This is the last day to enter your carving for this year’s Pumpkin Carving Contest!

Send in your entries by 5pm tonight - that way I can get them all ready for voting tomorrow.

E-mail your entries to gallery@intricateart.com.

I just added six new entries to the Pumpkin Carving Contest. Go have a look!

EVERYONE is welcome to join in. Young or old, carved or painted - we like ‘em all!

I’ll be adding entries through Monday night - so please send me a portrait of your pumpkin as soon as you get it carved - I’m excited to see them all!

Here’s my carving for this year. I drew it up and made the stencil myself, and WHEE it turned out just like I thought it would!

Here it is in daylight:

I’m totally entering it into my contest. I’m just not gonna be eligible for votes.

Seriously.

Jerry, aka dad, is a mechanic (now the proper term is “technician”, I believe). I grew up in a grease monkey’s home. The smell of oil and “garage” was always around. Dad’s hands were always cracked and raw and covered in dirt and grime, and his blue uniforms always smelled of a hard day under the hood of a car. For as long as I can remember, I always had a Ford - until I rebelled and bought a Mazda - then an Isuzu, then a Toyota.

I always fancied cars. I try to stay current with new makes and models, the changes from year to year, prices, options - that kind of thing.

The stuff under the hood, however, I’ve always left to a “Technician”.

In the midst of the construction around my house, I hit a bump in the road. I had to pull our truck (Yes, a Ford) out of the garage. It wouldn’t start. The annoyance was not even that it wouldn’t start, but that every time I attempted it grew more and more weary of me.

“Rowr-rowr-rowr” soon became “click-click-click”. If you know what I mean.

It’s been in storage for years. That’s a nice reduction in annual registration stickers as well as insurance costs - but it sure does wreak havoc on a battery.

Iew. So. I hooked up the jumper cables (scared little mouse that I am when I see a spark) and tried to charge it up with my car. No go. It clicked at me, and went away. Literally.

I called for some consults, and ended up being referred to WallyWorld (blech) for a new battery. I selected one - someday someone please explain to me why there are so many - and lugged the 50 pound beast home. Then I had to figure out how to get the rusty bolts loose off of this petrified rusty old thing.

Word of advice: don’t wear a nice fuzzy cute new sweatshirt while you do stuff like this. D’oh.

So, I got the old battery out.

Then I got the new one in.

I tightened up the bolts and doohickeys and gadgets, keeping my girlish soft skin in check all the while - and presto, the truck liked me again! It started right up, and gave me a nice pretty battery gauge reading.

I’ve done stuff to cars before, you know, the simple stuff. Added oil. Wiper fluid. Coolant. Changed the air filter. But this, this is harder than that easy shmeazy stuff. Phew. I think I should get some sort of certificate of accomplishment or something, you know?

Do I have any other Amateur Technicians in my midst? Please do show off your mechanical prowess. I am green with envy if you know what size socket wrench to get when you see all my screws loose.

Muuuuuuch better.

Aaah. I think I might keep this one around for a while.

I spent the entire night lastnight being nine months pregnant with the baby’s head pressing against my pelvic bone ready to come out.

I spent the entire night going about my business as if I were on the verge of delivery, but not quite.

The entire night being a weebol-wobble, my left hand against my lower back, rolling my hips side to side because my belly was so big and the pressure of the baby’s head was making me crazy.

All night long, I was told by doctors and nurses that they’re advice to me was to get into the Labor & Delivery room as soon as possible, and all night I wanted to get more stuff done before I went to the hospital. I kept telling myself the baby would wait, it would not come until I was finished.

I totally woke up feeling pregnant, too. Good grief, let me never have a dream like that again.

She made me do it. I had forgotten all about it, and I definitely needed reminding. Now it’s your turn.

Days are flying by lately, zipping before my eyes in a blur. We’ve got construction going on here at the homefront - a little bit of this, a lot of that, and in the end, we’re two steps closer to where we want to be with our household projects.

Did you know we’ve never had a working garage door that opened and closed - with actual space to drive a car into the garage and park? Nope, we haven’t.

We’ll have that by the weekend. I’m freakin’ out a little bit about that. We spent a good chunk of time this weekend clearing the stuff and things - and more stuff - out of the garage to get rid of years worth of collected - uhm, stuff (for lack of a better word), and then assembled the remains in an orderly fashion so there’s space for the contractors.

We did yardwork, which was pretty much negated by the rain and wind Saturday night, but we did get a lot of things taken care of (trimming a few branches off our tree, which was fun and really took a lot out of us - but cost much less than hiring someone to do a complete hack job of it), now by the end of the day tomorrow our property - well, all but two feet of it which has been lost in translation - will be surrounded by six foot privacy fencing.

The birds will be happy. My bulbs will be happy. Our house will be happy because it will have a barrier against the northern wind this winter. I will have a beautiful backdrop for photographs, and above all else, I will not be distracted visually while I’m painting.

I think tomorrow afternoon, I will have a naked party in my backyard. All by myself. Whose gonna know? (ssssh, it’s just between you and me, and my fenceposts.)

Then there was pumpkin picking, and carving. The girls wanted their pumpkins to have carvings of things that didn’t exist in stencils, so I drew them for them. That was a challenge! I did my best, and we carved our little pumpkins out, and these are the results:

This is Chickeymonkey’s pumpkin, George. Of course it’s George! She’s a monkey-aholic. He turned out cute for totally wingin’ it, I think.

Catybug’s was much more of a challenge. She has a thing for penquins, and likes Bruce. Yeah. Okay. Figuring out what to cut out and what to leave was no easy task, so it took a lot of planning, and stuff. It’s always nice to have dry erase markers handy for this kind of stuff. That battery operated carver was nice, too.

Mine - my pumpkin is still sitting on the table. Big fat guy, he is, nice flat front, a little green around the edges. He’s perfect. I drew up my own carving, too. I’m excited to get’er done, but I need time, and peace and quiet, and patience. Today doesn’t look like a good day for that - we’ll see what tomorrow is like.

Oh yes, and the blog design. I’ve been working on that, too. I’d like to finish it today, we’ll see how that goes with all the running around and tripping over nailguns and things!

So. You’re all caught up now with all the stuff and things and more stuff that’s going on here, pretty much.

What’s up with you? Where ya been, and how ’bout them snowflakes?