Autumn in Wisconsin is beautiful this year, and we’ve had our big downturn in temperatures. High of 52 degrees, which is just lovely. My favorite weather. Yesterday I had an eye exam, and I rather cheekily wore a snowflake sweater. I’m looking forward to winter! I realize It will be a few weeks yet—And yes, much to my husband’s distress I am playing Christmas music. I try to keep it confined to when he’s gone to work. The album I’m enjoying right now is “The Hotel Café Presents… Winter Songs. It’s wonderful, look it up on your streaming music app of choice. Here’s the first song, they are all soooo marvelous.

Anyhow, I’m dreaming of a white Thanksgiving. Finger’s crossed!

These past weeks we’ve had Sam home, and it has been wonderful. A very social time, which I am really not used to, but survived… and had a good time! First, we went to Nathan’s Parent’s house on the farm and his brother and sister-in-law and their four huge, lovely young sons. I can’t believe how grown they are, it feels like just yesterday they were born! But then, it’s hard sometimes for me to remember that Sam is a young man of almost 30! (you still have a couple of years, Sam…)

Then Sam had good times hanging out with his friends all week, painting the town red, no doubt. We then had lunch here at our house for my folks and brother, Frank, and his wife Michelle. We had sandwiches and soup, it was perfect. This week we had a dinner for six of Sam’s friends, I do love those young men.

Sam is flying out of Chicago tomorrow, Nathan and I will take him mid-morning. WHEW! As you can see it’s been a whirl. It was hygge to spend time with family, and when I set my table I used my beautiful set of Zanzibar stoneware. It gave me a lot of pleasure to set those tables.

Tonight we are taking Sam out to eat at a favorite Italian place we have discovered, Nonno’s Italian Ristorante. I am looking forward to that VERY much.

I have loved having Sam, I always do, but will look forward to getting back into routine routines. The cats will too, all these “other people” coming into their space has them a bit unsettled.

Well, I have not written for a while (I seem to be writing that a lot here on my blog, don’t I? Shame on me!) And though part of the reason is the company, most of the reason is working on my book. I’m now on chapter 6 and have never written fiction this long. I have a group of fellow writers on Discord (We call ourselves Coursera Conclave and have a quokka mascot. We have writers from Vermont and Calgary, California and Australia, and S. Korea, and more!) I’d love to share my story with you, but I’m not allowed to share it outside of Coursera (I do have some readers). It’s a YA urban fantasy. I will tell you there are elves involved. Zip!! I’m only doing this one course for now. It’s taking all my time. I’m supposed to write 500 words a day, but for me, it’s more like, go a few days without writing—edit what I’ve already done—moodle about—write a few sentences—write 1500 words (welcome muse!)—change mind about the plot—change character names (one character started out as Elrohir, then was Gwynefor, and now is Ifan. Poor dear is so confused, I’ve promised not to change it anymore)—write 500 words—write 500 words—get to approximately 2500 and stop. Each chapter is supposed to be 2500. Whew! Yeah, the life of a writer. It’s so good.

I have never been so happy and content. I am so grateful that my husband supports me in this. And who knows? Maybe I’ll publish it. Maybe!

Cheers for now. Enjoy the foliage, keep looking for snowflakes! Count your blessings. Gratitude makes everything better.

Company

so SAD

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