Falling

I love autumn. I love everything about it. The crisp air that almost burns when entering the lungs, the hues of red, yellow, and orange in the turning leaves, the smell of apples being pressed at an orchard, and the taste of a warm cinnamon sugar doughnut at the mill.

There are not many of these things to be found in central Arizona, but there is one thing I can always count on. The pumpkin patch. For me, going to the pumpkin patch in October for Halloween is as big of a deal as putting up a tree in December for Christmas. This year sucrose guy thought perhaps we needed to bypass the trip with the grim financial forecast we are experiencing. I told him I would take to the pole for a few nights if I had to so we could go. The compromise was taking a hit from the grocery budget.



Growing up a city girl, I have always found a certain novelty in visiting farms. The baby pigs in a pen to pet, the little yellow chicks running around pecking the ground, the shimmering black cow mooing, and the goats eating from my palm all bring me delusions of having my own animal menagerie one day.

Someday, I will have the white salt box house with black shutters on 6 acres of sloping land with one brown spotted cow, 4 baby chicks pecking the corn meal scattered about, and a pink pot belly pig lying on the front porch next to the dogs. Noticeably absent will be the nasty, pellet pooping, stinky goats that run up and ram you in the bum when you are not feeding them enough.

Until then, I will always be thankful for the pumpkin patch.

This is Halloween

I must admit, Halloween is my favorite holiday. After all, it is a holiday with the sole purpose of collecting and consuming as much sugar as your insulin receptors will allow. In our house, it is also the only time I can talk Hollywood into going shopping with me. We go to lunch, and then we plot out where the best place is going to be to find the perfect costume. We get to talk about friends and things happening on the playground. This time we even had to have the conversation about the difference between when a girl says she likes you and when a boy says he likes a girl. Which boils down to the difference between "like" and "like like" Aren't forth grade girls supposed to be into Barbies and Easy Bake ovens, not my son?

Then it's Curly and the Wee one's turn. This year they decided to be matching kittys. We had to scour the valley looking for the right size. We found it about 45 minutes away and headed off. The conversation with a six year old and two year old is quite different than that of a nine year old. We sat on the bar stools at Johnny Rockets for lunch and talked about who was nice at school over grilled cheese squares. We talked about getting our nails done and what color they would be. The wee one interjected a few thoughts, but mostly she just blew bubbles in her root beer.

When the big day arrived, the pumpkins had been carved, and the mummy dogs consumed, we headed out with some friends for the big night. The four big kids were done about an hour and a half into it. Not the wee one, she was a warrior. We kept asking, "Are you done?" The answer was always, "Not yet."

The next morning she locked herself in the bedroom with the dogs and consumed 2/3 of the haul. A preempted strike was then formulated by Hollywood and Curly to protect their loot. If only they were so vigilant with the laundry.