A fairly productive day!

Pumpkins!

Man, it's been a day. The alarm went off at 6am to tell us both that Omaha had to get out the door and go to some massive political event over in the eastern half of the state. I rolled over and went to bed, waking up finally around 8:30.

I made Belgian pancakes for breakfast, with sour cream and separated eggs, and while the waffle maker was a little clingy this morning, the actual pastries were wonderful and everyone made it all go away.

I took everyone shopping. First we went to the second-hand store, where Yamaraashi-chan tried on black slacks and a white, button-down shirt for choir. I tried on a few sweaters and knits in a desultory fashion, and even some pearls, but nothing really fit. Kouryou-chan wandered around and looked at all the Halloween stuff already on the walls.

We hit the mall. I hate the mall. It's so commercial. Yamaraashi-chan got her hair cut, while Kouryou-chan and I walked around the indoor block. I was consciously aware of my Gruen moment, and managed to fend it off. We arrived back at the hair salon to see that the stylist, who looked a lot like Tim Curry, had cut Yamaraashi-chan's hair short to the shoulder. It's a very cute look.

We ate at the food court, then we hit Penny's to find black shoes for the choir costume. We didn't find any, so we hit another shoe store. I was so perplexed about whether or not to buy shoes with heels for what was a professional, stand-still-for-a-long-time practice, that I decided I needed Omaha's help.

After we got home, I went out to the garden and cut loose five sugar pumpkins that had successfully ripened. Our garden was insane this year: while the season was a decent mix of hot and wet, there were two weeks of intense, dry heat that we had to get past, and the season itself was ultimately three weeks too short. Also, I'm never again planting pumpkin in such tight patterns: they escaped from the box and are now everywhere, creeping across my yard like something from Day of the Triffids.

Each pumpkin had to be cut open, seeded, cleaned, peeled, cut into cubes. I only had enough room in the steamer for about 1/3rd of the resulting pile of gourd, and each batch took an hour.

So I replaced all the fluorescent lights in the kitchen (hey, we can see again!) and spot-mopped the floor, did a batch of dishes and laundry, and even got the kids fed. All before Yamaraashi-chan went out this evening for some school event that seems scheduled mostly to keep kids off the streets on a Saturday night.

Since I had some time between dropping Yamaraashi-chan off and waiting to pick her up, I had enough time to throw together some pumpkin bread. Hell, I had a gallon of fresh pumpkin puree. The bread came out okay-- it settled to the bottom, and was very heavy, more like a dense pudding, but still, that and a glass of milk equals heaven.

Omaha made it home in time to rant and rave. Rave that a herd of Democrats actually managed to make it through a day-long agenda with an hour to spare. Rant because one woman gave an incredibly bubble-headed speech about her meeting with Joe Biden that was less policy-oriented and more fangirl squee, and because a resolution entered into the record had to be pulled at the last second because no one had read it.

And now that I've had dessert, recovered my kid on a cold, wet and rainy night, and blogged about it all, I'm off to bed.