skirt with bobby socks and pumps, an Easter hat, gloves and handbag, a kaballah string and a vintage Madonna record. Perfect for scaring all those little Variteks and Pedroias knocking on the door for loot. Did. Not. Happen.

My biggest guilt is that I think the pumpkin carving thing is kinda gross. Especially now that you can buy such a nice selection of pre-fabricated pumpkin-themed junk at Garden Ridge (or our "Garden Ridge of the Northeast", the open year round Christmas Tree Shop.) For far too many a Hallows Eve, I have waited until the last minute, unintentionally denying my children the pleasure of scooping nasty-smelling orange gunk with a soup ladle, slinging it at one another and then fighting over the butcher knife. So with the best of intentions, we always have a punkin on the front porch. And it always rots, both its scare and pie potential unrealized.

But this year, a miracle occurred! Sometime on the evening of Friday, November 7, one or more yard perpetrators of the squirrel or chipmunk variety used it's gnarly little front teeth and carved a 6 inch diameter circle straight through our uncarved friend, eating its way to the middle, with a detritus of seeds strewn across the deck. The next day, the hole was larger and more of the middle nether-region had disappeared. And on the third day, they wiped out the buffet. So I rolled the giant gourd shell away to the curb, confident that those cute, but nasty yard rodents will do nature's dirty work and the pumpkin will rise again - from some random place in my yard late next summer.