The Great Orange Hope

It is no secret to those who know me how much I love pumpkin anything.  I get excited when the Pumpkin Pie Blizzards come out at Dairy Queen.  Thanks to Yankee Candle, my house can smell like pumpkin spice or pumpkin pie 365 days of the year.  I even like to take a shower with pumpkin spice shower gel.  I guess you could say that I'm obsessed with pumpkins.
For the past few years I have tried to grow pumpkins.  Last year we planted the seeds and nothing.  A lot of flowers.  But no pumpkins.  Two year before, I planted some seeds in the ground and nothing grew.  Or so I thought.  As I was pushing the mower through the grass in our backyard, I heard a hollow thud.  I had run over a pumpkin.  I felt terrible.  My pumpkin growing experience has been pretty much hit or miss.
This year we grew a hodgepodge of veggie.  Peas, onions, tomatoes, peppers.  My husband  let me plant corn near the front door.  He was okay with it he said because the stalks could dry and become some free autumn decorations.
I'm always harassing Mr. P to let me plant food in our front flower beds.  He has been hesitant since we had tomato plants take over one of our front beds one year.  The plants became the second coming of Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors.  My husband had to reinforce the plants three times because they kept on breaking the wooden reinforcements.
And my pumpkin plants are growing.  My coveted babies.  The Great Orange Hope I call them.  Grow babies grow.

This time last year...

Hard to believe that this time last year my daily activities included going up to a hospital with my husband and 2 small children.  We visited little baby H on a daily basis.  He was a micro preemie that as a little over a pound when he was born.  He stayed in the NICU for 81 days.  During those 81 days I battled depression.   Most days it was an effort to just pull on my clothes and go up to the hospital.  There are no words to describe how emotionally draining it was.  I just remember being tired all the time and listening to depressinging music all the time.  One on heavy rotation in the play list was "Against the Wind" by Bob Seager.  I listened to this song so many times that when we were in a store after baby H came home my daughter recognized it in a store and said "Hey mom there's your song."
 We faced death and won. Both my son's life and mine could have been lost.   I had high blood pressure, pre-ecelempisa and the placenta that baby H was in was a  piece of junk.  They pulled it out of me and it was half the size it should have been.  After facing your mortality and that of your child your world is colored a little differently.  So many things that people think are important and stress out about seem sort of trivial to you.  You want to cut the bull shit out of your life. 
I don't know if I have fully dealt with what happened to us. Or, maybe I have and that is why I feel so different then what I was before.

Past Lives....

Next year will be 20 years since I graduated from high school.  To say that I didn't have the best experience is an understatement. Being teased bullied from grade one until you graduated scars the soul.  People would laugh and make fun of me and call me nasty names like whore, slut, so much that I use to think strangers were laughing at me. Not that it justifies it I wasn't a whore or a slut during that period of my life.   It took me years to get over this.  I went to a really small school.  Our graduating class had 47 people in.  So it wasn't like you could get a way from these people.
After we graduated I didn't see anyone from my school until one of my friends from school and I were in a class together at a local college. She told me know one knew where I went even though I lived in the same house I lived in until I graduated college.  They all thought that she was dead.  Evidently I went to school with a bunch of people that gave a real shit.
When I went to college I got to be who I always but could never express.  I was around people I could be myself with.  My dirty , dark sense of humor was liberated.  I became me finally.     I met my husband in college.  It was a great experience.  I've also been through a lifetime of shit that would  change anyone .  I had a miscarriage, a micro preemie, job loss, spiritual issues, health issues you name it.  These former classmates probably would not know how to deal with the person I had become.
I have a Facebook account like everyone else on this planet and that is how I got started thinking about these days.  I had put the bullshit behind me.   But then they added me to a page about a 20 year reunion.  I thought about it for about 2 weeks and said "Fuck it why would I go?" These people still act like they are in high school.  I'm good with my choice but it doesn't help the memories that it has brought up.