I avoided tasks like this most my whole life without even thinking about it consciously.

Can all women with normal health do this without trouble breathing and feeling weakness in their hands afterwards? Does it depend on the how good the knife is?

The thought ... it looks too hard really (for the above reasons, takes longer to get to my back). But nobody ever told me I should be able to do this...

I'll see if I can get a pumpkin, probably a fairly small or tiny one, tonight to figure out if I can carve it comfortably. Maybe I'll report back and maybe I'll find that I think the skin is easy to get through but I sort of doubt it.

Of course, if I do it, it'll be my first year of carving ...