{Virtual Coffee}

Hello there! If we were meeting for coffee today you would be laughing at me. My hormones have been wreaking havoc on my system and I've had to pull out the heavy artillery.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would say that today is almost all about colour. Like the first bag of clementines I bought and the collard greens I have been craving

and the chinese lanterns I picked out of the bin

and the spectacular leaves that jump out at me.

I love the words on the random pages of the dictionary I opened to like, "hobgoblin", "Cornishman" (in honour of Kate from The Catalan Way who wrote me a lovely email this week) or "purge" - like tiny moments of kismet.

I might show you a few neighbourhood sightings like the sock monkey

or some diehard flowers that are keeping my spirit alive during these darkening days

How about this newly decorated garage door? It's on the house down the street, you know - the one that looks like the Brady Bunch lives there.

I would tell you how the wind blew so hard on Sunday I had to laugh at the canopy from Eyesore Number 1 that got washed and hung on the line (I was half hoping it would blow off and defeat the purpose of constructing the base layer next year)

I might show you a few scary things in our front yard

but this is the scariest - how much damage one squirrel can do in a few hours.

We've decided to give this one over to him in the hopes he leaves our other pumpkins alone.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would confess that my first favourite place for hiding Christmas gifts is now full.

And in an act of utter selfishness I made myself an earring this weekend. Actually, I made myself the companion earring to the pair I started to make a few years ago.

It may have been as short as one year ago, but it's more likely it was two years and it's kind of hard to tell in the photo but those small silver beads from Bali have tarnished, but only on the one earring that has sat on my table for so long. I guess I could be accused of procrastination.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would want to thank everyone who supported my dirty kitchen floor last week by the confessions about their own kitchen floors. I realize now that I really could have let my own go for a few more weeks, maybe even months. And then I would confess something I did since we last saw each other. Last Friday Riley came home with his first grade 3 report card and, according to his teacher, he is failing reading. I can't believe it, Riley can't believe, nor can anyone else who knows him. For the last three years he has been at the top of his class in this subject and all of a sudden he is incapable of reading and understanding text? So I kind of fired off a few rather aggressive comments in response, also questioning why he performs so much differently at home than in the classroom. I could have understood if she said he was struggling with writing (which is abhorrent and we are working on neatness) or in math since he is having a hard time getting his head around logic problems but reading? I sense something else going on here that is uglier than ugly and which is something I won't talk about here.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would tell you we went shopping for winter boots and discovered that Riley's feet have grown two sizes since last winter. I know it's natural and normal, but it still kind of freaks me out.

And before I go I would show you these gorgeous swatches of material I picked up for some upcoming projects. I already know what I am going to do with the red piece

and the rainbow roll of batik was too delicious to leave behind.

I might just hang strips of it all around the house like prayer flags.

I am going to send you over to Amy's Lucky Number 13 and ask you to save me one of her hillbilly lattes while I and google "how do I make a ninja headdress" since seeing all this orange has got me in the spirit for making a halloween costume.