Seeds In My Teeth

It used to be that some holidays were for everyone - and Halloween was the best example of that. The only real "cost" of Halloween was the candy, or in the case of some houses on my block, the tape to wrap 5 pennies together, to give out to the kids. Costumes were inventive and usually consisted of stuff found around the house. Pumpkins were the cheapest veggie on the market (no pun intended) and your goody sack was an old pillowcase. Actually, you got a bonus on Halloween from your pumpkin because not only did you carve it and light it with a candle and show it with pride, but when you gutted it, you could dry and bake the seeds and happily munch on 'free' snacks for the next few days.

I decided to rant briefly when I was looking around for a really intricate pattern to carve on my pumpkin this year. Ok, what I meant to say was a pattern to carve on the down payment for a new car that calls itself a pumpkin. When did this orange lump become such an expense? Seriously, I didn't expect an average sized pumpkin to cost me $10 bucks! I wasn't really paying attention while in line to weight it, and then almost died when the family in front of me bought 4 big pumpkins and a gallon of cider and forked over $100! That sucked some of the fun out of it, but I was determined to stay positive.

My niece wanted a costume of an anime character. I told her we could make one easily, and she scoffed and said it would need to be bought. So much for the home-spun costumes that cost very little, but the one she wanted went for no less than $60 PLUS shipping anywhere online. She also made a comment about the types of candy given out, and how some houses weren't "worth it" to stop at because they had smaller, crappy candy. What?? It's still free candy!! Going T&T'ing was all about running around with your friends from house to house. We went to all the houses that were lit up, regardless of what the booty was from them. Now there's a politics to the candy? (Side Note - last year when I took the nieces around, one house actually wrapped the candy in political ads for the local council nominees! WTF?)

But last night, I wanted to find a decent pattern to use as a guide to carve a really great image on my pumpkin. Now, I'm no slacker. In fact I pride myself on creating really difficult and interestingly scary scenes on the flesh of the veggie. I just thought that with the design I had in mind, I could use a little guide so I didn't mess up the $10 pumpkin. So, I hunted online. Every page and every site that advertised and professed to have what I needed was a "members only" or "pay to view/download" gimmick. I must have gone through about 35 different sites and pages before giving up in disgust. It's a pumpkin carving design, made from a character from a movie. I will muddle through and do it myself and hope for the best. I'm just disgruntled that a fun and economically friendly holiday that I really cherished has turned into a profit mongering event also used to peddle political agendas with candy and fear (as exhibited by the Maryland decision about sex offenders. The jury on my head is still out about whether or not that was a wise idea).

So, sorry for the rant. I'll be the grumpy aunt driving her nieces from street to street in their purchased costumes to selectively pick up politically active candy from possible pedophiles and even worse - lonely old people. Oh, and look for my hand carved pumpkin design to appear in a later post!

Happy Hallow's All!