That's the night that the lights went out in Jacko!

Last Sunday, Cairo and I carved a pumpkin ... well, when I say "Cairo and I", I actually mean that I did it and Cairo was nearby. Sometimes, that's the best I can hope for. I had thought she would participate, but she was quite happy to let me have all the fun ... and it was fun ... and I didn't want to ruin our good mood by making her join in. The final result wasn't my best, but it was good enough that I wasn't embarrassed to post a picture of it on Facebook.

Since we are only here on the weekends, I was worried the pumpkin would be dead by the time we returned. I had read online, if you want to prolong the lifespan of a carved pumpkin, keep it in the fridge. The problem with that is, our pumpkin was much too big to fit in there. He did, however, fit in the freezer. Ta-dah! I was thinking, "That's even better! Freezing it will keep it fresh even longer!" And I was right ... in a way.

My Mother is the Queen of Freeze. We call her Ms. Freeze. She likes to freeze everything. When we saw the movie "Mother" with Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds, the Mother reminded us so much of my Mom. In the movie, Albert Brooks plays John Henderson, a neurotic man, who, after two divorces, decides to move back in with his Mother, Beatrice, played by Debbie Reynolds. His desire is to solve his issues with her, and therefore, solve his bigger problems with women. It wasn't Debbie's scatterbrains or her sweetness that reminded us of Mom, it was her love of freezing. That woman froze everything, including these huge, HUGE, blocks of cheese.

John Henderson: I like my cheese in the ounces. When they start weighing as much as a Fiat, I get worried.

My favorite lines from the movie have to be when John wants some sherbet and Mother pulls a block of it from the freezer, and he is horrified that it's not just freezer burned but completely encapsulated in ice.

Beatrice Henderson: Oh, that is just the protective layer of ice.

She proceeds to scrape away the ice and gives him a bowl of the sherbet and he takes a spoonful into his mouth, then spits it out.

John Henderson: Blaaah! Oh God, this is horribly old! This tastes like an orange foot!

This Friday, we got down to the condo in Birch Bay about 5:00pm. We pulled in our groceries and bags, pulled out the bikes and herbs, and then I went into the freezer to check out the pumpkin. It looked great! It was frozen solid but in the same shape I'd left it. It hadn't aged at all, of course not, it was frozen solid! So I took it out and placed it on a chair on the patio. I figured it might be a little wet when it defrosted and didn't want the mess inside. All seemed well.

I closed the curtains since it was night and I hate thinking people are looking in at us through the darkness. I'm surprised at how many people keep their blinds open at night down here. It's the complete opposite from home where it always surprises me how so many people never open their blinds during the day. When I was a teenager, I rarely opened my curtains, and my Mother would always come in and open them. "Oh! It's so dark in here! How can you stand it like this!" and with a Whoosh, the curtains were pushed aside, and the sun would stream into the room. Even when I moved out on my own, Mom was still coming over and opening them for me. Eventually, it caught on, and I now can't stand to NOT have the light coming in. It drives me crazy to walk into my daughter's dark room. I just have to Whoosh those blinds up, "Oh! It's so dark in here! How can you stand it like this!" Funny how we're doomed to repeat the things we hated in our Mothers.

Saturday morning I woke up, put on the coffee, and opened the curtains, and saw my pumpkin .... Noooooooooo! How could I have been so stupid! I'm sure anyone reading this knew it was coming. I should have known it was coming. But like a big stupid kid, or a big, happy, panting Golden Retriever, I didn't think things through. I just froze it, and now poor ole Jacko has paid the price for my stupidity. He has completely deflated, his skull is all caved in, he is now just a big nasty mess. Thanks Mom! The protective layer of ice failed me.