I have gone through a lot this weekend, both at work and in my personal life. Friday was a particularly long day because we had a scrimmage and I didn't get home until late. I came home to a very spastic dog. Ben was out of town for a triathlon so the poor dog was home alone all day (and apparently, that's the equivalent of giving a dog meth). I didn't get much sleep that night before I had to report to cover men's basketball practice Saturday morning. It was only supposed to be a two hour long practice, but it started a half hour late and went four hours instead.

To add even more stress to the weekend, my mom kept calling and texting me while I was at work Friday night. I don't like to take personal calls while I'm working, unless its potentially an emergency so I just told her I would call her back. I didn't get back till late so I figured I would call her after practice on Saturday, but she continued to text me. I thought this was particularly odd. She doesn't normally try this hard to get a hold of me. And if it is an emergency (like when my brother had his lung problems), she would just text me what was going on, but she wouldn't. I texted my sister to see if she had any idea what (if anything) was going on. She texted me back saying that she knew, but she wasn't allowed to tell me, but to give me fair warning, it wasn't good news. That was one hour into practice. Not only were those last three hours physically long (2 hour practice = marathon, 4 hour practice = 50 mile run...for those of you who need a reference), but they were emotionally long, trying to figure out what could possible be wrong. The worst case scenarios ran through my mind. Someone has cancer. Someone is in the hospital. My parents are broke. I was trying to figure out what could be so bad that she wouldn't just text me what it was. On one hand, I really wanted practice to end so I could find out what was going on. I wanted to get it over with. Like when people ask you, "Are you ready for school to start?" Well, no, but yes, because the sooner it starts the sooner its over. On the other hand, I didn't want to know. I wanted practice to last forever. If it lasted long enough, the bad news would just go away. Right?

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to or supposed to say publicly what is really going on, but the situation has me completely stressed and torn. Saturday was alright. Sunday was worse. I cleaned the house, baked two loaves of banana bread, and made pumpkin soup for dinner to take my mind off of it. Ben had the idea to play Christmas music while we cooked and cleaned (don't hate because we're almost two months early...our household pretty much revolves around Christmas. I'm so small and Christmasy, I'm a borderline elf.). It cheered me up for a little while, but then I started thinking about how Christmas and the holidays will never be the same after this news.

Anyways, I don't mean to be so much of a Debby Downer on Monday, but I had to get some of that off my chest. I didn't think to take pictures of the banana bread, because I feel like almost everybody has made it at some point. No need for me to talk about what we already know. The pumpkin soup was new for me. I got the recipe from the Food Network website and it was written by Alton Brown. I wasn't sure how it would come out, but I love pumpkin, so I figured it couldn't be too bad. Ben is not so much a fan of pumpkin, so he was pretty much terrified.

The soup is actually prepared and cooked inside a pie pumpkin...

...which makes it even more fun (and a little more challenging) to make.

I left out the onion (Ben doesn't like onions) and the thyme (we just didn't have any). The results...

Pre-blended

Post-blending

It was a little more thick, and less soupy that I had thought. They were the consistancy of boxed mashed potatoes. But the taste was delightful. It wasn't overly pumpkiny (pro for Ben), but the garlic was a little overpowering. In the future, I would use half as much garlic. It also didn't make a whole lot of soup, but still took a long time to make (2 hours) like soup typically does. The effort is only worth it once in a while, or if you are making a bunch of pumpkins for leftovers. Ben and I only got a small bowl of soup each out of it, so I would probably make one pumpkin per person in the future. However, thanks to the cream and cheese, it was a heavier soup, so it was more filling than your typical brothy soup.

Note: In the typing of this blog post, I misspelled "pumpkin" like 20 times...kept leaving out the second 'p'. Who needs it anyways?