This year, for Christmas, we bought a garage door opener. Ever since we got it (about a month ago) we enter the house through the garage, duh. We haven’t used the front door since that time, except to open it for guests.

I wish one of them had told me that I still had two big pumpkins on either side of the door. I didn’t even notice them when I put up the wreath. Two huge pumpkins, still on the porch. And boy, were they rotten.

How rotten were they? When I tried to pick them up, my hands went right through the shell and into the gooey core. I’m still picking that stuff out of my fingernails. I finally had to just open the trash bag, hold it behind each pumpkin, and sort of PUSH it with both open palms and my wrists, to get it into the bag. I’m going to let the next rainstorm wash away the two round orange spots on the porch. I mean, I’M not touching them.

I want to thank the Jehovah’s Witness crew for pointing out the pumpkins to me today. I don’t want your literature, and I’m not interested in your memorized spiel, but I do appreciate your telling me I still had pumpkins on my porch.

That sensation of sticking my hands into that thick gooey wet ick is going to stay with me for quite a while. I don’t know how obstetricians stand it. I hope they get regular manicures.