OH CRAP HERE THEY COME

gestational period...aka a time to forget or is it remember, hmmm

2010-10-25T06:40:00.001-07:00

i don't know, if you know, that i know, that you know, i am having twins. it has been a learning experience to say the least, learning how to avoid unwanted fights, learning how to drink and not get caught, learning how to rub my wife's back, and learning how to be patient. we all know how hard that last one is for me, but "i am trying to learn something new everyday," yes i was mocking someone right there, everybody learns something new everyday, unless they are dead and you telling me this makes you less smart than sarah palin. there have been some classic things happen and things said that have made me enjoy life even more. my wife has reverted back to being a ten year old. antagonizing me everyday since she was put on bed rest. she was so giddy when they put her on bed rest she was like a 5 year old that had stayed up to late and gets super hyper and punch drunk. this is my funny wife, and i like it. she is happy to be "in the family way" or have her "condition" even though it is twins. the "family way" and "condition" comments are vernacular of my aging and crazy grandmother. she can in no way say pregnant or even, knocked up, those things are, as she calls it,"tacky." we, beth and i, were going to lunch with her one day and Grandma Jean, aka gr jean, says "from the back you look fine, but from the front you look like you have a condition!" wtf, that was so amazing that i almost "lizzed." one morning as i was having a conversation with the porcelain god, the toilet, i hear from the kitchen, "i think you have puked more during my pregnancy than i have!" i just yelled from the bathroom, "write that down, that is really funny to me," as another stream of fresh vomit leaves my mouth. i think i did liz that time but i wrote it off to my situation.

i have been wondering when this great epiphany was going to come about how this whole child rearing thing should be easy and that advice from friends, a selected few of my siblings, and neither of my parents, would help me substantiate the importance of being here for them their whole lives, but i am sad to say it only makes me want to feed them to feral felines in a desert somewhere.

SO HERE THEY COME!!

2010-05-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

so we went to the 12 week appointment today! i have to admit i am a bit taken aback. what should i be...? we are excited and astonished at the same time. no twins on either side, so needless to say beth was freaked out. so here is the story leading up to the 8 week apointment...we have to go back to when she decided to take the pregnancy test; she woke me up early and showed me and she says "it says yes." what i am thinking to myself says, yes. she pulls out the pee stick and shows me the YES!! WTF they have digital pregnancy tests, where the hell have i been? i haven't had the pleasure of too many pregnancy tests, you should all be very greatful for that, but when did the make one that didn't just have an unreadable line. was it the pink one that meant, holy shit my life is skrewed? now we know that the wonderful world of technology has caught up with our need to breed and our lack of common sense to figure out the small things that can make or break our lives. off line...i tend to do that. so after i snap back from my rant in my head...i look at her and say with that, non abrasive tact that i have, "it's twins!!" that was the begining! this was at like 5 or 6 weeks. so we had a few weeks of dodging friends that we normally enjoy and adult beverage or two with. but about week 7 we had good friends over matilda and deney terrio, aka zack and larissa. she happens to be a OBGYN so we let them in on the secret. i told them that it was twins. then zack and i start singing little diddy's that we just free styled like, "twins twins its gonna be twins," or in sort of a chant like at a baseball game, "twins, twins, twins, twins, twins," repeat infinitely. so this jeering of my beloved wife, began. for the next week or two every so often and very subtle i would yell at the top of my lungs, TWINS! i realize i use the exclamation mark a lot. funny how i notice such obvious things. so the time passes and we are on the way to the 8 week appointment and the whole time on the drive to the dr's office, i have my fingers crossed, saying i hope it is twins. so we get in the office and beth tells the doc that i have been teasing her that it is twins. the doc says "be careful for what you wish for." she proceeds with the ultrasound and says here is the baby, great heartbeat and i say yeah, and then she says, "and here is what i'll call twin a!" i say without missing a beat, " you gotta be fucking shitting me?" she assures me that she is serious and puts the two devils on the screen at the same time. i start raising up my arms saying, in a not so self aggrandizing tone, "i am the man, yes, yes, yes." so now we are having twins. i am not allowed to express my thoughts on the sex of the babies, cause "i JINXED us!"

long time coming

2010-04-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted in a long while, but i need to fill everyone in about how life goes...NUTS!!!!

that is my life...goes nutz...more next week!!

the funniest thing i have ever done.

2009-09-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

i got on my trusty Ruckus and went to the store to buy some legal adult crack, aka energy drink. i made my purchase and had to ride one handed, because i had one hand on the throttle and one on the bag of stimulants i had just purchased. now i live by an elite college with frats and all kinds of normal stuff, i don't know what normal is i went to BYU, and i also live by a seminary for the catholic church. i get up to the stop light and look to my right there is a car full of college aged kids, i ASSumed, dressed in classic clerical clothing, smiling and having fun. i look over with a grin on my face and say, no i am not kidding, "where's the party? i bet that is going to be fun. are there are going to be a lot of little boys?" holy shit, no pun intended. i thought to myself, mmm what had i just done to these poor boys? i mean no matter what, that was not the PC thing to say at any point, but we all know how i am. were they really priests at all or were they just frat boys doing some lame frat boy thing? i, not internalizing what i had just said or present company, look over again and the smiles morph into looks of total disgust. out of the corner of my eye, i see something swinging from the rearview mirror. i shift my stare towards the rearview mirror and i realize it is three sets of ROSARY BEADS shimmering for all to see. wow wasn't that fun. PRIESTS!!!!!

cooktop vs. gas

2009-07-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

i am not on the fence about this one. most people think they need gas to cook their food correctly. in the words of penn and teller "BULLSHIT!" you know why people want gas? cuz they think they have a restaurant, do not misinterpret, mothers with more than 3 kids own a restaurant! you can get the right temp with a cooktop for 2 count 'em 2 people with 2 count 'em 2 hours of prep. i consider myself a bit of a cook, not a chef 'cause those people think they are the only ones in the universe, maybe, just maybe i am a chef incognito!!!!??? but this is my educated guess, not so educated, not so much skinny, i feel that the heat required to boil potatoes can be reached with time. so maybe i have to revamp my thesis statement, people without money to waste, think gas is better then anything else!!

testies of the times

2009-07-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

it has been too long for a post. i have been side tracked with the company i work for and its third grade drama and the childish antics, i have seen this before but i won't let out who, and Beth getting all of her final tests done to become a Pharmacist. i am here to tell you the growth of my twelve vines and my new girl have been wonderful. i have an 19lb pumpkin and a 65lb dog. she, the dog, has been the delight of my life and terror of my wife's. she shreds paperwork, shoe insoles, toilet paper, and remote controls directv $15 and $100 universal remotes. those things belong in their respective places. i have been testing myself lately on my threshold of pain. test one, test two, test three, test my brain cause i want to let it explode. i try to look at the pumpkins as i would my wife pulling the "goalie"(no we are not trying), so we can have kids. yeah it sounds good until the heavy lifting comes in. diapers and plant food, changing diapers and adding some sort of organic compost causes(who cares about organic, my mom never knew about organic, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY USE ORGANIC)...you get the picture. but what do i focus on? always the thing at hand. we all knew someday i would have pumpkins, but not a wife. now i am in a mild quandary of sorts. where do i put my focus? beer drinking, air sea battle playing, dogs, hair plugs (i need something), pumpkins, getting the man pill, or just being the type casted dark entity for the song ditch digger by rocket from the crypt. no my wife hasn't hit the breaks and the airbags deployed, just that i am arriving at that time of life. one of us has our career (beth, we all know i am not that driven) and we can get on with the next stage of life, kids or drug abuse (i would much love to go down the road of the great sundahls before me, you chose). before i get too deep in my own crap, did you all see the NoBama rant about the police and racial profiling. don't you think that dudes neighbors should be the ones under investigation? how do you not know you have a black man as your neighbor. sorry about the side note, not really.

that is why i hate the newz.

from now on i wil only do fonetic spelings cause i can!! hail canadia!! later and smell u soon!!

grit your teefs and get down to business!

2009-06-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

it is time to grit your teefs and get growing. this year is for bragging rites of who has the biggest pumpkin. i got my family and a few other friends to give it a go this year. i have commandeered the whole garden area in the far back corner of my yard. so i had to build my wife some raised garden beds to offsets my domination of the bigger plot.

the garden boxes are great and they are closer to the house. it is easier to get the herbs for dinner and the salad we want to eat that night. i think this is going to be a great year of the pumpkin. i wonder what confucius would say? and why didn't the chinese have the year of the pumpkin?

having something to get my mind off the state of the world, i have also been riding my scooter a ton. she gives me the freedom i have needed for a few years. life changing events have taken place in the last few years and i was missing something. this pumpkin lifestyle, my scooter, my dogs, and my wife have helped me to find my "happy place."

i want to brag about my wife, Dr. Sundahl, for one paragraph. i am so proud of her and her motivation, not her inability to relax, OCD. she completed her pharmD program at the university of colorado, denver. she has made me a better person, really. getting to know her is and has been the greatest gift of my life. last night she told me a story that i had never heard before and i was smiling about it. she takes me at face value. she is giving and loving, obviously she married me! it has been a struggle for us, with her going to school and me having a hard time finding work. but, we made it!! I LOVE HER!! it has been a joy, even during the hardest times of my life and our lives together. i look forward to what our future holds for us.

now that part of it is over, i look forward to the new challenges we face together. so smart a doctor (thanks cubby) and she is my wife.

we have added a few members to the family. we have another vicious killer named fiona gerturude rana sundahl. the taco bell mishap dog, more later... and we have been expecting this for a while, a new hottub. she is wonderful. helps with my aches and pains. fiona is a terror that i do not wish on anyone but she is ours. she smells the flowers, rips up the carpet, eats beth's shoe insoles, and knocks out her brother's tooth. but she is a magical fit. jackson loves her and lola is happy to be a maternal figure.

start today

2008-11-21T17:59:00.000-08:00

i have harvested all the seeds from the biggest pumpkin and am drying them for next year's attempt to make something bigger and better, it is the american way! but i am troubled, not by the car industry, but the man/woman who shaved my head today. i kept getting this strange, no way really, vibe that shim(she+him=shim) had done a buzz cut in the army, navy or some other branch of the military, over a few thousand times. it was in how shim so carefully found a high spot and made sure to go over it over and over it again. sounds like dubya's take on life and his thoughts about tax cuts for the oil companies. he was nice to talk to, or was it her, never mind, it was good to get a stellar buzz, even if shim's adam's apple was the size of a gorilla's testicle. so my real problem is why did i have a problem with some dude wanting to get his stuff cut off and become less of a man, this is not a dis of women, he is actually cutting off his hangers. i know and have met men less worthy of tackle then someone who feels strongly about his gender. but here lies my confusion...how come more men turn into deadbeat dads, then get sex changes?...just think about it.

cut and done!

2008-10-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

well i cut them off. she is 62 lbs!! i am happy with that but it makes me want to do better next year. i am sad to cut her i wanted to get to 100lbs but this is good. i have now made a plan for next year; cutting trees for more sunlight, getting the ph balanced, monitoring nitrogen levels so the girls don't get too much. i will write more later just wanted to get a quick post in and update all y'all!!

close to pickin'

2008-10-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

as we draw closer to the day of the dead and halloween, i am almost to tears realizing that my pumpkin season is almost over. tomorrow i will be cutting all three pumpkins from the plant and letting them mature off the vine so we can get the garden ready for winter. winter sucks! i will have the final tally of the weight and measurements and will post them soon. we have made a new addition to the family. she is a beautiful 7.6 pounds of fury. her name is fiona gertrude sundahl. we got her from the side of the road from some crackhead south of colorado springs. beth couldn't let her go to some home that would misuse and abuse her. my wife kept saying she looks exactly like "my lola." so now our dog jackson and myself are feeling a little bit out numbered, three female pumpkins, two female dogs, sammy my sister (just moved in), and beth my wife. i am hoping that this is not a trend in my life that i am out numbered. i am sure i will be left behind enough when beth decides she is ready to be "in the family way" or "P.G" as my grandma would say. when beth decides i will send out a press release so everyone can start stockpiling arms, gamesha save all of you!

more later...

the other children

2008-09-19T10:41:00.001-07:00

so i have as every parent, found my favorite and run with it. how do you distribute love equally, when you know one child is much better than the others? we i feel guilty for not mentioning my other little girls. one is named haile, like the guy, and the other is named chauncey. i loved those names but beth has squashed the idea of naming any of our children, which we don't have, either of these names. haile is about 7 lbs and growing steady. i am hoping she makes it to 12. chauns as i call her is slightly bigger and very jealous of her big sister, she is on the same vine. the problem with these two is they aren't photogenic at all. even worse they hide, cause are smaller, under the big leaves. it makes it hard to give them enough of what they need but i guess i will try much harder. i mean i love my dogs differently, or do i hate them equally? who knows but it sucks to have kids! i mean more than one pumpkin.

increasing in size.

2008-09-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

i know that this is a huge dilemma for most females but this one is okay. i am getting curious about her progress to be the best she can and found this website; www.backyardgardener.com/weight.html, and it gave me a guestimation. i don't know about guessing weights but this one seems to be fine for now. i guess my eye is a bit off from the equation those people came up with, but i can deal with that. what i can't deal with is election years. these smear adds are driving me up a wall the seem to increase in size and frequency. they taut their constituents as evil people, which most politicians are, who don't care about the planet or the people on it. i just can't take it anymore. these budgets these people us on television are obsessive to say the least, down right obese is what i call them. how can we get them to see this a misuse of what they say they want to "change in washington," the publics money. i am not going to touch AIG. so i propose a boycot of political spending from the middle class and i say we overthrow both political parties and put clowns in instead, at least we would know they were clowns

rollin' rocks!

2008-09-13T12:31:00.001-07:00

there are few thing in life i hold dear and this is in order (just kidding dear), beer, my wife, dogs, pumpkins, golf, bowling, and sure some family members. last night was shaping up to be a normal night. we went out to dinner with our friends lerb(lance, he wanted a tougher name) and rhonda(her lesbian name) to dinner at a steak joint. the food was good i got my steak rare and it was delicious. after dinner we decided to call it a night cause rhonda is in the family way, knocked up for all of you that don't know my grandma, and tired and beth was tired too. so as we leave the parking lot lerb calls us and says, lets go bowling. i was like hells yeah!! so we stop at family dollar to get beth some socks and then head down to elitch lanes to "roll the rock," as i like to call it. i was bowling poorly due to a freak gout accident, and boy does it hurt. so we were enjoying ourselves and in the 8th frame i get the dreaded 7-10 split. now if you know about bowling you know this is impossible to convert the spare. when i used to bowl twice a week with my brothers, larry, wally, the jesus, and others, we would always try our hardest to pick this up to no avail. last night i got my eyes focused on the prize, took an extra few seconds, released the ball as normal, "just like shaking hands" the golf pro a the jeremy country club would say(he has had a perfect 300 game). the spin wasn't as perfect as i would have liked but it was reaching the all right target arrows at the right times. i hit the seven perfect! it slid as if in slow motion straight at the 10 pin at a snails pace. reaching the 10 pin barely knocking it off its mooring and tumbling it to the ground. i did it!!! i have made the hardest shot in bowling and lived to tell about it. i am so proud of myself that in the facility i jump up and down waving my hands yelling "i am the best, yes, yes, yes." doing fist pumps and yelling. after a few minutes of this i start to do a dance right by our lane and some drunk dude walks out of the bathroom and says "yeah man, do it, do it." unbeknownst to him i had just made the hardest shot in bowling, but it made me feel good cause everyone else was hiding their faces laughing at me cause i was making a fool of my self. i am totally aware that this happens all too much, that i make a fool of myself, for me to even care. i just did something i have been trying to do almost as long as i have been trying to get a hole in one playing golf.

HURRAY FOR ME! I feel like the DUDE from the big lebowski, i can't be beat

Getting to work!

2008-09-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

paying your dues is something i have grown to love and hate. i think that sometimes you just need to let thing sort themselves out and get healthy. i have done neither. i kind of make, or let thermodynamics take it's course, things into a middle east sort of melee. i have achieved this in many facets of my life and don't see any change coming soon, no one, even myself, wants change, for fear the planet might come to this vortex and we all die. during my playing in the garden, having my older and much smarter brother show me some unbelievable things on the internet, which i finished in it's entirety last night by the way, and trying to justify to my wife that i am part mexican, i have realized that chaos is needed. my pumpkin, the big one is now 10x the size of this little cantaloupe. the disorder that my baby has reorganized is in some way creating a huge legacy of large prizewinning fruits. i mean if she doubles in size in the next month and a half she will have reached the goals i have set for her. funny how much that gourd and my life are parallels. we both in someway have understood chaos and have tried to harness it into something less negative or positive, depending on the charge.

now as we get into the college football season and i realize that gambling is not an addiction, it is a privilege! no man, who went to college, should deny his alma mater or himself the opportunity to make him some extra cash while proving that your donations to the program did help. football, american football and all football for that matter, was invented so man could gamble! it is as clear as the debate on pro-life, evolution, or god! this college or pro football season, fathers, uncles, older brothers, and younger brothers, if your older brothers are stupid and didn't teach you, take some time to show the youth of this great day and age how to read a point spread, understand over unders, managing to make good picks on parlays, and last but not least, how to find a bookie that has a solid rep and pays/collects on time!!!!

THANKS!!! werd to your mutha!!!!

holy crap!

2008-09-05T14:40:00.001-07:00

holy crap, this thing is getting huge! well one of my pretty little girls is pushing maximum density. she is now about 25 lbs and counting. she still has 2 whole months left to reach her potential. I am really excited to see how big this one gets. i wanted to ultimately have 3 or 4 but that plan isn't working out to well. the one to the left here is closest to the main root and the main stem so it gets most of the nutrients. thus it's size. there are two others still on the vine but they will last thru the weekend. i feel, that i think like columbus,lewis and clark, or the guy who invented the tivo, because i am doing something new, i guess we aren't even close. but i do feel good about the pumpkins. i have a close spot near my heart where they belong. i don't think i can love a child as much as my pumpkins cause they will talk back to me. plus i will have to wipe up their crap. this whole crap thing reminds me about this freaking election year. not the presidential race, even though it reminds me of a story about the three little pigs, i won't go into it. i am so sick of the crap that these candidates for congress can put on tv and let kids see. i think i am going to try and pass a law that they candidates get in a ring and they all fight it out and the winner gets all the votes. this would make more sense cause the guys who won would have to be a mindless wonder and we would know it. but all these other mindless freaks paint themselves to be these erudite and they still make crapy excuses and decisions. well what are we going to do? we can't kill them! wish we could! maybe we have to tell them all the hot celebs are doing it and maybe just maybe they can be like spike "whining baby" lee, that is his indian name. so listen i believe we need to concentrate and ponder the meaning of life, no, the movie and how good it really is.

and for all of you that watch 30Rock and loved sandwich day;

"Alcohol, this smells just like hill people milk. I've been drinking this since I was a baby! Mmmmm,. . . . . . . . . its on y'all!" Kenneth Parcell head page.

big takeover

2008-08-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

it has been a bit since i have written any new news for y'all. it is that time every four years, when even i get patriotic. yeah i know i should love this place on principal, but there are too many people here that get under my skin.

the girls are doing fine and growing. as you can tell by the photo "big takeover," just like the Nazi Scheme, my cilantro, cucumber, and peppers are being starved of nutrients because,

"there is unrest in the garden

there is trouble with the fruit

the peppers, cucumbers, and cilantro want more sunlight

but the pumpkins ignore their pleas!"

Rush wrote it different but you get the picture.

i have been neglecting some of the plants to see if they would be better left to there own devices and failure. it is hard to watch your kids fail and more so to watch them breed but i am a big kid and sometimes you just have to be a voyeur, for science or just a hundred pound pumpkin. i caught a bee doing my bidding today in one of the larger females, the drone must have been a chubby chaser because this girl has a "sweet spirit" if you know what i mean.

it is hard to tend to the little ones. that is why i will leave it up to the politicians to make sure my pumpkins are taken care of. i mean they have answers for everything, i mean everything. i had no idea they needed to know how the middle class lives, they are not the middle class. i just wish they would make it mandatory to have Thursdays as, "GO COMMANDO DAY," so those of us that wish not to wear underwear won't feel so out of place.

REMEMBER TO GO COMMANDO THIS THURSDAY AND TAKE PHOTOS AND SUBMIT THEM TO MY BLOG

mating season, duck season!

2008-08-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

it was duck season, i mean, mating season today! i put some panty hose over the female on sunday just so no "touchy, touchy" by bad little insects, this is my daughter we are talking about. so i gutted two male flowers and rubbed them up against the female and left the stamen from both around in the flower. Then i put the stocking over the female again to let them have some privacy. this is turning out to be a great challenge, i have undertaken but i welcome it. if i fail at this then maybe my wife will rethink the baby thing. the other parts of the garden are doing just fine. we now the cucumber plant starting to give fruit and tomatoes are taking a while to become ripe but they will be tremendous. sometimes you just have to sit back relax and enjoy the small things in life. i mean blowing your nose and getting all the green stuff out is wonderful and simple. enjoying your time in the bathroom, #2, is a small thing in life. eating old bread with mold on it at your grandmother's house, amazing. just enjoy!

cross pollination

2008-08-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

so a few days ago i had to cut off a couple of female flowers because they had bloomed and when it comes to dogs, food, and pumpkins i say "no thanks" crossbreeding. i woke up this morning and realized there are two new females starting to bud not open yet, kind of like me when i am in a crowd...yeah right! this is a critical stage. i need to make sure that nothing fertilizes my little girls except a boy that i deem worthy of fertilization. it is a hard choice and now i know what people go through when their daughters bring home guys like me, "what is wrong with that kid," "i hope he really isn't retarded." my choice and keeping my mouth shut about the would be suitors of my girls is actually more like an "arranged marriage,"if you will. Iiam like most parents who find out their daughter is knocked up, not very PC, they want to"C-I-L-L" the boy who got his boy stuff on their daughter's stuff. i get to cut up a couple of male flowers; cut off all outside petals, and force feed my precious that beloved pollen from the perfect match for her, as to not co-mingle cucumber pollen with GREAT PUMPKIN pollen.

i feel like the Sir Thomas Boleyn from The Other Boleyn Girl, forcing his nieces to make a name for the family and assure us financial wealth for life. i wish that financial freedom was on it's way but, i settle with a hundred pound PUMPKIN for now. So i have to cover the girls with stockings to ward of uninvited pesky foreigns, or what i like to call "tainted" pollen. here goes nothing.

fruit or fun?

2008-07-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

well now i see the start of fruit and i am sooooooo excited. also i found a tidbit at my grandma's house, will share later. Plants are looking good, tons of flowers on the main plants. vines are growing out and rooting, this was new to me but it makes sense, cause these little devils are going to be bigger than my belly. for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, i will try to find a photo of the glorious buddah. We had a yard sale, cause we don't have a garage, last Saturday...i don't quite get the concept, excuse my language on this one, going to buy someone else's shit they don't want anymore....i mean my stuff was good when i bought it but now it is shit and i don't want it. then you are embarrassed that your neighbors come over and look at all your shit and think to themselves, "i can't believe this guy has this much shit in his house, and he is more F'ed up than i thought cause he is trying to sell his used underwear, with skid marks!!!" there was one lady who comes up to the sale and says she only wants to pay a quarter cause that is all she has...then this loon whips out a dollar and tries to pay, holy cat's nuts batman!!!!! i am going to try and avoid garage/yard sales unless i am with my grandma. she is good at the "all i have is a nickel" crap too. okay side bar......i am putting a photo of some wonderful snack pack pudding i stole from her house. note the labeling, from the 80's!!!

once she gave my 10 year old niece a little bottle of chocolate. so we went back to the house and realized it was BODY CHOCOLATE "for those special moments!" i can't make these gems up i am the dumb one in the family of 6 too many. I have 9 siblings, completely different blog!

moving day

2008-07-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

can't believe it but i moved two of the little babies from behind the big one, yesterday. i have been stressed out, hoping that the newly transplanted seedlings make it to their salad days...so today i went to get some root stimulator and plant food to give them the best chance. what parent wouldn't help their child in every way to make it, so I got them some plant band-aids and hopefully dr. PF plant lover helps it out.

just a side note i am going to see the dark knight today.

seems like the plants are doing well. i guess i will put on the root stuff and some food and just pray to allah they make it. more later

i think i started something GREAT!

2008-07-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

my wife and i were at our local nursery and i saw this packet of seeds not far from the cilantro and i had to have them. i think this is mostly about my journey, for a first timer, to the GREAT PUMPKIN...but you never know. i started all of this, as my therapist puts it, to let the EVIL out of me and so my two nieces and my friends two boys could have the killerest jack-o-lanterns in the greater denver area. so i just put that love into a gourd-like squash and hope it exceeds all of my expectations. now my new endeavor is going to be challenging on many levels, but i am here to put all fears behind me and get out and make something of these little seeds. so here it goes.

i had just planted the seeds and no longer than it took the soil to dry my dog had trampled one of the mounds i had set up as the perfect host for four of my little lovelys. she is a simple dog, chases the squirrels, eats my jalepeño peppers, and craps on my mother-in-laws carpet, good girl. she, Lola, is the apple of her mother's eye. she is fat and makes me irritated every time i see here near my garden. but i deal with it, my insane grandmother puts it like this, "eric, those dogs are like your children. you need to be nice to them and then go take a rest and eat some vitamin c." the woman is like the old guy from my big fat greek wedding with the freaking windex, wtf. my grandma is and will be frequent stops on this journey so stand back and wait.

the seeds are not lonely they are surrounded by tomatoes (three varieties), green onions, peppers, mint, basil, cilantro, and cucumbers. i carefully watch the daily progress and weed when i can. so it seems i am back again to high school and the visions of the Great Pumpkin that broke my arm, jeff let it drop and everyone scattered, is back and even better. during the present quarter life crisis I am having all I really want to do besides, "have a good time all the time," is grow a three hundred pound pumpkin, fill it with gasoline, and throw it at a mailbox or ship it to friends in far off places and then send it back to me. i yearn to hear from jake's buddies,"you guy'th been smathin' mailboxes tonight?" no not us we are straight!