It's the Great Pumpkin

Yesterday was our annual trek to the pumpkin patch. Mark was more excited than he's been the past couple years, and he couldn't wait to tell me why.

"I'm much bigger than I was last year," he explained. "I can finally pick up the big pumpkins!"

Of course, there's only one rule when it comes to the pumpkin patch: "You can have whatever pumpkin you can carry." Only Mark takes that as a personal challenge.

And so he went around trying to pick up the biggest pumpkins he could find. Which I thought was cute and funny at the same time, until Edra pointed out the prices written on them.

"Fifty dollars!" I screeched. "For a PUMPKIN? Mark, put that pumpkin down now!"

Which he did, almost involuntarily. My screaming scared him, and he almost dropped the dang thing. I'm not cheap, but paying $50 for a smashed pumpkin (and going home empty-handed) would tick me off.

Mark ran off to a row of slightly (not much) smaller pumpkins. He is so skinny, it was hilarious watching him hoist those pumpkins up. 

He finally stopped bending down, opting, as Mark often does, for a shortcut. He tried lifting them up by the vine stump on top.

Which, again, was funny to watch, until he pulled the stump straight off a giant pumpkin. He looked up at me, stump still in hand, his eyes as big as pumpkins.

"Put it down," I hissed. "Walk away."

"But--" he started, and I sighed, aggravated as always that his ethics kick in AFTER he's damaged something.

"Technically, it's not broken," I said in a low voice. "Put it down. Walk away. Do it!!!"

I would have felt worse if it wasn't the day before Halloween, and there weren't 50 other giant pumpkins to choose from. But it was, there were, and we moved on.

Mark decided to downsize after that fiasco. He returned to me with a sizably smaller pumpkin.

"Seriously?" I asked. "That's the one you want?"

He nodded yes. I sent him out to look again.

Mark finally settled on a pumpkin twice the size as last year's, but without any double-digit price tags written on it. We had ourselves a winner.

I know Mark's a bit sqeamish when it comes to touching things like pumpkin innards, but he went at it with the sharpest knife he could find, and a plastic sandwich bag over his hands. I calmly took the knife away, and complimented him on the improvised surgical glove.

Mark spent almost all of his time emptying out the guts. He did, however, carve out two very tiny eyes, complete with eyebrows, on the massive pumpkins face. 

When he grew tired of carving, he drew on the pumpkin with a silver Sharpie instead. 

And finally, out of nowhere, he wrote this cryptic message, and started carving that out. 

At this point, I took away the knife, and sent him to bed.

And so, in typical Mark fashion, this year we have a very atypical jack o' lantern.

Seems about right...