Sometimes when I have too much time on my hands, I tend to buy things that are totally unnecessary. Like the time I bought $70 of post-it notes at Staples because I needed some blue ball-point pens. Or buying $80 of sprinkles at Williams Sonoma because they looked so darn cute. (I can’t remember the last time I ate sprinkles.) Today I bought two pumpkins. It’s Halloween, right? So what’s the problem? I haven’t carved a pumpkin in maybe, four years. Once my boys turned into teenagers, carving pumpkins became “so stupid” so we stopped. And I was okay with that having never been fond of the whole pumpkin carving process anyway.

When my boys were younger, I think they liked the idea of carving pumpkins but didn’t want to do the work. Typical. They drew the pictures of what they wanted (or chose them from a booklet) but us parents had to do the sawing, remove most of the guts because “mom it smells too much and it’s slimy,” and finally cutting out the face of the pumpkin. I had to clean up the mess, wipe down the finished products, and light the candles inside. But boy did those kids do a good job…drawing the faces. Looking back, I see now that it was really about us doing a family activity together. Our Charlie Brown DVD played on the TV in a continuous loop, we made spooky bat cookies and ate them all, and once the pumpkins were done, we’d watch a scary movie to end the night. Those are great memories and I hope my kids will think fondly of them when they start families of their own some day.

Now, here in the present, it’s just me and two pumpkins sitting in my car looking at me like “okay lady, what now?” And I have no idea. Because, guess what? I don’t like pumpkins. I don’t mind “pumpkin-spiced” but that raw pumpkin smell, yuck. The smell seems to stick in my nose hairs for days afterwards. However, I do like roasting the pumpkin seeds but getting them, well, is it really worth all that work? I’m still on the fence and so are my pumpkins, so to speak. I wonder what my husband will say when I tell him I bought them. I wonder if I can convince him to carve them for me. I wonder if he’ll laugh at my face. I wonder if I’ll need to buy more wine for all this. To be continued…

_{FYI: I have not received any compensation for the product(s), store(s), and/or link(s) mentioned in this blog. This content was written purely from my perspective for informational purposes only.}