BOO!

In the spirit of almost-Halloween, we got down and dirty jack-o-lantern style this weekend. With Heidi from next door, we made a night of it: renting the Back to the Future trilogy and cooking an autumnal meal (roasted chicken, cranberry chutney, roasted root veggies, and caramel apples). Eventually we roasted the pumpkin seeds too to top our soups for lunches this week. But there’s not much that’s quite as satisfying as starting out with a big blank orange canvas, and ending up with little monsters that glow in the dark.

Our cast of characters, clockwise from top: Mr. Evil Pumpkin, Mr. Ghost, Mr. Mike Wazowski.

And the most exciting thing is we have found a way to stave off the voracious neighborhood squirrels. It’s been almost 3 days, and only one nibble on Mr. Evil Pumpkin’s bottom teeth. The secret: the bitter spray (sold at pet supply stores) that keeps puppies from biting the furniture. Apparently squirrels are also opposed, and it doesn’t seem to affect the pumpkins any (e.g., color, decomposition). We may have jack-o-lanterns until Halloween this year!

Polls Are Now Closed!

Well, you all had your chance. The polls in the dog-pickle contest are now closed. No more entries will be accepted.

The correct answer is 17. This dog is somewhere between 17 and 18 years old. I think this is remarkable since I’ve actually never met a dog over 15, maybe haven’t even heard of a dog older than that. This beagle has been in his master’s care for 16 of the 17 years, or I would have trouble believing it. And he’s still spry! When I bent down to pet him and take his picture, he jumped (really!) in my lap and sniffed and wagged and licked. Like a 10-year-old pooch. He insists on taking 2 walks a day still, and honestly looks like he gets around better than his master.

Every time I see him I think, “What a shame he was neutered. That’s the sort of genes to pass along. Good ole mutt longevity.”

And the winner of the pickles is . . .

Annalise! with the closest guess of 15.

Look for your pickles in the mail, sister mine! Congratulations and enjoy!

For Sale!

This past weekend we invited ourselves and our junk to our neighbor’s moving sale. I had spent the past couple of months periodically adding items to a growing pile in the back room: portable CD players, lots of mugs, duplicate measuring cups, books we’ll never read again, toys not worth saving, 500 million highlighters.

By last Thursday, things were looking a little chaotic. And surveying the wreckage made us wonder, “Why did we need all this stuff and where the heck did we put it before?” Not to mention, “Will anyone want any of this crud?”

This is in the middle of the pricing/
organizing phase. Yes, this is organized.

This is what the driveway looked like on Friday when I drove off to work, leaving poor Heidi and her mom and grandmother to wheel and deal for us. I did make one sale on Friday morning: 3 tiki torches and the fuel to go with them for $3. Luckily, the point was to get rid of it all, and so every sale they made — and almost 75% of everything was sold by the end of the day — was cause for a little celebration. (Well, for us anyway. Every sale they made was for them one less sale they had to make.)

This is our half of the driveway. Heidi’s side also
included her garage. Lucky folks, the ones that
got here early and got the pick of the litter.

On Saturday, we reached for desperate measures by setting up a dime table, a quarter table, and half price table. And a “FREE! Please take it! Please please PLEASE!” pile. At the end of it all we were each left with only a few boxes, and a pile o’ cash. One very special bottle of wine, coming up!

The whole experience left me with the feeling I originally had: garage sales are a lot of work and not much fun. (A)You need to have a lot of stuff to make it worthwhile. And (B)You should either pay someone to do it for you (a REALLY good idea, in-laws-of-mine), or just give the junk away.

But we will very very much enjoy our bottle of the good stuff.