A couple things I learned this weekend.

Around these parts, Halloween starts way back in September. By the week before Halloween, parties are in full swing. The farmer we know finished up his harvest, selling off the plumpest pumpkins to Safeway and the rest in his scenic pumpkin patches, leaving us to meander through the rotten carcass field. There's a giant industry now in plastic headstones, tiny shrunken skeleton witches and massive decorative lawn spiders, but pumpkin farmers still sweat it out that the weekend before Halloween is sunny and bright and people bring their wallets.

Post coffee edit: My god. Who the hell wrote this thing? Plump pumpkins and farmer friends? Can you hear the sound of my fake gagging? Actually, we were driving back from going out to breakfast at lunch time and we drove by this farm where Gary sort of knows the farmer and I thought it would be deserted because Sunday and I'm all, PHOTO SHOOT PHOTO SHOOT and actually I was driving the car so Gary was just a merciless captive and we drove down onto his farm roads to the rotted pumpkin section and totally ran in to Billy the farmer who was super nice about our blatant trespassing and even hacked up a couple brussel sprout plants for me with his handy truck machete and I made Gary eat them for dinner.


I read my horoscope at 5:45am, it was blathering on about using self restraint in home decorating because of a penchant me and my horoscope brothers and sisters have for going overboard with too much drama. I dramatically raised up a mental eyebrow, the little one inside my brain that is beautifully arched and can rise independent of it's buddy across the way, and went on with what I was doing. Later that day, I found myself outside in the wind with a can of orange spray paint and some wrong tools for the wrong job, muttering to myself, and remembered with that oracle had decreed.

Post coffee edit: Oh lord. Dramatically raised eyebrow? And it was 2 cans of spray paint and yes it was windy and the summit was on fire again and all I can do is decide I've gotten nothing else done today except write another short story about inbred teenagers and I might as well spray paint the goddamn mailbox and in my mind it's all eyebrows and Martha Stewart and this morning I go out there and can you just say, spray painted mailbox? At least the gang colors in my neighborhood aren't antique white and fluorescent orange.