I took a picture of my photos so I could upload them here.
Of course, this visit wasn’t recent.
I took a picture of my photos so I could upload them here.
Of course, this visit wasn’t recent.
Welcome to the first day of Fall. Today autumn officially arrives at 4:02 p.m. EDT in the Northern Hemisphere. From The Farmer’s Almanac:
The word equinox comes from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night).
Week 38. The best parts of each season.
#MFRWauthor
I wrote a post for last week, but I didn’t get it posted on time. Last week the topic was Five Ways To Win My Heart. I hope you don’t mind me jotting the five ways to win my heart at the bottom of this post. Skip reading the delayed snippet if you choose. I won’t know. 🙂
Now on to this week’s topic: The best parts of…
Rebirth. Butterflies. No snow. Everything outside is fresh and new. The grass is turning a pretty Kelly green. Hyacinths and crocuses bloom. Buds appear on trees. The air smells so fresh after a spring rain.
Longer days. Vacation. The Beach. Blue skies and fluffy clouds. Roses. Fresh vegetables and fruit. Fireworks. No snow. Camping. People camp in anything from tents to 5th wheels or motor homes. My family has camped in ground tents, pop-up tents, a pickup camper (Remember those?), and a 5th wheel. Sitting around a campfire at night is romantic and fun for those who enjoy it.
Summer vacation doesn’t mean to me what it used to when I worked, but I love this season. Then, summer couldn’t come soon enough. School dragged until the last day. At my last job in middle school, all the teachers stood outside at the bus stop and waved good-bye to the students. The students got a big kick out of it. Lordy, were we happy! So were the kids.
Beauty. Cider Mills. Candy and caramel apples. Cooler temps. Longer walks. Less lawn cutting. Photography. The crunch of leaves. A coating of leaves as they pile up everywhere. Who doesn’t enjoy a drive during the autumn when trees put on their stunning autumn coats only to lose them too quickly? This is my favorite time of year.
Holidays—Thanksgiving. Christmas, New Year’s Eve. Decorations. Christmas lights. 
Turkey. Cozy fire. Snowmen. Snuggling into a warm bed. The first snowfall. After the first snowfall, it can melt and not come back until Christmas Eve. Then it can melt again. Do you like sitting in front of a fireplace? I can’t imagine what the holidays will be like this year with both my kids living far away. My son is moving today. 😦
Remember, folks, this is a Marketing for Romance Writers dot org BLOG HOP. Please check out the other participants HERE.
Thanks for reading! Enjoy autumn.
Here’s where I’m sneaking in a quick rundown of Five Ways to Win my Heart from last week’s topic.
1. Show respect and accept me for who I am. I’ll do the same for you.
2. Make me laugh.
3. Flirting with other women when I’m with you, especially with a woman who is with another man, won’t earn you brownie points.
4. How you introduce me to your friends and acquaintances says a lot. Do you introduce me as a friend, when we both know I’m so much more? Are you ashamed to admit I’m your girlfriend, fiancée, wife? Freaking introduce me properly, please. At least use my name if you can’t think of anything else.
5. Remember my birthday and our anniversary. Flowers, candy, or gifts aren’t necessary. Yes, they are nice to receive. BUT, if you took the time to pick out a card and tell me happy birthday / anniversary, you’ve won my heart, sweetie.
Photo credits: Coat/cowboy hat © Aldegonde Le Compte | Dreamstime.com. Christmas Boots © Olivier Le Queinec | Dreamstime.com. Butterfly Pixabay.
~If I had chocolate on this day, it would be melted all over my fingers and lips because I’m a chocolate kind of girl. I have two sons who feel the same way. Picture the Allegheny Mountains on a clear summer day. You can see mountain ridge upon mountain ridge and the surroundings are always bathed in rich green. Autumn makes you think you’re in a whole different area when the trees change color and everything looks like an artist’s palette. But, now we’re talking about June, my birthday month. This particular summer, our youngest son escorted us because we felt he was still too young to leave at home. He complained the whole trip. Our oldest son would drive up the next day.
~No one mentioned my birthday. Okay, no big deal, I guess. I have this birthday every year on the same date. Couldn’t someone remember? We went about our typical first day at the cabin which meant three hours of cutting grass, dusting the furniture, and making sure there were no mouse droppings all over the kitchen counters. Remember, mountains and forest equal mice and other rodents.
~Saturday our oldest son would arrive in his first, unpredictable car. Still, no one mentioned my birthday. One of our rituals, and necessities, was to go to town and buy groceries. Fine, I’d buy my own birthday cake—yellow with chocolate frosting. I didn’t need candles, but I sure needed the chocolate frosting.
~Out of cake!
~I swore to remember this the next time one of these guys had a birthday. Well, it sounded good at the time. At home we put the food away and started lunch then my son pulled in the driveway. When he got out I went to meet him and when he turned to me, he handed me a big sheet cake brought all the way from Michigan and decorated especially for my birthday! Was it chocolate frosting? No, but it was a beautifully decorated cake just for MOM, and even though the frosting wasn’t chocolate, the cake batter was. So, I had birthday wishes from my guys with candles and a chocolate cake. They all knew he was bringing me a cake and they decided to keep it to themselves so I’d be surprised. To this day, I believe that was one of my most special birthdays.
This week’s prompt was to write a 400 word memoir piece using one of the following. –wine, coffee, or chocolate. For more information and to read more pieces, visit Remember Red at Write on Edge.
This day will never be back again. Summer is officially over. Not many more hot days and sticky nights. Did you want to see summer end? I didn’t. Summer is special. A time of regrouping for so many of us. It’s a time for beaches, sandals, shorts, baseball, bull riding and whatever else you choose for your summer fun. Winter seems so long and spring is unpredictable, but summer is summer and too short sometimes. That brings us to autumn.
Do you have a favorite season? Mine would be autumn. There’s a lot to love about the fall, especially if you live in the Midwest like I do, where the seasons have distinct types of changes. Deciduous trees with their changing colors and shedding leaves gives the area a completely different look and feel. Once you notice the first maple leaves change to yellow, then it starts a changin’ quite 
quickly afterward.
Next thing you know, we have a whole neighborhood full of colorful trees then leaves crunching under foot when they drop. We might smell the familiar odor of burning leaves. The crisp air in the evening, a starry night and a harvest moon, and apple cider seem to speak of an en
ding, a preparation for a long winter ahead.
Autumn days can be sunny and still hot on occasion, and we can always look forward to Indian summer where we have one last shot at nice weather, reminding us we should have flown south before the howl of November winds. So now that autumn is here, it makes me a little sad, reminding me of short days and long nights. Life quiets down a little and we ease into a different kind of schedule.
Before long the window scrapers will be brought out, and snow tires might be installed. De-icer for the door locks should be searched for and put in a place we’ll remember for the first time we wake to a sheet of ice covering our vehicles. Unless you have a garage, of course. Chances are you don’t have a garage at work, so go buy your lock de-icer. Don’t depend on your key fob to open your door. Yes, this tip comes from experience. Another tip- Don’t keep this de-icer in your car.
Take a few minutes this month, and enjoy the cooler temperatures, the starry nights and the full moons. Visit the beach once or twice more, and stick your toes in the warm sand on a sunny day. Make enough memories of this summer and autumn to last you through the long winter of 2013. Remember we’ll never have this day to do over.
This happened a few years ago. While looking for another post, I came across this. I might as well reblog it, right? I have since moved away from this area.
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I’m willing to bet you can’t find a park today that’s not crowded with hot sweaty people, noisy kids, dogs barking, a Frisbee flying, and hot dogs grilling. Well, I have a news flash. I’m in a beautiful park right now, quiet, serene, and no sounds but nature, or an occasional vehicle driving by. Birds of different varieties are 
singing their whimsical tunes; the tin roof above me is creaking, compressing with the sun beating down on it. It’s making a ticking sound, and I’ve had to turn around to see if someone was there. Tree tops are the only place you’ll see a leaf rustle. There’s barely a breeze, the flag is still. I squint to take in the sight of the true cerulean blue sky with only a puff of white here and there, in that, of perfect cumulus clouds.
The temperature is 91 degrees F. It must be too hot for even a mosquito, thank goodness! Not that many flies buzzed around as I enjoyed my Black Forest Ham sandwich from Subway. Looking in front of me there is a run-off from the stream down a little ways, and it sits stagnant with nowhere to go. It looks like the perfect place for snakes to be skimming the surface or creeping through the grass, but luckily I ha
ven’t seen any. I don’t like snakes so this is a good thing.
My reason for being here today is to finish writing the ending to a book I’m writing. Looking at this beauty I had to take a minute to enjoy the green of the trees, the quiet of the day, and wonder if I want to go for a walk in the miles of trails before me. Down the path a little ways is a covered bridge over the small stream I mentioned earlier. The water is running fast, splashing against the rocks in its way.
One other vehicle sits in the parking lot, but I see no other human in sight. I don’t hear voices in the woods. I’m expecting to see a deer make its appearance, or at least a squirrel. Are they sleeping in the shade beneath a bushy pine tree or nestled in amongst the cool leaves high in the trees? Suddenly, a loud bird whistle breaks the restrained silence, calling its mate and getting an answer. 
The whistle isn’t familiar, but much louder than the others.
It must be time to write that ending now, but my hands are sweating in this heat. I don’t think I will ever get enough of what nature has to offer here, but I won’t get that book finished if I continue to immerse myself in this peace and quiet. Until I have my next quiet summer moment, I’ll be home in the air conditioner writing the end! Just in time I see, for the lawn men are here to cut the grass!
Try to find your piece of serenity today.
Tomorrow I have to go back to work. In Michigan, we don’t start until after Labor Day. It’s supposed to promote tourism. That might work if the gas prices weren’t so high now. Anyway, I am returning after being laid-off. In June I received a letter saying that there would be a lack of work for this school year; therefore, I wouldn’t be needed. Okay, it was the third time in three years for me anyway, so it wasn’t a surprise. I’ve only lived in West Michigan for four years. Sometimes I wonder why I left a twenty-six year stable job to come here. I did it to marry a man who lives here. Little did I know work would be so bad in this area. Now, I take it one year at a time.
It will be good to go back and see friends and students. I’m in a new position this year. They received extra funds from Title 1; therefore, I get to return! I haven’t slept in much so getting up early shouldn’t be a problem. The problem will be going to bed at night. I’m a night person, and a writer, and nighttime is when I write, mostly. We didn’t go on vacation this summer, and I don’t have to leave lake property or a cabin in the woods to come back. I shouldn’t have a problem at all. That probably isn’t so with others who love their summer vacations, and the “no summer schedule” to give up. Since I didn’t go wild all summer and didn’t do anything special, it won’t be hard to go back to work. It will be hard to leave my writing, though.
MONEY! That is one of my biggest motivations, other than loving the type of job I do. Yes, I was laid-off, and I did apply for unemployment. Guess what? I missed it by seven cents. So, all summer I didn’t receive unemployment conpensation. I applied for an extension, which was recently reinstated. Last week I was informed that I qualifed for an extension of unemployment benefits for eight weeks. That’s four checks. Now I’m going back to work. Hmmm, how does this work? I’ll know tomorrow when I call them. There’s a form to fill out, too. My employer received one. How confusing that will be to them, knowing I am coming back to work, and filing for an extension. Again, I wonder how this will work. Will I receive it for the three weeks left of lay-off after they approved my extension? I’ll find out tomorrow. I’ll find out everything tomorrow, when I go Back to Work After Summer.
Mary J. McCoy-Dressel 
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