It's Definitely Autumn - Time For Thoughts of Autumns Past

I'm running a little late today, so this may be a bit shorter than usual. Still, I'm here, I did my run this morning, and I took a bit of extra time to set up the portable clothing rack I had purchased from Amazon and hang my Mother's evening gowns onto it. The next stage in the photography and sale of these clothes will come with tacking a sheet up for a backdrop. Working in the spare bedroom is never comfortable in the winter - it gets the least heat of any room in the house. But, I do want to continue working on the project. I don't have a deadline, but it would be nice to progress - baby steps notwithstanding. 

Progress isn't measured by time, but by action. I made 
one more step towards my goal of fixing and selling 
my Mother's gowns this morning by setting up the 
portable clothing rack and getting them hung on it. 
Now that they're not being crowded in the coat closet, 
I can concentrate on photographing and listing them for
sale on Ebay or Etsy.   

DH and I actually had a relaxing Sunday. It was quite windy, so raking leaves, despite the (relatively) nice temperatures and full sunshine, just wasn't a possibility. I think the wind finally managed to get almost all of our leaves down, though, so DH will probably get started on raking the leaves this week. We need to get them off the lawn before the snowfall comes, and the later we get into the season, the more difficult that will be to accomplish. It's a hella-lot of work to get our leaves taken care of, and the gutters will need to be cleaned once more too. The gutters are pretty easy - a precursor for when DH will need to rake the roof after every snowfall. But when there's moisture that has frozen in them, the gutters are much more difficult. Hauling the leaves over to our compost pile is much easier with two of us but still takes a lot of trips back and forth from the upper back yard to the farthest corner of the front yard near the drainage ditch. 

Although this is NOT my yard, it looks pretty much like 
what my yard looks like right now. Fall leaves everywhere. 
In my yard, after yesterday's windy day, my trees are now 
almost completely bare. The fallen leaves are exactly 
like what you're seeing here, though. A carpet of golden 
leaves just waiting to be raked. 

Obviously we didn't get any gutter guards installed - yet. He's mulling it over, and we'll probably get some within the year. The quotation is good for a year, so we have that in our favor. We rarely jump on things as quickly as sales people would like. Even with Minion, I went back and forth to the car dealership several times and measured, then measured again. I double-checked all of the specs, made sure it would totally meet my needs, and then, finally, bought her. She's been a great car to have, and I've never regretted that purchase. So sometimes we just move slowly - but we end up with exactly what we wanted. 

I have a 2015 Mazda CX-5 and I love it. I loved it so much, 
that when Chickie needed a new car, she got a 2014 version 
of the same car. So we BOTH love our cars. I'd get another one 
in a flash - it's been extremely dependable and very easy 
to operate. Before we had the truck, Minion was our truck 
and performed the job well. I have about 65,000 miles on 
her now, so expect her to last several more years before I 
need to look at a replacement. 

The only exception we've ever made to the "check it out and then check it several more times" unspoken rule is with appliances. When the refrigerator died, we were there buying a new one immediately, even though we couldn't get exactly what we ideally wanted. We had to settle, because life just isn't good without a refrigerator. It was still several days before the installation could happen, and we were living with dry ice and lot of ice cubes in coolers for several miserable days. The oven replacement, on the other hand, took months because that was extremely size specific and we could live without an oven. Still, I'm quite happy with our new oven, and I'm getting quite comfortable with it. 

This year I'll be able to make a Thanksgiving 
turkey on time in our oven. Last year we didn't 
get our replacement oven until closer to 
Christmas, so we had turkey, but our true 
Thanksgiving turkey was a dinner out. It was 
good, but it didn't give us that lovely smell that 
we associate with Thanksgiving throughout my 
house. I've been getting used to my new oven and 
I like it. It's a delight to have a functional broiler 
once again. 

So sometimes taking some time before choosing a product or device isn't a bad thing. Some things need to be replaced immediately (when the upstairs TV died, DH had a new one installed before the day was ended). Other things can take much longer (we've needed new windows for two decades. Maybe next year). But through it all, life goes on. The sun rises and sets, people are happy or sad, and the Great Wheel turns, never-ending, in the dance of the Universe. May you find your place within the Great Dance and have a wonderful day. Slava Ukraini.