Life: Idiotropic

But what was I harvesting? Trunks and pumpkins!

Yep, on Sunday morning, I got up before Mr. Sun and left before any sign of movement in my home. The kids slept. Kirk slept. The cat slept. It was amazingly quiet.

There was no need for a mug of coffee and a wagon since I knew I couldn't stay long, but I was on my way back to Tongeren to pick up my trunk. What was an easy hour there turned into a not-so-easy two hours as I hit a blocked road on the way there, tried to listen to Stella who took me to dead-end after dead-end, then found my own way back to a beginning point and got around the closed road my own way. Then I got to Tongeren, couldn't go down the street where the shop was, and was forced from one narrow one-way street to another making the same dismal loop over and over again until I was almost in tears. What was supposed to be an exillarating trip to pick up my treasure turned into a frustrating escapade with no one there to help me. One nice man helped me get to the market, but the roads that I needed to use were blocked, so I kept getting back to the same church on the hill, then down the wrong way on a one-way street until a man came up facing me in his car and wouldn't move until I turned around. Eventually, I told Stella to take me home. She got me to a point where I could find my way back to the shop and I just went down that "do not enter" street anyway so that I could get my 200 year old Austrian trunk and get out of there. The positive is that I saw a lot more of Tongeren that I've ever seen before and there are some beautiful churches and statues there. It would be a nice city to walk through, but driving there is crazy.

When I got home it was still morning and the kids were eating their breakfast. The weather was beautiful, so later that afternoon Kirk took Luci to GK for their father/daughter date. They went biking and ran into GK's big Octoberfest celebration downtown. He said it was really nice with a lot of food, rides, and games for the kids. While they were gone, I took the rest of the clan to the Kurbis stand in Stahe just down the road from us and let them pick out some small pumpkins. We'll get our big ones later when it's closer to carving time.


I've seen more variety of squash here than every before which is funny to me since the Germans don't eat as many of them as we do. They eat spaghetti squash and butternut and not much else. Pumpkins are only for Halloween that is beginning to catch on both here and in the Netherlands. She had pumpkins in tan, orange, white, and green... long skinny orange tubes, crook-necks, butternuts, small green and varigated squashes, a big green one in the shape of a U, and these alien squash in the shape of flying saucers with little knobs all over them like warts gone mad. Along the back of her room she had a string of lights with carved pumpkins hanging from them... they'd been carved, their bottoms cut off, then dried, and they looked really neat. I think we'll get some crook-necks next time and try to dry those.