This is my favourite season ever!
Allow me to assault your mind with images of Autumn (as if I haven't already done that).
(The sunlight filtering through the trees would give me a migraine in real life...)
Can you see the beauty of Fall? Can you at least see why it's my favourite? If not, allow me to attempt to further convince you.
Still not convinced? Then allow these words to speak for themselves.
Congratulations on making it this far into the post, where the actual reading part begins. I'm sure most of you by the second set of pictures probably felt like this:
or...
So to those of you who are still here, what I'm trying to say is, HAPPY AUTUMN! (It took me long enough, didn't it. I'm sure some of you feel like I assaulted you with a branch of coloured leaves and threw a pumpkin spice latte in your face!)
There's just something about Autumn that chases away my cares. Just two days ago, I was freaking out about everything, and today, I don't have a care in the world. *shrugs* This is my Christmastime. I wish there was an Autumn holiday besides Halloween and Thanksgiving just to celebrate the beauty of it. We could decorate a fall tree, hang fall socks to stuff fall treats into and give to loved ones. Why hasn't this been invented yet?
Don't get me wrong, I like Christmas just fine. My father was obsessed with Christmas the way I am with Autumn. He always made it seem magical, the limited time I had with him during the first five years of my life. He went all out for Christmas, and I always slept in the living room on Christmas Eve and stared at the lights on the tree that cast a glow about the room until my eyelids grew too heavy for me to remain awake. It's one my favourite Christmas memories. To this day, after the tree goes up, I'll turn everything off except for the tree lights and sleep in the living room.
There's just something about the foggy mornings, the warm days, the crisp nights, the colourful leaves jutting into the backdrop of the Robin's egg blue skies, the sound of dried leaves crunching under my feet, and the fall festivals. (There's one we stopped attending simply because it became more like a country music/arts and crafts festival with a bunch of food vendors. There was nothing really "fall-like" about it.) Doug has grown to enjoy these things probably mostly because of me, but I'm glad he enjoys them along with me.
Doug is a Summer type of person. His birthday is during the first week of Summer. He loves to swim. (If we had a pool, I would never see him.) He loves to grill. He just loves any excuse to be outside. I avoid the outdoors like the plague. I only go swimming for his benefit. I find pools to be nothing but a germ infested body water that is nothing short of human soup. Forgive my repugnant description, but it's true. I don't see how chlorine can kill every single germ in the water. But I will get in a pool just to be with Doug, all the while praying that I don't contract some horrible disease. (YAY OCD!) I will sit outside in the Summer with Doug while he grills. I try to enjoy these things, but I just don't do it with as much enthusiasm as he does with Fall for me.
I do feel bad for my lack of enthusiasm, because I really do have the best husband in the world. He doesn't just love me, he cherishes me. He also does these really sweet things for me. For example, he helped me with my quest to find an orange purse on Sunday after church.
I hate shopping. I absolutely loathe it. I want to go into a store, grab the things on my list, and get the heck out of there, and I know that my husband is not a fan of shopping for girl things like purses and shoes (I can only shop for shoes for twenty minutes), but he can spend at least an hour in any electronics department of any store, and I've already collected my items. I'm the one sitting on the bench with the other husbands who are waiting on their wives. These guys look at me like I don't belong there.
We went to another nearby mall to look for orange purses. I had already been to our mall, and the only store that had anything like that was the store where the last two purses I've had have ripped inside, and I don't want to pay that sort of money for a purse that isn't going to last. Did I mention that I hate shopping? We looked at every store, and absolutely no orange purses. We did find some at one store, but I didn't want to attempt to procure a bank loan just so I could purchase an orange purse! The cheapest one was $80 and I'm not paying that. So we headed home, and Doug suggested one store at which we rarely shop. At this point, I wasn't feeling so well, but we stopped anyway. There was exactly one orange purse in the price range that we had discussed, so my wonderful husband purchased it for me. My quest had ended. I had slain the dragon...wrong story. Let's move on.
That evening, I was clapped out and just wasn't feeling well. Doug fussed over me. He recorded one of my favourite movies, taking up space on the DVR just so I could sleep longer. That's the kind of sweet things he does for me.
While I'm bragging on him, he did spend Saturday working around the cottage. He took down a tree in our backyard. I'm not meaning a huge three with a thick trunk, I mean a tree that keeps growing in front of our kitchen window with a trunk that is probably as wide as my forearm, but he had waited so long that the trunk was actually wooden. He said it didn't take any real effort, but still he got rid of it. I had asked someone else with the proper tools to do this for me, but they ran off and I never saw them again.
The Fall decorations are almost up. The leaves are hanging, and the wreaths are on the doors, but I haven't put out the free standing leaves or tucked them behind pictures yet. I'll have that completed by this weekend.
I've been trying to get some time in with my loved ones. I spent Thursday morning/early afternoon with Allison, and my honorary son, Keegan that evening. I had a great time. My Saturday plans were cancelled, so I worked, ran errands, and went on the quest for an orange purse.
I spent time with Jodi last evening. We watched a movie, ate pizza, and had a great time. It was nice to kick back and relax. I didn't even think about my work. It made me realize that I really am a workaholic and that I need more moments like these with my loved ones to kick back and relax.
There are a few events and happenings this week. I have an appointment on Wednesday. Thursday, dinner with another loved one I haven't seen in a while. Then this weekend, another friend is coming over for what might be the last time. There's also something going on tonight.
The Moo Kitty has a vet visit this evening. I honestly think he needs kitty Xanax. I think he's a compulsive scratcher. He has scraped the fur off of his neck and his stomach. We've put medicine from the veterinarian on him to kill fleas, and even though it kills them, he still scratches. I think he has anxiety problems. The Trinity Cat rarely has a problem with fleas. We put the medicine on her and she stops scratching. He's going to be angry when Doug puts him in the carrier, then he'll cry all the way to the vet. He'll be examined, run back into the carrier as if he's been tortured, we'll stop by Starbucks, which is across from the vet, he'll cry all the way home. The usual vet visit protocol.
When I got the Moo Kitty neutered in 2000, the vet was in a different location in a miniature strip mall of sorts. To the left of the veterinary offices was a strip club. The vet had an event that particular day called a "Tom-a-thon" where people could bring their male cats in to get their manhood taken away. There was limited parking, and hundreds of people showed up, so we had to park in front of the strip club. Can you guess the name of the strip club? The strip club was called "Bad Kitties". You can't make this stuff up! I could imagine what was going through my cat's mind. We parked in front of a place called Bad Kitties. He was trapped in a pet trolley. Little did he know, he was getting neutered. He probably wondered what he had done to deserve this. I felt bad, but I couldn't stop giggling about the irony of it!
What's even funnier was across the street from the vet and the Bad Kitties strip club was a Tudor's Biscuit World. This is the same day. Their sign boasted new lunch platters offering a choice of beans or burger. Unfortunately, they must not have had another "R" because burger had no "R" in it. Now the sign is too high for someone to mess with and not be caught, which leads me to believe that either the employees of said establishment found it funny, or they just didn't have that extra "R" to use. So the sign read: beans or buger. Doug said, "If they're giving us a choice, I'd rather have the beans." Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.
The strip club has sense been torn down. Walmart was built in its place. Tudor's still remains. There have been no more humourous misspellings on their sign.
I wish I had taken a picture of these things, but this occurred in a world before mobile phone cameras. Can you believe how much technology has changed in fourteen, almost fifteen years? And before I get distracted by this subject, I'm going to conclude this post.
Happy Autumn, Everyone!
Cheers!
