My Favorite Time of Year

 My Favorite Time of Year

Well Fall is here, and that means more comfortable temperatures and beautiful colors in the trees, cooking soups and stews, and wonderful Dr. Levy taking pity on me and lowering my Risperdal dose from 4 mg./day to 3.5 mg. Hooray! I feel crisper, more motivated, and isn’t that wonderful after months and months feeling zoned out and fatigued. I feel greedy, I want to go down to 3 mg. but easy does it, Melissa, I don’t want to tip into an episode like I did in 2022 when I was down to 1.5 mg of the Risperdal.

So I’m just going to enjoy where I am, and proceed with my new water exercise classes I found. They meet twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’m making new friends. I feel better, stronger, I’m delighted I’m out of the recliner and moving! I’m trying to walk more too, though it’s slower going with me very reluctant to leave my chair in the morning.

 My husband, bless his soul, keeps encouraging me to join him on his morning walks which I promised to do when the weather got cooler. Well, here we are, it’s Fall with temps in the 60s and 70s, perfect for strolling so what’s my excuse? I have none. Just need to push through this initial resistance but that’s hard. Don’t give up trying!

OSU football has started and the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey season starts in a few days. So that will keep me occupied. My writing group is still going strong, something I find very rewarding and I love the fellowship with the other participants. All in all I’m happy, sure I get a little stressed and anxious in the morning but besides that everything is OK. I’ll take it.

On Sunday, October 13 my husband and I celebrate our 23rd anniversary. I can’t believe we’ve been together this long, time flies and all that. We are going out to dinner to Cento, a neighborhood Italian restaurant that recently opened. I’m excited to have the night off from cooking, and to have someone else doing the dinner dishes. 

AA continues to be important to me, and I’m doing my meeting zooms plus attending an in person meeting every now and then. I’ve recently joined a prayer accountability text group with a few guys from Shawn’s sponsee family. Basically, we check in with one another to describe what we are praying for, and offer encouragement to one another. Praying doesn’t come easily to me, and I’m hoping this text group will help with that. 

I continue working with sponsor Shawn on the AA Steps. I’m still on Step 7, parked here because of a current crisis of confidence in my Higher Power, but I’m working through that. Shawn doesn’t push me, and I appreciate that, I’ve got space and time to list my shortcomings and humbly ask Him to remove them. This is a real commitment to my Higher Power, the rubber is meeting the road, and I want to be sure when I complete this step. 

So this is my update for now. It’s a beautiful day today, and I’m going to get out and enjoy it. Easy does it, everyone, bloom where you are planted. See ya. 

Writing Prompt: A Great Pumpkin

 Prompt: Write about something you do very seldom that most people wouldn’t know about you that you feel is actually a big part of who you are.

A Great Pumpkin

Once in a blue moon my husband Michael and I will rally in October and make the drive down to Circleville for the annual Circleville Pumpkin Show. I love these small town festivals, and who doesn’t love seeing the 2,400 lb. pumpkin crowned winner as heaviest of them all? Yes, there’s all the competing pumpkins to see, and then all the pumpkin foods to sample, like pumpkin hamburgers, pumpkin doughnuts, and of course the crowd-pleasing pumpkin pie. And if you like people-watching like I do, it’s a feast for the eyes to gaze into the crowd of 100,000 people that show up each of the four days of the Show.

My husband was raised in Circleville, so for him it’s a trip down memory lane when we go back to his home town. Sometimes when we go down for the Pumpkin Show we’ll leave the festival and drive by his old house, which used to be considered a solitary place in the country outside of town, but now has been surrounded by adjacent houses and some business development nearby. We never have stopped by the house and tried to meet the current occupants. Instead we just do a slow drive-by. That seems to suffice these days. But I love seeing the place where Michael spent his younger years, I imagine him raking the yard and bagging leaves for his allowance. I think his stingy Dad paid him $5.00. 

But back to the Pumpkin Show, and that wonderful, small-town vibe you get when you attend the yearly festival. I really, really love this, and although I’ve lived almost exclusively in large urban centers for most of my life, I really think I would love having a homestead in a small town like Circleville, where everyone pretty much knows one another and a lot of each other’s business. Occasionally a meaty scandal rocks the town, like right now the police department in Circleville is under investigation. Eventually things get sorted out, some people get fired and move away from town. Life goes on.

There are different parades during the four day Pumpkin Show, and I’ve seen the Little Miss Pumpkin beauty pageant parade as well as the Circleville High School marching band. Michael was in the band back in the early 1980s, back when it was a really big deal, with over 200 people participating. Michael played the trumpet, and wore black and red clothing in a military style as well as a tall, black furry hat. I wish I had the chance to see him playing with that large ensemble. What a sight that must have been!

My husband turned 60 in August and he’s pushing to convince me to move to a more rural locale for this next chapter of our lives. Perhaps we will end up somewhere down in Pickaway County, closer to Circleville. But then again maybe we will just stay put here in German Village. Who knows. I’m just taking things one day at a time, and right now we’ve got our own mixed assortment of pumpkins outside on the porch, just waiting to be carved. And I know how to make a mean pumpkin pie. Guess the pumpkin show for us is here this year. I don’t mind. There’s always next year to see the great pumpkin at the Circleville Pumpkin Show. 

Writing Prompt: A Favorite Room

Prompt: Visualize what's currently inside your favorite room. Why are those things in there? Who bought them? Why do you love the room? 

A Favorite Room

There are several rooms inside this 1906 home of mine that I enjoy immensely. I spend most of my time either in my kitchen or the TV room, but it’s the adjacent parlor room with working fireplace that I’d like to discuss today. 

My time spent in the parlor is limited primarily to the cold winter months, when my husband lights a fire for me and I curl up on the pine green leather sofa to watch the flames. Basset Lily will jump up on the couch with me and nestle in next to me. I bought this leather couch myself almost 25 years ago, back when I was single and wanted to splurge on a piece of furniture. I’m not exactly sure how much I spent on the couch but I think it was over $1,000. Nice couch.

The parlor room is filled with interesting, eclectic things purchased by both myself and my husband. Some lovely paintings hang on the walls, a landscape with trees, and three paintings purchased from a gallery specializing in American Realism. I also have a framed Toulouse Lautrec print of a red haired showgirl he loved to paint.

There’s a sampling of antiques in the parlor that we’ve gotten from our parents. I got us something called a dry sink, a large wooden piece with shelves below a top resembling a sink with no faucet or drain. Inside the dry sink I have some of my mother’s china, some nice bowls, and some formal place setting pieces. Next to the dry sink is a large antique pie safe, basically a wooden storage cabinet from years ago. My husband inherited it from his mom and uses it to store miscellaneous items, and I stashed my old portable CD player/radio in it that I used to play all the time. In the far corner of the room sits the antique secretary my husband also got from his mom. He keeps important mail and documents in there. I’m glad we’ve put the piece to use. 

There’s an antique hat and coat hanger on a portion of the wall to the left of the fireplace. Both my husband and I love to wear hats, and we’ve amassed quite a collection. There’s my husband’s Stetson hats, and my Russian furry hats in faux leopard and black mink. All the assorted ball caps from the different sports teams we support. And one of my favorite hats, an olive green fedora that makes quite a statement when I wear it out.

The focal point in the parlor room is the fireplace, and the wood mantelpiece over it with a mirror. We have an assortment of items on it, including “Harry” a stuffed squirrel; a large, silver vase in the shape of a fish stuffed with peacock feathers; a pair of bronzed baby shoes I found at an antique shop; a painting on a piece of tin of a red rooster with the lettering, “Warning: A Bipolar Rooster Lives Here”; and a small wooden frame around the following quote: “Opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your front door forever.”

So this has been a brief look at a room that has given me pleasure throughout the years. Soon winter will be upon us and I’ll be back in the parlor, gazing at a fire and all the eccentric items in the room. For now the room is quiet, just waiting for me. Soon I’ll be in there. Soon.