For the last week, every walk has been in the rain, drizzle, or threat. Feels like London or something. I'm ready for a change. In the summer I like walking with the threat of rain since it's no big deal to arrive home soaked.

DW says that it's time to lower the storm windows. (We have the kind where the lower storm glass is raised in the summer and the screen lowered into its place.) That's the true sign of transition away from warm weather around here.

Good Morning! I'm almost done the second dog sit in a series of 4. Looking forward to it all being over for the year 2014 in Nov. and then seriously starting the search for my own dog. Today and tomorrow will be killer days with additional cat visits and dinner walks but then I have a small space in between all this work action.

We will be celebrating our first Thanksgiving in our own home with two people I haven't seen for 30+ years. It should be interesting.

Dagmar

We got a cold front down here in Florida. It is supposedly 55 right now, which is unheard of for October here. The high will be only 82 today and then back up to 87 the rest of the week. It was so great riding bikes yesterday and running this morning with the low temps. Normally it is very hot through mid November so this is a rare treat.

Something, probably.

CalCounter, I loved walking in the cool weather yesterday. It was a nice foretaste of the six to seven months of bliss that is Florida.

Bill, when I lived in Mass., mid-October was the time for putting up the storm windows, fastening the 3M plastic over the windows that didn't have a storm-window option, etc. I don't miss it.

After 8 months of not enough work coming in, I'm suddenly slammed for the next month with too much. Such is life for a consultant.

I hope everyone has a good week.

Agreed, and double agreed! Glad things have picked up for you although it would be so much nicer if they were just at a steady, achievable and pleasant pace.

Any ideas about why it was slow and why it's not now? It was very slow for me until April, then terribly busy. Now, well I'm just catching my breath and trying to see which way the wind is blowing.

Hi, Silverbirch. Most of my consulting is on textbooks, and the textbook industry is in flux right now; that's why I think everything dropped off.

In the meantime, I've been looking for new non-textbook clients, and I found one--plus I also work on some scholarly and trade books. The latter two often want to have things ready for the holiday season, so they get in a big rush around this time of year. So it's partly expected, but partly just coincidental.

Good morning. Fall here means cleaning up the patio and getting the furniture in order for outdoor entertaining. First I blew off the accumulation of dust, then rinsed, scrubbed and rinsed the cushions and supporting structures. Then cleaned the table and bar area and those chairs. All that remains is the grill which DH will do while I plant tomatoes and other veggies in the plot that he prepared with mulch yesterday.

Work continues to be crazy although I now see an end in sight. My assistant continues to baffle me as to why this change is so confusing to her. I left her on her own to create a new password for our online payroll entry and she totally flubbed it--twice. She'll have to call for a third password reset and then hope she types in and writes down the same password. ugh.

Oh yes, it's fall. Temperatures dropped into the 40s overnight. When I walked to 6 AM spin class in the dark, I amused myself by puffing my breath out into the air, to see the visible clouds that I could make.

When I get home from work tonight, my mother will be gone, having driven home after her long visit with me and our trip to Las Vegas. I will be relieved. She is restless, is not introspective or a reader, and requires a lot of attention and interaction with me, or even with strangers whom she chats up. Sometimes it's like having a child always looking at you expectantly: "What are we going to do next?" At the end of a nine-day visit, I'm running out of fun activities and resenting not having time alone to recharge. Like, I really want a pedicure, but she thinks it's not good to spend money on stuff like that when you should do it yourself.

Hi saef,
Your mother isn't a child--it sounds like she is an extrovert. Hard for introverts to deal with.

We still are experiencing a heat wave here, but it's supposed to end soon and I doubt it will return.

I'm fighting a cold/allergies and I don't have time for it. I have my dreaded book fair starting next week-- set up is this week so super busy.

Weight is up and I'm hoping it's partially because I'm not feeling great. I'm hoping anyway.

That's interesting, JayEll. Thanks. I'm always looking for patterns.

I can kind of relate, saef. My MIL flits. I seriously believe she has some sort of ADD or ADHD. I don't know how she can finish anything (read a book, watch a TV show, prepare a meal, etc.) as she is constantly flitting to another "job." She often cannot even complete a whole sentence. It can be unnerving at first but I generally learn to ignore it. At least she realizes that she's doing it, but I don't think she understands how much it impacts those around her (if we're watching a movie on TV we'll have to pause it numerous times for her to jump up and a) see what the cats are doing, b) check on the laundry despite it not being finished, c) check her phone to see if she missed a call, etc.). When she's helping me prepare dinner and I ask her to set the table for example, she'll flit off to do something else and forget to finish so I just finish it for her. While she might be good at multi-tasking on some level, it's not the kind of multi-tasking that is comfortable to watch.

Alison, you just described my mother, so accurately that it's uncanny. She's reactive and easily distracted. Everything must be done immediately, the minute she thinks of it. I don't work like that; I batch things. And I have to set emails aside to answer later. She sees that as procrastination and a threat the thing will never get done, when it isn't -- it's sometimes because doing a string of errands in a particular order, when they're all located in the same neighborhood, seems to be the most efficient way to complete a task.

To be fair, I think it's not any easier for her to deal with me, as when I am being uncommunicative or withdrawn.

And Jay, it's just that with a 73-year-old mother, and me doing the driving, and the trip preparations, and the meal preparations, it often feels like a role reversal, as I'm playing the parent and she's the child whom I have to work at amusing.

I can see how that can happen, saef.

But... my partner is 74 and very different from your mother. So, it may not be age so much as just the way your mom's personality is.

Our cat had to have an enema today, and the bill was $342. I asked if they had used vintage champagne for it.