And More . . .

Today I went in search of pumpkins. First, I let my fingers do the searching--on the internet. Turns out that most of the pumpkin farms in our area don't open until October 1st. Why am I feeling like I'm so LATE this year then? Maybe I'm early?

I found a local nursery only about a 10 minute drive from the office that had a nice assortment of all the weird pumpkins--the red-orange variety, the white variety, the light green and dark green varieties, and of course the plain old orange variety--but in lots of different sizes. Just what I was looking for! BUT what I wasn't looking for was the price--most of the medium/large pumpkins were priced around $17 to $18. YIKES! So, I limited myself to a smallish white pumpkin and a few of the smaller sized plain old orange pumpkins. Oh, and a couple small white and orange striped ones that were fairly cheap, considering. So now I have a kitchen table scattered with pumpkins--tomorrow I'll finish the decorating and find places for them around the house.

I've talked to a few local people over the last day or two about the obvious absence of fall. All my friends who normally break out their autumn decor in the first couple weeks of September are incredibly slow to get going this year because it still feels like summer! I'm quite envious of all of you who have said fall has arrived in your area. Our weekend forecast? A severe weather alert. Here's what it says:

"ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES FOR THE BEGINNING OF FALL WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE WEEKEND AS HIGH PRESSURE REMAINS OVER THE AREA. HIGH TEMPERATURES SATURDAY AND SUNDAY WILL BE 10 TO 15 DEGREES ABOVE NORMAL WITH NEAR RECORD TO RECORD TEMPERATURES POSSIBLE."

Aren't you sorry for me? If you answered yes, then could you do me a favor? If you have fall where you live, go outside Saturday afternoon and blow as hard as you can toward California. Sunday's supposed to be 102 degrees. And while we DO tend to stay somewhat warm in California in the fall, it's not usually THAT hot and we can count on crisp mornings and evenings--but not this year, not so far.

I was flipping through a Halloween magazine the other day, and they showed an idea where they'd taken a photo of a graveyard and had it blown up to the size of a mural and then taped it to the inside of the windows. I think that's what I'm going to do with yesterday's fall blog photo. Maybe I can just stay indoors with the air conditioning on, tape that photo to the living room window, and pretend it's fall outside.

And SOUP? I was in Trader Joe's today, looking at the soup and remembering what eating soup was like. I WANT SOUP! I want it to be chilly enough to eat soup--and not Gazpacho! I want to eat comfort foods again. I want to bake. ARRRRRRGH!

And worst of all? I think all this waiting has invaded my quilting mojo. I can't seem to get motivated to DO anything. My next quilting "task" is to pin the Buggy Barn witch quilt for quilting, but do you think I could get myself talked into doing that this week? NO! Why? It just seemed like too big a job--although it seriously isn't. And I know that. But I'm deep into waiting mode--waiting for the quilting fairies, I suppose, to come do it FOR me.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm going to stop waiting. Tomorrow I'm going to pin the quilt. I'm going to finish the fall decorating. I'm going to roast a chicken and make gravy and who knows what else--maybe we'll have a mini-Thanksgiving. And I'll get my box of apples and bake an apple-something. Because maybe if I ACT like it's fall, and if you'll all blow really hard in the direction of California--maybe Autumn will arrive!

Or maybe not. But I can still pretend.