Pumpkin Soup, or Close To It

I just got back from walking Gracie around the subdivision. We were out for nearly an hour and I lost count of how many soupy pumpkins are out there. Downright scary, which of course, is perfectly fine for Halloween. However, the temperature today is close to 100. Those once-fresh pumpkin faces are caving in from the top down. By the time Halloween rolls around come Sunday, those wilting pumpkins that I saw today will be just a pile of pulp.

Not only will the homeowners have to scrape them up off the porches, but they will have to wear a mask to keep the pumpkin-pungent odor away, and wear gloves to keep the bugs and slugs away from their skin. Not a pretty sight. The rule down here is if you want pretty pumpkins on your porch to stay looking like pumpkins, then leave them the way nature grew them-- faceless.

In this southeast Texas area, if you want a carved pumpkin out on your porch for Halloween night, then it's best not to carve into it till Halloween morning. Trick-or-treaters aren't allowed to go door-to-door down here till 6:00 in the evening, and the Halloween-night curfew ends at 8:30. Which means people have all of Halloween day to get their pumpkins carved into happy-smiling faces or boo-scary faces.

Speaking of "boo"-- have you heard of being "booed" for Halloween? My neighbor V did that to us last Halloween and the year before and I thought it was just one of her neighborly things to do. I read in this morning's Chronicle that being "booed" by a neighbor is an honor indeed.

What you do, to a favorite neighbor, is put some trick-or-treat candy and a special little Halloween gift into a paper bag and set it on someone's porch by their front door. Then you ring the bell and run away. The one doing the "booing" is supposed to get away from the door quickly, so the Halloween gift-bag will be a surprise to the "booee." However, being that my neighbor V lives right next door, and my husband's study has windows over-looking the front walkway, he saw her as she ran away from our porch. Actually he saw just her feet, and V always wears the most interesting shoes, so it was easy for him to say "That must be V... no one else would wear those shoes."

Personally, I won't be doing any "booing" this Halloween. Everyone coming to our party will be leaving with a special cache of gifts, plus we'll be giving out surprises during the party. In other words, I am all "booed" out for this Halloween.

Speaking of the party... I think I'd better go have another look-see into my closet. The outfit I had planned to wear has a very long skirt and long sleeves. Not exactly what you want to be wearing when the temperature is near to 100 degrees outside. Even with the air-conditioning on in the house full-blast, a little hot-flash seems to find me when we're having a party. So I think it would be better for me to have shorter sleeves or no sleeves at all.

As we usually do on Thursday nights, we watched The Apprentice last night. I knew Elizabeth was going to be fired at the end of last night's show. Talk about not being able to make a decision... it was painful to watch. And she didn't like the advertising concept her team came up with... so why did she go along with it? It was wrong from the beginning... they wanted an ad campaign that would touch people's heart-strings, not test their fear-threshold.

And, as we watched Trump last night, I realized that we'd be missing next Thursday's show because we'll be at the Manilow concert. Now... let's see.... do I sit home and watch Trump, or do we go downtown to see Manilow. No contest! Sorry, Mr. Trump, but next Thursday-- you're fired. (Just for one night.)