Whatever happened to November?

Whatever happened to November?

Autumn, or what we commonly think of as autumn, departed last week in gusts of windblown leaves and falling snow.

I’m not ready for winter. And the calendar agrees with me. It says right here: Winter Solstice December 21.

But yesterday, with our neighbours putting up Christmas lights and wreaths, I was shamed into removing Hallowe’en decorations from our front porch. The scarecrows are now downstairs and the pumpkins are on the back deck waiting to be transferred elsewhere. Actually, one pumpkin already made it to the garbage after prematurely collapsing in a mass of black muck.

So where have I been all month? What have I been doing while early shoppers browsed through stores and diligent writers put brilliant thoughts to paper? What have I been doing as creative types went sleepless whilst feverishly compiling 50,000-word novels for NaNoWriMo?

I seem to have been really busy, and I do have pale flashes of memory: rearranging paper stacks in my office…library readings with fellow-author, Bob… a couple of mini-workshops with my son’s assistants… proofing a final publisher copy of Living in the Eye… rearranging paper stacks…

Here’s Kevin’s cover, by way of distraction, painted by him in accompaniment to his poem describing life in the eye. Just as it is never totally still in the eye of a tornado, it is never still in my autistic world.

Oh, but the pumpkins on our deck keep reminding me that I haven’t quite transitioned into the spirit of Christmas cards, wrappings and Yuletide gatherings.

Perhaps tomorrow night when I mingle with my Lambton Writers’ Association cohorts, their writerly vibes will help me transition to a more seasonal dimension.