Eye of Newt Wool of Bat

Did you ever have one of those days where you wonder whether you should have made arrangements for your future care?

Today I had my car stolen out of my garage.

Well…it turned out that it wasn’t exactly stolen.

I just kinda forgot where I left it.

It was like this.

My regular route of walking to Starbucks through the park with the two dogs was impossible, as it was under reconstruction with the planting of trees, smashing of ground, and digging of trenches. Instead, I put both dogs in the car and drove to the end of the park to walk the long way around.

On the way I called one of my daughters to see if she had time to meet us at Starbucks. She did.

While waiting for her to drive over, I saw a Pour Over Brewer and Mug that my friend had been looking for, so I texted her to see if she wanted it.

She said yes.

She asked how much it was. I told her.

She said that was fine.

I asked her if she wanted me to buy it since I was there.

She said yes.

I asked her if she wanted more than one.

She didn’t.

So I bought it for her…as well as a package of iced passion flavoured herbal blend mango ice tea, one short extra hot cappuccino with light whip and a dash of cinnamon, one tall not extra hot soy latte, and no muffins. I went across the street to buy the muffins because Starbucks really doesn’t have…

These really aren’t excuses. I’m just trying to come up with one.

In the middle of our coffee and our much better muffins, my daughter was called to a job site, so all four of us jumped into her car and she drove us home. Arriving to my house, I opened the garage door to find it – empty.

We all sat there staring.

Well, the dogs weren’t that interested.

Someone had stolen my car and my wallet! (I know my wallet was stolen because it was in the stolen car. As well as two and a half pairs of gloves, a set of booster cables, and a box of pistachio nut chocolates.)

In a panic, I phoned the police.

In the midst of giving the calm and patient officer my vital statistics and a few extra, I suddenly remembered where I left my car.

Horrified as to my immediate and future capabilities, I profusely apologized, put a leash on the dogs and walked the full length of the park to retrieve my stolen car.

Please discuss this because I don’t even understand.

I know. You are no longer making the effort to roll your eyes.
But the day wasn’t a total miscreant, as on the way back to my car, I saw some great carved pumpkins and houses decorated for Hallowe’en. 

Then I thought – what better way not to add another misery to my already burgeoning day, than to write about carving out a space for yourself, or at least a pumpkin.

Now there are some salient coring principles involved when undertaking such a fundamental endeavour.

Number One: Ours is a culture that measures our worth by our efficiency, our decisions, and our ability to decorate great pumpkins.

 Number Two: Allow yourself the luxury of changing your mind.

We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on the latest Etsy products, Facebook posts, or how Anthropologie is decorating their store this year, without investing the time and thought to come up with our own ideas.

Cultivate that capacity for negative capability. Just say, “NO”, and take your God-given poetic licence to ask someone else to carve the pumpkin this year.

I mean, once you start overachieving, people expect things from you.

Number Three: Expect anything tasteful to take a long time.

It’s hard to capture something so fundamental, yet so impatiently overlooked as decorating the best pumpkin, yet the myth of the overnight pumpkin success is just that – a myth. Thus our present definition of success needs redefining.

For example, no matter how arduous a task it may be, it’s a good idea to be honest with oneself. (You do not want to sit next to someone at dinner who will not admit this.

Well, that’s all I have for today, unless you want to know about attaching metallic studs to pumpkins and I’m going to assume that’s a no.

Basically what I’m also saying, is that there may be a minimum of 6,403 more interesting things on the internet today than this post.