The Little Engine

I sometimes wonder if nature actually pays that close of attention to the calendar.  Most of the time, I think not.  But I noticed that in Madison, the temperature sharply dipped the day after Labor Day.  It was as if Mother Nature said, "Well, summer is officially over for these people.  Let's pull out the cold weather and give it a good airing."

And to my own surprise I didn't mind. 

Well, I did a little when I woke up to find that my bedroom was freezing and I didn't have enough covers on the bed yet.  Cold mornings are so much harder to get out of bed.  You get nice and snuggled under your warm blankets, burrowing down like a little bunny.  As soon as you stick your arm or foot out, the bite of cold attacks and you huddle back under the covers, thinking "no, not yet." Of course, as soon as you do get up and out of the covers you're AWAKE.  There's no going back.

But I like the cool in the morning.  It's been the kind of cool where you have to throw on a hoodie to take the dog out for his morning constitutional.  The air has a wonderful clean and crisp feel to it.  The thick mugginess is gone.  The day has a fresh, newness to it.  It doesn't feel like it partied too hard the previous night and is now hung over, still curled up on the floor in the bathroom half asleep.

I love the fall.  I love the colors and the smell in the air.  I love the crisp mornings that give way to mild afternoons.  I wish I could trade 3/4 of winter and 1/2 of spring for more fall, but I haven't yet figured out how to do that.

Many readers will be glad to hear that work continues on the third book of Asylum Tales.  It's proving to be an extremely rough draft that will need some work in the next round, but I just want to get the rough draft down so I have something to work with later.  I've crossed the 50,000 word mark and I find myself wondering how possible it would be for me to cross the halfway mark by the end of the weekend.  That's only about 12,000 words.  Spread over the next 4 days, that's only 3,000 words a day.  Let's see how close I can come.

I am also chugging away on the 750 words still.  I love doing my daily 750-word purge.  It gets the brain moving.  It wakes up the fingers.  And I'm collecting all these cool badges!

With coffee in hand, I am now ready to tackle the day.  How about you?