Another Carving Throw Down, Halloween Postponed, And a New Dog Gets Named

Whew!  Lots of ground to cover today.
Grab a cup of a comforting beverage -
mine is coffee - and settle in.

New Jersey and New York are beginning the 

long, hard, sad, and expensive cleanup from Sandy.

***Note to Martha at Linderhof -- (Greenport, NY) We walked down this street and the
pier to get to Crabby Jerry's (at the end of the pier) for lunch back in September
when you and Jim visited.  Sandy tore up and destroyed the docks at Crabby Jerry's,
and flooded much of the business district where we walked and browsed.
A little different now from that beautiful Sunday we were there enjoying oysters and clams!
(Photo by Sebastian, from the Suffolk Times website.)

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We grownups are heartsick over the

terrible damage and loss from this massive storm.

But kids have had something else on their minds.

Will this mean there's no Halloween?

Thank you, Graphics Fairy!

Not quite.

But it means that, at least in our town,

Halloween has been moved to Saturday.

No Trick or Treaters today.

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Which might be just as well.  

Another couple of days can give me a chance to redeem myself

in a pumpkin-carving contest in which I am the only competitor.

The other participant is not competing.

Which is odd, 'cause she'd totally win.

Our efforts from a few days ago:

Mine.

Anne's.

You see the problem?

So yesterday, because we were again home due to the storm, we

carved two more innocent pumpkins who had never done us any harm.

Okay.  Our efforts from yesterday:

Daughter Anne's.

A haunted house.  Second Empire, no less.

And to the left of the haunted house, a spooky tree . . .

 To the right of the house, a ghost perches in another tree,

above a cemetery with a weeping angel monument. 

Detail:  Mansard roofs.
This is the second pumpkin Anne has ever carved.

And now (drum roll, please!)

my own carving masterpiece:

I hope you didn't have a mouthful of coffee when you saw that.

It's supposed to be a shoe.  And I really did have a plan.

It just got lost along the way.

My detail:

A pumpkin covered in red Magic Marker lines.

Who knew that wouldn't wipe right off a damp gourd?

I am going to probably ink the whole cutout area in red MM

so you don't see my primitive scribbles.

As I said, I am the only one thinking this is a contest.

It's really not. It's me doing clumsy carving, and Anne

doing her own, patient, art-kid thing.

Ha!  My pumpkin is way bigger than Anne's.

I win.

I hope our Jack O Lanterns last until Saturday!

And don't you think it would be cool to have a

carved turkey pumpkin for Thanksgiving Day?

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Now, about our new family member,

the Cavalier King Charles tricolor boy we

adopted from Cavalier Rescue on Sunday . . . 

Some of you chimed in with name preferences,

from yesterday's post, and most were for Dickens.

"Dickens?  You think I am a little Dickens?"

"I am a mighty hunter!  Go away, leave me with my fresh kill,

a fox that smells oddly of acrylic fake fur and PetCo,
and sadly has no squooshy stuff inside."

Anne and I test-drove "Dickens" as the name for our

new little guy, but he didn't seem to like it.

I liked the name "Pip."  But our dog?

He prefers Dylan.

He already answers to it.  Dylan it is.

BTW when we got into the car to drive home from Dylan's

foster home on Sunday, with the clouds and wind from

Sandy blowing in from the Atlantic, I turned on the radio, and the

first song I heard was Bob Dylan, singing "Shelter From The Storm."

"Let me in!  It's wet out here!"

 s'Truth.

I keep thinking this is Thursday, but it is not.

It's Wednesday.  And there's a chance Howard will be able

to get a bus, or maybe a car service, home from NYC tonight.

Hope so; I miss him!  -- Cass

P.S.  If you spotted a lead hooked to Dylan's collar in his bare-it-all picture, it's because he is not used to walking on lead, and thinks this snake-y thing around his neck is either a toy, or an instrument of torture that must be destroyed.  So we are letting him drag the lead around, to get used to it, and we randomly pick it up, hold it casually, then give him a little treat for not going bonkers.  Hey, I like getting treats for not going bonkers; don't you?