Sunday October 20th, 2013

The exercise:

Write about: the carving.

Went for a couple of family outings today, neither of them very far though. Max waking up every two hours last night made sure energy levels were less than optimal.

It was still nice, as it was a lovely fall day. I did manage to get a couple of pictures but they're still on my camera. Which is like, way over there.

So getting them onto the computer will have to wait.

Mine:

As Halloween has approached every year since we've started attending the Penticton farmers market one of the other vendors has brought a few large pumpkins with him that he carves on site during the market. I've always been very impressed with his work but that's about as far as it had gone.

Until yesterday.

As I was finishing packing up the truck in preparation for heading home I heard someone calling me from up the street. I turned around to find it was the carving vendor.

"Hey, you want a pumpkin?"

"Uh... sure?"

He waved me over and I had a look at what he was offering. My first response was out of my mouth before the thought had finished forming in my head.

"Oh yeah, Max will love it!"

"All right, grab a side."

We lifted it up and I discovered that he'd just been working on the exterior; it was very, very definitely not hollowed out. I have no idea how much it weighed but it was a lot.

Somehow we managed to get it to the truck without dropping it and got it up on the tailgate. I got in the back to make some space for it and then we manhandled it the rest of the way in. After arriving back home I had to get Kat's dad to help me shift it from the truck to the tractor, which he then used to bring it down to our place.

While he was driving through the orchard I sent Kat a text that simply read: Bring Max to the front door in a minute.

She did. He, as expected, loved it. Here's a picture of the boys and the pumpkin as taken by Kat:


Now we just have to get the bugger hollowed out before it breaks our front porch.

2 comments:

Greg said...

That's a handsome pumpkin! And an adorable child. Oh, and you're there too, Marc :-P Actually it's kind of nice to see you in these pictures from time to time, as you're normally behind the camera :)
That's still an impressive pumpkin though, not least because it looks to be almost as big as Max himself.
And your editorials are as good as ever!

The carving
The cell was icy cold, even the fact that it had to a hundred feet underground didn't seem to provide any warmth. Iain thought he could detect the permafrost in the soil walls though, surely there was no other reason for them to be as hard as iron? Could permafrost get this deep?
He ran his hands lightly over the wall in front of him, sure that his body-heat couldn't melt anything, but still wary of it nonetheless. There was definitely something carved in here, but it was faint, almost... worn away. Which was also ridiculous. If it weren't so far North he'd think this was a student playing an elaborate joke.
Still, they had tool for this now, and the latest UV-lighting techniques was very good at bringing out faint carvings like this, Carterier had used them at that ill-fated pyramid trek he'd planned. Poor sod.
He reached behind him, asking Beverly for a measuring rod, and his hand connected with something unexpectedly soft. He flinched, and looked round, wondering why Beverly was almost leaning over his shoulder.
Then he began to scream.

Marc said...

Greg - yeah, sometimes I have to make a point of getting in front of the camera... otherwise Max might be left with loads of childhood pictures taken by me, but not including me.

Seriously. Horror story. Full on. Go write one already :P