Happiness is Autumn Weather

~ Jenny

It’s a gorgeous day here, not too hot, soft breeze, perfect September weather.
(Perfect for oversleeping, too. Sorry about that.)

How are you weathering things this week? What made you happy?

54 thoughts on “Happiness is Autumn Weather”

  1. I got the car to myself, dropped off a bunch of library books, and am having lunch (and ice cream) by myself. It’s probably the longest time I’ve had away from my kids in months.

  2. Our forecast high today is 99 degrees. So I am full of bitterness and envy over ‘not too hot.’

    Other than that, happy because I got a lot of good ‘self-published author’ BS done yesterday, including loading up novel #14 for launch.

    Also we watched the live-action Beauty & The Beast on Mouse Plus last night, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Lordy what beautiful production design. Cast full of Oscar winners. Great songs. Today we sort-of plan to watch the live-action Aladdin, if the husband hauls himself out of the man cave before it gets too hot to go into our TV cave.

  3. I am making my dog a birthday cake. I don’t usually but he turns 15 this weekend and I am reflecting on how much I love the little guy. We have been through alot together. He is not in great health, so I’m not sure he’s going to make it to 16, which breaks my heart but we are happy for the now.

    Tomorrow we hope to take the sailboat out and enjoy the lake. We haven’t had a chance to sail yet this year.

  4. I’ve been working my tail off as our school year is a calendar one and we lost FIVE months. So upon return of half class on alternate days with a shortened curriculum I’m reteaching SO much. It’s training ALL of my teaching energy.

    The only other thing I do is yoga and lurk on Malicious Compliance and Pro Revenge subreddits. It’s turning into a similar addiction to reading till the end.

    Oh, wait. The happy?
    I’m happy to see the children.
    I’m cooking more and better.
    The daily yoga is helping me keep calm. Using Yoga With Adriene again after my course and some of her sessions are harder now because I am working with better alignment. So sometimes I stop at 20 minutes in and do more restorative movements.

    I’m doing the facial massage from Katie Brindle and IT’S HELPING MY SKIN SETTLE, without any meds.

    Adding 5 to 7kg to the doggo is going ok. Can still count his ribs too easily but am working on that.

    Also, this pandemic has shown me how so many of the things I didn’t get in my life were for my own good. That is my biggest happy.

    1. And being able to see that is a skill that will pay dividends in the years to come. Congratulations!

    2. Ah, Aunt Snack, so true. Huge life lesson, feel like engraving it on a bracelet to wear daily.

      It’s one thing to be in the moment of loss of different position or promotion and hear “everything happens for a reason” but to SEE the reason revealed 6 years later is frankly, mind-bending.

      1. Hindsight really can be enlightening. I do professional tarot reading, and I often have people come to me a year or two later and say, “I thought you were crazy, but everything you predicted happened!” I love those moments 🙂

        I’ve learned over the years that most of the things I didn’t get (or people) turned out for the best. Not always, but mostly.

    3. “Also, this pandemic has shown me how so many of the things I didn’t get in my life were for my own good. That is my biggest happy.”

      That’s how I feel about my hell job. If I was working in a career I loved and actually cared about (i.e. doing something creative for a living), I would be out of that career now and have no health insurance. So thank gawd for, at the moment, not being expendable.

  5. My friend Harriet’s neighbors at their river house have the most amazing organic garden I’ve ever seen. Yesterday I picked up a butternut squash that Harriet had left for me and this morning I found an email from her with an article containing 28 recipes featuring butternut squash. That, in itself, would be reason for thanks, but the amazing thing is that it started me thinking about making her a sampler or pillow.

    I gave up needlepoint years ago because I have arthritis in both my thumbs which makes it painful. But when I read Harriet’s email a phrase popped into my head that would make a great sampler. And while she has declared both houses “clutter free” zones and refused most gifts, she won’t be able to refuse something handmade by a friend. And it has the added benefit that I can get out some of my frustration with politics by stabbing at the canvas. Maybe I can even design it to use up some of my huge bag of yarn left over from previous projects (if I didn’t donate it before my last move). Oh, I absolutely adore feeling sneaky!
    The only problem is that all the places where I used to buy supplies have gone out of business. As Jenny would say, “Must cogitate.”

    1. I’ve done three coronavirus-themed samplers. I’m still vaguely pondering a fourth. It’s a fun pandemic activity.

      What’s the saying?

  6. School starts this week and I was having trouble finding a desk. Stumbled across my old grad school desk hiding in a corner of our shed – DH was using it for storage and it was in in rough shape. However, I cleaned it up and it will get me through the next 2 years. I still need to set up my computer, etc., but happy that my work space is coming together.

    I spent a day working at a friend’s flower farm. Mostly weeding but we also collected sweet pea seeds. I love it and feel like I should pay them. They sent me home with tomatoes, a patty pan squash the size of a frisbee, an armful of glads and zinnias. My morning glories finally started blooming. The squirrels got into the seeds so it took them time to recover and get established. Only a couple of blooms at a time but they’re the size of a large tea cup and a gorgeous true blue with white stripes. Definitely worth the wait.

    Fall is definitely on its way. Trees have started turning colours and it’s much cooler. A bit more heat would be good for the garden but walking the dog is more enjoyable than earlier in the summer.

  7. It’s currently 100 degrees at my non-air conditioned home here in LA, but as they say, it’s a dry heat, so I suppose that’s, if not happiness making, at least non-happiness ameliorating. My Dyson fan was made for this, so there’s some happiness.

    Happiness was clearing out a bunch of shelves in the garage, and now that there’s a little space, I have a plan going forward with organizing all the “going to Portugal” stuff together and continuing to get rid of more things. Once it’s cooler. 90 degrees is looking awfully attractive at this point.

      2. When I was a kid living about an hour outside of LA, it didn’t get that hot. It also got cold in the winter (well, 45-50). It has changed so much. But, hey, climate change is a myth, right? Oy.

  8. Today is 98 degrees. On Tuesday, it will drop below freezing and we will have snow. I miss having a Fall season.

  9. We had a friend visiting for the weekend and other friends over to see him. He’s an artist and we spent some time on drawing and a lot on just talking. It was great.

    And on Saturday we went for a walk around the botanical gardens, admiring the flowering magnolias and the acres of daffodils. And the fruit icecream van by the gardens has re-opened, so that was a delicious way to celebrate spring.

  10. Yesterday I returned books and a dvd to the library porch which is kittycornered and three houses down from me. When I went to get back in my car and go to the hospital to visit my husband I noticed a tire was almost flat. Drove back home and son took care of it and off I went. So glad I did the library first. This is the fourth time my husband has been hospitalized this year. He’s been seeing a lot of specialists who set him up for tests, determine the the test performed is just fine and set him up for another test with another specialist. Before he could take the next test he decided to just go to the emergency room of the hospital and they figured out he has Congestive heart failure. (Note here that he is also stubborn and I would have to finagle to get him to go.) Why couldn’t the cardiologist figure that one out? He never bounced back from the procedures he had in February and March and Covid struck the nation which pushed a lot of things back. I know that had a lot to do with it. In the short time he has been there he has lost a total of 14 lbs in water weight with more to come. He’s breathing so much better and can go for strolls around the floor and not be gasping for breath. But damn I can’t wait for him to come home and resume kitchen duties, I’m exhausted trying to come with what to cook for dinner.

    1. Wow, that’s appalling that the specialists didn’t figure it out. But great that he’s improving. It must be such a relief.

      1. It is. My own feeling is that the medical community is very structured and analytical so that what he was diagnosed with back in February and March his doctor double checked in the past month with tests. And told him the operations were a success because everything looked great. An appointment was being set up to see a Pulmonary specialist when my husband took matters in his own hands and just went to the emergency room. He is getting better and hopes to be released tomorrow.

      2. My favorite diagnosis not made by a specialist was 20 years ago when I had a sinus or upper respiratory tract infection where the specialists could not find the source and 6 weeks of different antibiotics did no good. I was at the vet’s with my cat for his annual physical and the vet said “Are you taking anything for your asthma? You should be using an inhaler.” I went back to the specialist and they listened to my lungs again and said “you have asthma”.

        1. Picked my husband up this morning from the hospital and he will have to monitor his weight on a daily basis. He lost a total of nineteen lbs in water weight.

        2. My own similar favorite was when my mother came home from surgery, having declined painkillers, and then found she was uncomfortable her first night at home. She went to the kitchen and puttered around, fixed herself a cup of something hot, and couldn’t find any aspirin or anything similar. Except in the miscellaneous cupboard was a tablet left from the dog’s surgery. She said she contemplated the tablet for quite a while before deciding she probably shouldn’t and going back to bed.

          She mentioned it to the vet the next time the dog went in, and the vet laughed a while, and then told her that Pidge’s pills were calculated dosage by weight and Pidge weighed about fifteen pounds, so any pill for her wouldn’t have helped Mother much.

  11. Lovely fall weather too, although a lot of not-so-lovely ragweed to go with it. Ah, well. Fall has always been a mixed bag for me.

    Happiness is planning my one and only trip for the year, six days hiding in a house in the Catskills starting next Wednesday with a friend. AND HER DOG. There is a river down from the back and a fire pit for s’mores. We purposely rented a house so we could cook all our own food and not be around other people, although there is a microbrewery 5 miles down the road that we might check out. I’m planning to do jigsaw puzzles (which I love, but can’t do at home because Cats), read SEP’s new book, drink wine, and avoid both the news and the internet. I need this mental health break like I need air right now. And did I mention she’s bringing HER DOG? This makes me very happy.

    What doesn’t make me happy is that my town (Oneonta, in upstate NY) is in the national news because of Stupid. We have two colleges here. The private one, which is smaller, did a pretty good job of planning for the students’ return. The state school completely blew it (a week of self-quarantining on the honor system before coming back to school? really? no testing? really?) and some of the students took that stupid and squared it by having huge parties the week before classes started. No masks. A week in, we were at over 600 cases. They had to shut everything down and sent them home to distance learn for the rest of the semester.

    The good news is that none of the kids seem to be very sick–no hospitalizations–and so far no one who works at the college or lives in town (other than the students) have gotten sick. So that’s something. But man, the affect on the artists’ cooperative shop I run. Let’s just say it is a good thing I have a vacation to look forward to…

    1. I am once again into puzzles and have discovered new favorites. In September I was going to start fall/Halloween puzzles but life interrupted. I’ll have to finish the one I have going first. I really like the Susan Brabeau designs for the expressions on the faces of characters.

      As for the students on the news over the weekend in Boston it was reported that eleven students were caught partying at a hotel. They were dismissed from college and no refunds were to be given for their tuition.

  12. Being able to turn off the AC half the day is a happy.

    Loaning the laptop to the grandkinder for online school… is more scary than happy. Those power adapter plugs are so darn frangible.

    I was awakened today (at 1:30 PM) to be asked, “Want to go shopping?” I, of course, answered affirmatively and took action. Showered and dressed and dashed to the car. We didn’t need much, so it was a “being sociable” and “away from the rest of the family” trip. I didn’t even fill an entire recycle shopping bag. The dotter filled several to make up for me. 🙂

    I must admit to getting bored with Outback. Got chicken instead of beef. Got a salad instead of potato. 🙂

    Happy!

  13. I did my filing and cleaned and tidied the house today: I’m on holiday from tomorrow. First day (partly because the forecast’s poor) is going to be a planning day, plus a trip to the library and the bookshop. Really happy to be taking a month off.

    The garden and allotment keep making me happy. Also discovered some good blackberries ten minutes’ walk away.

    My five batches of compote/fridge jam seem to have turned out well – still have one to taste. But damson jam for breakfast again makes me happy.

    1. So silly me is unfamiliar with damson fruit…so when I first read this, I read it as

      “But damn, son! Jam for breakfast again makes me happy!”

  14. Defrosted the upright freezer yesterday. Very happy. Painting the granddaughters playhouse without them. Gray told me I could paint some if I want too. It is a much bigger job as they changed their colours to be more colourful and then they want some glitter paint on it too. They have been watching ellieV toys (Aussie on YouTube). More colours and glitter. Had to go to three paint stores to get all the product, low inventory. Happy to paint with and without them.

    Getting my boat license on line, so far 1-100% and 2-90%. Woohoo the brain still cogitates. Very happy with my marks.

  15. I finally had the socially distanced croquet party today, in the lovely 75 F weather. We put out chairs far apart. If we go close, we masked up. Not too many people played croquet, but sat appropriately apart and caught up. I played, and went down in flames. It was great. We are very aware that we’ll lose the evening light and then it will be too cold to be outside, and that will be the end of safe outdoor meeting for the year. We have hopeful plans for parties next summer.

    1. I’m debating whether to buy a lot of those giant snuggly sacks for outdoor get together or an electric outdoor heater…

  16. My dill/garlic crock pickles came out well. The weather is beautiful. I trimmed the hedge; with the shorter days, I shouldn’t have to do it again until next summer. I also stopped at our local honey store to stock-up.

  17. This is week three of my (per my therapist’s “permission”) contacting the crush for approximately half the week. This is going pretty well, all things considered. Had a movie-related conversation on Tuesday that went past midnight 🙂 But on Friday I contacted him and this did not go so well, because one of his cats had disappeared for several days and he was crying and freaking out on the couch.

    Well. For those of you who remember how the St. Anthony prayer found Jenny’s lost purse, a friend of mine told me last year to try St. Francis for lost pets. Which is a thing I started trying out when I saw lost pet signs in the neighborhood. Lost pet fliers started coming down after I started doing this, so I assume it’s worked. Well, I did a prayer to St. Francis, a little spell, and had another witchy friend of mine contact whoever the heck she contacts. Told crush that I was going to do something magical (he knows I’m pagan but still hasn’t really clued in on how this goes… said “I know I’m a crackpot, but hey, can’t make it worse”) and he’s a Muggle, so was all “I guess.”

    Within 24 hours, the cat turned up, just walked by the family looking for her like nothing was wrong. I doubt he associates that with any magic, but I’m proud that for once, I could actually do something (or “do something,” however you define that, I do not care) for him. He even initiated texting (as previously mentioned by him, he freaks on initiating unless there’s some reason like carpooling, tickets, or well, cat) to tell me the cat had come back! So, huzzah, he’s not crying any more. I really didn’t want anything worse to happen to him these days…

    I am still debating whether or not to go try see him, but am leaning towards no now since the store he works in (family business) held some giant event with a lot of people in it this weekend. Good lord. I don’t really do well being Out With People these days anyway and I ***really*** just want to tackle hug him and I am 99% sure I’ll cry if I see him, so that would be bad.

  18. Happiness is having lunch with a friend at a new-to-us place that believes in giving back. One adds $6.00 to the check amount, and it pays for another person to eat. Prices are reasonable and food was good. Also managed to get to eight minutes on an elliptical (not using the hand part, just cycling), which makes the ten-minute goal look possible! And this afternoon, went to local art museum and enjoyed the beauty.

  19. We had a beautiful day here too. I went for a hike and took some decent photos and then spent some time in my hammock swing trying to finish my re-read of Queen of Attolia before I had first my Google chat with my sisters and then an online book discussion of QoA with fellow fans. I didn’t manage that but since I have read it before, I remembered enough to keep up with the discussion.

  20. The kittens are thriving and absolutely adorable. I now have a haircut. The temp has cooled off a bit, though it’s certainly still warm. I’ve started rereading NINE COACHES WAITING. If only it will cool off some . . . .

  21. On Saturday I walked around the yard with a friend then wandered down the path in the woods. I realized that I hadn’t brought my cane. And, that I don’t know how to fall or to pick myself up — in case that’s changed since the knee replacement.

    So I returned to the house but later visited a friend for a tour around her gardens and woods for 3.5 hours. No cane.

    What’s more, no pain. All day long. Nearly 10 weeks after surgery, life is great — the first that I’ve been pain free since the start of 2018.

  22. On Saturday we took my 1965 Morgan 4/4 on a road trip with the local Morgan club. It is the first time I have ever done that (we bought the car 40 years ago as my 30th b-day present). The car now has about 150 miles on it since we finished (mostly) the restoration and it is running again. And it is so much fun. People wave and laugh and give a thumbs up when they see it. It is the epitome of cute (also beautiful with a willow green body and black fenders). It is like creating your own parade.

  23. I sanded, primed and painted a small curb-pickup shelf and side table. Except I had grabbed a splattered paint can while not wearing my glasses, and instead of “Paint-Rite High Gloss” it actually says “Prep-Rite Holds Gloss.” Which means I sanded, primed, primed and primed.

    Maybe I’ll just put on a coat of non-yellowing poly.

  24. My built in oven is dead, for the 2nd time in 14 months. I think I’m going to rip it out and replace it with a real stove. The stovetop isn’t in real good shape either.

    My blood clot is much better but the seatbelt bruising on my chest sucks.

    I’m down 28+ lbs since the end of July. The Eliquis is killing my appetite. And before that I was sick and was basically on a liquid diet, which jumpstarted the weight loss. I’ve seen my doctor several times this summer and she’s aware of the weight loss. On the up side, I’m now under 200 lbs.

  26. My actual happiness was spending the weekend at my friends’ river cottage. There were games, kayaking, jetskiing, eating, and most enjoyable for me, sitting on the front or back porch reading. The weather was fantastic. I didn’t put on a mask for 3 straight days. In short, it was 3 days of normal.

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