Past pumpkin pies

The Resident Fan Boy sent me an email from work last week regarding a co-worker at his office who is fighting a long, almost certainly losing battle against cancer. As you will see, they are organizing a potluck lunch for September 24 (a Thursday) in her honour. Would it be possible for me to offer to bring one of your famous pumpkin pies?

So last night, I pulled two packages of mashed pumpkin (from the jack o' lanterns I chop into bits on All Saints' Day) from the freezer and this afternoon, baked two, as my daughters also hanker after my pumpkin pie, and elder daughter sets off at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a four-day school trip to New York City, and I need to show her that there are no hard feelings. (Mothers need to prevaricate quite a bit.)

Despite the rather painful nostalgia (yes, I know that's redundant) resulting from reviewing the Februarys of past years when I last participated in NaBloPoMo, I've been leafing through my journals in search of kinds of September. This morning, I came across this September memory from when elder daughter was nearly one and a half:

This evening as I waited almost in vain for the pies to cook ([RFB's]turn to bring goodies to the office tomorrow), I could see [eldest daughter] dancing beyond the closed apron door that joins the kitchen and living room. I had my "baby tape" on, the one I recorded to play during labour, and there was the baby in question, peering through the slats on the door and jiggling up and down, lifting her infant feet.

I'm not sure which songs eldest daughter was grooving to, the tape had two hours of my favourite slower pop songs. (Another had two hours of my favourite classical music -- the doctors in delivery liked it; one said, "I wanna hang out here this evening!") Here's a sample: my very favourite U2 ditty and, in my very humble opinion, one of the four sexiest songs ever:

Oh, and the oven was really old. That's why the pies were taking so long.