T'is the season

pumpkin carving, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

I love Halloween. I love all things spooky.

I love the costumes and the decorations; especially the silly, scary geometric features of the jack-o-lanterns dotting all the neighboring porches. I love meli-mello for celebrating it every day in October.

I especially love the walking from house to house in the dark of a cold autumn night. It kind of makes me sad that we get so few visitors because of our location, a few hundred measily yards too far from the road.

But such neglect offers it's own reward: Both of us big'uns get to accompany the lil'uns in their quest for candy. Love that.

What I don't love, however is pumpkin carving.

Sure, it's gotten much easier since so many cheap and reliable tools have hit the market for pumpkin carving neophytes, not to mention a garden load of easy-to-follow tutorials that boost our design capabilities.

But it hasn't gotten any less messy.

Turns out four-year-olds (at least mine), while they may have big ideas on what shape the eyes should be and how sharp the teeth should be (or if there should even BE teeth on these gourdly ghouls), don't really like sticking their hands in orangy pulpy goo.

So, as the person in our house who routinely gets left with the GOOD jobs ... such as cleaning up the scene of the blowout diapers and vomity messes ... I get the joy of scooping pumpkin guts and separating the stringy pulp from the seedy goodness.

I can barely wait until next month when I'll be scrounging around the inside of the turkey's thorasic cavity looking for organs and de-capitated necks.

And they say HALLOWEEN is scary.