This pumpkin was brought to you by the letter M

 Many a marriage has withered and died in the pumpkin patch. I was raised to expect the "Hostess Cupcakes" of prime pumpkins and now, unexpectedly poor, I was being directed to the "Little Debbie" section of the patch.
What EXACTLY were you expecting?" Brad wondered. "I was an E-2 in the Army and you were pulling six inch tapeworms out of puppies at a mall pet store. Those were not the type of paychecks to be purchasing prime pumpkins." So, for their entire childhoods, my sweet, guileless daughters had no idea that pumpkins were supposed to be sort of round. If they showed any curiosity about the other pumpkins in the patch, we would warn them to stay away because they were diseased. My girls were thrilled if their one dollar pumpkin had a stem, for pete's sake.

But times have changed. No more malformed pumpkin for me! This year, I raced into the pumpkin patch and embraced an eight dollar pumpkin. Oh! The extravagance! And while Brad glanced fondly over to the rejected pumpkin pile, he willingly carried my thirty pound pumpkin to the car. "Can we get two?" I asked, thumping a prospective pumpkin hopefully. I watched as a nervous tick developed near Brad's left eye. And while his pocketbook and economic savvy might have been screaming "NO!", his love of his wife begrudgingly said "Yes."

Pumpkin carving time is also a reliable test of a marriage. I am the designer. I do NOT touch goop. This year's theme was a little out of the ordinary for me:  A dachshund. I sketched it on. I willingly, and without caustic complaint, made revisions and then watched with horror as Brad approached my pumpkin with our thirty-year-old electric knife that Aunt Sally had bought us as a wedding present. My job was to hold the pumpkin steady and make encouraging remarks. "Is the knife supposed to make that choking, clogged noise?" I asked. "Does that qualify as an encouraging remark?" Brad answered as he banged the knife against the side of our four-wheeler. "I'll look at this later," he said, putting the electric knife aside and getting out his panel saw. "That doesn't look like it's made for delicate cutting," I remarked. Brad inexplicably turned on me. "How about you try cutting out some of this," he snapped, "You won't even pull out the cut wedges!" Wow. Talk about caving in under the pumpkin pressure.

"Don't throw the pumpkin parts on the ground," Brad complained,
"toss them in a bucket." "The bucket is over there," I pointed.
Don't pumpkin parts decompose, I wondered.

Despite Brad's doubts, the dachshund shape turned out great. "Are you going to draw a Rottweiler on the other one," he asked. "Too complicated," I said, dismissing his idea.  "How about we carve a big M for Mosiman?" Brad frowned. He was not about to put a perfectly good eight dollar pumpkin out to pasture to star in an introductory alphabet segment on Sesame Street. "At least spell out our entire name," he wheedled. Then he proceeded to complain about the whimsical bubble letters that I drew on.

You'll be happy to know that the pumpkins AND the marriage survived. The trick is that both require a thick skin.