Completely Random Autumn Thoughts

Autumn hit like a ton of falling orange and red leaves this week. Which makes me wonder if a ton of leaves would hurt as much as a ton of bricks—if they fell on me. I’m thinking not, but I could be wrong. I wasn’t much into science in school.

The gray skies and changing colors seem too soon this year, but I know we’ve had the trees dump all their plumage early on in September before. It makes it much harder to find the pup’s fragrant offerings in the yard, until I slip and slide through them. But that’s life with dogs.

Otherwise, fall’s bright colors floating down on the still-green lawn is actually quite lovely. Autumn is my favorite season. It just never seems to last for a fair share of the year. The colors come and go so quickly and everything turns to brown overnight.  

I’ve been working on my sequel to Entangled this past week, trying not to be distracted by the colors outside my window or my dogs persistent begging to go for a walk. Like they need walks. I feed and water them. What else do they expect? Attention?

I’m still waiting for that breakthrough moment when I suddenly have my entire plot and everything figured out and take off typing like a maniac. That would be nice. I’ve had that with books before, but so far this one is not cooperating. I’ve even dreamed plots before. Which is great, because you can work while you sleep.

Maybe I need to do more research. I do know that eking out one sentence at a time is painful. Especially when I go back and delete it later anyway.

Speaking of research, I haven’t once visited the new library in town. I know it’s probably just the same as the other county libraries around the southern suburbs, but the building is new and is being paid for by our tax money, so I should probably look inside one of these days.

Autumn also means that road construction is in full swing. Our neighborhood is overrun right now with dump trucks, cement trucks, tractors and men with shovels. It’s louder in my yard than a jet airplane landing strip. They’ve torn up nearly every foot of road and sidewalk for blocks and blocks and now are slowly piecing it back together again, like a giant jigsaw puzzle that was chewed up and spit out by a Doberman. More tax money at work for our good. I thought the five-foot wide blacktop sidewalks were great, but someone decided little narrow cement sidewalks would be much more pleasing to the eye. I just don’t know where the neighbor children will park all their toys and bicycles now.

Another happy thing about Autumn is that new episodes of my favorite shows are finally here. Chuck starts its new season tonight on NBC. Just in time too, cause my other favorite show, The Closer, just finished its short season last week.

Is it just shows that start with a C that I like, you may ask? No indeed. I like shows that don’t have reality “stars,” no one has to eat bugs to continue to the next level, no one gets a make-over, no one cooks up jambalaya or pot stickers for a live audience, and no one has a special talent that involves dancing, tightrope walking, or sword swallowing. In other words, I like “real acting.” Is that an oxymoron?

My autumn ramblings must come to an end. Back to work on my book.