Pumpkin Party

So, tonight my wife had that pumpkin party that was supposed to be last week but got rained out twice.

My wife goes all out--she makes all sorts of Halloween-themed food items, decorates everything, and in general exhausts herself.


Relatives show up with their spawn, eating commences. Outside we have a fire pit that they've lit.


There's the pumpkin-carving tent where people carved their pumpkins. I abstained this year. Just not in the mood. Jesus, am I old...


There were twelve adults and eight kids, but only seven pumpkins got carved. Guess I wasn't the only old person there. Here's a picture of the four that stayed long enough for a pic.



Anyway, hopefully next year I'll have more time to get back into the spirit...

Suck My Deck

Working on the porch reminded me of something.

Years ago--like, back when my brother and I still lived at home with our parents--my dad decided he wanted a deck instead of the concrete slab he had out there. Like a real 15X20 wooden deck that was like 5 feet off the ground so you could walk right out the sliding glass door onto it.

My brother and I would, of course, be expected to help out. So we did.

And it so happened that while we were in the middle of the two-week build that my grandad came into town visiting. And he, like my dad, thinks he knows everything.

So one day my grandad goes out there to "help" my dad work on the deck. You should have seen it: work comes to a grinding halt. My grandad thinks my dad is doing FILL IN THE BLANK wrong. My dad says he's doing it right. They argue. They argue for a LONG time.

Once they finally agree that it's my dad's deck and he's going to make the decision whether it's right or wrong, they continue. Until ten minutes later when my grandad thinks my dad is making another mistake. And it begins again.

Anyway, I was reminded of this when my dad and I worked on my porch, but not because of the similarities. Quite the opposite. You see, for two people to have these long arguments requires that both people care about what they're doing.

And I don't. It's not that I don't like my porch. But I'm so much more a "function over appearance" person that if the deck works, I don't care how it looks.

My wife and I fight over this all the time. She's the opposite.

She bought this great rug for downstairs, she throws it down and shows it to me. It looks great. However, I can't open my goddamn refrigerator anymore. The door rubs the carpet, which bunches up, and then it's all stuck.

She wonders why my coat is always hung over the kitchen chair or tossed on the ground next to it. I told her I wanted to put a coat rack on the wall behind the front door. "That would be ugly," she says. "Use the coat closet."

There is no way that I am going to walk in, go to the coat closet, open it, take out a hanger, hang up the coat, and shut the closet every time I come home--not to mention the reverse every time I leave. I just wanna grab my coat and hustle out. The coat hanger would work, but wouldn't be pretty.

Seriously, she has a problem. If it's pretty she'll buy it, even if we don't need it(and I can tell you we don't have room for it). And especially if it doesn't work as well as the non-pretty version we already own.

I gotta start looking for the future Mrs. K the 2nd. You know, for when I kill this one.

:)

Ta-Fu**ing-Dah

Sunday my wife tells me that she and my dad are going to "fix the moulding on my porch". I say cool, whatever. What I heard was "I am going to do something that involves ZERO work on your part, Kev."

I'm totally okay with that.

My dad comes over and pulls off the old moulding and says that all the wood out there is completely rotted. We've had a number of flooding incidents, and the house is like 50 years old.

The bad news is that he decides we need to rip it all out and rebuild it. Which, if you noticed, now involves ME.

I figure, how bad can it be?

Monday we spend all day ripping out wood and then attempting to repair the places under the doors--tricky stuff because we have to keep it all supported or the entire thing will drop under the weight of the porch. So Monday we accomplish almost nothing.

See, we're doing this because my wife is having a "Pumpkin Party" on Thursday night for the family. I dunno, don't ask.

Tuesday we begin cutting wood sheets and work some more on the doors and the bottom braces. We started working at 1pm and my dad left at 8:30pm. I work until 10:30am and am totally exhausted. My body aches. And we've only gotten one little corner section done.

Wednesday I take off early from my store(thanks Brad!) to go help my dad finish--he was going to try to do it by himself but there's no way he would have been able to do much. We busted ass and got most of it done before my dad left at. But I finished the last hour and did some beautiful carpentry.

I walk into the house--my wife and kid are in the kitchen. "Ta-Fu**ing-Dah!" I exclaim. "I'm done!"

My wife says, "You hungry?"

My kid(who's autistic and doesn't speak very well) says very clearly "Ta-fu**ing dah!" and he laughs like I did.

My wife glares at me. "Oh, that's great!"

I can't stop laughing. It's so funny. Almost made all that work worthwhile.

Almost.

Currently Watching

I've seen a couple of people post things at the bottom of each blog they do, like:

Today's Lunch
or
Currently Watching

And they list what that happens to be.

So I think I'll try to remember to do that in the future.

Anyway, just finished Romancing The Stone. I'd forgotten Zemeckis directed it. It's inspiring that Michael Douglas looked that good and he was 40 at the time. Also neat to see Kathleen Turner before she turned into a man.

Watched some Casshern. Was bored out of my mind. Felt like it was 6 hours long so I finally just turned it off.

Caught The Birds on AMC--don't know why I didn't just pop my dvd in. That movie's still so insanely well-crafted. I again wonder what Hitchcock would be making if he were still alive.

Am in the middle of watching Jaws 2 on free On Demand right now.

New Star Trek

So they're doing a new version of Star Trek. Yep, the old one with Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, the bunch.

And J.J. Abrams is doing it. I think he's a good writer/director.

First they cast the guy who plays Sylar on "Heroes" to play Spock. Perfect casting. This guy looks and acts like Nimoy.

The next castings were weird though. They cast the guy who plays Harold in "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" to play Sulu. He's a comedic actor mainly. They cast Simon Pegg--who is hysterical--to play Scotty. Aside from the accent, Scotty is so NOT Simon Pegg.

Moving on, they cast Chekov with some nobody.

The guy they cast as Kirk looks okay, but I've never seen him in anything.

Today they cast Karl Urban as "Bones" McCoy.

Say what? This is "Lord of the Rings", "Doom", and "Pathfinder" Karl Urban? Action guy Karl Urban? Playing "Bones"? This is obviously a RADICAL departure from the original "Bones".

I'll reserve my judgement on the whole thing, but I gotta tell you--I'm nervous about the whole thing.

Theft

So this is weird.

A few weeks back I came home to discover the bungie cord we keep attached to our front gate is off. We keep it there so our dog doesn't accidentally open the gate and run out. And it's NEVER unlatched.

I walk into the yard and don't see our dog Shayna. I go inside and ask my wife where she is and she says, "Outside." I ask her if she unhooked the bungie cord and she says no.

I go outside and look around the yard--Shayna's definitely gone. My wife is flipping out. I ask my neighbor if he saw anyone near our yard. He says he saw two girls petting Shayna over the fence about an hour ago.

I tell my now-crying wife I'm going to go look for her. I drive the most likely route and find someone outside their house. I ask them--"Did you see two little girls walk by with a white dog?" And you'll never believe it. This is the first person I've asked, someone who lives around the corner and down the street.

They say, "Sure! They didn't have a leash so we gave them a rope. We know where that dog lives. They your little girls?" I said no and asked which direction they went. They pointed.

So I drove that way. I pass a court and keep going, and see a girl talking on the phone outside of her house. I ask her the same question and she says she didn't see anybody.

Wow. That was easy. Gotta be in the court.

I drive back to the court and in, and instantly see four girls all huddled in front of a house. In the middle of them is my dog.

You can probably imagine the things going through my head. But I tried to keep my eye on the ball. Ultimately, I just don't want them coming back to my house to take the dog again. So if I get out of the car and rant and rave, and threaten and scare them, will that make them more or less likely to do it again? If they were little boys it might work. Little girls, I decided to take a different tact.

I got out of the car and came over. The girls knew it was my dog and said, "Hey mister, we found your dog! She was following us down the street."

I know it's bullshit. I'm sure they know I know it's bullshit. But I say "Thanks. My wife is crying she's so scared of losing her." In this way I think maybe I can make the girls feel bad for taking her, and maybe they'll be reluctant to do it again.

Also, their father comes out and it's obvious he's pretty pissed at them. He's glad I showed up so he wouldn't have to take the dog back himself. So I figure at the least they're going to get shit from their dad.

I take Shayna home. My wife pulls up a couple of minutes later; she was apparently driving around sobbing, trying to find Shayna.

So that was that.
----
The other morning at about 5:30am I walk out my door. It's still dark out. I walk down my steps and notice my front gate is wide open. It startles me.

Luckily, Shayna was inside asleep so I didn't worry about that. I couldn't figure it, so I just left.

I returned about 3 hours later and only then did I notice that many of our Halloween decorations from the yard had been stolen. THAT was why the gate was open. Some pinhead kids had come in the night and taken our pumpkin lights, a ghost from the tree, and the wooden HAPPY HALLOWEEN sign from our front gate.

I mean...seriously? Is there big money to be had from stealing Halloween decorations?

The irony being that if I had left Shayna out that night(she likes to sleep outside much of the time) nobody would have come in the yard. Most people are scared of her even though she's very friendly, and even if they're not scared of her, if you approach our gate she will bark--and that will bring me.

Anyway, I come home the next day and my wife has bought new Halloween decorations, but this time she's strapped and tied them down with those plastic ties and also some wire. She's a little insane.

Me, I'd have just abandoned the decorations.

Wicked Forest

Maybe it's just me. I have driven by the big signs the past couple of years. Every Halloween they go up a couple of weeks in advance.

"Wicked Forest". It's some haunted Halloween hay ride or something. Get scared out of your wits! The signs promise frightening fun.

Then I notice who's sponsoring it: A Catholic school.

Is that weird, or is it just me? I mean, back when I was growing up our church didn't even want its youth trick or treating. It was a secular event, which was apparently a bad thing, especially when it was "celebrating the devil's holiday".

But now they're embracing it? Sponsoring events related to it?

I'm not complaining. I always knew Halloween was one of the best holidays of the year, only rivaled by Christmas because of all the good swag you'd get.

I guess I'm just surprised it took this long for the church to get in on the act.