Pumpkin Carving for Procrastinators

If you’re like me, the annual Pumpkin Carving ritual is a chore that you tend to put off until the last minute. It’s not that I don’t want to spend two hours of my life carving a perfectly good vegetable with a godawful sharp knife so that it can be turned into a potential fire hazard. I mean, you’d have to be crazy to want to miss out on that kind of fun. Actually, the truth is, I’m just plain lazy. The longer I postpone pumpkin carving, the more time I’ll have to waste on the internet likely it is that my husband will do it.


This year, I’ve succeeded in stalling the pumpkin carving until the last possible day and my husband isn’t home to save me. Below are my tips for successful pumpkin carving when you’re unable to get out of having to do it yourself:


1. Get a pumpkin. This might seem obvious, but one year I foolishly skipped this step. If you have kids at home who are counting on a carved jack-o-lantern, I don’t recommend forgetting to buy a pumpkin. Kids may be small, but their torture methods have no limit.

2. Check your health insurance. Since you’ll be working with sharp knives, what better time to make sure that your health insurance policy hasn’t lapsed? If you find out that it’s been cancelled, you never had coverage to begin with, or you learn that Pumpkin Carving is one of the gazillion and nine exclusions on your policy, you can stop right here and tell the kids it’s all Obama’s fault for not effectively improving healthcare.

3. Cover your work surface with newspaper. Or not, if you’re one of those weirdoes who enjoys cleaning.

4. Wipe the pumpkin clean and set it on the newspaper. The flat side down works best unless you’re an adrenaline junkie who likes to take risks with sharp knives and wobbly pumpkins.

5. Find a template from the internet of a design you’d like to carve. If this is your first attempt at carving, this is not the time to try complicated patterns such as all of the characters on Mad Men. The pumpkin will either rot or be eaten by squirrels within a week, so why overexert yourself by making an intricate design?

6. Gather your carving equipment. You’re going to need a large bowl for the pumpkin guts and seeds, tape to attach your template to the pumpkin, a large metal spoon or other sturdy item for scraping the inside of the pumpkin, a small paring knife, a steak knife, a permanent marker, and lots of paper towels.

7. Carve the lid and discover what a pain in the ass it is to cut through an inch-and-a-half thick vegetable. This is the part of the project where you mentally list your activities for the rest of the day and decide that you’d better cancel half of them. Yes, folks, pumpkin carving takes much longer than you’d expect. Make a mental note to buy pre-carved pumpkins next year.

8. Make sure to carve a notch or tooth on the back of the lid. This will save you from spending hours spinning the lid around and around as you try to fit it on perfectly.

9. Scoop out the pumpkin guts from the inside. Dissuade teenage son from wanting to keep the seeds and pumpkin goop for God-knows-what reason. Make mental note to have teenage son professionally evaluated.

10. Tape design template onto the front of the pumpkin. Bitch and swear when you discover that the tape won’t stick to the slippery pumpkin. Wipe the pumpkin with a paper towel and try again. And again. And again.

11. Crumple up template in a fit of exasperation and decide to draw a free-hand design instead. A typical jack-o-lantern face with two triangle eyes, a triangle nose, and a single-toothed mouth is about as easy as you can get. If you’re a masochist like me, however, decide to draw the template design you originally picked. Even if you fail, you’ll have one helluva guilt card to play on the kids later.

12. Send the kids to their rooms when they tell you that your design doesn’t look like the picture from the internet. Then you’ll have time to contemplate why you gave birth to those little ingrates in the first place.

13. Begin cutting. Swear and jump around like a maniac when the knife slips and you take a slice off of your finger tip. Vow again to buy a pre-carved pumpkin next year as you hunt for the first aid kit.

14. Push out all cut-out pieces from the inside. When you discover that this is easier said than done, recut all pieces about eighty more times in an effort to finally get them to release and pop out. Neaten up carved areas with a small, flexible knife.

15. Ground teenage son for making fun of your creation. Say a silent prayer of gratitude for hubby’s vasectomy.

16. Insert a tealight candle in a pyrex dish and put it inside the pumpkin. Light the candle and watch the pumpkin glow.

17. Receive hug from nine-year-old. Enjoy the fact that you’re now a hero to your youngest child, which makes it all worth it.




Happy Halloween!




*a version of this post appeared previously at open.salon.com/blog/Lisa_Kern

So long, trouble. My ship has come in!

Sweet! Lookie what I found in my email today. It seems that forwarding all of those email chain letters and praying those novenas to St. Theresa have finally paid off. I'm going to be rich:


October 21, 2010

Hello,

As you know, My name is Dr. Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman, Federal Reserve System, U.S.A. However, i am blissful to inform you that the contract panel held at the white house yesterday just released your name as one of the unpaid inheritance fund. This panel was primarily delegated to investigate manipulated contract claims, and overdue inheritance payment. Note that after the meeting held with president Barrack Obama, office of the senate house and U.S. secretary of the states, Hillary Rodham Clinton, we came to a conclusion that your long awaiting inheritance funds worth the sum of ten million, five hundred united states dollars only must be released to you.
Moreover, i wish to notify you that your long awaiting inheritance funds have been gazetted to be released to you via telegraphic transfer. But a man came to my office few days ago claiming to be your representative. Below are the personal and banking details he provided. Please confirm the authenticity of this information before we proceed.
Full name Jose Hernandez
Full address 466 lily st mansfield ohio
Direct/cell phone 419-001-8000
Fax # n/a
Current occupation capenter
Marital status divorced, age 65
Bank name: JPmorgan chase bank, NA
Bank address: 603-613 maccorkle avenue, St albns, wv 25177
Account # 857250091
Routing # 051900842
Name on the account Jose Hernandez
However, we shall proceed to issue all payments details to Mr. Jose Hernandez if we do not hear from you within the next seven (7) working days. If he is not your representative or sent by you, then you are advised to furnish me with the below details. Also be informed that he will be jailed false personification, grand theft, invasion of privacy & identity theft.
(1) Full name
(2) Full address
(3) Direct/cell phone
(4) Fax #
(5) Current occupation
(6) Marital status divorced, age
(7) Bank name:
(8) Bank address:
(9) Account #
(10) Routing #
(11) Swift code
(12) Name on the account
(13) Drivers license or work i.d
I am eagerly awaiting your timely response with the above requested details.
Yours Faithfully,
Dr. Ben S. Bernanke
Chairman, Federal Reserve System, U.S.A


I must say that I'm a bit surprised that Ben Bernanke sends his own email and that his shift key is apparently broken. Maybe he uses those lower case i's because he's such a humble guy who just wants to give millions of dollars to deserving people. Yeah, that must be it.

He's probably in such a hurry, from being such a busy man, that he didn't have time to spell out the full name of the city in which Chase Bank is located. Thankfully he included the zip code or I'd be screwed in trying to locate my money. Phew! Praise Jesus for zip codes.

Ben apparently doesn't have time to use the return key, either. You totally rock, Ben, but your email would be much easier to read if it had some white space in it. Just sayin'.

I can't believe that he and Hillary Rodham Clinton work together on unclaimed inheritance cases. I guess when Hillary isn't trying to achieve world peace, she plays matchmaker with unclaimed funds. Take that, all of you Hillary haters.

I'd better hurry up and send my information to Ben Bernanke so he doesn't give my inheritance away to Jose Hernandez. Those carpenters can be shifty, you know.

I'll send postcards from my new mansion in Aruba as soon as I get settled.

XOXO

Lisa

How to publicly embarrass yourself without even trying

To kick off my new blog, here's a little something from my old blog. You can think of my experience the next time you think you're having a bad day.)


Last Friday, my husband Dan and I found ourselves without two-thirds of our children. Our oldest two were away on an overnight school trip. When you’ve been married a thousand years like we have, and you find yourself with a rare night without most of your children, you start to think about doing things...

One of the things we thought about doing was going out to eat. It would be much cheaper with only the two of us plus our 9-year-old son, Evan, who can still order from the kids’ menu. It had been a frustrating day at work, and I’d gotten home late, so eating out seemed like a great idea.

We decided to go to Outback. The three of us were feeling almost festive as we chatted about our day and took turns buttering those brown loaves of bread with the obscenely large knives that they give you. I always have to resist the urge to tell the waitress that I only want to butter my bread, not stab it into oblivion.

I’d ordered the Wedge Salad which came with two small steak fillets. It tasted especially good since I’d not eaten any lunch that day.

As I was eating, I felt a trickle in my left nostril. Thinking that my nose was running, I asked Dan to hand me my purse so I could get a tissue out of it. Evan looked at me oddly and said, “Your nose isn’t running, Mom. It’s bleeding!”

A bloody nose in Outback? I touched my fingers to my nose and sure enough: they were covered in bright red blood. I could feel the panic start to rise within me. Oh God...my nose is bleeding in Outback. People are trying to eat. I’m trying to eat.

My stomach felt queasy from this realization, but I tried to discreetly pinch the bridge of my nose to stop the bleeding while keeping the tissue below my nostrils to catch any drips. Was it working? Could anyone see me?

The bleeding seemed to be stopping, but I did not feel well. My arms and legs began to feel heavy and odd. I felt a sensation of heat rising from my chest to the top of my head. As the heat rose, my field of vision grew smaller, losing peripheral vision first, and then the remaining vision became pixilated. The panic was now rising within me. I knew I was losing control. There was a loud rumbling sound in my ears, as if a train was behind me.

“I think I’m going to pass out!” I fought this idea a bit before announcing it. Everyone in my family suffers from vasovagal syncope when exposed to certain triggers like blood or medical procedures, so I’m used to them passing out, but I’d always considered myself immune. I’d had three kids for godssake. What on earth could possible skeeve me?

Disbelief aside, I was going to pass out, whether I wanted to or not, and Dan knew it, too. He directed Evan, who’d been sitting next to me, to crawl under the table to the opposite side of the booth in case I needed to lie down. I certainly couldn’t move to let him out let alone lie down.

Dan got up from his side of the table and tried to sit next to me, but I wasn’t able to scootch over and make room for him. I was stuck in my feverish, pixilated world with the train roaring behind me until it all went black.

I had to learn what happened next much later because I had lost consciousness completely. Here’s the story that Dan told me:

When it became inevitable that I was going to pass out, Dan tried to hold my head up so that I wouldn’t hit it on the table. Apparently a human head is quite heavy when it’s not being supported by a conscious body.

As he was busy doing this, my son Evan, distraught at the scary scene of watching his mom pass out, proceeded to throw up all over the table.

At that moment, a waitress came over and casually asked if Dan wanted any more iced tea.

Iced tea? “No thank you; I’ve got bigger problems here. My wife’s passed out and my son has just thrown up.”

The waitress ran off to get a manager.

A man at the table behind us heard the commotion and approached our table to ask if he could pray for me (we live in a bit of a Bible belt area so this isn’t terribly unusual.) Dan said sure; it certainly couldn’t hurt.

He did not expect that the man would stand at our table, arms outstretched toward the Heavens, while praying loudly as if from a church pulpit. If there were any patrons in Outback that night who weren’t aware that we were having problems, the very vocal praying of this man managed to bring them up to speed. Now the entire restaurant became focused on our pitiful little party.

After a minute or two, I started to come back around. Nothing was the same as it had been before I passed out: what had been a raging fever broke into a cold sweat; my face, hair and hands were now dripping wet; all of the dishes and food had been magically cleared from our table; I was surrounded by several wait staff and managers; someone had put a cold wash cloth on my head; and most disturbingly, there was a huge pile of vomit in front of my son Evan.

Surveying this sight was enough to make me want to go back to being unconscious.

My brain started working again, and I was most worried that my son had thrown up on the table. Like a dutiful mom, I wanted to clean it up right away. I asked for some paper towels but the manager kept insisting that they’d take care of it. Someone claiming to be an EMT grabbed my arm and took my pulse but all I could think about was the barf.

I asked again, “Please let me clean that up.” Again, I was denied.

There was talk of ambulances and hospitals, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. I was tired and just wanted to go home.

Dan attempted to pay the bill but the manager said that it was on them. (Translation: Just take your disgusting, bleeding, barfing, passing-out family and LEAVE, wouldja? You’re grossing people out while they’re trying to eat!)

Actually, she was very nice, but that’s what I would’ve been thinking if I were her.

I wobbled out of there on my weak legs amid the curious stares of the other customers, but managed to make it across the parking lot to the car while holding on to Dan’s arm.

After we left, we realized that in all of the commotion, we forgot to leave a tip for the waitress. She deserved an especially nice one after all that she had to deal with (barf alone requires extreme generosity. Barf plus blood plus someone passing out? That’s probably worth a trip to Bermuda!)

We plan on going back to Outback to give the waitress her tip just as soon as our extreme levels of mortification subside. We figure this shouldn’t take longer than a year or two.

On second thought, maybe we’ll just mail her the tip.







(previously published at open.salon.com/blog.lisa_kern)