Labor Day weekend.

Here it comes.... and there it goes. I say this every year: Once Labor Day rolls around, the rest of the year just melts away like a snowball.

I'm already in a Halloween frame-of-mind here, with the house all decked out in black cats and orange pumpkins, smiling witches and purple and black Halloween trees. I do Halloween the old-fashioned way.... happy decorations, nothing dripping with blood and gore. If it isn't pleasing to the eye, then I don't want to see it. I've started wrapping up Halloween grab-bags for the party.... little gifts in cellophane bags that are slowly filling up a big basket as I find them.... our friends will be able to choose a Trick-or-Treat gift as they leave the party.

I searched eBay for 'vintage Halloween' items...... lots of stuff out there, most of it expensive, but I just like looking. When I think of all the 1950s Halloween decorations that were up in my grandmother's attic...... we all should have just marched up there and chosen what we wanted before Aunt Dolly moved to Florida. Heaven only knows the fate of those attic treasures.


Wildfires are burning again in parts of Texas.... some just 70 or 80 miles away from us. Our friend J called us after dinner tonight, telling us to look towards the west at the huge white smoke clouds that are rising above the sky in Bastrop. We've been to that little town, and even looked at property there before settling down right here three years ago. Bastrop is another Hill Country town that time has over-looked.... its streets and homes preserved from decades ago, giving you the comfortable feeling that the world (at least in Bastrop and towns like ours) hasn't gone completely modern and crazy and unpredictable. The TV news said that over 140 homes have burned, plus countless livestock have been lost. One woman was crying on the news because the fire department wouldn't let her go back to her property to search for her horse. So very sad. If that doesn't make you count your blessings, then nothing will.


We woke up to a morning that wasn't broiling hot today... clear and crisp, a great day for walking, which we did. When we came home, I turned off the air-conditioning and opened the doors so the cool breeze could come through the screens. The winds today were wicked, though, which didn't help the firemen fighting those fires around the state. No rain in sight...... all the storms churning around in the Atlantic and coming towards the Gulf aren't reaching us up here in the hills. We're as dry as can be.... walking on the grass sounds like you're crushing cornflakes beneath your feet.


Houdini and Bluebell in the birdcage.... happily sharing food and treats, and before I came upstairs just now, they were both side by side on their little swing, closing their eyes and getting ready to sleep through the night. I've discovered that our outside (sometimes mostly inside) cat Gatsby is afraid of the parakeets. If he comes into the kitchen door and the parakeets are chirping and singing, Gatsby will practically glue himself to the wall as he makes his way from the back door to the TV room. This big tough-looking cat afraid of two colorful birds that probably weigh less than two ounces each. You're a funny cat, Gatsby-Boy.


We went to College Station over the weekend...... while my husband shopped at Best Buy for computer things, I found a party store filled with all sorts of decorations, costumes, favors, whatever-you-can-think-of to toss into a party. I can see that store becoming one of our regular stops when we drive up there. What will not be a regular stop is the Italian restaurant where we had lunch that day. The only delicious thing in that restaurant was the sauce, but everything they put it on was mediocre at best, and that's pushing it. I can honestly say I'm an Italian food-snob, being from an Italian family and knowing how to cook Italian dishes...... and that little place was lower on the Italian totem pole than Olive Garden. (Sorry, Olive Garden, but there are no Italian grandmothers in your kitchens.)